September 18, 2023

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (172)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 171: I am made of anxiety and overwhelm today. I have staffing issues at work. Not bad issues, but issues that required a great deal of my attention last week and need more this week for it to work out right. I also have our meeting with the principal who has my hackles up so high, I can’t stand the thought of being in the same room.

I was honest about my feelings and did my best to breathe through them. That helped a bit. But it was frustrating that every time I noticed the anxiety symptoms had ebbed, noticing them brought them back.

Year 4, Day 172: Terrible sleep after staying up late to clear the decks before this morning full of meetings. But I am still glad I stayed up, that advance work let me get through all the meetings and the scheduling of more meetings and the regular work today without an anvil weight on my chest.

Quite annoyed that because of the many distractions caused by the school failing to do what they should have done without our prompting, I missed sending out a package on time to our Lakota sponsee. I had spent two months putting it together ahead of time, so I can schedule it to go out later this week once I have a moment. Just very annoyed at how impossible it is to handle all the things, all the time.

We got another “whose child is this?” report from daycare. Smol Acrobat turns into a whiny blubbery mess at the drop of a hat, mornings, evenings, and weekends at home. They go from happpyyyyyy to CRYFACE in nanoseconds. But their teacher at daycare commented one morning, after PiC exasperatedly observed that it was yet another hellish morning getting them out the door: that’s weird, they never cry here.

WHAT.

I briefly forgot but pretty sure this was the same for JB, too. I think they were a triple handful at home and mostly just fine at school. I remember many instances where I had to heft JB like a log and take them to their room for a time out, and conversations with a former teacher friend whose kids were the same age who reassured me that the kids who are terrors at home are frequently totally fine at school.

Year 4, Day 173: The meeting happened today, finally. The anticipation was getting to me. While it changed very little, we got a bit of new information that we didn’t have before. Their former teacher covered most of what we needed, the principal confirmed that they wouldn’t allow this to drag on if it keeps up this year. She mentioned checking in with the kid multiple times to make sure they were staying away from JB. So that’s the last piece we needed: to see the school taking some accountability and not ignoring the whole thing as a NBD.

Year 4, Day 174: Sera 🐶 and I both had a rough night. Not sure if her restlessness was due to arthritis pain or being unable to settle until PiC stopped working but she paced the halls at half hour intervals until 2 am. I had painsomnia and when I did finally drop off, my sleep was fragmented and light. Could someone bottle sleep and sell it, please?

On the bright side: it’s been two whole weeks since my last sore throat!?

Year 4, Day 175: Friday food! Go figure, the meal I liked the least was the meal that Smol Acrobat actually ate on their own: Costco rotisserie chicken wrapped in cheesy tortillas with (and without the second time) Mexican rice. I’m positive the selling point was the tub of sour cream they were allowed to dip into. They were given one wrap and they ate it entirely on their own without needing me to coax them one mouthful at a time! 🎉 We also had bulgogi from the Costco fridge section with rice and salad one night. The bulgogi is great on top of a salad without rice too if you’re cutting back on starches. We had each of those meals twice, on alternating days.

September 11, 2023

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (171)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 164: I only labored a little this Labor Day, and that was just to marginally make up for some time I’ll need to be away from my desk tomorrow.

I have had it up to here with cajoling Smol Acrobat to eat their dinner night after night after endless frustrating hair-rending night. I declared that their choice was clear: finish eating their meal, and join the rest of us in a bowl of ice cream, or don’t, and don’t.

PiC wasn’t sure I meant it until I sent JB to the freezer to bring out the tub. Yup. I meant business. I started eating my ice cream right in front of them. They’ve never cleared a plate of regular non-dessert food (safely, no worries, they weren’t THAT motivated) so fast on their own.

All I want for my birthday is not to spend another night trying to get this child to eat their dang dinner. You’d think we were trying to poison them the way they avoid eating until we come up with sufficient motivation.

Year 4, Day 165: All three packages arrived today, ahead of schedule: my medication, Sera’s 🐶 meds and treats, and my binders. It’s satisfying to get them all squared away on a Tuesday because the boxes can go out with the Wednesday recycling. It’s such a little thing to be happy about.

Year 4, Day 166: Roller coaster day. This morning, I contacted the superintendent’s office since the principal never bothered to acknowledge our email, much less engage in meaningful conversation.

The assistant confirmed receipt quickly, then it was just as quickly passed over to the Director of Student Safety, who dumped it back in the lap of the principal for an in-person meeting. You know, the one who ignored the email to begin with.

I shouldn’t be surprised, just like I wasn’t surprised that she refused to offer any constructive feedback on the situation in the first place, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. It felt like it was my failure to be effective. I did my best to lay out the situation as we saw it and open a dialogue. Instead, we get passed around like a hot potato that no one wants to deal with. And somehow it feels like MY failure. PiC says that it’s good that it’s now all documented. I suppose that’s looking at the marginally less dark side of things. We wouldn’t even BE here if they had bothered to respond to my email like they should have done in the first place. Or if they gave two hoots about student safety. They keep acting like we’re trying to punish the other kid. We have no interest in the other kid. We only want to stop the behavior before it gets completely out of hand.

Year 4, Day 167: I keep wondering why I’m so behind this week and then I open this post and realize oh, that’s right. We had one day off and though I cleared my desk on Friday, I’m still burning the midnight oil trying to get caught up and not making enough of a dent. So that’s depressing. But! The good news on the work side is we will be able to train more staff soon, ahead of need for once, because I had a brilliant plan and now all it needs is a brilliant execution to make sure that my team has good backup. So there is that.

On the personal side, I’ve been having all kinds of awful feelings of failure about the bully situation. While mulling over all the things I don’t know about this situation, I stopped by JB’s former teacher’s classroom to ask for her thoughts. She was very forthcoming about the things I asked, and then asked to speak to JB for a bit. She very kindly reassured JB that they have every right to defend themselves if this kid comes at them again, and that they wouldn’t be in trouble for that. I don’t know how they didn’t inherit my “touch me and I’ll pop you” gene but they’re more worried about getting in trouble than they are about protecting themselves. That accounts for at least half my feelings of failure. The other half is probably emotional backlash from seeing responsible adults at the school abdicate their responsibilities to keep JB safe. I didn’t spot that one, genius Jaydot did.

A line from Suits that stuck with me: “for all his faults, he would take a bullet before he would let anything happen to his little girl.” A whole lot of us are in the (We have/had a) Crappy Parent Club. Suffice to say my dad wouldn’t take a bent nail for me and I didn’t know how deeply that would undermine how I parent and how I feel about parenting.

Year 4, Day 168: Friday food review! I threw together a baked salmon, rice, and (frozen) broccoli dinner one night. I picked up a Thai feast the other night. PiC added my fresh dug potatoes from the garden (er, the potato growing bag), to a premade chicken curry from Costco one night. That’s the one dish that was popular with Smol Acrobat. Just enough for them to ask for some more than once but not eat all of it all the time. I can’t wait until they outgrow this distracted eating phase.

It’s felt like pulling teeth to get food on the table this week. I think I’m overwhelmed from juggling all the things.