Five Things I Love about Recess:

In much the same fashion as when we were in the first grade, in this house we live for recess. The almost unbearable long stretch between President's Day and Easter is behind us, and now we only have to make it four or five weeks between breathing periods. It is Jason's first year of really experiencing the glory that is congressional recess, so in honor of that I'd like to share with you this list.

1. Yoga: As I mentioned here, I discovered yoga last fall...which was pretty good timing, since the economy was falling apart and I was taking two classes at once and I still get kinda stressed thinking about it. I tried to explain to my dad, who has been having stress headaches, why I love yoga so much (I mean, for the last five minutes you get to lay on your back on mats and they turn the lights off. If there was only kool-aid and animal cookies afterward, it would be perfect.), and I knew he thought I was silly. No matter. During recess I can fit yoga into my week, and it makes me--and the muscles around my neck--very happy.

2. Mail-writing Show Downs: My coworker Nate and I had a contest this week to see who could write more constituent letters in one hour. The loser had to buy Suzi-Qs (a delicious Hostess treat) to share with the winner. I took Nate to school.

3. Digging Out: Mostly I spend my week of recess reading all the emails I should have responded to during the past five weeks, cleaning out my towering (and completely ignored) inbox, and hunched over my desk with a stack of file folders and labels, putting the pieces of the past month back into place. Seriously, it makes me so happy. And relieved, because, for just one week, all the balls are securely back up in the air.

4. Taylor Swift: I am finally on the Taylor Swift bandwagon, high school drama and all. This song on my iPod, which enjoyed play on repeat, pushed me through a couple of runs at lunch last week (another nice thing about recess) and a complicated memo on cap and trade.

5. Evenings: This week we planned a flower bed, made curtains, ate dinner in the dining room, got together with friends, and organized the library shelves. Usually all we manage to get done on weeknights is watching TV and falling “totes mude ins Bett,” as we used to say on my one trip to Germany. We also reminisced about the time, long, long ago, when we had a life outside of work during the week. At least we still have recess.