All Things in Moderation?

I am really trying to strike a balance between work and play.  With the 3 day weekend I probably managed it a bit better than on other such occasions, but it still felt a little heavy on the have-tos.  Saturday my husband and I trekked down to Elder Son's home (about 2 hrs away) to deliver the "old" snowblower to him.  We took Elder Son out to lunch and then I took him grocery shopping.  Elder Son recently went through "job elimination" so he's battling that shock. He'd worked for a really good company for 5 years, with glowing reviews and promotions, and then he went into work the Tuesday before Christmas and was told that his job had been eliminated effective immediately --- no warning, no severance, no nothing.  So despite the fact that he is a VERY frugal man, and has a healthy savings account plus some investments, panicking parents felt the need to supply him with groceries!  We had a pleasant visit, but it did involve the whole day.  And the traffic was quite heavy on the return trip which makes the drive more tiring. It's not that I don't want to see our son, but sometimes he has the attitude that we have more time to travel than he does.  It's a 4 hour round trip no matter who makes it!

Yesterday was church.  I am now the moderator of my church and one of my responsibilities is to chair our monthly Council meeting.   I've attended Council for the better part of 25 years as chair of one committee or another, and over the past year or two I've chaired several meetings as vice moderator.  But yesterday was my first outing as the new moderator.  One of my pet peeves about Council meeting is the pacing.  Sometimes they drag on as discussion bogs down into everybody saying their piece multiple times.  My goal as the meeting facilitator is to find that balance between making sure everyone who needs to speak does and making sure we're not belaboring a point.  I was successful yesterday, and not only did we get through the entire agenda, but we finished in record time!  (It helped that we'd just had Annual Meeting on Thursday so there wasn't much new to report.)

After church my husband and I had a quick dinner, and then he took off on a sports trip.  (He drove the bus for the team.) I spent most of the afternoon grading papers and doing laundry.  I would have preferred to accept my friend's invitation to go over to house for a knitting session, but those papers don't grade themselves.    I don't like grading papers and I especially dislike grading late work.  I have a group of students this year who do not complete assignments.  I've been struggling with this:  We need to stay in constant communication with parents about their students' grades but it gets old fast when only 5 students turn in assignments on time. There are days  I spend more time contacting parents about missing work than I do correcting on-time work.  That's a problem.  Yesterday I graded 4 sets of papers,  made a list of missing work for 15 students, and started thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in the classroom this week.  I finally sat down with my knitting and Netflix at 6 pm.  I was in bed at 10, but I couldn't sleep since my husband was still out on the sports trip.

Today is "my day off" - and it will consist of a doctor's appointment that will consume most of the morning.  This afternoon I still have some school work to finish, and there is some business bookkeeping to deal with.    I am also supposed to get to the pool at 5 pm for water aerobics.  After reviewing all of this, I don't think I hit the balance I was looking for between relaxation and work, but I didn't spend ALL weekend on have-to's.  Just a lot of it!