Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

Too bad it isn't summer yet.

I've decided that, since school is over this Friday, tonight is the last time I'll have to blow off my time-sensitive work until late in the evening and then pull a long night.  So I'm making the most of it.  I'm sitting out on my porch (duh), all lathered up with citronella-scented beeswax lotion, feverishly hoping it's effective.  I've got a big mixed drink next to me (I'll keep the ingredients a secret so as to not arouse undue anxiety in any concerned parties) (MOM), and I'm quite excited about the level of relaxation I'm feeling.  It's NOT alcohol-induced relaxation, by the way.  I'm barely...okay, I'm halfway through it.  But it's tame.

I have a class' worth of social studies projects to grade tonight, and even though I know they'll be really easy to do, I just can't bear to waste this daylight and the delightfully muggy outdoors.  My plants are happy, the birds are happy, my Edwin McCain Pandora station is happy, and I'm happy.  And hot.  Very, very hot.  I might be experiencing negative utility from sitting outside here in a minute (thanks, brother Andrew, for introducing me to this valuable and highly pervasive concept).

I'll certainly be experiencing negative utility later tonight when I'm exhausted and I still have thirteen projects to grade.  That is, assuming that I only get tired after I've already graded seven of them.  Thank goodness I have effort-challenged students and about seven more didn't even turn their projects in; otherwise, I'd be in way bigger trouble.

Did you know that being "in trouble" used to be a euphemism for unwed pregnancy, especially of teenagers, back in the fifties?  I think it was at least in the fifties.  How is it that I know all kinds of random things about eras which I've never experienced?  We watched a movie in school today, and when the credits were rolling, I saw Andrew McCarthy's name and animatedly said, "What?  Andrew McCarthy was in this?!" (not thinking that in an animated movie I wouldn't necessarily recognize him...) to which one of my kids countered, "Who's Andrew McCarthy?"

Right, of course they wouldn't know him.  I replied, "He was a teen heartthrob in the eighties."  It made me feel really old.  Then it made me feel like an impostor.

Because I wasn't even born when he starred in Pretty in Pink.