maintenance

One of the things I love about being an academic is never having had to give up the rhythm of the school year. I always loved the excitement of late summer and some new clothes and shoes, but best of all school supplies, and then the weeks at the end of May anticipating summer. Being a professor is much the same except the end of the school year has also come to mean physical maintenance. All the necessary things that have been put off I try to cram into the month of May while the children are still in school. The teeth get cleaned, a visit to the doctor - blood work perhaps - revisiting medications, some attention to the lady parts, and this year I dragged myself for a mammogram having not gone since I turned 40. That was this afternoon and I still feel a bit squashed and tender. I even decided to have a brow wax and that turned out to be a big mistake. Fine for about four days afterwards and then suddenly I broke out in random dry patches or bumps and just generally looked even more ill kempt than I had prior to my attempt to be better 'kempt'. I've also been for a kick ass 90 minute hot stone massage by our lovely masseuse Michele (Alison may have a cleaning lady, but we have a masseuse...).