The holiday break is officially over in the morning and I’ve misplaced my work ethic. Maybe I left it in my other purse.

Coming off of the end-of-semester madness, I rode an adrenaline-tide clear into Christmas Day. There are crossed-off lists to prove this, although I was so thorough I threw them away afterward. Something happened Christmas day that made my metabolism, my forward motion, my internal combustion, go dead still. It wasn’t gradual. I’m telling you, at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas Day, I exhaled and tuned into a slug.

That was fine for a day, so I let it continue. The next morning I woke up at 8:20 or so, completely horrified. I never set an alarm (not that I normally need one) and slept without waking for nine hours. Those who know me best understand the seriousness of such a thing. I’m a five-hour sleeper, the one who drives everyone crazy by staying up at all hours and rising in time to make coffee at five. I’ve spent my whole life tiptoeing around while others sleep.

It scared me, sleeping all those hours. Whatever had switched off the day before took over my body, and now I’ve spent the past two weeks moseying through my days, slug-like, instead of strangling every single minute for a few more seconds. It’s been lovely, really, but it’s over tomorrow.

I just can’t wrap my head around it. On Thursday there will be rooms full of students, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion they’ll all be much more sluggy than I am. My job is to bounce into those rooms and get their internal clocks moving again, start the cogs and wheels and such humming. They’ve been staring blankly at television or computer screens for four weeks now, the academic legions of WE will need to wind our own rusty clocks first and in a hurry.

When I taught high school and enjoyed Christmas breaks that lasted, oh, an hour and a half, this never happened. The thing is, I’m not sure if I want to complain about it too much since the slug that I’ve become is fairly comfortable and reclining.

Too much leisure is worse than too little. Time to make a cup of coffee and dropkick myself back into living. Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet.

P.S. – In my quest for threaded commenting – something WordPress does that Blogger doesn’t – I installed a commenting system called Intense Debate. Nice, but not as easy to use or pretty as I’d hoped. I guess I’ll hold out until Blogger adds threaded commenting, which I’m sure they will. I’ve asked nicely and all.

The downside is that in uninstalling my experiment, I lost a few comments. Please forgive me.