Welcome to Pandemic School
Week 5
Day 28 – Sunday, April 11, 2020
Happy Easter!! He is RISEN!!
Did I honestly think I’d be writing a Pandemic Journal for more than a month? Definitly NOT.
We finally got word from Elijah’s school, Signature, which is a public charter International Baccalaureate high school about the end of the school year. Granted, they wait for what the public school does and then they tweak how they want to handle things. For the rest of April they will have online class four days a week with Fridays off for teacher planning. Starting in May only AP classes will meet. Freshman only (Ha! only…) have one AP class, U.S. History. For Sophomores and Juniors it’s likely that most if not all of their classes are AP. Seniors should have a mix of AP and IB.
AP tests will be given at home (!!!). AP US History will be on May 15, and both Hannah and Elijah will be taking it. It looks like Hannah’s AP English test will be on May 20.
Since rain was predicted for today, we had Leah’s Easter egg hunt in the backyard yesterday. I asked Hannah and Elijah if they wanted to hunt eggs, but they declined. I wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t want any complaints later that I had left them out. Leah also decorated a dozen hard-boiled eggs that will become deviled eggs for tonight’s Easter feast (yum!).
I have kept all or nearly all of the wire “egg dippers” that we’ve used since Hannah was tiny. I have quite a collection, lol. One of the dippers we used this year will likely snap the next time it gets used. The good thing is that even if we buy the egg dye kits with 10+ colors, we have a dipper for each color and plenty to spare in case of dipper catastrophe.
I have to say that playing Easter Bunny for teens (or nearly teens) is pretty darn easy. They sleep late, so you don’t have to do much the night before. Also, my teens only want candy, which is super, easy. Leah still wants a stuffed animal, and candy filled plastic eggs. I’m happy to oblige since I don’t know how much longer she’ll want to do that.
Here’s my Easter confessional. I went to Wal-mart this morning just to buy Peeps. When I went on Friday, I looked and looked in the Easter aisle for Peeps. All they had were weird flavors like Spicy Peeps and Mystery Peeps. After I checked out and was nearly out the door, I saw the Peeps display. How can I impulse buy Peeps on the way out?!?! So, I went this morning at 7:15, grabbed three packages of Peeps (pink, purple, and blue), and check out. The weird thing was all they had were chick Peeps, no bunny Peeps. I always buy bunny Peeps in colors to match the kids’ Easter baskets… This year, they have chicks. The kids consider Peeps to be an essential item for Easter, so there you have it.
Day 29 – Monday, April 13, 2020
We had a windstorm and a power outage (several actually) in the wee hours of the morning. Around 3:30ish I was awakened by the printer turning on. That freaked the cats and me out since it’s not attached to a computer, nor is it wireless. Turns out that the power had turned back on, and I hadn’t known it was off. The power flickered on and off a few times, and I unplugged the printer. Finally the power settled on OFF. I have the Vectren app on my phone, so I reported the outage, and tried to go back to sleep. Around 5am the power started flickering back on. The icemaker makes a loud noise when the power comes on, and I’d open my eyes and see my alarm clock. I’d blink and the alarm clock would be dark again… Around 6am it settled on ON. I was supposed to get up then, but I decided to give everything 30 minutes to settle in (make sure the fridge was cold, the heater kicked on, etc). I will say, the cats were well behaved last night.
It’s the girls’ first day back to virtual school since spring break, and they both got up at 7am. Well, I woke Leah up at 7, but she just requested I wake her up at 8am.
Easter was enjoyable, the kids got their baskets of candy, and Leah got a plastic Apatosaurus and a blue Squishmallow bunny. We had a yummy, and easy dinner of (pre-sliced) ham, boxed scalloped potatoes, Grands biscuits, deviled eggs, and sweet kale salad.
I called my mom in the evening and she told me about their Easter for two. Normally, she has a houseful with my siblings and their families. They had cinnamon pork chops and apple chutney, yum!
Today, I get to look forward to a lot of computer and paper documentation for work. Yay. I also have a WebEx conference at 1:00. I need to make bread this morning, and Leah and I are going to pick up school lunches at 11:30. We are going to social distance a visit with her BFF at the lunch pickup location.
Day 30 – Tuesday, April 14, 2020
While my introvert brain may have been made for quarantine, my middle-aged body clearly isn’t. I’ve got to find something active that I will stick to. I know there are lots of options, but somehow virtual Sh’bam with cat helpers and teen viewers isn’t super appealing.
Yesterday I spent the morning individually documenting on the state IEP software 70 individual parent emails that I sent out last week (if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen). I finished around 11:00 and Leah and I went and picked up school lunches where Leah and Libby were able to wave at each other through the car windows. It was kind of sad. We are thinking about a social distancing picnic if it ever warms back up.
After lunch I had a WebEx that lasted until about 2:00, after that I called it a day. I read a chapter in my book, played Animal Crossing, made dinner, ate dinner, cleaned up, and played Animal Crossing again.
The kids all had virtual school lessons yesterday. Leah asked for help once, but when I told her I was working and she could come sit by me for specific help, she lost interest. I think she was hoping I would just do her work for her…. Hannah had a Spanish assignment on Senor Wooly (that’s new to me) that she found creepy. I guess it was an animated story told by a scarf, and Hannah found everything about it to be creepy. Spanish is the class for Hannah this year where the virtual assignments are about three times as long as a classroom assignment would have been. She has one of the easy Spanish teachers this year, and my guess is the more difficult teacher creates the assignments.
Elijah and Leah keep their bedroom doors closed 100% of the time to keep the cats out. However, that means that the HVAC doesn’t circulate through their rooms very well. To try and remedy this situation, I ordered some extra tall baby gates. The gates arrived yesterday, and I set one up in Elijah’s doorway (I’m keeping the second one boxed up in case I decide to return it). Did it deter Oliver? No, it made him more persistent. Instead of being happy that he could see into Elijah’s room, he became intent on displaying his anger. He sticks his paw through the plastic webbing and strums it. It makes a shockingly loud noise. For now, it’s a good way to air out Elijah’s room, but Oliver needs a distraction.
This morning, Daniel Wertz faculty and staff are having a “Coffee Talk” WebEx as an informal moral boosting team-building endeavor. I’m sure it will be fun. Thirty minutes into that, I have a speech therapist WebEx meeting. Then I will likely start my paper documentation of therapy assignments provided. Document, document, document…
Day 31 – Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Last night I was contacted by the credit union that is refinancing my mortgage. It seems like this is taking FOREVER. They need my home owners insurance declaration page. I’ve gotten a mortgage and refinanced in the past 5 years, and I’ve always just told them who the insurance was with and they got that information themselves. I went on StateFarm.com to download the document, and was surprised to find that it had to be physically mailed to me. I may or may not have the original somewhere, but I didn’t find it. I sent a message to the insurance agent to see if they can fax or mail the document directly to the loan officer. I guess we’ll see. Is there some new rule about this document? Seems weird. On a positive note the appraisal on my house came back for more than I paid for the house 18 months ago. In my experience, refinance appraisals tend to come back on the low end since the bank really wants to make sure they aren’t making a bad deal on the loan. So, that’s a YAY.
I ran to Wal-Mart at 7am because my children consumed nearly twice as many hamburger buns as I expected at dinner last night. Grilled burgers wouldn’t be fabulous without buns. I ran in with my mask, did not get a cart, decided to look at the clearance Easter candy. OH! MY! GOODNESS! It’s like no one bought ANY Easter candy this year! The shelves are still full of good stuff at 50% off! I’ve never seen anything like it. First off, it makes me sad for the retailers (not Wal-Mart specifically, it’s hard to ever feel bad for Wal-Mart), sad that people were unable to celebrate in their normal way, and also proud that my community is taking this whole pandemic seriously (go Evansville!). On the way to the bread aisle, I stopped on the baking aisle and lo and behold they had jars of bread machine yeast! My current jar has enough for one more loaf. I almost feel like the Widow of Zarephath when making food for Elijah made the last of the flour and oil lasted for many days.
I have a WebEx conference at 9am, and I’m starting to feel like those are keeping from living my best pandemic life, lol. Okay, not really. I should have just gotten up at 5 instead of 6 so I could move at a more leisurely pace.
I woke Leah up at 8:00, and haven’t seen her yet. I woke Elijah up at 8:00 (who’s online classes start at 9:00), and he said he had gotten up at 1am but was currently sleeping… I’ll have to re-wake him in a few minutes. KIDS!!
Day 32 – Thursday, April 16, 2020
After attempting to check my bank account ALL DAY LONG, around 8pm I was able to confirm that I had gotten my Trump check like most people I had heard from. I was a little shocked that my bank was so overwhelmed with people logging in. They just put up a banner saying “We’re working on it”, and I’m sure the situation actually takes care of itself as more and more people finally get their confirmation.
Thinking about that check made me think of Hannah and all the other 17- 23 year old students who got nothing. Interesting demographic to throw under the bus considering they are old enough to vote, many/most of them work and filed tax returns, most of them are currently living with their parents because schools/colleges/universities sent them home. I guess it’s because they are “dependents” for tax purposes, but parents don’t actually receive any tax benefit for these young adults. Few pay for their own food and housing… It makes no sense to me.
That made me think of my own college work/study job that I had when I was a junior. Where I went to the work/study office and looked at a physical bulletin board and picked a job. It seems incredible that that’s how things happened in 1994. I ended up choosing a job helping the academic advisor for foreign language majors. It was a great job. The advisor was very sweet but not super organized. She would leave piles of things for me to do (put files away, make copies, sort things, mail things, run errands all over campus), and she was always surprised at how quickly I was able to get through the piles. The next school year, I continued to work for the foreign language department, but I was the evening computer lab monitor. Some classes required students to spend a certain amount of time in the computer lab. At that time, you couldn’t monitor who was on the computers, so they had to sign in and out on a paper list. That was my first experience with email and the Internet… 1995.
Last night I finished watching Picard. Wow, that was a really great show, and obviously a lot of time and money went into the production. I am clearly terrible at sitting down and watching shows… even shows I really enjoy. I’m not sure what’s up with that.
I am 70 pages away from finishing the 13th Wheel of Time book, so I expect to finish that today. The entire fourteen book epic series is 10, 913 (paperback) pages long, and I’ve read nearly 9,700 of them in the past fourteen months. I’m only about a month behind schedule as I’d hoped to be done by now. Normally, I would read a short book or two before starting the next WoT book, but I think I’m just going to start the next book tomorrow.
Day 33 – Friday, April 17, 2020
I clearly have a mental block against moving into the second month of Pandemic School. I looked at yesterday’s entry so I would know what number day it is, and it said “31”. That didn’t seem right, and sure enough I had put “31” on both Wednesday and Thursday. I fixed that.
Oliver, the @#$%^&* cat, got up at 3am which is pretty normal. I got up, closed the bathroom door and my door to keep him from throwing things on the floor. In the 5am hour, he meowed sweetly to come back in my room, so I let him. I thought, “Wow, he’s learning to not be such an @#$%^&* in the middle of the night. He snuggled up with me, purred, and went back to sleep. I got up at 6:00 and went into the kitchen and was shocked to find broken glass all over the floor. He had knocked a glass apothecary jar full of wrapped candy on the floor and the lid shattered. It is not unusual for him to knock stuff off the counter, but I think this is the first time he’s shattered anything (probably not, I’m sure I’ll think of something). I swept up all the glass, and was thankful that I’d put on a pair of flip flops when I got out of bed. None of the cats seem to have sore paws, so I think we are good. I didn’t even hear it… that’s weird. Earlier in the week, Oliver knocked my tin canister of steel cut oats onto the floor. I heard that one, but didn’t come investigate right away (it was a THUNK, not the usual crash and rattle). The tin can had landed on it’s lid (the kind you pry open) and was slightly ajar. Only a tablespoon or less of oats ended up on the floor which is fairly amazing.
My mom made and sent masks for us, which I whole-heartedly appreciate. She even went to great lengths to split up the Zelda fabric between my brother, brother in-law, and me because we all chose the same scrap. The kids have not left the house in weeks. Leah has taken a couple of car trips with me, but has not been out among people. I’m the only one wearing the masks, but she has an idea for a scrapbook page and wanted photos of everyone wearing their mask. At dinner the other night, I finally remembered. I handed each a mask, and waited for them to put them on. Elijah had NO IDEA what it was, or what it was for. He asked if it was an eye mask for sleeping because he always wanted one of those. He clearly is on different social media than the rest of us. If they ever do leave the house, they will clearly need a lesson on how to wear them.
I love all of the flowering plants and trees in Evansville in the spring, but I don’t love all the pollen. My allergies here, compared to Oklahoma are very mild, and I shouldn’t complain. I am truly glad I don’t live near cedar trees because fall and winter in Oklahoma are miserable because that’s when the cedar trees do their thing. At least all the pollen in Indiana is accompanied by SO MANY beautiful flowering trees.
Last night, I made sloppy joes for dinner. I have not made them in over six years because the kids would not previously eat them. I just wanted to make something a little different with the ground beef, so I went for it. They ate them without complaint. I don’t think sloppy joes are a favorite, but they ate them, and they didn’t complain.
Elijah does not have school today (Fridays off!), but he hates sleeping in. His body wants to sleep in, but his brain doesn’t. He hates the thought of wasting time by sleeping… However, he sleeps through alarms a lot. His alarm is set to play “Mr Blue Sky” by ELO, and it’s just not jolting enough to actually wake him. After hearing it the 20 second loop for 10 minutes, I woke him up. Then five minutes later, I went to wake him up and he told me he was awake, but his alarm was still going… He might be up now, but if not, he’s not missing any school.
Day 34 – Saturday, April 18, 2020
Today, I need to do laundry and mow the lawn. I’ve started the first load of laundry, but the lawn will probably have to wait until afternoon since it rained all day yesterday and it’s currently a frosty 34 degrees right now (but it is sunny!).
Last night was pizza night and I picked up from our new normal, local place, Azzip. Apparently, there was a run on pizza last night because they were running WAY behind. I’m glad they were busy, but the poor workers were just run ragged (in the rain). Typically, when I order online, I have the option to pick up ASAP or choose a time. Last night my earliest option was 45 minutes later and they were running 30 minutes behind that. Our pizza was great, as usual, but they had run out of (warm, chocolate chip) cookies. They gave us coupons for 4 free kids meals to replace them. I don’t think you can use those when ordering online though… I’ll have to check next time I order.
My kids had another nostalgia night, which happened last Friday as well. We eat dinner together EVERY night, I’m not sure what it is about pizza that brings it out of them. Last night it was the computer games they played when they were tots like Reader Rabbit, and an online Dora game (actually several). Then Leah, who started playing games on an iPod Touch when she was 18 months old, started talking about some of the early apps we had. I told her most of those were on my school iPad for my students to use. We got that out and she played Tozzle (a toddler, puzzle app that was the first paid app I ever bought), Toca Boo, and My Play House.
Time has very little meaning during Pandemic School; however, weekends mean no web conferences and no homework is assigned or due. Yesterday, Leah asked me what was for dinner, and was surprised that it was Friday… It all just runs together. Elijah no longer has school on Fridays, which we assumed meant that nothing would be assigned or due on Fridays. That was an incorrect assumption. Apparently, something was assigned and was due at noon. He found out about it at 8pm, and he immediately started working on it. That’s fairly obnoxious in my opinion.
All the politicians (well, not all…) are pushing for the world to reopen in 2 weeks, but getting people tested is still difficult. Where are the serology tests so we know who might be immune? I’d love for my kids to go to camp in early June this year as planned. I’m just not sure we are there yet. My community made a statement that we could be the first to open in the state because our numbers are so low. I just looked at the published numbers, and on a good day 38 tests have been done. The number of positive cases with those few tests is increasing. It makes sense that Indy got hit harder and earlier than we did. I also know that the city REALLY needs the casino to open up.
I have not yet cancelled our vacation to Colorado at the beginning of June (I have until May 2), but I probably will.
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