Today is the first day of Winter Break.  (The weekend didn't count because I wouldn't have had to go to work on the weekend anyway.  You dig?)

I have two-and-a-half paid weeks off from workschool.  From the place I work, of which work I do being the teaching of school.

I. Need. This. Break.

Never in all my life, ever, have I understood so dearly why the school year is structured as it is.  Never in all my life, ever, will I ever accept the charge of those ignorant fools that teachers have it "easy" with all their time off.

This time off is as necessary to me as, I don't know, food, water, and shelter are to humankind.

I've put in a roughly 70 hour week every week since the end of August.  I do it with love, being lucky enough to teach at an amazing school filled with extraordinary young people, but man, am I tired.

So:

The Break:

Ca commence comme ca:

It's raining (ohmygodit'sraininginlosangeleswe'reallgoingtodie), and so far, I have accomplished this: 1, the making of a perfect caffe latte replete in a foam wonder the likes of which are unseen in the hipster havens of Intelligentsia and Chango, and 2, the reading of a satisfyingly gory history of Paris, in bed.  The curtains are drawn to expose a gray sky and hapless commuters in the drizzle.  Yes, friends: I am very happy.

Later, I will go to yoga class for the first time in weeks, finish the Christmas shopping, and make one heck of an espresso chocolate chip banana bread (recipe below), but since I don't have to do any of it, and since the major accomplishments of the day have been accomplished (they being the coffee and the reading in bed), I am complaisant and relaxed as a kitten. 

Espresso Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Assemble the following:

Unsalted sweet cream butter, 1/2 a cup
1/2 a cup of white sugar
1/2 a cup of brown sugar
1 egg
3 ripe bananas, coarsely mashed
1 tbsp mayonnaise (trust me)
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
A little less than 1 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
Dashes of salt and cinnamon and, for the adventurous ones out there, a dash of chili powder
1-2 cups cold espresso or drip coffee (for example, whatever's left over from this morning)
Lots of chocolate chips (at least 1/2 a cup)

Cut up the bananas into thirds and drown them in the cold espresso.  Let sit for, say,  an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350.  Lightly grease a 9x5 loaf pan.

Blend the butter and sugar until it's smooth.  Beat in the egg.  Drain the bananas from their cold espresso bath, dump the espresso down the drain, and then add bananas and mayonnaise to the butter-egg-sugar concoction, blending until it's well-blended (of course).  Be careful not to overprocess the bananas.  Add the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and chili powder.

Mix together the flour mixture and the delicious banana-y goodness mixture until well-mixed (of course).  Fold in chocolate chips.  Again be careful not to overprocess.  This dough is just the tiniest bit runny and chocolate chips have a tendency to fall towards the bottom of the pan, and this is a bad thing.  I think we can all agree that chocolate chips should be well-distributed amongst the populace.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan.

Bake at 350 for at least 45 minutes.  Our oven is a bit cold, so I end up baking for about 75 minutes.  Anyway, bake until you can insert a toothpick down the center of the cake and it comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and let it sit in the pan for about 15-20 minutes before devouring.  You will devour, mark my words.

(To make this less calorie-riddled, you can substitute most of the butter with unsweetened applesauce, use yogurt instead of mayonnaise and carob instead of chocolate chips.)