Finding My People

You guys.  I don't want to brag, but I might have found my very favorite away-from-home job ever.  Make no mistake, I leave my heart asleep in her crib every morning when I drive to my office (which is only 3 days a week!).  But if I can't be there I so very much want to be here.

If only every day were Family Beach Day

I could tell you all of the awesome things about being a professor, and how I get hours of time in which to do what I want in terms of teaching whatever I think is pertinent and prepping in whatever way seems good.  I could tell you about the veritable smorgasbord of office supplies available to me.  Spiral bound.  Quad-ruled.  3 holes or 2.  Its like Christmas!  I could tell you about the friendly camaraderie that somehow already exists between myself and the other people who work here.  But all of that pales in comparison to my classes.

The sweet, precious sophomores this morning, when I asked for Pandora requests during in-class problem time, do you know what they said?  Ke$ha?  Nope.  Top 40?  Huh-uh.  The words that came out of Plaid Shirt, Second Row (don't judge, there's 38 of them!) were "Could you play the Garth Brooks station again?"

Bless.

They wear camo and chambray shirts with the arms cut off, and not ironically.  There is a Steeler's shirt in every classroom. There is, sadly, a shortage of sweet tea in this strange land, but I am beginning to suspect that, against all odds, I may have once again found some people to call my own.  It is beginning to feel familiar to me here, seeing these young adults as my own classmates looked so many years ago.

Its not the same, and it won't be.  There's a part of me that wants to wallow.  Preferably from the comfort of my bed with the fan on to make it cool enough to justify the duvet I'm wrapped in.  I want to just sit and just miss everyone we left, because I do miss them so bad.  And I want to lament about our house, the one I swore I'd never love and didn't want to grow old in, that I now somehow pine for.  I want to pout about the clouds and the lack of proper beverages and southerness.  But there's no value in that.  I do miss our Southern life, and you people down there, we miss you like whoa and probably will for eva.  But we're in a new place now, and so its onward and upward.  To the tune of "I can still make Cheyenne".

<3 M.