You know you're working too hard when...

1) You can't stop thinking about what you're going to teach in math next week during Savasana (final relaxation) in yoga class.

2) You go out for dinner with friends on a Friday night, guzzle down your first drink before anyone else has even had a chance to ORDER theirs, then become catatonic while downing drink #2.

3) Your mind is so tired you feel like you can't handle real news. Protests in Libya? Tsunamis in Japan? I don't know what you're talking about. Out of all the articles last week in the New York Times, this was the one I was riveted by. It's the tragic tale of a hamster named Princess Stephanie's cruel death (actually, two hamsters' deaths, but somehow Stephanie got all the attention -- maybe because she's royalty) and the criminal charges pressed after the incident following a 9-month hunt for the perpetrator. And then I went in to work the next day and told my co-workers all about it over lunch while they pretended to be interested. [Update: the charges were dropped. Are there no consequences to hamster cruelty??]

4) You can't stop thinking about whether the mealworms in your classroom will live through the weekend and questioning whether you should have brought the poor little guys home -- all 80 of them in their 9 separate containers. After all, being responsible for 80 mealworm deaths is even worse than being responsible for 2 hamster deaths, and dying of dehydration is more painful and prolonged than dying from the trauma of being slammed on the floor.

Sigh. When will summer vacation be here?