Things are better, but not awesome. I don’t think awesome has really been on the table for the last 55 weeks, but it’s worth adding that caveat. Sometimes when you are struggling, people who wish you well want you to be great again so that they can not worry about you anymore. And sometimes those struggling get tired of carrying their own load plus someone’s else anxiety and worry, so we smile and say we’re fine! All cleared up!
It’s not “all cleared up,” but it is better. This Monday, Everett’s day care reopened. As a day care, they are classified as essential, even in the emergency phase we find ourselves in as a city with regular schools closed. On Monday morning, I sent this gif to my coworkers in our group chat with the message “Me walking away from dropping Everett off at day care this morning.”
For a moment I felt a bit bad. I don’t have tons of mom guilt, but sometimes I worry non-parents are going to be shocked.
So I followed that up with this gif and the caption, “To be fair, this was Everett running in the door without looking back.”
Monday was so much better. The two older kids did their work and due to leading less attention, I was able to focus on what I needed to do with less interruption.
Everett was sad before he went to school and said he’d miss us. I reassured him that we’d pick him up at the end of the day. He still repeats that feeling some mornings, but he comes home dirty from the sandbox and talking about what he did that day.
The other change I made that has improved my mental state was planning in more offline time in each of my 80 minute blocks. When we started the school year, I planned in 30-50 minutes of off-screen (asynchronous) work time for students. But as we went back to campus, I started running 80 minute live Zoom classes. It’s just exhausting for everyone involved, and I need to be free to help my children with their lessons and activities. Just being able to send my students off to work while I go get lunch started or help a kid with their writing assignment has done so much for me.
In case you needed reminding, I’m working two jobs and parenting at the same time. Matilda can’t read her math word problems or log herself into her computer. She needs help with instructions. She needs pencils sharpened and clean sheets of paper. She needs help finding her Portuguese book. They all need a time keeper to get them logged into their 4 Zoom classes a day. David and I have all these alarms set and we have to stop our teaching to tell the kids to join their Zoom classes when our phones start playing funny songs. And many times, we have to strong arm them into logging on because they resist.
They resist? I must admit that until March of this year, my kids have done 0 specials classes in distance learning. No PE, art, music, or counseling classes. And until this semester, they weren’t always consistent about going to their Portuguese classes every day. So, about half the time I tell them they have Portuguese or special, a cloud rolls over their eyebrows and they start negotiating skipping it. We’ve held the line and they always have a good time in those classes.
So I’m not in the low-bottom any more, in the words of Marc Maron. And that’s huge. I’m more focused, I’m less stressed, I’m less depressed.
We’re still waiting to find out if the state and city government will allow schools to reopen next week. Because we have parent/teacher conferences next week and only have classes on Monday and Friday, we bumped our tentative reopening to April 19, the following Monday.
The situation in Brazil and Sao Paulo is still really bad. You have to be really avoiding the news to not know that. There are a few signs of improvement in our state and city. Hospitalizations are down and we have some days of lower cases. It’s going to take some time for that to have an effect on the death rate and the ICU occupancy.
Teachers 47+ can get vaccinated starting on Monday. They haven’t announced when teachers under 47 will get vaccinated, but I’ve pre-registered and our school is hosting a vaccination site, so we may be able to get ours on home turf.
So, everything is “a little better, but…” That’s about as good as it gets in this pandemic, I guess.
But, hey, both my kids went outside to play with friends during our lunch break today and I’m writing this in a quiet, nearly empty apartment. I’ll take it where I can get it.
