This week, this job of teaching has been unusually easy for me. I never say that. Usually I get through a class and have pit stains under my shirt because diagramming sentences is apparently an aerobic activity. But this was a rare week. I didn't have much prep because I had already taught these concepts before. I just came to class, I taught the things, and the students smiled. Or they slept. Let's be real, plenty of them slept. It's that last full week before spring break. They need to sleep during the day, not sleep at night, and then they need to go on spring break. When they come back, their bodies will be here but their brains will never fully come back from spring break. It's a natural rule of the order of the academic year.

And who can blame them? The brains. They would rather live in Jamaica, don't you think? :)

I exaggerate. I teach such bright people. I was just grateful that this week had been without the usual helping of drama or pocket full of stressies. Oosh. All so bad for my complexion.

*** This is not to say that I wasn't in a bit of a tired funk this afternoon when I was coming up the driveway, carrying my boring piece of credit card mail. I said a prayer, the length of a mere three heartbeats, God, can you just turn me inside out? I hate feeling funky like this.

And then two little sunbursts met me halfway. The girl was running clumsily and I realized that it was because she had lost one of her shoes but it didn't stop her. The boy was racing after her and he realized that what his big sister was doing looked like fun, clever idea this one-shoe running, so I watched as he paused and kicked off one shoe, all the while smiling, and then my heart swelled as two half-shoeless sunbursts crashed right into me, blessing my heart and answering my prayer in three heartbeats.