Not a Wasted Word

There has been some press lately on academic pods – families pooling their resources to provide support or instruction during the pandemic. Some of these families are looking for someone to support students with the distance learning provided by their school district (and maybe supplement it in some areas), while others are looking for a credentialed teacher to basically teach their kids in a small, private school-like setting (this is also being referred to as microschooling)*. Services are springing up all over the country (and especially in the Bay Area) to help connect interested parents with prospective educators.

I have to say, I understand the popularity of academic pods. I actually proposed a pod-like scenario to my friends a couple of weeks before all the articles came out. I guess we were already kind of podding this summer, when I took the kids every day and provided supervision at a park, or activities in my backyard. If we’ve been getting them together in a safe way all summer, why not keep doing it during the school year?

The idea, originally, was to pool our financial resources to hire someone to help the kids complete their distance learning work, possibly supplementing the work in some way (we never got past the world “supplement” in our discussions so I can’t really articulate what that meant for us). Mostly we hoped this would allow us parents to get our own work done during the day, and to minimize the power struggles that erupt when we try to support our own tweens children during distance learning.

It turns out that even if we pool our resources, hiring someone would be really expensive. Everything in the Bay Area is really expensive, so I’m not surprised. It’s also really hard to find someone who is willing, and able, to do it.

Of course, “it costs too much” is an easy cop out, when really the whole enterprise is incredibly daunting to consider once one moves past the “Wouldn’t it be great to have someone around to make this easier!?” to the realities of “Who do we find? What are we actually going to ask them to do? Where will they do it? How will we determine all of these things when there are four of us and we have different ideas? How much is each person willing to pay? How much control over the situation does each person expect for their contribution? What kind of liability is involved in this scenario and who will shoulder that burden? Who will write up the contract and manage payments?” We are four friends who are very easy going, and have lower expectations than most, and even we realized pretty quickly that it’s actually incredibly complicated to put something like this together.

It’s even harder when you don’t have a group of families you know who want to create a pod with you. Podding with families to support my 1st grader would be way more helpful, but I don’t really have anyone to do that with. All his preschool friends are at a different school, and while I’ve reached out indicating that I’m interested in participating in some kind of pod, no one has gotten back to me. It’s clear that bringing in someone from another school, with different logistics, is not a snag anyone wants to introduce into an already complicated scenario. I’m also guessing I’m not willing (or possibly even able) to throw the kind of money at this that the other families can manage, so I haven’t really followed up.

At this point, we’re not sure what we’re going to do. I’m considering hosting something myself, in my backyard, and having my friends pay me to provide the supervision piece. I’m not sure if that is manageable yet, as I don’t really understand what will be required of me during actual school hours while we are distance learning. If it’s set up like the spring (and it might be for me, as an elective teacher), I could probably host the girls in my backyard and help them participate in their distance learning. But at this point I just don’t know.

Of course, when my district goes back to the classroom (and we will definitely do this before my kids’ district), any possibility of me doing this goes out the window.

We also might switch off days, with each mom taking off a morning to be with the girls in their own backyard. We each have backyards that are big enough, and the weather here should be nice until at least November. I could probably keep doing this even if we return to the classroom for a hybrid model because I would get one day at home to prep.

My son’s situation is also a wild card, and I think part of me hopes that if I were getting some supplemental income from my friends, maybe I could pay a high school student to help him at some point during the day (our neighbor would be ideal for this because he is amazing and speaks Spanish and would be generally awesome to have around). There is also one family nearby (my son’s best friend) that I’m hoping to engage in some way – I would be willing to provide some kind of supplemental services to them for free if it meant my son got to hang out with his friend on a regular basis, because really all my son needs is some socialization.

I definitely want to do some supplemental work with my daughter and her friends. I’ve already brought home a few novel sets so we can do reader’s workshop and my mom has agreed to do some writing units with them (my friends would pay her of course). Obviously, being a teacher makes all of this WAY EASIER for me than it would be for other people (the supplemental part is especially hard because knowledge of the standards AND resources are necessary).** The good news is I can do the supplemental part no matter what – it could happen in the afternoons a couple of times a week, and I know my friends are very interested in this piece so it will probably happen.

Right now there are a lot of unknowns. I’ve told my friends that I am interested in providing something, but that I can’t commit to anything until I know more about my own schedule. I also have to talk to my husband, who generally prefers the simpler option over all others. The fact that being with her friends will make distance learning a happier and more fulfilling experience for our daughter is the only reason he would even consider all this complication. (Whereas I am also eager to help out my friends – two of them are single moms and this has been really hard on them.)

There is still a lot to figure out, and even if we did try something, I would only commit to the six weeks that I know my district will be in distance learning. I think switching off is probably the ideal scenario, but it might not work for everyone. And if I did offer the service, I would be very explicit about what would, and would not, be providing. It will be a lot of extra work, but if it means my daughter (and her friends, who I enjoy and care about very much) have a more positive experience, and I make some supplemental income, it might be worth the late nights I would be guaranteeing for myself.

All that to say, I’m thinking about podding, but only in ways that are relatively easy for me, and that are possible only because I am a teacher and I have friends who are interested in the same set up as I am. I don’t think I could handle the expense or complication of pooling resources to hire someone else, especially not with people I don’t know well. Mostly I want my kids to have some time with their peers, and maybe a little supplementation (more for my 5th grader than my 1st grader). And that is where I’m at. (And yes, I know that when upper-middle class families like my own do this we exacerbate the widening achievement gap – I will definitely be reaching out to both my kids’ teachers to see if they have any ideas for how we can support the students in their classes that need it).

*Neither of these options – not pods nor microschools – should be called homeschooling – which is a word being used to describe all kinds of situations that are not homeschooling at all. Parents helping their children complete work provided by their school are not homeschooling. Parents paying a teacher to provide a complete educational experience are not homeschooling. Homeschooling existed before the pandemic and will exist after the pandemic and the word, evidently, will be used erroneously during the pandemic.

**I’ve seen a lot of talk about hiring substitute teachers to run pods or microschools and to provide supplemental learning experiences, but I do not believe someone who is cleared as a substitute is necessarily capable of this. In California you only need to pass a finger print screening and a 10th-grade equivalency test to become a substitute – you don’t need to know ANYTHING about what should be taught at each grade level, or how best to teach it. That said, some people are substituting as they earn their teaching credential and have completed some of their coursework. And obviously substitutes that are retired teachers are very qualified. I would urge families to be careful and not to assume that substitute = teacher, because that is not necessarily the case.

What are your thoughts on academic podding? Have you considered it?

And before I knew it, the summer was over.

Next week I start work, for real. Well, for semi-real. It’s all professional development, but I’m also presenting two of the sessions (one on Thursday and one on Friday), so it’s more real than it would be otherwise.

It’s earlier than normal. My district received some federal aid and they are using it to offer us professional development and PAY US to take it. They are also tapping the knowledge of their own staff, instead of paying $$$ to have an outside entity come in with a ton of bells and whistles and not much actual substance. I am quite pleased by all of these developments.

{They are paying us presenters for our services, but it’s a much better use of money to pay us than to pay an company or key-note speaker.}

So yeah, it all starts on Tuesday – except for me it’s really Monday because I’m taking a free training on Google Suite for educators. We use google classroom and while I feel very confident in my knowledge of their apps, and how to best utilize them in my classes, I also know that just one little tip, or one new way to implement something familiar can deliver massive gains. Or just make things a little less boring.

I am eager to get started for real; I’ve been spinning my wheels on a lot of planning aspects of next year because I just have no idea what it will look like. I don’t know how much I will be expected (or allowed) to push out synchronously, or how many students I’ll have from either middle school in my two levels, or if I’m teaching the 6th grade and if so how much, or if they’ll be asking me to teach anything else. The last time I spoke with my principal she said I would probably only be teaching Spanish but that was weeks ago, and as we all know, a lot can change in three weeks, especially during this pandemic.

2020-21 school year, here I come…

Every morning my daughter’s camp sends a link to a google form that I have to fill out. The third line is a morning temperature check.

We also had to track her temperature for the two weeks prior to camp, and turn it in on the designated health check page.

When I was trying to get pregnant, I took my basal body temperature EVERY DAY and dutifully tracked it on an ovulation chart. I did this for many, many months.

Handing my daughter the thermometer, and jotting down the temperature, has taken me back. I’ve already accessed the mental challenges of that time – the crippling uncertainty and the paralyzing fear – to talk myself down from the worst anxiety spirals. But this very real, very tangible act brings me back in a totally different way.

I mentioned to my daughter this morning that I know what it’s like to take your temperature every morning, because I did it when I was trying to have a baby. She seemed to appreciate the camaraderie our shared experiences provided, and she didn’t whine as much when I handed her the thermometer.

I’m very thankful I don’t need to take my temperature anymore, because I already have the children I so desperately wanted back then. I am very lucky woman.

This is a really good read about not just the current child care crisis, but the long term implications of women being forced out of the job market in the short term because of the pandemic, and in the future because of a severe shortage of child care.

A lot has been written about how the pandemic has reversed the gains of decades of work toward gender equality, and it’s something I have been reading a lot about.

I’ve definitely noticed a lot of old resentments flaring again since the shelter in place order has been in effect. I was usually the one who made herself available for a lot of the child care logistics, partly because I had more flexibility in the afternoons and also partly (well, probably more than partly) because I drive our only car.

My husband has definitely internalized expectations about the sanctity of his work day, and they are very much on display now that we’re all stuck in the same house. The fact that I had way more flexibility during the work day in the spring, and my background in education (which means I was more inclined to help our kids manage their school work), further entrenched the unequal division of labor. Me being on summer break for the past six weeks has pretty much cemented them.

I’m really worried about how the fall is going to play out. I assume the expectations on my kids will be greater than in the spring, especially for my son who only had one zoom meeting each morning and then was free to finish the work I gave him when he wanted (or when I could help). I also assume I will be doing more synchronous teaching, which will require I not be disturbed for longer chunks of time.

All of this is going to make the fall a lot harder to navigate than the spring.

Circling around how we might make these logistics work is part of why I’m struggling from falling deep into an anxiety spiral.

I’m trying to be proactive. I asked my husband to take off the first week of school entirely, and he just put in for the time. My hope is that if he’s around as we figure out the first week, he will better understand how he can support them, and me, as distance learning progresses.

Right now there are so many unknowns about this fall, but one thing I’m sure of is that I’m going to need to be proactive and persistent if there is even a chance I’ll get the support I need from my husband to maintain my sanity. His default attitude is to assume that I am on it, and that he can go do his own stuff. When we could outsource child care that was more manageable, but now that we need to figure it all out in-house it’s not. I hope we can make it work so that at the end of all this we’re still married…

{First I wanted to thank people for the supportive comments yesterday. I didn’t expect that post to be linked to elsewhere and I didn’t expect so many people to read it, but I’m glad I wrote it and I hope it helped at least a few people better understand where teachers are coming from. I also want to make clear that just because I don’t think it’s safe to return to the classroom right now, that doesn’t mean I support the “we won’t return until there are no new cases for 14 days” movement either. I do believe there is a middle ground, and I would be willing to take it, but I doubt federal, or even state, leadership will do what is needed to get us there any time soon. And now, on to today’s post.}

I couldn’t sleep last night. I went to be early because our son had woken us up several times the night before and I was exhausted. I did everything right – I didn’t watch TV before bed, I read my book instead of scrolling on my phone and then I turned out the lights at 11pm. Three hours later I was losing my ever loving mind.

Sometimes it sneaks up on me, the anxiety. I don’t even know I’m feeling it until I start spiraling through a million aspects of my life, and the lives of those I care about, that I have no control over, and I can’t shut my mind off no matter how hard I try.

It was a reminder that things are hard right now and people are struggling. Of course I didn’t need the reminder, two of the things I was anxiety spiraling about were a good friend’s very troubled marriage and another good friend’s serious mental health issues. Both make me incredibly sad and both are directly related to the fucked up situation we all find ourselves in.

I’m also realizing that just because I finally know that we will be starting the year in distance learning, I don’t really know enough else to start planning. I usually channel my anxious energy into planning, but right now I don’t know what my kids’ daily distance learning schedules will look like and I don’t know what my own daily distance learning schedule will look like. Everything is up in the air, so I can’t even start test driving possible ways to make it work in my mind.

And the clock is ticking. My kids “start school” in less than three weeks. I start with students only two days after they do. I’m trying so hard to get some meaningful, productive work done but most days I’m just spinning my wheels. It’s frustrating and I’m exhausted.

I think today I’ll try to be productive, but I’ll also try to cut myself some slack. I’m not a napper, and the thought of lying somewhere and trying to sleep, when I spent SO MANY HOURS doing that last night, just causes me more anxiety, so I’m going to have to push through the exhaustion. I will NOT read anything from the NYT or WaPo and I’ll take something to make sure I sleep tonight.

Tomorrow I’m sure things will be better. In the meantime, I need to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

I have had a lot of complicated feelings about returning to school in the fall. At the beginning of the summer I was all about going back – for both me and my kids. I thought that kids weren’t big transmitters of the virus, that California was keeping community spread under control, and that we could find a way to make it safe. I saw countries in Europe and Asia opening up schools without a huge change in virus numbers, and I assumed we could too. I also thought that whatever we did in the classroom would be a huge improvement over distance learning.

As the summer progressed, a lot of things changed. We learned that kids older than 10 transmit the virus at about the same rate as adults (I teach middle school so that made me feel very differently about being seeing 48 middle schoolers a week). Despite a governor, and mayor, who took the virus seriously and waited longer than most states, or cities, to start reopening, numbers in California, and even in the Bay Area rose at alarming rates. I also realized that we couldn’t look to countries in Europe and Asia for guidance on how to open schools safely when their responses to this health crisis look nothing like what we’re doing in the United States.

At this point I stand with teachers who believe it’s not safe to return to classrooms in most parts of the country, including the Bay Area. I understand how detrimental it is that students not return to school, but it’s not appropriate to blame teachers for refusing to put our own health and safety at risk when we had nothing to do with the failures of leadership that lead us to this point.

I get that it looks like teachers are flat out refusing to return to the classroom, when essential workers have been forced to return to clinics, hospitals, grocery stores and other essential businesses. While educators have not been classified as essential workforce in California (and I doubt other places), I appreciate that society is starting to recognize what an important service we provide. If teachers and other school staff are eventually classified as essential, I think it’s important to remember that teachers are being asked to return to work in the exact conditions that have been identified as the most conducive to spreading the virus: spending long periods with the the same group of people, inside a small, poorly ventilated space.

We also are acutely aware of what happens in classroom and we know how trying to return to school while following masking and social distancing guidelines will look.

We know students aren’t going to want to wear masks and that many of them will be getting messages from their parents that they don’t actually have to. We know that even the ones who do want to wear them will struggle because kids, especially younger ones, have only developing body awareness and masks are tricky to manage for long periods of time.

We know some parents will send their kids to school even when they are sick, because they have always done that and they will continue to do that.

We know that tests will be hard to get and that results will take a long time to come back, and that all the uncertainty and waiting will be stressful for everyone.

We know kids will show up with no symptoms, but will actually have the virus and be spreading it to their teachers and peers.

We know we might have the virus, and not realize it, and that we might actually be spreading it to our students. We know the guilt we would feel if we gave it to our students, and they gave it to their families, and a student or family member died, would be crippling.

We know we will feel we should stay home at the slightest sign of illness, and there won’t be subs available to take our classes. We know that if there are subs available, they will have been in other classes with other groups in other schools and even districts.

We know that when there is a confirmed case, the teacher and entire class will have to quarantine for two weeks before returning to school. We know that when there are enough confirmed cases, the entire school will have to shut down. We know there will be a lot of confirmed cases, and a lot of disruption for students, parents, and teachers.

We know some kids will be hanging out with their friends outside of school, and they won’t be following social distancing guidelines, and that the actual number of contacts we’ll be seeing will be far greater than the number of kids sitting in our room.

We know our classrooms are small, and cramped, that our windows don’t always open and that our ventilation systems don’t work, or are very old. We know that when we request things be fixed, the maintenance staff can’t respond in a timely matter, or at all, because there are way more requests than staff and resources to address them. We know the maintenance staff will be stretched thin already trying to make an old, decrepit building safe for staff and students.

We know that our schools and districts are chronically underfunded, so much so that providing basic learning tools like paper, pencils, and books can be a challenge. We know that public schools are facing massive budget cuts, and that the protocols required to make it safe for students and teachers to be together in classroom will cost significant amounts of money. We don’t understand how our school districts, that struggle to provide the resources required for successful learning during a normal school year can possibly provide the PPE and other resources necessary to keep teachers and students safe now.

We know that we are not valued or respected by society, and that we are popular scapegoats for society’s failures. We know that when kids start getting sick, people will come after us personally, and professionally.

We know that we can’t look to other countries who have successfully reopened their schools because they have:
– testing capacity that FAR exceeds our own
– robust and effective contract tracing in place
– safety nets to support for people who have to isolate for 14 day
– national and local governments that recognize the threat of the virus and have taken the appropriate actions to contain its spread
– nationally and locally required safety measures that are understood and accepted by the general population
– much lower rates of percentage positive and community spread

We know that socially distanced school will look nothing like what kids are used to. It will not bring them the sense of normalcy their parents want so desperately for them. It will not allow for the socialization that parents recognize kids are desperate for, and it will not foster effective instruction or learning.

We know that having 10-12 kids in a classroom, with masks on for the duration, unable to work, or socialize with their peers, and unable to approach their teacher or to even see their teacher’s face, spending 30 seconds x the number of students in the room washing hands every hour, constantly aware of the threat of the virus, is not an effective way to learn.

We know that the belief that in-class learning is somehow a far superior option when compared to distance learning, does not take into account the reality of what school will actually be. We know that until we get this virus under control we will not be providing optimal learning experiences at school or with distance learning, but at least with distance learning everyone has a chance to stay safe and healthy.

Teachers know this because they are in classrooms every day and they know what it will actually look like. They know what kids need in order to learn and socialize and they know neither will happen in classrooms where kids can and will be transmitting the coronavirus to their teachers and peers.

We know how this is going to play out, and we know it’s not going to provide the security and socialization that parents are arguing for when they insist their kids return to school. The school experience parents think their kids are missing out on by returning to distance learning does not, and will not, exist.

Yes, parents need child care to return to work. Yes, under served students need support so they can engage in distance learning successfully and receive the services they need. State and local governments should be addressing those very real and exceedingly important issues. But sending kids back to school now, while the viruses ranges, is a solution buttressed by anxiety, panic, and wishful thinking.

I know these are desperate times and they call for desperate measures, but please don’t ask students and teachers to risk their lives when the return on investment is, in reality, shockingly low. Please don’t attack and demean teachers for not wanting to return to schools, and instead remember that we are not responsible for this reality, and there is nowhere we’d rather be than in our classrooms.

Our district pivoted to starting the school year with six weeks of distance learning. They sent out their announcement yesterday.

I am relieved that we know how we’re starting, and don’t have have to spend the next three weeks going back and forth wondering how we will be delivering our curriculum. I’m relieved that I can ask my parents to help me with my kids because I won’t be with middle schoolers all day, who are believed to catch and spread the virus as well as adults, even if I do have to go to my classroom to teach from a computer to all my students at home.

I’m so tired of this debate, and the shit teachers are taking for being selfish and unwilling to show up for their students. I’m sick of people saying we’re essential workers when schools/educators are not listed in California’s Essential Workforce.

I can promise you that few people teach for long if they don’t love their students. Why do people think we become teachers? The fabulous paycheck? The respect and admiration of society? It’s a thankless job that pays very little for the amount of education required and earns little to no respect. And yes, June, July and August are nice, but they clearly don’t make up for the what we deal with during the rest of the school year or our country wouldn’t be facing a severe teaching shortage. Evidently teaching is the easiest profession to be in if you don’t give a shit about anything or anybody, and yet no one wants to do it. Weird.

I have a post in the works that talks more about this, but honestly I don’t really want to post it. I’m tired of hearing that we’re choosing the “easy” option of distance learning when distance learning is incredibly hard and requires way more time and energy than actually being in the classroom (it’s like writing sub plans every day of my freaking life – and it’s miserable). I’m tired of being told to push everything asynchronously (which is considered more equitable because it can be accessed at any time) and also being told when I do that I’m not adequately servicing the most urgent learners, who need synchronous instruction (but also are the least likely to be able to access it).

For the umpteenth time in the history of public education, schools are being asked to solve the problems society has created by perpetuating generational poverty and stripping social safety nets. Schools are being asked to prop up the economy by allowing parents to get back to work, provide services to disadvantaged students that society has abandoned to a disgraceful fate, and solve the inequitable access to internet technology, all while being a chronically underfunded public institution that federal and state policy has continuously ignored or blatantly refused to support.

So yeah, I’m really tired of the shit talking. Really, really tired. I wrote something else but I’m not going to post it. I’m just going to leave it at this.

The bright spot of our summer that got snuffed out earlier this month was the only bright spot I had planned. I put all my eggs in that basket and then that basket got thrown against a wall, so while friends have gone camping or spent weekends on the river, we’ve done nothing but stay home.

Until this week.

On Wednesday we went to Safari West in the north bay and spent three hours seeing giraffes and zebras up close and personal, without even a fence between us.

We got dinner outside at a restaurant in Calistoga before setting up camp in a yurt in Bothe-Napa State Park. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows and ate s’mores. We slept (well, most of us did), woke up, packed up the yurt, ate breakfast, and went on a three mile hike.

We got In-n-Out for lunch, then went to a Steelhead Beach on the Russian River for a little swim. We were home by dinner time on Thursday.

They were some big, busy days, filled with a lot of fun, and also a fair amount of grumbling and frustration. I didn’t sleep great and I was entirely over my kids griping before I tucked them into their sleeping bags.

I’m glad we did it because my kids had a great time, and made some amazing memories. I’m glad I did it because it scratched an itch I’ve had all summer to just do something already. So we did something and now that itch has been scratched and I can move on to getting ready for the new school year.

Today my son has his last day of rec and park camp and next week both kids will be at camps and I will start preparing for the new school year for real. I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to get work done but spending more time dealing with my daughter and her friends (and other shit) than I wanted. Next week starts three weeks of serious work time. If I use it wisely the start of the school year will be a lot easier.

I’m glad I scratched that itch. Hopefully now I can get focused.

Yesterday was July 19th. My first day with students is August 19th. I’m officially one month away from the start of the school year.

On Friday Governor Newsom announced that schools cannot invite students back to classroom until their county has been off the state’s “watchlist” for 14 days (being placed on the watchlist involves a number of metrics such as percentage of positive tests and how that number is trending, number of hospital beds available, etc). San Mateo County, where my district resides, is currently the only county in the Bay Area that is NOT on the watchlist, though the SF Chronicle reported that it will probably be added early this coming week.

Late Friday evening our superintendent sent out an email to staff and families explaining the new state mandate and promising that our district will start with in-person learning if at all possible.

If they maintain that stance, we will spend the next month preparing for both a return to in-person learning and distance learning, ensuring we will fail to launch the school year successfully in either scenario.

Our union will also probably be in a stressful struggle with our superintendent and board, as we request a return to distance learning while they ensure we can return safely in person (despite not being able to promise that in any way shape or form).

I sent an email on to both asking them to please relieve us, both staff and families, of this unnecessary burden of uncertainty. Spending the next month watching the numbers and our status on the watchlist will make it impossible for anyone to plan effectively for the start of the school year. Our district has a long track record of ignoring staff concerns, so hopefully parents will start communicating their desire for a clear course of action soon too, otherwise it probably won’t happen.

Of course, my district is also currently requiring that teachers return to their classrooms in the fall, even if we are teaching entirely online, despite the governors recommendation that all work that can be done remotely take place at home.

I know there is a still a month left until we start, and there is still hope that my district will announce we are at least starting the school year with distance learning regardless of our status on the watchlist, AND that we will be allowed to work from home if we are using distance learning. The fact that we have to wait for either decision is already a mark against them in my book.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. I have to admit, I was dreading the day, but it ended up being quite nice.

That was primarily because my cousin set up a tribute.com compilation that all my cousins and aunt and uncles recorded videos for. My parents also did one (and my mom did one for my grandmother by reading a letter from her to me that she found at her house), and my in-laws and my friends. It was so moving to see all my friends wishing me happy birthday, reflecting on favorite memories and saying nice things about me. My husband had it all queued up when I came upstairs, and it was the most amazing way to start the day. It totally turned my attitude around.

Other things I did on my birthday:

Watched The Little Mermaid with my daughter. She had been wanting to watch it again and it’s one of my favorites so I happily obliged. She also let me sing along to all the songs, just because it was my birthday.

Went for a run, and my daughter and her friend did their own walk in the park. We’ve been using a set of walkie-talkies my parents got us at parks so the girls can have some independence and it works out nicely when I want to run.

Listened to part of Governor Newsom’s press conference.

Participated in a two hour union meeting.

Got my period.

Did some work.

Got ice cream cookie sandwiches from Coldstone (I wanted to get a tray of their cupcakes – a bit of a ritual on my birthday at this point – but evidently they don’t make them anymore (or you have to order them ahead of time? I was confused)). The ice cream cookie sandwiches were plenty yummy so I was fine.

Picked up my favorite dish – thrice cooked bacon with rice cakes from Mission Chinese.

Talked to, and texted with, a ton of friends who reached out on my birthday.

Watched Memento with my husband, which I had been wanting to watch again for a long time.

Enjoyed some yummy cocktails that my husband mixed us.

Ordered some stuff online (my son’s camp, which was a big, unexpected expense, pushed me to my spending limit much earlier in the month than expected so I had been waiting until my credit card rolled over to the next billing period to use it again).

All in all it was a very nice day, and I was pleasantly surprised. Now we get ready for my husband’s birthday next week…