Pandemic at School
Week 47
Day 320 – Sunday, January 31, 2021
I stayed up past midnight finishing my book which was fantastic. I got up early so I could go grocery shopping as early as possible. I marked everything off of my shopping list this week, and that just doesn’t always happen anymore.
I ordered three meals from EveryPlate this week, so I only had to plan for the other four. While I was at Walmart, I noticed that they have started Scan & Go, where you scan your items on your phone and bag them while you shop. When you are done, you stop at a self-checkout, scan the QR code and it prints your receipt. I asked friends about buying produce with the Scan & Go, and it sounds like you can’t buy weighable produce at this time. The service is bundled into their Walmart+ subscription, but you get two weeks free, so I might try it out.
I finished my weekend chores and checked out a new digital library book, but got so sleeping I ended up napping for the better part of the hour. I always find it amazing that I might not see my kids for hours at a time because they are in their rooms, but if I’m napping, they will all wake me up. It never fails, and I rarely nap.
I made lasagna early in the day, so dinner prep would be done. It had been a while since I made one from scratch, but mine is a lot better than the frozen kind. Hannah’s boyfriend, Dylan, came over to try out the lasagna. He had previously told me that he didn’t like lasagna, but he liked the one I made tonight.
Leah pulled out her homework after dinner. She had math, science, and needed to finish up an art project (thank goodness we have Hannah!). I miss textbooks with matching worksheets for science…. Leah’s teacher pulls together a hodgepodge of information in Google Slides and notebooking pages. The illustrations never match, and it’s often difficult to label the information. I’m not a fan of this method.
We are hoping for a snow day tomorrow, but we need the temperature to drop a degree or two. It is snowing, but it’s 33 degrees. That’s hardly fair.
Vanderburgh County only reported 53 cases today. I wonder if more will be added later. That is pre-Halloween levels of COVID. Hopefully, we are past the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s spike in cases. It’s January, and no one has money to do anything in January.
Day 321 – Monday, February 1, 2021
Happy February!! While it did snow overnight, it was never really below freezing. When I went to school, there was snow on the grass and puddles on the street.
With the exception of the teacher’s lounge refrigerator breaking, the day was quite smooth. I got to school, started my computer, took my lunch to the previously mentioned fridge, left it, went back to my office for a WebEx meeting, got an email from the principal saying the fridge was broken, went back to the fridge that was definitely not cold (but the light was on), took my lunch to the walk-in in the kitchen, and went back to my meeting.
Today was a big day for Hannah because she got to apply for housing at IU today. Honors housing supposedly goes fast so she wanted to apply asap. All of the computer systems that IU uses are just terrible, they make me crazy. The honors housing was accidentally left off of the application. Eventually, I sent an email from Hannah’s IU account to Res Life telling them that honors housing wasn’t listed as an option, and how was one to apply. There was a reply after dinner. They added it, told us to log out and log back in. Lo and behold it was there. My guess is the only incoming freshman who applied today were applying for honors… so “you’re welcome” to all of them.
I got my W-2, so I started on my taxes. Exciting times!
COVID numbers were low again today for Vanderburgh county, 56 new cases, 7 day average positivity rate down to 9.9%. If we have a couple more days of that, we might be in the yellow on Wednesday. Even the area hospital census is down to Halloween levels. All good news.
Day 322 – Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Happy Groundhog Day, Candlemas, St Brigid’s Day, and Imbolc! We are halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow so six more weeks of winter are predicted. Prognosticating woodchucks… why not? This morning Elijah said it sounded like something from the Middle Ages, and he’s right. Why is the movie Groundhog Day never available on Netflix?
Many of the elementary students had a difficult time behaving today. I’m not sure what the cause was, or if they were just feeding off each other.
For dinner I made Super Smash Burgers and real fries. I used the EveryPlate recipe, but I broiled the burgers which was faster and a lot less messy. I bought Crisco instead of lard to fry the fries in, so my house doesn’t smell like a stockyard. I didn’t really notice any difference in taste, though my cousins swear that lard is better.
I helped Leah with some ELA homework about The Titanic and reminded her how to figure simple interest in math.
COVID rates in Vanderburgh have been in the 50s for 3 days in a row. It’s likely that we will move down to yellow from orange. Just two weeks ago we were red. Hopefully, the trend continues and we can get more people vaccinated before the more contagious variants arrive here.
Day 323 – Wednesday, February 3, 2021
I saw my middle schoolers today; one was out for quarantine.
I borrowed a toy dinosaur and put it in a paper lunch bag for my group lesson today. We had a rousing game of “What’s in the bag” (like 20 questions)… and the third kid literally guessed, “Is it a toy dinosaur?” The toy pig I borrowed from their treasure box lasted a lot longer.
Kindergarten was a hot mess of behavior again, and there was a nose biting incident!
As I was making dinner, Southwest pork bowls from EveryPlate, I realized that they sent me the wrong meat for two out of the three meals. Steak pieces subbed nicely for ground pork, but the pork chops aren’t a great sub for bacon. I will have to buy bacon for tomorrows linguine carbonara.
Leah has her Wednesday Night youth activity and they had pizza so Leah didn’t want dinner (I made a meal I didn’t think she’d like anyway).
Since I need bacon, Elijah wants me to stop and get a couple of things for his lunch as well.
Vanderburgh county stayed “orange”, but moved from a 2.5 to a 2, if cases continue to stay low, we’ll get to yellow soon.
Day 324 – Thursday, February 4, 2021
I really wanted today to be Friday.
I saw my “little bitty” kids with autism today. I almost got bitten, twice. The first time I didn’t even see it coming, but another teacher walking toward me did, and she saved me (Thanks Rachel!!). Both of my hands were busy containing little hands, and I didn’t see the teeth coming. On the way back to their classroom, I did see the teeth and maneuvered around them.
One of my virtual students came back to school in person today, so I got to have their therapy LIVE instead of over WebEx. A vast improvement, I have to say. Now, I‘m down to just two virtual students, one who never shows and one who is hit or miss.
I got a good teacher gab session in after school before I had to go pick Elijah up.
Dinner was Linguine Carbonara, which was very tasty, but had very little protein. I realized that EveryPlate sent me four servings of new potatoes, but none of my dishes this week had potatoes…. Maybe I’ll make them with the pork chops that I got instead of bacon.
The moving seven day average for COVID cases in Vanderburgh county is down to 63, the last time it was that low was October 1st! 26, 558 people in Vanderburgh county have received their first dose of vaccine, and 7,733 are fully vaccinated. We have about 180,000 in the county, so 15% partially vaccinated.
Day 325 – Friday, February 5, 2021
It’s finally Friday! PTA provided all the faculty and staff with the snack and (school friendly) drink of their choice. They do this every month, and I love it!
I spent the morning in the 1st-2nd grade autism classroom, and they all did a nice job today. One student was really ticked off that the “February” tag was removed from the bulletin board during their spelling test that included the word. We heard about that for a whlle…
My afternoon was filled with articulation practice and one language group. I had a student tell me they were absent earlier in the week because they had a “hair problem, and Nana said not to talk about the hair problem”, lol. However, this student told everyone about the “hair problem”.
Since I was feeling generous (and hungry), I ordered a stuffed crust pepperoni pizza, and a supreme pizza from Papa John’s for dinner. I do like that their pizza arrive on time and HOT.
The roofer called, and he’s going to fix my roof tomorrow morning.
Hannah got hired to be a camp counselor at Camp Carson, which was expected, but still exciting.
Vanderburgh county reported really low numbers of cases, but also a ridiculously low number of tests. I imagine those numbers will change over the next couple of days.
Day 326 – Saturday, February 6, 2021
The roofer told me he would arrive at 8am to fix the roof, so I got up at 6 and got ready for the day even though I would have preferred to sleep a bit later. I was glad I got up because he was on the room at 7:40. Two hours later, the roof was repaired and I was $450 poorer, but that’s home ownership for you.
Leah, Elijah, and I had hair cut appointments on the other side of town at 11:00, so we left at 10:20 to make sure we got there on time. We got there with plenty of time to spare which of course meant that she wasn’t ready for us early…. That only happens when we are running late.
While we were waiting for our appointment time, I got a text asking if Leah was available this weekend to hang out with Penny. Since we were practically in Newburgh already, I said I’d drop her off after haircuts.
Elijah needed a new backpack because the replacement I bought at Target a couple of weeks ago didn’t last an entire week. The plan was to stop at Academy for an Adidas backpack since they have a good reputation with boys who have a lot of school books. Academy didn’t have one large enough.
Since Leah had not yet eaten, we stopped at Chick-Fil-A to fill our bellies before I took her to the Harper’s house. For the first time that I recall, CFA made a mistake on my order. It wasn’t big enough to complain about either. One of our chicken sandwiches had cheese on it… which is a little weird. Elijah ate it, and said it would have been better without, but it was still CFA (also, that was his 2nd CFA sandwich).
We dropped Leah off, then went to Dick’s Sporting Goods where we did find an Adidas backpack large enough to hold a ridiculous number of textbooks, a laptop, and a lunchbox…
Elijah and I returned home around 1:45. It was quite a morning!
The rest of the day was spent lounging and doing laundry. Trent had a bad afternoon and vomited about 10 times. He hasn’t been that sick since before Christmas…. The steroids he’s been on for the past couple of weeks have given him a good boost in energy. The vet said they would only prolong his life a month or two at most.
For dinner we had Kung Pao Beef from EveryPlate. It was surprisingly good considering that it called for ground beef. I skipped next week’s box, and tried a two week trial of eMeals. I’m not overly impressed with their recipes, though I like the idea a lot. I looked through 30-40 recipes for this week and found two that I thought my people would eat.
It started snowing tonight… because it’s not a school day tomorrow.
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