By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (11)

July 27, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $1608.94; Rural libraries, $321.62.

Weeks 17 and 18 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Week 17, Day 115: I stepped out of the house for exactly 45 seconds today. My butt was alternately numb and aching from the number of hours logged at my desk. Mondays are the worst of the worst. Compounded by post-holiday weekends :/

I had a rough evening feeling like a bad friend. I was practicing, though it was uncomfortable, naming my guilt, understanding that it was foundless and knowing I still felt it, and trying not to shame myself for feeling the guilt OR into believing that I deserved the guilt. It was a complicated and conflicted feeling. But it ultimately felt better afterward.

I then reconnected with another dear friend who was feeling bad about her own rough life situation so we talked late into the night and I think we both felt better afterwards.

Week 17, Day 116: JB finally had a good lesson without any balking, whining, delaying, or wasting time. Freaking finally! It’s been a bumpy couple of weeks and their teacher and I were discussing minors adjustments along the way to get here. I’m not sure if they worked or if it was just a phase but I’m crossing my fingers that changing locations and physical set up helped them get back on track. (I suspect it was also because they felt well rested, got to read with Dad when they woke up, AND got to play with their cards for a while in the morning.) Hamilton has been a great incentive for us to get through dinner and bath quickly at night, they get to watch a couple songs before bed. Probably not the best to induce actual sleep but it gets them through the nighttime routine so fast.

PiC’s schedule was so light today he was able to get out for some exercise which is a great and he was able to cover childcare while I was, again, utterly and completely swamped.

Week 17, Day 117: One more good lesson for JB. We had moved them to a workspace further away from me so we weren’t on top of each other last week. I can’t help but feel like once they adapted to that, not having me nearby as a disciplinary measure actually helped to reduce their distraction level.

They have been using my old laptop that I couldn’t use for work anymore, it can only function for a couple hours before falling over, for the past several weeks. I do wonder if we should get them a newer cheap model or even get that family laptop I’d been thinking of for a while so that we have a back up in case either of our work laptops are no longer working or in our possession.

Right before dinner we received a notice from the school district that they wanted us to choose between hybrid learning and distance learning. WHAT. Good news?? We can have a choice and we could have decent distance learning??

Hahaha no of course not. The plan was basically trash.

The most high level details they shared about the hybrid learning setup were bad and poorly thought out. I shudder to think of what the detailed plans are given these early plans. The distance learning was worse. The distance learners won’t even be part of the school.

I sent a politely worded incredibly lengthy email with over 20 questions asking how EXACTLY they’re going to make sure this is safe for staff and students. I wanted to send this 😠🖕🏼 😠 but I did not for I am a professional and I am a mature adult. But I was sorely tempted to.

Who reopens a school and plans a deep cleaning schedule that first ensures every separate group gets exposed to the other separate group’s germs before the deep cleaning??? And let me tell ya, there was not one word in there about how they were going to effectively protect and safeguard the teachers and staff or an actual plan for when students and staff get sick. A lot of blarney about “safety first” but actual actions to ensure safety? Nope.

Utter foolishness. Just absolutely nonsense.

One of my first questions, thanks to knowing Penny, was: will the teachers be supplied adequately with PPE and cleaning supplies before the start date?

What’s their plan for when teachers get sick? Are they notifying and quarantining the entire class? Because I do not consider teachers to be acceptable necessary collateral damage in pursuit of education for our child.

I get that this pandemic is going to heavily impact teachers and parents alike. Most of our local residents are working families who don’t have the option to work from home. Even though we hate it, we can make something work, but a lot of families won’t be able to manage any of these options because even the hybrid model is only four days of instruction a week, two of which are at home, and what parents can be out three weekdays of a working week? We’re incredibly fortunate but we’re well aware that many around us aren’t and the system needs to serve everyone, not just the wealthy and fortunate. And I mean everyone. It shouldn’t force teachers back to work more days than their own children can be attended to, it shouldn’t force teachers into unsafe conditions when community transmission rates are still so high.

I don’t know what the answer is yet but I do know that these proposals are nowhere near a good answer.

I’m high risk myself so I cannot in any way feel comfortable with using the hybrid model so we’re left with a lot of questions about the adequacy of the distance learning model if we can even have that option.

Week 17, Day 118: Sera vomited first thing this morning. Sigh. Thank goodness PiC got her outside in time.

This was an incredibly intense work day, I was working at hyperspeed almost all day but even so because of the volume of work, I just couldn’t make an appreciable dent for the longest time. It felt like it was hopeless again except all the things I was getting done were important medium-range things that had to be started so there was that.

Sera continued to vomit all day at intermittent times so she got to stay with me in the enclosed room with hardwood floors. I’m not scrubbing more vomit out of rugs if I can avoid it. I’m 99% sure she’s fine, she’s just got a bit of GI distress that she does every so often (similar to a stomachache or mild food poisoning for us) because she’s had this before and recovered completely and she has no other symptoms whatsoever. I always watch closely for any other signs that might indicate a real problem but so far, it looks like a mild upset stomach.

We read an enraging version of The Ugly Duckling. I’d bought a pile of books from Scholastic a while back and this was a bilingual version. I figured it’s a pretty classic story, safe enough, right? WRONG. It went something like this: the ducklings were mean to the one ugly duckling because he looked different. All the other animals were mean too. The ugly duckling was so sad and lonely. Then he heard the loud swans calling: said hey come here, you look like us, so the duckling did, and there was peace again.

😠😠😠😠

I’m furious that I spent precious book money on such trash.

Week 17, Day 119: Another day of enraging updates about the clusterpuck that the upcoming new school year is going to be. So far they’ve proposed only every possible nonsense path forward instead of any safer “for now” path until things improve. I know other school districts have figured out they should just reopen with only distance learning, which of course comes with it’s own challenges but at least it dramatically reduces risk to all attendees for a period while we’re still figuring out what to do long term. This is a complicated issue but I hate that the discussions seems to totally center around EITHER we reopen completely OR we go entirely distance learning and there’s no room for the nuance, and complications of the vulnerable students, in between the two sides.

I gave myself an absolute headache trying to figure out alternatives while gritting my teeth and trying to do All the Work.

Week 18, Day 122: JB has always been a bit morbid but this week it’s taking a new form. They have been bringing me their plushies, one or two at a time, with a tragic story of how the plushy’s parents died. To date I am the foster mom for the small elephant, the big pig, the goat, and the little pig. PiC is foster dad to the horse. #weird

It was Monday so it was work hell on uppers. PiC seriously held down the JB fort to spare me additional aggravation as I was slowly rapidly losing the will to be a functioning professional adult. I barely kept it together all day as I slogged through rude and entitled people, crappy internet (we hate you Comcast), and bad customer service.

I gave up around 6 pm. I couldn’t take it anymore and moved on to working on backing up my phone (running out of storage) and ordering some medical supplies. That was a headache too but I got it done and even figured out that I could plug my phone into my external hard drive and transfer files directly to the hard drive that way. Saves me some time when I have to back up our files.

Week 18, Day 123: What. A. Day. Seamus had a check up and his vet was as concerned as I was that he wasn’t improving after weeks of treatment so we had to rush him to an emergency specialist to find out whether it was as advanced as we worried it might be. Thankfully it wasn’t quite as bad as that, but we are still in a state of serious concern so I appreciated all the support on Twitter as I ran around getting his treatment plan in order.

We managed to get some work done too but the day was all about Seamus. I’m so glad that I insist on a robust cash flow and savings system. The money wasn’t fun to pay but I didn’t have to consider not treating him because of cost. I know a lot of families are not so fortunate, we certainly rescued dogs in the past when we weren’t financially secure, and I remember that was a really hard choice between being humane and helping out a helpless animal and not having cash on hand for that purpose. This is part of taking care of my family and we’re doing our best on that front.

Not that spending = care, but it’s that cost didn’t have to be a barrier to let us care for him to the best of our abilities and what modern medicine can offer.

Week 18, Day 124: My hands were a mess today but not working wasn’t an option. Not working won’t necessarily make them feel better anyway, and sometimes working warms them up enough so they do feel better but it’s a very painful journey from Point A to Point Not A. So I worked. And I was on a razor-thin edge of having not even the sheerest layer of patience left.

Unaccountably, while work normally (pandemic-normal) makes me irritable, on some days, the routine of getting work done soothes me. I’m weird. (Everything is weird.) But only for an hour or two because I’m not THAT lucky.

Thankfully on this day the worst of the pain subsided enough that I could function again, and oh yes, administer Seamus’s NINE daily doses of medication. PiC and JB did the easy 4, I fielded the tough doses. He basically hates me almost as much as he’s offended by the mail carrier and we’ll be doing this all week long. Deeeelightful.

In other news I can’t quite figure out what to do about my giant poster pad calendar. The sizing and spacing is such that I can write in one week across the top only if it’s Mon-Fri and Sat/Sun share a large column. There is not enough room to divide the page into 7 columns and still see the schedule clearly. On the one hand, it makes sense to have a week laid out so that our week truly ends with the weekend’s end. On the other hand, calendar positioning is intuitively Sun-Sat for me so I keep assuming the middle most day is Wednesday. It is not.

Would you sacrifice cognitive assonance or sufficient space to write in each day’s commitments?

Week 18, Day 125: After strongly and bitterly considering the homeschooling route, and then getting a sense of how much work that will entail on my part to get it set up, I found our compromise. We’ve committed to the distance learning through the district and will supplement the weaknesses in the program with outside tutoring. I’m not looking forward to figuring out their educational software though. I have never heard good things about any purchased educational software from teachers or students.

I was thinking on our division of labor. I still do all our money stuff, and am in charge of most spending approvals since I’m most in tune with our budgeting. PiC has largely taken over meal planning and cooking and cleaning. I organize all of JB’s schooling, though we discuss the big picture stuff, I manage the educational conversations day to day and oversee the morning lessons while he does his thing for a couple hours, and he chimes in on disciplinary matters. We’ve flipped roles. He used to handle all daycare/preschool conversations and I would do all meal planning and prep.

I still handle all the mental load of planning ahead for the household, he takes the physical and time hits on doing most of the childminding and dog walks, planning errands and adventures, actually doing most household chores and all the grocery shopping. In the past four months, where I used to do twice weekly laundry, I’ve probably done about four loads of laundry myself. He and JB handle most of the laundry now. I’ve been to Costco once.

JB has been an absolute champ about being stuck in solitary with their parents and I attribute a lot of that to PiC. He brings all the fun that I lack (and do not feel in the mood to muster) and they’re getting a good balance of outdoor fun and indoor learning time.

I’m incredibly lucky that we’re both working full time and earning full time wages but PiC is working less than I am, shifting his hours to the evening, and fully covering childminding during his non working hours. It just makes sense. I manage a large staff and he doesn’t. My work mostly has to happen during core hours and his doesn’t. I’m tired AF but knowing the load is about even makes a huge difference.

Extra rough day for me physically today. Two days ago, working through a flare up was good for me. Today it made things so much worse I had to break from work early and by the end of the night my hand and wrist couldn’t take any weight at all.

Week 18, Day 126: Being a human parent right now feels extra fraught as we fight for safer school plans that are good for our actual community. It doesn’t feel like it’s going well and I’m reminded by how many selfish racists are in our district area by the comments they submit to the school board meeting.

Being a dog parent is tough too. Seamus and I are at odds literally nine times a day. It’ll be worth it if he heals up properly but dang if it’s not still a challenge.

I DID make my peace with the terrible Ugly Duckling story, though. JB wanted to read it again and I took that as an opportunity to point out how the animals, including the adults, were bullies or enabling bullies, and sadly that does happen in real life too. Then we talked about what we do when we see people treating people badly like that – and that we don’t just stand by when people are bullying others.

:: Did you have to deal with bullies growing up? Did you have any help from friends or adults?

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