Summertime and the reading is easy ....

Vanessa Greene's
The Seafront Tearoom

For all my fellow school teachers - rejoice for summer is here! Time for relaxation and getting all the jobs we've put off doing all school year like painting the bathroom, cleaning the basement, making appointments with doctors or dentists, etc. etc. etc. Unfortunately I set myself up for failure and disappointment when faced with the arm's length list for summer chores so I've learned to take each day as it comes and do some little task. Keep the expectations low and you will be pleasantly pleased when you achieve even more.

So far I've spent my first two days of summer vacation tidying up around the house, doing laundry, working in the garden and ferrying a parent to a doctor's appointment. Oh yes - and reading. At first I couldn't settle down with a title - should it be something improving? Work related? Emotional? No - it should be something light and fun and summery. My second experience with Vanessa Greene's tea themed novels,  The Seafront Tearoom, delivered just what I needed. It is a story about women with challenges in their life that had to be faced. Women who needed to decide in which direction did they want their lives to go in. Women who needed companionship and found it in making new friends over a cup of tea.

Greene has presented me with several good themes to ponder at a time of transition in my own life. The end of the school year is always a challenging transition; grateful to have completed a year, a bit run down, a bit disenchanted, even managing to begin planning for the next school year, in much need of a break to regroup. I'm not going to go into a diatribe regarding the misunderstood challenges of teaching here, but I do want to say that between the stresses of a job and home life, regardless of what you do, a break is necessary to recharge the batteries before picking up the daily battle once more. Isn't it lovely that reading can be the conduit for that? Even just a couple of pages a day can bring respite. I'm so amazed when colleagues say they don't have time to read during the school year. I would simply die if I didn't make some time, even 15 minutes, for some personal reading every day. Reading is what helps to keep me sane. My advice - brew a cup a tea and sit with a fun book!