In Ten Minutes

In ten minutes the house will awaken to the sounds of three excited kids getting ready for the first day of school.

In five minutes those kids will be running down the stairs, intent on being the first to turn on the tv, shocked to see me downstairs already, happy to get the promised smoothies for breakfast but totally pissed to not be able to have "electronic time" until after they finish their morning list of things to do.

In one hour and fifteen minutes, I will be walking those three kids to the bus stop, forcing them to pose for pictures as they board that bus for the first day of school.

And in about one hour and thirty minutes, I will be walking back to this house, alone, ready to start the next chapter of my life.

I am officially unemployed. 

I guess the better term in "underemployed" but whatever.

I will still be teaching Religious School (but only one session instead of two) and Hebrew School (but only on one day instead of two) and I do have one tutoring student so far, but besides from that, I've got nothing.  And it was my own choice.  I'm the one who decided to try to get back into the elementary classroom.  I'm the one who told the preschool last year that I would not be returning, knowing that I if I did not get hired to teach full time I would have to be available to sub.  It was my choice.  How was I to know that all school budgets would be slashed this year due to lack of state funding?  How was I to know that any chance I had of an actual job opening within a school was going to be filled by teachers that currently hold a contract? 

I guess I could chalk it all up to bad timing.

The worst part for me is that instead of being able to try to sub right from the start of this day, I will find myself working feverishly on my on-line, self-paced courses so I can complete enough hours to reactivate my teaching certification.  I had misread the information about Act 48, mistakenly thinking that because I wasn't teaching in public school I did not have to finish the one hundred twenty hours of continuing education that I needed to do.  Therefore my certification is officially inactive.  So as soon as I get back from bringing the kids to their bus stop, I will begin completing my first thirty-hour course as quickly as possible.  Fun, fun, fun.

And it all begins in ten minutes.