Week 7

Holy crap. Week 7. Ugh.

Milestone...we reached full overload today. I suppose it was bound to happen, and that it took this long to get to it can be seen as a positive. However you look at it though, the day was rough. The day was filled with bickering and side eyes and dirty looks from young and old alike. Not pretty. Our solution was to try and carve out our own space to take the day off from each other. There were varying degrees of success on that, but we tried.

I sure hope it helped. Tomorrow is a new day.

Distance Learning

I anticipated that juggling work from home and the boys' distance schooling would be a challenge, but I wasn't expecting how much so. This week has kicked my behind as I struggled to figure out and schedule some time for the boys to get their assignments done (with only one of them mostly independent, one slightly independent, and one not at all independent). It's still a work in progress, I think.

The boys together have 13 different teachers sending emails, plus the emails from support service teachers. One of the boys doesn't want to have anything to do with Zoom meetings because they overwhelm him, yet all of his teachers and the support services want to do them. It's been ... fun. I've learned a lot of what not to do as I deal with my own kids' teachers, which I suppose that is a good thing for my own students.

That said, my own students are about to complete their first week of distance learning. Of my 170 students, 50 of them are still MIA. No one answers phones or emails. It's quite alarming.

Bug

I don't know what came over me, but today I got the bug to do something. I ended up scrubbing all of the walls in our bedroom so I could prep it for painting. Apparently, when I get the bug to do something, I go all out. I needed to feel productive, though, so I think this is a good thing.

Week 5

Here we are at the start of the fifth week of social distancing. Honestly, I expected the lock down to come, but I don't think I fully grasped that we'd be here 5 weeks later and still really have no end in sight. Strange times we're living in.

We all set a goal for ourselves last week. We didn't even aim high for the goal, yet not a single one of us hit our goal. That's not the best track record. lol. I guess we try again tomorrow, although I don't know that I am holding out high expectations for success this week either.

All of this is eerily similar to how I felt back on bedrest with the twins. I had high hopes for doing all the stuff then, too, but nope. Nothing got done. All I did then was play games on my computer and blog. Funny how little things have changed.

We did accomplish the big neurology appointment we had for one of the boys. He started having seizures out of the blue on his 12th birthday. It's scary for him and scary for me, so I was really hoping the appointment would be a good one and we'd walk away with a treatment plan. We've started him on some medication, have seen zero side effects so far, and most importantly, haven't seen any more seizures. We're all keeping our fingers crossed that the meds continue to do their thing.

So Sad

We learned Isaac's family member in the hospital due to Covid passed away this week. Such sad news. My understanding is that the service will be small with only immediate family, which is also so sad to me. This virus steals so much from so many -- freedom, connection, and ultimately life -- and continues to steal from families when it prevents those still living from joining together to mourn their loved ones.

3 Weeks

Three weeks of social isolation down. No one has been out for the last two weeks with the exception of Isaac, who took the cars out for a drive.

Instacart delivery comes on Wednesday for our two week grocery run.

I ordered some masks off of etsy earlier this week. While I don't plan on anyone going out, you just never know if the need will arise. Best to be prepared. Our state and county recommend wearing them now.

I managed to find some Clorox wipes online this week, too. I felt a little like I won the lottery when I was able to purchase them. Now, if I could find some toilet paper, I would be happy. 5 people, 3 of them kids, use a lot of toilet paper I've found. Who knew?

I had a low day yesterday. One of the boys was ill yesterday (he had a seizure, his fourth, so that brings on a whole new challenge), so it all just weighed heavily on me. Today, though, I am feeling better. It helps that he is feeling better, too.

No new news on the family member in the ICU. I'm going with that being the best sign we can hope for right now.

Done for the Year

The governor declared that we will be out of school for the rest of the school year. To put that into perspective, we had not yet started our third trimester when the stay put order was put into play. We don't get out of school until the third week of June. Even though we knew that something like this was a very real possibility, I think it is a shock to everyone. My own kids are sad. My students are so sad. I'm sad.

It's a bit like we're living in a bizzaro world that's running parallel to the real world. Sigh.