Not a Wasted Word

Back to School Night went fine. honestly I’m not sure how it went (I can never tell how it goes), but it’s over and that is all that matters.

I was at school for 13 hours today. When I finally got home it was to a house that had been without power for over 6 hours. My poor husband. He has had quite a week.

The power is still out. It was projected to come back on at 10pm, but that was back at 2pm when it went out and there haven’t been any updates since then. We’re worried it won’t come back until much later.

We have a set of lanterns and plenty of batteries. Our little travel battery happened to be charged. I picked up Chinese food on the way home.

I know people go without power for a days at a time. I know we’re lucky that an outage like this is rare for us. But it still sucks. We don’t even know why our power is out. We probably never will know.

I still need to finish my sub plans and send them to my school. Thank goodness for hot spots.

Tomorrow I’m taking the day so my husband can get some work done. I’m taking my son to get tested in the morning, but otherwise we have nothing planned. He has a giant packet of work slog through. I want to get him outside at some point. I hate Thursdays, and after such a long day today, I’m not sad to miss work tomorrow. And I’m very relieved I can give my husband a break. Luck sure isn’t offering him any.

My kids can’t fall asleep so I’m being called. I hope tomorrow is better.

UPDATE: The power came on at 9:56pm! Woot!

UPDATED #2: I got my sub plans done at 11:03pm! Double woot! (The staggering amount of work required to miss just one day of school is mind boggling.)

I did not mean to be gone for so long. I kept insisting to myself that I’d get a post out, but it just doesn’t happen. I’m so tired at the end of the day – my brain is like oatmeal – and I just can’t bring myself to open the tab to type.

Last week was a rough one. I spiraled WAY DOWN. WAY DOWN. I felt like a crazy person and frankly, I was afraid. There was a reason for the spiraling (it’s nothing awful and I’ll write more about it later) and by the end of the week I was able to pull myself out of the depths, but it sucked and I was exhausted by Friday.

I knew this week was going to be rough – my son’s virtual Back to School Night is tonight and mine is tomorrow night IN PERSON (WHY?!) – but I wasn’t expecting my son to be stuck at home for most of it because someone in his class tested positive for Covid. That really throws a wrench in things.

This morning, an hour into my husband FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE (he has literally not stepped foot in his office since the pandemic began), we got an email, voicemail, and text saying that our son was a close contact and had to be picked up as soon as possible. Luckily my husband was able to leave work and get him because it would have been REALLY HARD for me to step away from school in the middle of the day, let alone get there quickly. So now our son’s whole class is out until next Tuesday and there will be no distance learning even though everyone is home and it could easily happen. (In my opinion this is some bull**** and I will be asking why this is the case. What is the teacher even doing all week?!)

I can’t really take off tomorrow because it’s Back to School Night so my husband is taking the day (but trying to make some meetings), and I’m taking off Thursday (which is a day I hate and a day I was REALLY dreading this week after the late BTSN presentations I have to give in person tomorrow) so my husband can work. We’re still not sure about Friday – I have a minimum day so I think I’ll just go and take the afternoon after I get home.

As stressed as I am about the disruption, I recognize that we kind of lucked out because the exposure was last Friday, and they only got the positive result today (the student has been out with symptoms since the weekend) and since this coming Monday is a holiday, he’s only missing 3.5 schools days out of the 10 days of quarantine. We can get him tested Thursday and feel confident that the test will be accurate because it will have been 7 days since his exposure. They may even be able to spend the night at my parents house on Sunday night like we had planned. So yes, it really could be worse. We are the first class at the school to be quarantined this year, and I’m hoping they will learn how to better manage it when it happens again. I will definitely be sharing my input. 😉

So that’s where I am at. Still here, still hanging in there, but just barely. It kind of feels like I’m hanging on by my fingernails. I’m hoping that next week I’ll feel better, and things will be back to normal. I have high hopes for this long weekend to reset.

How are you doing these days?

WHAT WORKED

Big prep each night. I’m trying to get out of the house by 7am, which means I need to get pretty much everything done the night before. I have a long list on the board in our kitchen so I make sure I don’t forget anything. Last week I did a lot myself, this week I’m going to make my kids start helping me.

Leaving before the kids get up. The one day I didn’t leave before the kids got up, I ended up leaving WAY later than I wanted. Now I know I NEED to be out the door before they are out of bed, otherwise a quick five minutes stretches into 15 minutes before I know it.

Sending them little videos to start their days. Since I don’t see them before I leave, I stop the car a couple blocks away and record a little 30 second video for each of them, and then I message them the videos so they can watch them when they get up. They really seem to like them, and if I forget a detail I can put it in the video. I also put little emoji stickie notes on their lunch boxes (which I finish packing before I go).

Double weekend workout. I try to work out four times a week, and usually I get three of those workouts done during the week, but last weekend I doubled up in case it was too hard to get my third workout in, and that ended up being a great strategy. On Thursday I was too zonked and on Friday my friends planned an impromptu “we got through the first week” get together, and I was so happy that I didn’t have to fit in a workout either day. I worked out both days again this weekend, so I have some leeway this week too.

Daughter taking bus home. The aftercare program at my daughter’s school is free, so she is going some days. Other days she just wants to get home after a long day, and she can do that on the bus! She’s still only taken the bus with her friend, which suits us all just fine.

Pseudo seating chart. I adopted a flexible seating arrangement this year, but I was nervous about starting the year with free seating. My friend gave me the great idea of labeling each seat with a letter, and then handing each student a letter as they walked in. This gave us three days for them to try different seats, and for us to really talk about our flexible seating arrangement – and the expectations – before they get free seating this coming week. It was a great idea and I’m so glad my friend shared it.

Huband’s new pillow. My husband’s new pillow came early last week. It’s the Easy Breather Memory Foam Pillow from Nest Bedding. He snores less, and his neck pain is gone. I’m thinking of getting myself one because it’s also Wirecutter’s #1 recommended pillow for side sleepers.

Surgical mask refusal workaround. And, my crowning achievement… finding a way to get my kids to wear surgical masks, despite their hating the feel of them on their faces! When I realized the cloth respirator masks I got my daughter wouldn’t arrive in time for the first week, I started brainstorming ways I could beef up their cloth masks. I had a bunch of kid sized paper surgical masks, and two kids who refused to wear them (they are itchy!). I also had a TON of Athleta cloth accordion masks, which are super breathable. I realized that some of them didn’t have nose strips, so I released the stitching on the bottoms, opened them up and put a surgical mask inside. The disposable mask fit perfectly inside the cloth mask, creating a 5 layer mask that provides the filter of a surgical mask but feels soft like cloth! I was SO THRILLED that this worked, and that I had exactly ten of the Athleta nose-stripless masks (they were $4 for a pack of five at one point and I literally bought every pack of 5 they have – evidently two of the four sets have nose strips and two do not!)

Natural latex respirator masks. My daughter’s masks did come on Friday, and they fit her great. They are kind of crazy – you need to hand wash them, dip them into boiling water for 10 seconds and let them drip dry (you can’t wring them out first). This is obviously not ideal, but I got five of them, so I can wash them all on Friday nights, and let them dry over the weekend. Here they are on Saturday morning, dripping into the downstairs kitchen sink. After seeing my daughter’s, I got five for my son as well, since they were having a sale, but they will take a while to get here.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Starting laundry at 9pm. There is a big push in California to avoid running major appliances from 4pm to 9pm, when household electricity use is at its highest, and clean energy generation is at its lowest. It wasn’t so hard to get laundry done outside of this window when I was working from home, but it’s a lot harder now. I tried to run a load starting at 9pm, but I wasn’t done folding it until after 11:30, even though I remembered to switch it right when the cycle was done. I’ll only be running loads that don’t need to be folded on week nights from now on. 11pm is too late to go to bed these days.

Attempting to skirt afternoon work traffic. How did I forget how AWFUL the traffic is around my school at dismissal? There are four schools within two blocks of each other, and they all get out around 3pm, which means there is NO WAY to get out of the area quickly. I tried to park off campus on Friday, but the parking spot was a 10 minute walk up the hill. I will not be able to leave work most days until 3:45, which is not what I was expecting. This is incredibly disappointing.

Quick pick ups. My only two years of a common kid pick up were lost to a global pandemic (it’s cool, I’m not still bitter) and unfortunately my kids’ new schools are in opposite directions, so pick up takes a really long time. Luckily, my daughter takes the bus home herself some days! I think soon that might be all days… It also takes FOREVER to pick up at my son’s school. The lines is always 15 parents long, no matter what time I show up. It takes forever and I’m always tired and hangry by that point. I am not a fan.

Running errands after work. Between the delayed departure time on my school’s end, and the lengthy pick ups on my kids’ schools end, running errands right after work just doesn’t work. This sucks because it means I have to run errands in the evenings or on the weekends, when stores are way more crowded. I am a sad panda about this – I REALLY hate shopping during peak times.

Staying organized for class. I have not created good systems to stay organized in my new classroom, and… it shows. I need to spend some time this week trying some new systems.

Down time. At this point I’m not getting any down time during the work week. My kids still go to bed at 9pm, and I have to start my lengthy “big prep” around then, after which I go to sleep. I hope I can find some time to unwind at the end of some nights.

Back-to-School Shopping. I’ve been trying to get my son some new black pants (part of his uniform), but he’s in between sizes (his current pants are too short, but he swims in the next size up). I hit up Target (their size 10 fits him best), but the kids’ clothing section was like the toilet paper aisle at the beginning of the pandemic; there was nothing left. It was crazy! I tried to get some stuff online but most of what I wanted couldn’t be shipped (and obviously wasn’t in stock anywhere). I hope I can find a couple pairs that will get us through to his next growth spurt.

The weekend. I committed to an event I didn’t really want to go to on Saturday, and it ended up being a super depleting three hour thing that I really regretted attending. I need to be careful with weekend commitments, I just don’t have the energy for stuff I don’t want to do. And yet, we need to do something, because Sunday felt interminable (in all the wrong ways) and we ended up letting the kids play way more video games than we wanted. They didn’t play them all week (it might have been the first four days my son hasn’t played video games since the pandemic started), so we were more inclined to let them play, but in the future we need to have a better plan for filling the days.

What has been working, and not working, for you lately?

We made it to the end of the week. It felt like two weeks, maybe even three. I’m bone tired, and it’s only just begun.

As I expected, it’s better, but it sure ain’t easier.

There is more to say, about how hard it is to wear a proper mask all day. About how wet my face gets from the sweat and my breath. About how hard it is to learn who the kids are when 2/3s of their faces are covered. About how all three of our schools have had notices of Covid exposure, but that none of us has been a close contact yet.

Every night it feels like I’m maybe getting sick. My ears ring and my throat is tickley. But I wake up the next morning feeling better and I know it’s just exhaustion. I wish I could get tested regularly but my work won’t pay for it and Kaiser has long waits for testing and longer waits for results. In either case I have to lie and say I have symptoms to be tested.

It’s going to be a really long fall, but seeing how happy my kids are at school, in the same room with their teachers and out on the playgrounds with their friends, gives me the strength to face it. I’m sure they will get sick before they are offered the vaccine, but hopefully their masks will keep their bouts mild. That’s my hope at this point.

I am so thankful we live in an area where masks are not a flash point. Our incredibly high vaccination rates might not have saved us, but hopefully our willingness to wear masks will.

Now we need to keep our fingers crossed that our air quality won’t plummet. That is when things will really get hard.

I know there are more important things happening in the world. More tragic devastation coming to pass. It puts things in perspective.

I’m really grateful it’s the weekend. I need these two days to rest and unwind.

The kids started on Monday. I start today. This has almost always been the case (that they start two days before me) and I appreciate those extra days to get used to their routine before I’m thrown into my own.

The first two days went well. I took each of them to school on Monday since I didn’t have anything pressing waiting for me at work. Both of them ended up in classes with their friends which REALLY helped calm their nerves and kept Monday morning drama free. They both tried out their new after care situations on Monday afternoon too.

My husband attempted his first solo morning yesterday and it went well. He takes our son to school on the bus around 8am, getting home by 8:45. Most of this time was spent just watching our son play on the blacktop (supervision starts at 8:10 and they line up at 8:30), so it will probably shorten as they both get used to it. Then he is back home to walk our daughter to the bus by 9am. Her friend met them there and they were off! Their school doesn’t start until 9:30am! I’m guessing that later in the year they can meet each other at the bus stop without my husband (they both have watch phones so they can coordinate themselves).

Yesterday I hung around until 7:45ish because I had an all-district welcome back event at another school at 8:30am. Today I’ll be leaving much earlier (especially since I woke up at 5am and finally gave up on trying to fall back asleep at 5:40, when I started writing this post). I lay out their clothes the night before and I’ll be packing their lunches before I leave. It helps me to participate in those little ways.

I think I’m ready for today. It’s a minimum day so each class is only 30 minutes long. My classroom is ready. I have an activity planned but am giving myself enough time to just take it slow and focus on expectations. I have a few little fillers to get us to the end of each period in case they blow through my activity super fast.

I have not taught a real class on campus since March 13, 2020. Its been way too long and I am so ready to be back. I was able to implement my flexible seating plan and I LOVE my new room. I have three smaller classes of Spanish 1A and one full class of Spanish 1B – my Spanish program has finally grown to meet my aspirations! There is a lot of positive to focus on and for this week at least, I’m going to focus on it.

Thanks for sticking with me while I managed my freak outs about the beginning of the year. I still feel a lot of anxiety about starting school during the Delta surge, but I’m also feeling a lot of gratitude that we get to go in person. Fingers crossed that today goes well!

Today we finally jump off the cliff we’ve been been standing at the edge of for so long. Today we take the plunge.

I’ve been standing on this cliff for… well it feels like an eternity, wondering what the water will be like, if riptides will carry us away, if dangers lurk down in the deep, if we’ll hit the water wrong and seriously injure ourselves.

But today we jump, or the kids do. I’m trying to focus on their normal, understandable anxieties, and not harp too much on the importance of wearing their masks correctly. They both have other concerns, like what their new teachers will be like, if they can find all their classes, and how fun will aftercare be; I don’t want to add, “possibly getting Covid” to that mix. At least not in their heads, though it will always be floating around in mine.

I feel like there are so many headlines about how many kids are getting Covid at schools where masks are not mandated, but I haven’t read anything about whether masks are keeping transmission of the Delta variant down in schools that do require masks. I know we have lots of data about how safe schools were last year, but if Delta is a whole mew hyper-transmissible ball game then I don’t understand how that data applies. I am taking comfort in the lack of headlines about outbreaks in local camps this summer. Maybe masks will provide the protection we need to keep schools open.

That’s all I want – for it to be safe enough to keep schools open.

Sending good thoughts to anyone starting school today or soon.

Tomorrow my kids will start their new school years at their new schools.

They are both nervous. So, so nervous. But they are excited too. After over a year of distance learning, they have high hopes that this year will be different, better, or at the very least more normal. They are not hoping for too much – these are very reasonable expectations! – and yet I worry their hopes will be dashed.

Neither of them will wear a surgical mask on their face – too itchy! – but they are both willing to wear a cloth mask with a surgical mask over it. So that is what we’re going to do. As my friend says, the most effective mask is the one they will actually wear. The new masks I got my daughter have not come yet. When they do, if they work well, I will buy some for my son. I think once they are well masked, I will feel better.

I was reading an older blog post today and one of the comments was pointing out how joyful the blog space was. It got me wondering again about what makes some people more joyful. At this point in my life I am pretty darn content. If this pandemic weren’t raging these may have been some of the best years of my life. My kids in pretty decent places – they don’t require so much supervision and can actually be fun! My marriage is doing well. I don’t hate my job. I love having the extra space in my house. I have good friends that I see regularly. Besides the pandemic, things are really good. And yet I wouldn’t consider myself joyful. Content maybe. Satisfied definitely. But not joyful. And there is always that undercurrent of stress and anxiety. It’s just who I am. And it prevents joy from really taking hold.

This is not a woe-is-me, why can’t I be joyful lament. It’s just something I think about from time to time, especially when I read the blogs of women whose outlooks seem to be so different from my own. Sometimes I can attribute their poise and positive attitude to more resources, but not always. And even when they are in a different tax bracket, I can tell I would not have that attitude even if our incomes were comparable. It just makes me wonder what happens in people’s brains that determine their general disposition, and their outlook on life. I also wonder, if I could pick a different attitude or disposition, would I really want to change mine?

Anyway, a weird tangent to go off on, but it’s what’s in my head at the moment. Maybe I’m trying to choose joy today, on the eve of my kids’ first day of school, during the unexpected and overwhelming resurgence of Covid-19. Maybe I’m trying to have the attitude of the women who have not mentioned the pandemic once on their blogs in the past 17 months, even as it raged all around them. Maybe I want to know how to compartmentalize like them, to hold the unknown and the can’t-be-controlled at arm’s length, where it does less damage. Maybe I just want to know how to seem so unfazed.

Or maybe it’s just Sunday morning, and I haven’t had my coffee yet.

Last night I had a dream. A work dream. An anxious work dream. Usually my anxious work dreams involve me lost on a large, unfamiliar campus, unable to find my way to my room. I know I’m late, and that my students are waiting for me, but I can’t for the life of me, figure out how to get to my room. I hate that dream, and I have it all the time.

Last night’s anxious work dream was different. At first it was all about how I couldn’t get my students to line up outside my classroom. No matter what I did, they would not line up to listen to my directions. I was getting increasingly more frustrated, so I walked out to where they were, and saw there were two giant pot holes in the asphalt, right where they were supposed to line up. One of them was massive, big enough for four or five kids to fall into, and deep enough that they wouldn’t be unable to climb out once they fell in. I was flabbergasted, and then despondent. These gaping holes were clearly safety hazards, and no one had done anything to protect my students from them! They weren’t marked or cordoned off or anything, they were just massive holes that any kid could fall into at any moment, and they were right where I was asking my kids to line up. As I was trying to figure out why no one was doing anything to protect my students from the holes, I woke up.

Well, that dream wasn’t hard to interpret.

I left a (probably inappropriately) long comment on SHU’s post today, letting her know that she was not alone in feeling overwhelmed by everything happening right now, especially the start of the school year. My whole family is on edge. No one is sleeping well. My kids are (understandably) nervous about starting school again after spending only 10 days in their classrooms last year (really since March of 2020). That anxiety is compounded by the fact that they are “returning” to completely new schools that they know nothing about, and that they will know nothing about until they first step foot on them this coming Monday. It’s a lot.

If I’m stressed out by a new classroom and a return to in person learning after meeting students on campus for only two days last year (also since March 2020), I can only imagine how they feel.

At this point I think we just need to jump in. Right now we’re standing at the edge of the cliff, wondering what the water will feel like, worrying about what creatures might be swimming in the depths, fearing that we might hit the water wrong. The longer we stand here the harder it will be to take the plunge. I’m thankful that school starts on Monday. I do think we’ll feel better after we jump in.

And hopefully, in real life, we’ll feel more prepared to avoid the safety hazards, even if it feels like they aren’t clearly marked, and no one is protecting us from them.

Today is officially my last day of summer. Tomorrow I am contractually obligated to be on campus, attending a full day of meetings.

To mark this day, which I can’t really believe is here, I want to use this post to point out all the ways the glass is half full right now.

• My kids and I are slated to start in person this fall. For all the anxiety I feel over all of us spending the day with others while Delta is circulating, I would be devastated to start the year in distance learning again. I think one of the reasons I’m so frustrated by starting the year under these circumstances is that we were NOT in school last year when community spread was so much less likely. If we had been learning in person last year, it would have been a lot easier to accept the increased risk presented by the delta variant.

• The sun has been poking through the fog almost daily, which very much buoys my mental health. The weather down by where I work has also been lovely – I forgot how important the weather down there is for my overall well being! And so far our air quality has only crept into the yellow despite the second-largest wildfire in California history raging up north. The same wind patterns that make SF a desolate fog bank all summer are at least keeping the smoke away. That won’t be the case when fires are raging in the fall.

• This morning was my last carpool trip to sailing camp! I am so happy not to be battling the bridge traffic any longer.

• My surfaces are still clear! I’ve actually been able to keep the clutter at bay. I’m trying to be very aware of the junk that encroaches on our living spaces and be proactive around transitions that facilitate that encroachment. After the car pulls into the garage I need to spend a good 10 minutes making sure everything gets where it ultimately needs to go, instead of languishing in the entry way, or on the stairs, or in the kitchen. Making sure my kids pick up their stuff at the end of the day is also paramount.

• My new classroom is almost entirely mine. Besides two giant standing table bars that maintenance needs to move out of my new room, and three pieces of furniture that the janitorial staff needs to move out of my old room, the moving of rooms is complete. Almost all my boxes are unpacked. Now I just need to organize stuff, which I rather like doing.

• {My old classroom, along with all the other modular classrooms on campus, are getting new carpeting which means ALL furniture is being removed and then replaced haphazardly. I am SO GLAD that is not happening in my new classroom, where most of the furniture is where I ultimately want it.}

• My husband ordered a new pillow that is recommended for people who snore. I really hope it helps with his snoring, but even if it just helps with his neck pain (it’s for people who sleep on their sides), I’ll be happy.

• The CBD drops I got (I use Care By Design’s 8:1 CDB/THC) are helping with my anxiety. Or better said, they are helping with the physical symptoms my brain interprets as anxiety (isn’t it crazy that most emotions we “feel” are really our brains’ interpretations of bodily sensations?!) It is so nice not to feel like I’m spiraling all the time.

• I am not going to my classroom today, on the last weekday where that is an option (and for the first time in 1.5 weeks!) Instead I’m spending the day with my son who is not in camp this week. We’re going to Stagecoach Greens, a little outdoor mini golf spot that I love. I’m excited to spend some one-on-one time with him before the school year starts.

• My principal sent me my schedule a little early (I asked if I had zero period, and she sent me my entire schedule in her response). I do NOT have zero period, which is probably for the best. I’m teaching four 7th and 8th grade Spanish classes, which is twice as much as I’ve ever taught (in person). I’m also teaching one 6th grade Spanish class on the wheel. I have 4th period prep, which is against lunch. It’s a solid schedule and I’m happy with it.

• Perhaps most importantly, with both kids at new schools that don’t start until 8:40 and 9:30am, I will not be participating in the mornings at home with my kids. I am SO HAPPY about this. Leaving early for work, before my kids wear me down with their morning whining and fighting, is truly the best case scenario. It means I’ll be solo more in the early evenings, but I’m fine with that.

• We don’t have anything planned this weekend, which is how I like it. I definitely need to get out of the house, but I like when that happens when and how I want it to. Saturday is Free Comic Book Day so we’ll probably head out to our favorite comic book store and snag a few titles.

• Monday my kids start school. They are both at new schools and while I know the fall will be an absolute shit show, I am so thankful they get to be in their classrooms. I really do think that is the most important thing (for my kids, in our specific situation).

What is making your glass seem half full these days?

More random, incoherent thoughts because that’s all I got:

I really appreciated OMDG’s post yesterday about Emily Oster’s newsletter. She is much better at articulating my feelings on a lot of this than I am.

I’m thinking a lot about my daughter and mask wearing. Everything I read says I should put her in a N-95 or a KN95 or a KF95 but she won’t even wear a surgical mask because she thinks it’s itchy. I just don’t see her keeping a quality mask on her face. Which means I have to find something that (a) she will wear (b) covers her face and does not fall down when she’s talking (c) offers a high level of protection. In the past I bought masks that were meant more to protect others; this is the first time I’ve felt we were wearing them to protect ourselves. It’s a whole different ballgame to be sure. I just ordered five of these. Hopefully they will bring me some peace of mind.

Ha! Peace of mind. There ain’t going to be any of that this fall. At this point I’m just hoping to minimize disruptions. I’m not going to let myself frame it as keeping my kids safe – because I know I can’t do that – instead I’m going to try to keep them from missing half the fall in their classrooms. Maybe that I can manage.

As I was cleaning the floors downstairs yesterday, I realized that if we’re spending $630 a month on child care I will definitely NOT be able to afford a house cleaner. This really bums me out; I was hoping to really put in the effort to keep the house neat, and then have someone else to come in and make it clean. I’m realizing that the effort required to keep it both neat AND clean is more than I’ll be able to manage long term. It’s only been one week since I finished cleaning up my house, and already the rooms I worked on at the beginning are bothering me. I think the effort required to keep things very clean is exponentially greater than the effort required to keep them meh. Meh is manageable, but neat and clean is a lot of work. I guess I’m going to have to go back to meh, and that’s okay, it’s just a bummer.

As I was feeling bummed about not getting a house cleaner (which I’ve never had before, to be clear) I remembered that in the past, at this point in the summer, I’d be knee deep in planning the Back-to-School BBQ. Knowing that I don’t have to do that this year, nor will I ever have to do that ever again, raised my spirits considerably. Maybe I can’t get someone to clean my house, but at least I don’t have to be on the PTA board anymore!

Speaking of the PTA, at my son’s new school there are Communications co-chairs. That means TWO PEOPLE are in charge of Communications for their PTA. We only ever had four people on our entire board – we never filled a chair position while I was there. Seeing that they had Communication co-chairs really blew me away. It’s a whole new world.

An email from my daughter’s new middle school explained that we are getting nothing from them before the school year starts. The kids get their schedule on the first day. The orientations will take place via Zoom some time during the first week. It’s totally nuts. I have no idea if this is how they’ve always done things or how they are doing it this year because of all the extenuating circumstances. It’s not what I was hoping for, but I’m trying to let it go. Hopefully she’ll show up on Monday and get her schedule with no problems. And then hopefully we’ll attend the zoom orientation and they will give us some information and we’ll feel better about everything. Hopefully.

We haven’t gotten anything from our son’s school. The Kindergarten and 1st graders get an orientation this week, where they get to meet their teachers and see their classrooms. The 2nd graders do not. I’m not sure how we’ll even learn which class he’s in. I REALLY hate not knowing what is going on. I HATE it. I keep reminding myself that knowing my son’s teacher’s name wouldn’t mean much since I don’t know anything about the teachers at this school, but still. It feels like no one knows what they are doing on even the normal things. How are they going to manage this crazy Delta variant?!

There are no adults in the room. Not in any room. It’s… so disheartening.

But my classroom is almost ready. And later this week I should get my schedule. Maybe I’ll feel better when I know what my year will look like.

Maybe.