Not a Wasted Word

This week was rough. A lot of ups and downs. By Friday I was exhausted.

Thursday was my son’s 7th birthday. We’ve been counting down since early September. 55 days. To say I was grateful to get it over with would be an understatement.

Wednesday I went to Target to get some last minute things. I also picked up McDonald’s for the kids on the way home. That night I got a text from a friend with the link to a GoFundMe she saw on Facebook. A very good friend from high school’s husband died. She has two young sons and her husband stayed at home with them. I was shocked to learn of her loss. It was hard to concentrate Wednesday night, but I had to score work, create more work, wrap presents, and decorate my son’s room after he fell asleep. I also cried quite a bit.

Sunday morning my son was up at 6am. He was thrilled with all the decorations and the few early birthday presents that were already in his room. I made him come back to bed with me, where he fell quickly back to sleep and I lay next to him in his bottom bunk, listening to six songs from the Captain Underpants soundtrack on repeat. This is where I learned that my friend’s husband committed suicide.

I’ve been to eight funerals in my life and four have been for people who died by suicide. I wish this country cared about mental health; that they screened for mental illness and provided mental health services for those who need them. Losing someone to suicide is so devastating.

Thursday was hard. I had a lot of classes to teach. My son was eager (understatement) for his party with my parents at 4pm. I was thinking a lot about my friend, who I called and left a voicemail for. It was hard to get through the day.

My parents came at 4pm with the party. I had decorated the backyard but they brought everything else – early dinner, cake and ice cream. I was very grateful for my parents help.

The party was a low key affair. My son opened his presents and we ate food. My son blew out candles and we enjoyed cake. By 5:30 my parents were loading their stuff back into their car. Thursday night my kids played some of their new video games with their dad while I went downstairs to rest for a while.

Friday things were more back to normal. My son had class and all the work from the day before he had to make up. I taught some classes and attended a PTA meeting. I completed some training modules I have to do by Nov 1st. I took my son to the dojo and got our backyard ready, again, for a dual birthday celebration with my son’s friend’s family. They came over at 4:30 with In-n-Out and we celebrated both boys (his friends’ birthday is one week after his). It was nice to spend time with them (they have taken our son for outdoor play dates a lot these past two months and we are very grateful for that) but I was so, so tired by Friday afternoon. I was very happy when I finally got to pour myself a drink Friday night.

Saturday was low key and I was grateful for that. We stayed home playing video games and reading. We didn’t see anyone or really do anything. It’s what we all needed. I got some work done and realized that by the evening I actually felt relatively caught up. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.

Sunday I cleaned up around the house. It’s a shit show and causing my stress and anxiety. I’ve realized messes in some spaces, like cat hair and shoes all over the stairs, or LEGOS in the living room where I work, cause more stress than other messes, so I tackled those. I took the kids to the Great Highway to run while they rode their bikes. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to get outside. We declined an invitation to see a movie with friends that evening. Even with only 20 people I knew in the theater, the idea of being inside with people for that long weirded me out. I wasn’t really in the mood to socialize either. Instead we stayed home and watched a movie and went to bed early.

I’m glad last week is over. We only have three more weeks left of the first trimester and I have to be back in my classroom teaching by Nov 13. Right now I just want the election to be over. Everything else pales in comparison to that.

My life feels unmanageable, but I have refused to believe that there isn’t something I can do to make it better. I have a lot of control over what I teach, and how I teach it, and I feel there have to be choices I can make that create less work for me. I thought I had made those choices this week, and Wednesday things actually felt very manageable. I didn’t feel like I was putting out work fires all day, or racing the clock to get things done. I was able to help my son do his work, and my daughter and I even took a walk to get bubble tea.

But then today I realized I had forgotten to finalize some lesson plans, and actually it was two sets of lesson plans because my one class is really at two completely different levels (two of the kids should really move down a level but their parents refuse (they are brothers) so I have basically an extra class worth of content to create right now, and I also have to figure out when to actually teach it to these kids, since I’m spending my class time teaching the other 27 kids in the class). So today was one of those days where I was perpetually behind, trying to eat my lunch in the seven minutes before my 1:30 class started, totally overwhelmed and frazzled and in the weeds every minute.

And of course my kids still needed me. My son is SO BORED all day long. He finished his work quickly (which honestly doesn’t bother me because the only thing worse than him being bored is him having to do school work). I don’t know what to have him do. He reads some, and listens to podcasts, and plays with his toys, but there are A LOT of hours to kill in a day and I don’t have a lot to offer him. The program at our dojo took a two week break and it’s been the longest two weeks of the school year. My daughter is super moody, barking NO at me constantly and speaking to me in the most blood boiling tones. She asks for help but then balks when I give it. She is not very pleasant to be around and it’s really hard managing her mood swings. Today I had to deal with her screaming through tears at me about finishing a math test THREE MINUTES before I had to go engage 30 middle schoolers on Zoom. Those are the transitions that totally destroy me.

So I don’t know. Maybe I can’t really make significant changes to my life so that things feel easier. I am trying to work full time while making sure my kids are doing their school work, and also just managing them being home even when they are done with their school work. I am dealing with an introverted husband who just wants to be alone but can’t find any solitude and is anxious and depressed about the state of everything. I never see my friends because they are all managing the same insanity, many of them without a spouse to support them. And soon the delicate balance that is at least allowing us to get through the days will be shot to shit when I have to return to my classroom.

Our union did end up meeting with the district and a CTA (state-level union) representative informed them that our district can require we return to campus, as long as they provide safe working conditions. Somehow our MOU is not enough to ensure we can choose where we teach from.

So it looks like in mid-November I have to start teaching from my classroom. This is so that I can familiarize myself with the safety protocols enough to be able to bring students back, something they anticipate doing at the middle school level in FEBRUARY OR MARCH. So yeah, I guess I need 2-3 months of teaching from my room to be ready to handle students coming back… so stupid.

I have to say, selfishly, the idea of teaching from my classroom is pretty amazing. Eight hours of uninterrupted time to work in a quiet room… yes please! But it will be a disaster for my family. My husband will absolutely lose his mind.

I cried about it for a couple days (and realized I have not been taking my magnesium, which I remedied) then I started planning. There are still a lot of details I’m not sure of, like if I really have to go in every day (I’m hoping not). I do think I could make three days a week in my classroom work well enough. One day I go to work without the kids (hopefully my husband takes that day off – he hates work right now and would be okay taking off a day a week), one day I go and bring them with me and we make it work (it will be awful but it will be one day). Then one day I take them and my parents pick them up for a few hours. This would be doable. If I do have to be there every day, I really don’t know how we can make it work without everyone being significantly more unhappy. So right now I’m going to focus on my plan, which may work.

And I guess I’m going to accept that there isn’t much I can do to make any of this more manageable. I am teaching 150 kids remotely and it takes a shit ton of time to make that work, and my kids need my attention and my husband needs my support, so it’s going to be hard and I’m just going to have to muddle through. Accepting that might be the best way to get through this.

We had a long weekend in these parts. San Francisco has always recognized Indigenous Peoples Day but my district only started taking it off last year. I was SO HAPPY for the break today.

This past Thursday our board voted to approve Phase 1 of our Return to School Plan, which requires teachers return to their classrooms to teach (via zoom) by November 13. This directly disregards the MOU in place with our union, which allows us to work from home during distance learning if we choose. Our union will start negotiating with the district tomorrow. To say I’m frustrated that I might have to commute to my campus to teach from an empty room is an understatement. If I have to start working from my classroom the delicate balance we’ve created at home will totally fall apart and everything will be worse than it is now (which is really not very good). I’m disappointed with our board for asking us to do something that their employers are surely not asking them (and/or their spouses) to do. It feels unfair and unnecessary.

There are parents in our district who are very organized, and vocal, about bringing back students as soon as possible, and I am assuming we’ll be back at some point around the New Year. It’s going to be a shit show and I’m not looking forward to it. I really do think people are trying to return to a reality that is just not possible yet, or maybe they think that once we go back this virus will really have gone away. But going back won’t change anything except our chances of getting sick. And some hybrid schedule that only has kids on campus certain days of the week is not going to return anyone to the school experience they so desperately crave. Thinking about how bad this is going to get makes it hard to focus on all the work I have to do now. And truly it’s so, so much work. Having another massive stress hanging over my head is not helping.

We also got a testy email from our principal announcing tomorrow’s staff meeting, and explaining that we have to be there and if we’re not we have to put in the hours in our management system and personally write her explaining why we aren’t there. This is a noticeable change in tone from her, so I’m assuming that it’s coming from higher up. Shit is definitely about to get ugly.

In happier news… My parents took our kids for an overnight this weekend. They came late Saturday afternoon to pick them up. I did some work on the elliptical and then my husband and I ordered sushi to pick up. I haven’t had sushi in SO LONG and it was amazing. We watched a movie with some cocktails and passed out. The next morning we slept in, then ordered brunch from one of our favorite Mexican places nearby. We don’t normally eat out and we want to do more to support our favorite local restaurants so every once in a while we splurge.

After brunch I drove down to work to pick up some materials from my classroom and then went for a run before I picked up the kids. I even got my car washed at my parents’ house! (We don’t have a hose that reaches to the front of our house so we can’t really wash it at home and I hate to pay to have it washed.) It has been a long time and it really needed it, especially after all the ash that had been in the air.

Sunday night we watched Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s my son’s second Marvel movie (we watched Thor Ragnarok last weekend) and he loved it. It’s fun watching the Marvel movies with them.

Today I had my daughter’s friends over for the second part of our book club project. It fell pretty flat but the girls enjoyed being together. In the future I’m going to stick to the discussion sessions and avoid the projects. It’s just too hard to engage them in academic pursuits on the weekends.

Oh, and a friend of mine found my blog. She was googling SFUSD because she’s so disappointed in our options for middle school next year, and found a post I wrote about the PTA being a part of the problem in our district. I had actually written the post as a letter to the PTA presidents listserv so the first paragraph is pretty specific about the school and its situation (without naming it directly). Still, I was a little rattled that she recognized it was me. There is nothing on my blog I wouldn’t want my friends to read, but I’ve learned the hard way that I usually regret when people I know start reading it. I NEVER mention my blog to my friends – they have no idea I write it – so it was startling to have her find it by randomly googling something and then so quickly recognizing I was the author. She was very nice about how weird I was initially about it, and I doubt I’ll have issues with my current friends reading it moving forward, but it made me rethink how much identifying information I share here.

I have been working on and off all weekend and I’m so tired. I keep trying to bring down the amount of work I’m assigning, hoping it will translate to less work for me but it doesn’t seem to be working. I still have so, so much work to do. I wonder if taking the extra class was a mistake. I thought that since the content was the same as for two other classes it wouldn’t be that much more work, but scoring the work of 32 more students, and communicating with them when they are missing that work, takes a lot of time. I just feel like I’m working constantly.

I can’t believe our board is trying to make us work from our classrooms – on top of all the bullshit we are dealing with. It makes me so mad.

I think it’s time to sign off, or this rant will never end.

I wanted to thank every one who commented on the last two posts. I have to admit, when I wrote that post about how despondent I feel about the fate of our nation, I never for one minute considered it might inspire such a heated debate. I also didn’t realize that a mediocre (at best!) Spanish teacher like myself might have so many incredibly thoughtful, eloquent, astute readers. I am humbled by the fact that you come here to read my words.

I will admit, the last few days were intense, and exhausting. I wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared to engage in a political debate. I appreciate the discourse that took place, but I’m totally exhausted by the energy it required to participate in a meaningful way.

Lately I’ve been feeling awful at the end of the day. My throat hurts and my ears throb and my lymph nodes feel swollen. Every night I wonder if I’m getting sick, but after seven hours of sleep I wake up feeling better. I guess it’s just exhaustion, just my body feeling beaten down by the intensity of the day. I’m really looking forward to the three day weekend as an opportunity to rest, both physically and emotionally.

Thank you again to everyone who came here to comment in the last 48 hours. I appreciated the discussion, and the support. I understand that some of you felt I was remiss in putting up my second post, but I do believe that if I’m unwilling to hear other points of view I am part of the problem (this is surely due to the fact that I don’t participate in social media and don’t have daily interactions with vocal Trump supporters who are uninterested in hearing my point of view).

I continue to believe Trump is a horrible person, and catastrophically bad president. I believe he is irrevocably damaging our country and destroying our planet and that any action (or inaction) that results in his reelection is more of a moral and ethical choice, than a political one. This is not about two parties and their differences. This is about rejecting a man who has no vision for presidency except to further his personal and professional gain. He cares about literally no one but himself. And the amount of destruction and division and despair (and even death, as he continues to ignore the pandemic) that his reelection will reap is terrifying.

Sure I might live near like-minded people who share my views, but I’m still affected by the choices and action (or inaction) of the federal government. My daughter will grow up in a world without Roe vs Wade if the Supreme Court is filled with conservative judges (that in no way reflect the ideological makeup of the country), just like women and girls in every area, urban or rural, of the United States. We all live in a world that is being destroyed by our refusal to protect the environment, and those protections have to be instituted at the federal level, even state regulations aren’t enough and personal choices can never affect real change. This election affects all of us no matter where we live. I hope everyone in this country will look at the big picture, and realize how much is at stake.

If people are not emotionally invested in this election, I do not believe they grasp what is actually happening. Our future hangs in the balance. And no amount of “living near people who think like you” makes that okay.

It’s true that I do live in an area where almost everyone around me has similar political leanings. If yesterday’s post wasn’t an indication of that, I can’t image what is.

Honestly, if I had known that people of different political persuasions, ESPECIALLY people who still support Trump, read this blog, I would have written that differently. I would have asked those people to please explain to me why they still support him. Maybe if I could understand I wouldn’t feel so much anger.

Because I do feel anger. And yes, sometimes I feel hatred. Mostly the hatred is directed toward the actual lawmakers who are making the actual decisions. But I will admit, I don’t have a lot of understanding or empathy for people who support lawmakers who are doing everything they can to destroy the American Dream (and our planet) for all but a very narrow swath of the population (white, male, wealthy).

And as I recognized in my last post, I’m not proud of that. It’s not who I want to be. Martin Luther King Jr. said we have to love our enemy. I want to be able to do that, but I don’t know how. And I don’t know why I should when they are creating policy that destroys our planet, and people’s lives (and they’re doing it so a few white, wealthy males can be more wealthy).

Having said that I recognize that widening the divide with vitriolic language is not productive. I was ranting to an audience I believe was like minded. I was being honest about how I felt, recognizing that it wasn’t how I wanted to feel, and expressing my disappointment in myself for those feelings.

Trump supporters might say they don’t hate me, that they are the tolerant ones, but in my mind they support a man who embraces white supremacy, who enacts bans of people of a different religion, who calls all people from a neighboring country rapists and keeps their children in cages, who has shown no grief for the hundreds of millions of Americans who have died from a virus that he again, just recently, declared was nothing to be worried about. I don’t understand how they can do that without hating the people white supremacist hate, without hating the populations that are so deeply hurt by his actions. Maybe someone can explain that to me?

I know we say that the divide is too large, and maybe it is. But if we refuse to try we are a part of the problem. I was part of the problem when I wrote that post. I’m trying to correct that.

For all the people who were aghast at my last post, who felt their own hate toward me for voicing those feelings, I invite you to please explain to me why you still support Trump and the Republican party. I’m not talking about what the Republican Party used to be, because I believe when they officially failed to offer any policy platform besides “support Trump” (who has not articulated any specifically policy of his own, except to embrace white supremacy and fill state and federal courts with conservative judges) in 2020 the Republican Party of five years ago ceased to exist.

So if you can put aside your hatred of me to try to explain it to me, I would listen. If you can tell me actual policy that Republicans are pushing that you support, I would love to hear what it is. Of course you don’t have to engage here, after I proclaimed what amounts to my disdain for the people you support, and my lack of understanding toward you specifically. I would understand if you refused. But if you do want to help me see your point of view now, I am willing to listen.

I’m taking another break from the news cycle. I can’t stand watching Republicans talk about how inconsequential this virus is, telling Americans to just go on living their lives.

I hate Republicans. I really do. At least I hate Republican lawmakers. And I hate the person I am when I read about them. I don’t want to hate people. I don’t want to be someone who delights in the suffering of others. But that is what I do when I read about Republicans right now. I don’t want them to have that kind of control over me, I don’t want them to drag me down to their level, so I’m going to disengage.

I’m very glad that my Republican extended family is far away from me, and that I’m not on social media so I don’t see the horrible, ugly, falsehoods they surely post. If I knew, really knew for sure, that extended family still support Trump and the current Republican party, I don’t think I could engage with them again in any kind of meaningful way. I’m glad I just don’t know, and I hope I never know.

I know that makes me a coward. But being a coward is all I’ve got right now.

Does this make me close minded? Am I the one who is failing to embrace empathy and understanding? Am I as bad as them when I say (and feel! – truly feel!) things like that?

Maybe.

Everything feels so unfair right now. It feels monumentally unfair that I have to worry about the future of my country because of uneducated, bigoted people who don’t live anywhere near me. I recognize that things only feel unfair to me now because the whole system was set up to support me and ensure my success, which is why things felt so “fair” for so long. I recognize that for so many people in this country things have always felt this unfair, and this fraught.

That makes me even sadder.

I don’t know how to create positive change. I believe the system was created so that positive change is all but impossible. The system has been honed over the years (decades) to give the rich white men all the power, and to make it very hard for anyone else to create change.

Yes, I can vote. And I will vote. But my vote won’t really matter because California always votes democrat and the electoral college assures that my vote, my actual vote, is all but meaningless. The biggest impact my vote might make is in the tally of popular votes that are counted, but don’t actually count. Instead someone thousands of miles away from me has a vote that is worth far more than my own.

I can’t believe I used to marvel at the complexity of our government, of all the safe guards that were put in place to ensure things were balanced, and fair. I marveled at the three branches of government, at the idea of “checks and balances.” I was such an ignorant fool.

But most of all, I hate that the people who undermine the system are the ones that claim the moral high ground, that they call me the heathen living in a liberal hell hole, and proclaim themselves on the side of goodness and truth. The people who do nothing but lie and maneuver themselves around actual facts.

They probable believe it. And if two people can believe such different things. I don’t really see how we come out of this together.

I think what’s happening is that I’m realizing that no matter how the election ends, or what happens in January, I will never love my country again. I will never have faith in that fairness. Which is probably for the best, because that fairness never existed in the first place. All of it has always been a lie.

Sorry for such a downer post. It’s where my head’s at these days.

This will be a series of unrelated paragraphs that having nothing to do with each other. And may not even make sense on their own. You’ve been warned.

It’s Thursday! (I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon.) I’m so happy when it’s Thursday afternoon because on Friday I only teach one class and that is a relief. Also next week I’m only giving my students an assessment, in “real time,” so I don’t have much independent work to create and finalize over the weekend.

Next week is also conferences, which are sure to be a total cluster fuck.

I did end up deciding that I need to bring down the volume of work I’m giving my students. I was pushing hard in September so they would be ready to learn about Día de los Muertos in Spanish and I believe we got there, and now I’m going to pull back. I’ve been showering them with praise for how much good work they’ve been doing and letting them know that we’ll be doing less moving forward. I hope they are feeling proud of themselves, along with relieved that Spanish won’t be as hard next month.

I invited my principal to my zoom today (mostly because we were using Pear Deck and I really want our site to buy us all Pear Deck so I don’t have to pay for it myself, so I wanted her to see how great it is) and she was super impressed with my class. It was nice to have an adult tell me I’m doing a good job. Teaching on zoom is so isolating, and it can really start to feel like you exist in a professional vacuum.

My son, who is in first grade, started reading the Dog Man books by himself. He’s also listened to the Captain Underpants audiobooks enough times that he can read those without much help. He is right on the cusp of really reading and I’m excited for him. Right now I’m incredibly grateful to Dav Pilkey for creating a set of books that make my 1st grade son incredibly excited to read.

My husband and I are refinancing our mortgage. Our new rate will be 2.7%! We thought we had an amazing rate at 3.25% but 2.7% is pretty great. We’ll continue to pay at our current rate (the same monthly amount) because we have the money, but it will be nice to have the option to pay $500 a month less if our financial situation ever changes. We are also saving to do some work on our back room which has water damage, so hopefully we won’t have to take out a HELOC later.

Our coffee maker broke last week and we could not commit to buying another one. The level of indecision, for a fucking coffee maker, was not proportional to the importance (or cost!) of of decision at all. And for two weeks I was using our aeropress to make coffee in the morning, which was a total pain in the ass for two people. And still I couldn’t commit to a coffee maker. It was totally infuriating. And I think it speaks, yet again, to the fragility of my mental state.

We did, eventually, buy a coffee maker and it came today. Hallelujah!

My son’s backyard play date, my daughter’s running club, and my own street side dinner with friends, were all cancelled today because our AQI is back in the orange, and eventually red, today. It’s been almost two months of having to watch our air quality and it’s really wearing on me. (And yes I know how lucky I am that my house hasn’t burned down, but it’s still hard to have the specter of fires looming over us after all these weeks).

Honestly, the worst part is that my house is so hot and stuffy and I can’t open any windows and there is nothing else to do because we have no air conditioning. It was only 75* in SF but my house feels so stuffy. Ugh. I just want to open a window.

My friends and I had a text chain today about whether or not we need to stockpile before the election. Actually it was more about what we should stockpile, not whether or not we need to. Like do we need to buy tons of water, or just food (and booze 😉 obviously. It’s a total mind fuck to realize that I had a completely serious conversation about that, in the United States of America. I have accepted that everything I learned about my country was a lie, and it only functioned as long as it did because most people in power followed a set of unsaid “rules” that weren’t actually written anywhere and don’t actually need to be followed (or can be changed at the whim of those in power), and once someone who doesn’t care about them gets into power, the whole thing comes crashing down. The most troubling thing is that even if the Democrats gain control in November, and eventually are allowed to take that control, I don’t believe they will take the steps necessary to ensure this won’t happen again, and Republicans, who represent the minority in our country, will continue to exert their control over a majority that doesn’t agree with them or share their values.

I was realizing recently that if I could choose to be fast forwarded to the eventual outcome of the election (be that November, December, January or beyond) or the conclusion of the pandemic, I would choose the election in a heartbeat. I think that really puts into perspective how stressful our current political situation is, because that pandemic is no picnic.

Speaking of the pandemic, my husband wants us to go into super strict quarantine for two weeks so we can spend some time with his parents. His father is 75 and they have been very cautious about their exposure – they get their groceries delivered and really only leave their house to bring our kids some magazines once a week, and even then they only pass them to us from the car. We would have to quarantine as strictly as they are to see them, which would be a big change for us. I’m not entirely thrilled to go back to never leaving my house again, but of course I’ll do it for my husband, kids and in-laws. I think we’d spend a lot of time with them for 1-2 weeks, and then go back to grocery shopping, and seeing the kids” friends in outdoor spaces with masks on for a while again.

San Francisco and San Mateo counties are back in the “red” pandemic wise which means that schools can open again if they are following county health guidelines. Private schools up and down the peninsula are opening, and even some public schools in places like Menlo. Our district’s union has been negotiating a possible return and already it’s getting ugly. I am not looking forward to whatever fight between teachers, the district, and parents, is sure to ensue.

I’m tired. So very, very tired.

Happy Friday everyone.

It’s Sunday, which is the day I make sure everything is ready for the week. I have to have all my assignments scheduled to post on Monday morning, and I usually spend Sunday night scoring the stuff that came in (the official due date for work in my classes is Sunday night, which I allow so students can finish work on the weekend if they need to).

Tomorrow I’m having my students do a group project and the amount of work required if I want even a chance of it being successful is incredibly high. It has been just so, so much work. If the whole thing ends up being a disaster I will be very disappointed.

So far “group work” in breakout rooms has been a bust. I will hop in and out of the rooms and find the kids just sitting there silently, doing the assignment themselves. Tomorrow’s group work will be the first time they’ve had to create something together, on a shared slide deck, each with editing privileges. I really wanted it to go well, so I asked them to tell me one or two people they think they work well with, and I spent quite a bit of time creating groups that honored their suggestions. Then I had to grab all the emails for each group so I can create a copy of the slide deck for each group and share it with the group’s members right before we start (otherwise some of them might claim a job they want without asking anyone else for their preferences). I also have to create a video of the directions so they can be watching those while I am finalizing the breakout rooms because not all of them log in with their school emails. I want the whole thing to get finished during one 45 minute “period,” so I gave each group member a small amount of work that I assume they can accomplish. I really, really hope it goes well. It probably won’t.

I spend a lot of time working on work, thinking about work, prepping for work, and grading assignments for work. I spend a lot of time worrying about work. I’m worried that I’m giving them too much to do. I worry that they are struggling and not telling me (even though I give them ample and varied opportunities to let me know). I’m worried they hate my classes and want to drop out (although the kids who are struggling refuse to drop out, no matter how many gentle emails I send them nudging them in that direction). I’m really proud of what I’m giving them – I was very lucky to find a program that uses strategies that allow for maximum language learning (in my opinion) even via distance learning. But I know how hard to is to stay engaged when it’s just you and a computer at home from 8:30 to 3pm. And I know that many of them have more significant obstacles to overcome than difficulties engaging.

When I’m not thinking about work, I’m worry about my kids. They are doing fine, all things considered, but I can see they are struggling. My son especially struggles to stay engaged with distance learning. He wasn’t a huge fan of school before the pandemic started, so I don’t know how much is distance learning specific and how much is just me being around to see how much he dislikes regular school work (and for him to be home to express that dislike, which he wouldn’t have done at school). My daughter is doing well, but it’s hard because she wants to be independent and 5th grade is an important year to start flexing those muscles, but she still needs a lot of scaffolding and support from us, organizationally, to get her work done. She is back on her ADHD meds and they are definitely helping, but we are still navigating appropriate ways to support her while letting her take responsibility for her own work.

I’m so, so grateful they both have opportunities to do activities away from home that offer social and physical outlets and remind them how to function in groups with other adults at the helm. My son’s first three weeks at the dojo end soon and I’m really hoping he gets to go again in October. It’s been really positive for him.

My husband is… really struggling. Even with the anonymity of this blog, I don’t feel comfortable sharing too much of what he is going through, but suffice to say it’s hard to be a public servant right now when the government is failing, so spectacularly, from the highest level down. He has been taking some days off, so he doesn’t have to engage with the misery five days a week, but it’s not enough of a respite to keep the depression at bay. It’s been very eye opening for me, someone who dealt with depression for over a decade, to recognize how hard it is to support people who are truly depressed (or very close to it). I have a lot of empathy, but it’s hard to provide the support he needs when I’m barely keeping my own shit together.

My own mood has been fluctuating a lot lately. I’m doing the things I know are necessary to keep me on the evenest keel possible – exercising 4x a week, getting seven hours of sleep most nights, taking my magnesium – but I still find myself upset without a specific triggering event. I’m sure it’s just the incredible stress we’re under because of the pandemic, compounded by the uncertainty of the coming election, and the lack of connection that quarantining creates.

I also am realizing that it’s just really hard to jump between teaching and my family multiples times a day. Usually our schedules are so tight that I have to run upstairs within minutes of teaching a class. It’s hard to be so on – smiling and energetic and engaged while getting almost nothing from my students in return – and then going immediately upstairs to deal with a 1st grader who just wants to listen to podcasts and eat Pirate’s Booty all day, but instead has to show up for his next class, or finish an assignment on Seesaw.

I titled this post “Playing catch up” because that is what I felt like I had to do here after so many weeks of being away. But I’m realizing my whole life feels like I’m playing catch up. It’s exhausting. I keep reminding myself that I have more flexibility in my job than most when it comes to what I’m actually teaching and how much energy it requires to teach that way. I could put the breaks on my own program, but that is very hard for me to do. Next week is conferences and I decided to break up the assessment I’m giving my students into three short chunks, and to not give them anything else. I’m hoping that provides a little break for all of us, even me. Maybe that will give us all some ample time to play a little catch up…

The last two weeks have been a roller coaster. So many ups and downs, and while it felt interminable while it was happening, now that it’s over it felt like it flew by.

The last time I wrote here was during the apocalyptic orange sky day. That day was a serious mind fuck, and the five days of red and purple air quality that followed were hard to get through. We couldn’t even open our windows, let alone go outside for five full days. It was horrible.

Then, finally, the bad air quality lifted and we could go outside again. The end of last week felt amazing.

Friday was a good day. My daughter and I went shoe shopping because my daughter is participating in Girls on the Run and she needed a proper pair of sneakers. Stores like Foot Locker recently reopened in San Francisco so we were able to go in and actually try on a pair, which were $120 marked down to $30 because they were the very last pair, and exactly her size. We also stopped into a book store to get the newest Dog Man. It felt awesome to be walking around, casually visiting stores again. It’s been months since I did that.

Of course later that day we heard the horrible news. I cried a lot Friday night. I realized for the first time in my life that I don’t love my country. I actually hate it. I absolutely wish I didn’t live here anymore, and I don’t want the future here I see forming for my children. I’m not quite sure what any of that means yet. I’m still processing it. And I’m definitely taking a break from the news cycle for a while. I absolutely cannot stand the hypocrisy right now.

The weekend was better, but the cloud of reality hung over everything. Saturday was super packed – I took the kids bike riding in Golden Gate Park and then had my daughter’s friends over for a book club in the backyard (we discussed El Deafo and made warm fuzzies like in the book). Sunday my daughter had sailing (she’s going for three Sundays in September) and I went over early to run on Treasure Island before picking them up. I don’t think there is a more beautiful view of the city than from Treasure Island.

At home I finished picking up my house so I could – finally! – clean all the floors on the upstairs level. They needed it so bad, and it took hours of picking up shit, sweeping and vacuuming to get to a place where I could actually do it. But it did get done and my house looks clean for the first time in months. I’m reveling in it.

Of course I aggravated an elbow injury doing all that sweeping, vacuuming and steam cleaning and today it hurts worse than it ever has. Sigh. I’m resigning myself to the fact that I have an overuse injury and I’m going to need to take definitive steps to making it better. The problem is I have no idea what those steps might be. Blerg.

It’s weird that my kids have actual activities again – my son has karate camp three afternoons a week and my daughter has running twice a week – which add a structure to the weeks that we had been missing. Distance learning still isn’t great for us, but I’m so thankful that the have structured activities that give them regular social interaction and exercise.

I’m still working pretty much every waking moment during the week, but I’m getting better and taking breaks during the weekends. At least on Saturdays.

And I guess that is where I’m at. I hope you’re all doing well.

I don’t know if it’s because California, and especially the Bay Area, has a rather narrow definition of “normal weather” (we rarely experience severe storms and even lightening is rare here), but the disorientation from yesterday is lingering. Today the air quality is very bad – it hurts the eyes and lungs – but the ominous orange tinge and the dark skies are gone.

I feel like this video encapsulates how disconcerting yesterday felt. It really does seem like we’re living in some dystopian future, except it’s happening right now. A dystopian today. It’s been hard to shake.

Brilliant: drone footage of San Francisco yesterday to blade runner 2049 sound track pic.twitter.com/bHKBvqOLLv

— jason@calacanis.com (@Jason) September 10, 2020