Not a Wasted Word

This week was national Teacher Appreciation Week and Sunday is Mother’s Day. And while I made sure my kids made their teachers digital cards, and I sent them gift cards, I did not receive anything from my students. And while I will give my own mother something on Sunday (I am very grateful she is still in my life), I will likely not get anything from my own family. I’ve gotten so close to accepting this perceived discrepancy every year, and honestly it only stings a little at this point, but I’m still not a big fan of early May.

{I know I am appreciated, and I know my kids love me, and I hate when superficial “weeks” or “days” make me feel like someone needs to do something to prove that. I think it’s especially frustrating because the efforts I make myself never seem to be made toward me (and I am not the kind of person that enjoys making the efforts – it absolutely feels like a chore). But again, I know that sending an email during a specific week is not the only way a student can show they appreciate what I do, and a card from my kids is not even my preferred way of them showing me they love me. But when you see it everywhere, except in your own life, it’s hard not to feel… overlooked? Like I said, I’m not a fan of early May.}

And yes, I have made clear to my family that I would like I little acknowledgement (just a card or drawing!) but it doesn’t seem to be something they can manage at this point.}

So in the absence of being openly appreciated by my students and family, I appreciated myself this week by taking advantage of a sale on Mixtiles. In about three weeks, 32 photos will be arriving here to grace the wall in our new living room. We just got the giant wardrobe out today (which has been stressing me out for weeks) so I can finally see the entire wall. It’s going to be amazing when all the photos go up!

These are all photos I’ve taken over the past year or so, that I ran through different filters on an app called Prisma. I really like to have photos like this on my walls, and most of the “art” in our house was created by me (some of it created by a much younger, very interested in black-and-white photography me). I do have some photos of my kids, but mostly I put up stuff like this. It was incredibly satisfying to “create” something (it’s been A LONG TIME) and I can’t wait to put it all up on our walls.

Do you like days or weeks that force others to feel they have to show their love or appreciation in certain ways? Do you participate in them?

I was going to come here a couple nights ago and say, hey, it’s been a while since I cried. It’s been a while since I’ve felt totally overwhelmed. I was going to report that the mental health crisis I was dealing with a bit ago seemed to have passed. That I felt pretty decent, given the circumstances.

And then Tuesday happened.

I’m sure it’s hormonal. I have a short cycle (just 21 days) so I’ve been on this roller coaster twice now already during shelter-in-place. It definitely hits harder these days. These days are rough. This week, evidently, will be rough. I’ll get through it, and it will be better on the other side.

I’m very happy that Monday one of my favorite nearby parks we open again after a month-long closure. Getting out, alone, to run for an hour definitely helped put me in a good head space for the rest of the week.

The stuff I’m reading about right now – that people are assaulting people whose job it is to enforce face mask requirements, that governors are then waiving those requirements, that states are requiring people return to work or lose their unemployment benefits… there are no words. And once again our country feels unrecognizable.

I read recently that the most horrible thing will be when we accept the deaths as unavoidable casualties. When we know longer care that a 1,000 people die every day. Except they are avoidable, and I worry many of us already stopped caring.

And now Trump is sowing doubt in the validity of number of deaths. Even though, when you factor in access deaths, the number is actually much higher.

I think now is the time for me to step away from the news cycle for awhile. Especially during weeks like these when I feel more emotionally reactive and overwhelmed. it doesn’t educate me, it only depresses me. And right now my hormones don’t need any help with that.

This week, while about half of the states in the nations began to tentatively reopen their economies, California extended its shelter-in-place order through the month of May. I don’t think anybody was particularly surprised, or upset. We were the first state to start sheltering in place and I believe we will be one of the last to lift certain restrictions. And that is fine. I trust Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, and London Breed, SF’s mayor, to do what is best for our city and state (SF has been committing to public health policy along with six other counties in the Bay Area so they are always working more or less in concert). They are opening the San Mateo County Parks again, which I’m thrilled about, and I don’t plan on writing much else about public policy as it relates to the coronavirus here, or anywhere else, as I clearly do not have anything of value to add on the subject. If anything I just misconstrue facts and create confusion and that is the last thing we need right now.

Having said that, I do think I might have some clarifying perspective on Newsom’s suggestion that California public schools might open up early this summer – possibly even in July. This was mentioned at the same press conference as the extended shelter-in-place, and it got a lot of press as people weren’t sure what to make of it.

Someone asked me for my thoughts on it here, and I wrote a long response in the comments, which I’m going to re-organize and then re-publish as a post. This post!

First of all, Newsom did suggest starting the school year early. And he did mention the month of July. But he suggested the possibility of an earlier start in late-July or early-August. Most public school districts in California already start in mid-August. So the early start he suggested was only 2-4 weeks early, not the eights weeks I heard people freaking out about. If we started eight weeks early, we’d get no summer at all.

I understand why Newsom wants to open schools early – kids are falling behind, and it’s the ones who were already not meeting standards who are falling behind the most. In my district, all but one week of the third trimester has been distance learning. That means the kids who are not able to effectively learn right now are missing a full third of the school year. That is a massive amount of time. Teachers are not even attempting to cover the regular curriculum, so even the kids who are thriving with this new kind of learning are missing important topics and skills. Teachers will not be able start teaching next year at the same places in the curriculum that they usually start. The amount of school these kids are missing is a really big deal.

And yet, I don’t think Newsom can actually force school districts to start in late July or even early August. School districts would have to negotiate an earlier start date with their unions, as the 20-21 year contracts have already been passed. If districts did try to start the year early, it would be incredibly hard to reach an agreement with their unions. But I don’t think districts will be attempting to start early, and the biggest reason for that is funding.

Asking teachers to teach a longer school year would require paying them more. Districts are going to be facing massive budget crises, which will probably lead to them using furlough days to effectively shorten the school year in an attempt to balance their budgets (In CA, at least, public schools are funded partly by business taxes, which won’t be at their normal levels because of the economic shut down, plus other methods of funding are also not tenable). It’s true that students need to make up the time, but the reality of our public school system doesn’t make it possible. In fact, the opposite is much more likely.

And of course, we’re talking about all without even mentioning the biggest elephant in the room – that schools currently have NO IDEA how they might bring students back safely once the new school years starts. You can’t effectively social distance in a small class room with 28 to 35 students, or hundreds of students eating lunch at the same time.

I’ve heard of a couple possibilities for returning next year: starting with a staggered morning/afternoon schedule, or alternating days, or some hybrid of classroom and virtual teaching. In all these scenarios, teachers are on campus five days a week but students are not. Again, this requires teachers teach more hours (they would have to teach the same thing for twice as long if class size is halved – or three times as long if it’s cut into thirds) or require hiring more teachers to cover the same amount of curriculum. Since budgets crises will prevent paying teachers more, AND will also prevent hiring more teachers (if they even could – there is already a shortage of educators in the country), I don’t really understand how they will implement social distancing and fully cover the curriculum. The only situation that works is for students to effectively get less instruction, when what they absolutely need is more.

I’m worried we will be asked to teach small numbers of students in the classroom, and also have asynchronous lessons ready to send to the students who aren’t at school on a given day. This would be absolutely untenable. Asynchronous lessons are preferable for students, who can access them on their own timeline and finish them with some flexibility (as opposed to synchronous lesson which require students to on a virtual call to receive the initial instruction), but they also require an incredible amount of time and effort to plan, create, manage (respond to questions via email, etc), and then grade. My district has requested we do the majority of our teaching asynchronously, which is more equitable, and I have complied. And now I work 14 hour days because creating a meaningful learning experience that can be done in the almost complete absence of the teacher is incredibly difficult. There is no way teachers can be teaching in person AND creating these kinds of asynchronous assignments for the kids that aren’t in the classroom on a given day. I really don’t understand how any of this is going to work.

Teachers are incredibly burnt out right now. And we’re very stressed out about next school year. Currently we have no idea what the 2020-21 school year will look like.

I’m not saying that we should all go back in the fall like nothing ever happened (or isn’t continuing to happen). That is impossible, and I wouldn’t want to be a part of that if it were being pushed (it won’t be). I just don’t see how our public education system, which is already so underfunded and dysfunctional, will be able to rise to the challenges of teaching our student population in a pandemic. It’s already May and the wheels of change in public education move so, so slowly. How are all these different districts going to figure out a plan, negotiate it with their unions in three short months, and then implement it. (even an MOU will take months to negotiation, let along a whole new contract – and really a new contract will be necessary because our jobs will be entirely transformed). I’m very curious to see what things will look like next year; I have absolutely no idea how this will possibly play out.

Newsom dropped the “maybe early start school year” bomb on Wednesday of last week. The day before I spent two hours in a zoom staff meeting discussing how our tiny district can cut $3- to possibly $10-million dollars over the next three years. We’ve lost over a million dollars to our closed preschool and after school programs, and rental fees for property use over the summer (which we created and developed to balance our budget when state funding was inadequate). We’ll be losing countless more millions when the state announces its budget – a month late – in August. They are talking about increasing class sizes and implementing furlough days – effectively crowding our classrooms and shortening the school year- the exact opposite of what teaching in a pandemic requires. Other districts will be having these conversations very soon too – we’re just ahead of the game because 20% of our budget is made from preschool and after school and we know those funding sources have disappeared for the foreseeable future. When the state budget is released, everyone else will be panicking too.

If the idea of maintaining the economy while we control the spread of the coronavirus for 1-2 years confuses me, the idea of us going back to school next year sends me into a profound stupor. I cannot fathom how they will make it work. At this point the whole enterprise it totally untenable.

I guess the only thing we can do is wait and see. If we thought the last seven weeks were crazy, just wait until next fall. It’s going to be a doozy.

The only thing I do know for sure is that California will not be going back to school in July. There is absolutely no way that is possible.

Thank you for abiding with me as I worked out some hard stuff last week and this week. I appreciate your presence, and support.

I thought today I could post something a little more positive. So here are some of the things that have been working for us, a family of four with a Kindergartner and 4th graders and two parents who are attempting to work full time from home, while supervising our kids’ distance learning with no childcare of any kind.

Saying thank you instead of I’m sorry

Women tend to apologize for a lot. It’s almost like we’re conditioned to apologize just for being alive. I definitely apologize way too much. My cousin recently mentioned how much we were apologizing in our Marco Polo videos, and told us that instead we could say thank you instead. I like it because rather than pointing out your perceived shortcomings, you can highlight the response you appreciate in others. When I was having a hard time a couple of weeks ago, instead of apologizing to my husband I thanked him for the support he showed me when I was struggling. I’m doing it with my friends, and kids, too.

Marco Polo and Houseparty

Marco Polo is an app where you can leave short videos for a friend or group. I like this because you don’t have to be available at the same time as someone else to check in. I Marco Polo with my friend in NY and my cousins in St. Louis daily. It’s a great way to keep in touch without having to arrange a specific time to talk.

Houseparty is a nice break from Zoom and Google Hangout, and there are some fun games to play.

Morning Zoom Meetings

Our kids are going to bed late and getting up later (well, one of them is). It’s hard to get them going in the morning, so having a specific thing they need to be dressed and ready helps. Both our kids have 9:30 Zoom meetings with their classes and those definitely start our distance learning days. I’m really grateful for these meetings, even though they can cause stress and dissent.

Meeting our kids where they are

My daughter is managing her workload pretty well. She has enough that I don’t feel I need to supplement what she’s doing. My son is not getting work, which I’m fine with because I have 1st grade resources to give him. He spent the year playing Prodigy (a math game) at the first grade level (they don’t have K) and honestly could start working on 2nd grade math at this point. And he’s reading at a pretty high level. (I attribute all this to TK, which was basically Kindergarten, which means he’s now done Kindergarten twice.)

He also hates doing school work at home. I make him a little packet of math and reading every day, and he spends some time on ImagineMath, Prodigy, and ABC Mouse. We’re also working through the Magic School Bus packs I got years ago and never used. He has to complete his paper packet before he can play the learning games. There are lots of fights about this, but it’s a system that works well enough. I’m pretty happy we can really focus on work that is at his level right now. I’m also relieved we don’t have to worry about him meeting any grade-level standards.

Audiobooks

We always listened to a lot of audiobooks, but we’re listening to even more now. Axis360 generally has what we want with shorter (or no) wait times than Libby. We’re also taking advantage of Audible Free Stories for Kids. I’m trying to push the Exclusively on Audible titles that we can’t listen to once they stop the free service (they say they will be offering it while schools are closed – not sure what happens in the summer).

Quid pro quo

Our son got a Switch for Christmas and he loves to play it. It was forbidden on school days before shelter-in-place. Now he can play it on the days he takes his virtual martial arts class. This takes the fighting out of martial arts participation, and gets him engaged in something that is both physically and mentally stimulating 2-3 times a week. It also makes it easier to turn the Switch off on weekends. (They get two hours of games (Switch, iPad, or Kindle) on Saturdays and Sundays.)

Small treats to make things special

On weekend nights we watch movies with popcorn and cherry lime rickies (I got cherry syrup at Smart & Final to mimic a special drink at one of our favorite burger joints).We make a big deal about new movies showing up on the streaming services. I make hot pretzels when I can get my hands on yeast. We let the kids have “sleep overs” (my daughters sleeps in my son’s bottom bunk) once during the week and once on the weekend. They are going to build a fort and sleep in it this weekend. We try to have special treats sprinkled through out the weeks to keep things interesting. We stick with our distance learning schedule on the weekdays so the weekends still feel distinct. I try to take them out at least once on the weekends to ride bikes or scooter. If the weather is nice we’ll hit up the beach (Ocean Beach is open again). We get In-n-Out from the drive through once a week, usually after biking or the beach.

Hulu while we work

I hear about people watching TV and reading books right now. That is not happening at our house. (I think it happens at the houses where the kids are older? I’m not quite sure.) My husband and I work pretty much all the time when we are not with our kids. We try to make one night work free (usually Saturdays), but otherwise we are working as soon as we wake up, straight until we go to bed. But at night, when the kids are finally asleep, we put on dumb shows on Hulu like Party Down or Broad City in the background. And that is nice.

Working out

I am still working out four times a week, at least. I take an intense virtual cardio/strength class through on Wednesdays. I take a virtual martial arts class on Saturdays. I try to run on Mondays and I do something on Thursdays and/or Fridays – usually 45 minutes on our elliptical. Even my husbands is using the elliptical three times a week, and he has never worked out in all our 13 years together.

San Mateo county just announce that it will be reopening its parks this Monday, which means I’ll probably be running more than normal for a little while. So excited to be able to run in our beautiful parks! Woot! It will definitely make the next month (or more) of continued shelter-in-place more manageable.

Lollipop walks

We go somewhere in the car once a week, usually to the Great Highway to scooter or ride our bikes. The rest of the week we walk in our neighborhood or go out to the backyard. There actually isn’t that much left to do in the backyard, so we’re trying to find ways to make that space engaging for the kids. In the meantime we coax them into their shoes and socks with lollipops. DumDums are a small but powerful incentive to get out of the house.

Of course, when it never stops looking like this, we stay inside. And that’s okay sometimes too.

Intermittent fasting

I’ve been doing some form of intermittent fasting during the work week for a while now. I continued it during shelter in place and it’s helping me keep my weight from creeping up (I’m trying hard not to gain the quarantine 15 because it will not help my mental health to gain a bunch of weight). I usually stop eating after dinner, around 7:30pm and I don’t eat again until lunch around 12:30. I have tea at night and drink my own form of Bulletproof coffee in the mornings. I find that I definitely feel better when I do intermittent fasting at least 5 times a week. During spring break, when I let myself eat whenever I wanted, I felt pretty shitty by the second weekend. At the very least intermittent fasting keeps me from snacking at night, and keeps the bloat away, and I appreciate that.

Not drinking on the weekdays

Another thing intermittent fasting helps with is to not drink on the weekdays. This has been a self-imposed rule of mine for years, and while it is tempting to relax it now, since I don’t actually have to be anywhere… well… ever, I still abstain on the weekdays. Since I’m working until bedtime anyway, drinking wouldn’t really relieve stress. I’m whatever personality likes specific rules and boundaries and then follows them, because moderation has never been my strength. Until the school year is over, I won’t be drinking during the week.

Not thinking about the future

I rarely think past the end of the week, except for long term planning for work. I don’t expect anything to happen this summer, but I don’t think about it right now. I just take each day as it comes. It’s helping to keep the panic at bay.

{I recently realized that this Friday is May 1st and that freaked me out something fierce.}

Landing on a schedule

We have found a schedule that works pretty well for us. My husband gets the kids ready in the morning (no small feat) while I answer emails from students who haven’t read the directions I so meticulous wrote out for them, or posted in videos, or both! Then he goes downstairs for three hours and I help the kids with school work, while simultaneously trying to do work myself. My husband comes back up from noon to 1pm to make everyone lunch and watch the kids while I record any videos I need to make. Then I come back up, and he goes back down until about 4pm. The afternoons change depending on who has calls or meetings or other things. I try to get the kids outside at some point between 2pm and 4pm. We eat dinner around 6pm. In the evenings the kids get TV on the days they don’t earn Switch time by taking martial arts. I get more time to do work on the weekends if I didn’t get enough time during the week.

Writing our meetings on a white board

Even though we have a makeshift schedule in place, we still write our calls and meetings on a white board in the hallway. Thursdays I have a lot of zoom calls so we have to switch things up that day. Mostly it helps to know when my husband is absolutely not available.

Timers and alarms

I have seven or eight daily alarms that go off during the day to remind me of when we need to take our medicine, or when we have zoom calls. I even have one to remind me to start making lunch. I found it was REALLY hard for me to remember what time it was and show up to stuff that was scheduled, so I just saved every possible time we might need to do something in my phone and now it sings songs to me throughout the day. I also set random timers and alarms to remind me… of pretty much everything. My follow through these days is pretty abysmal, so reminders are necessary.

With our shelter in place order extended “through May” we’ll be relying on what is working for us to get us through the next month, and probably the summer.

What is working for you right now?

I’ve been informed a couple of times that my recent posts or comments are “Trumpian” or “Trump-aligned.” These critiques are in reference to my comments about our nation’s inability to maintain the current level of shelter in place without destroying our economy beyond repair. And that I’m not personally afraid of contracting the novel Coronavirus.

I clarified, though I feel my original post was pretty clear, that when I say we can’t maintain this level of shelter-in-place for a year without destroying our economy, that I am not promoting some plan where we open up earlier than public health experts recommend. When I say that I am stating a fact. Our economy will be destroyed, for the great majority of Americans, if the level of unemployment keeps rising and then remains at these unprecedentedly high rates for a full year. That is an indisputable fact. And we don’t have the social services in place to help the people who will be the most adversely affected.

When I wrote that, it was part of a larger thought. Actually, it was part of a question. What is the end game here? All the plans I’ve seen for ways we might tentatively open up the economy and start living again rely on a level of testing we won’t be able to implement any time in the near future (if at all), access to PPE that isn’t currently available, the production of anti-viral medications (that would help younger people with bad outcomes manage the virus at home without needing hospital care) that don’t currently exist, and a vaccine that we don’t even know if we can develop, let alone manufacture and distribute at meaningful rates. So basically, none of the plans are viable, at least not in the United States. So how does all this end? I guess the answer is that we absolutely don’t know, but no one in power is willing to say it.

I feel like I can say that and not be pushing for the reopening of the economy on some Trumpian soapbox. But maybe I can’t.

As for me not being afraid to get COVID-19, that is my own personal feeling about my own personal situation. It is not meant to comment on anyone else’s feelings about the virus or how much they fear getting it. We all have different health histories and underlying conditions and the threats COVID-19 poses are different for everyone. And yes, I know that anyone can get very sick with the coronavirus, and be left relying on a respirator, or dead. While I am a relatively healthy individual, I’ve fallen into the small percentages of people that experience adverse outcomes in otherwise benign situations. My first pregnancy was an ectopic, and only 1% of pregnancies are ectopic. I also ended up with sepsis, from a case of mastitis I didn’t even know I had until I left home fine and arrived at a well-visit with a 104* fever. I could easily have died in either of those instances without modern medical care. So it’s not like I’ve never experienced being on the wrong side of reassuring medical statistics. I know anything can happen.

Maybe I am ignorant not to be afraid of getting the coronavirus. Or stupid. I’m basing my feelings on what I’ve read (in reputable new sources like TPM and the NYT) and what my friends and relatives who are doctors and nurses have told me. And my feelings only relate to me. I only mention it to explain that anxiety about getting this virus is not what is hard for me right now. It’s certainly is not meant to comment on anyone else’s fear or anxiety, and it’s especially not meant to comment on public health advisories or orders. Nor is it meant to suggest that we should be reopening the economy right now.

Besides questioning the closing of open spaces, I have never criticized the steps public health officials are taking to protect us. I follow the shelter-in-place orders as well as most people. I have never stepped foot in an open space that has been closed but is still accessible. I wear a mask and gloves the few times a month I leave the house to grocery shop. I have social distance walked with my parents twice, and visited their backyard once, but I stayed six feet away from them, and wore a mask when we were interacting. That is the only time I’ve “met up” with anyone during the shelter in place order.

I know people who still have nannies caring for their children, or are still using home childcare facilities, or are still having their parents watch their kids. My cousin, who is an oncologist, eats at his sister’s house, with her husband and kids, regularly. I’m not flaunting a refusal to follow public health guidelines, because I am not refusing to follow them. I don’t complain about quarantine cramping my style, or the hardships I’m personally experiencing (which are few and superficial) but I do write about mental health issues that our current situation have manifested for me. Maybe I lack resilience or grit, but I’m not bitching about the sacrifices we need to make as a society.

We recognize the threats that we see, that are right in front of us. I don’t know anyone, personally, who has had the coronavirus (at least who knows they’ve had it – and the fact that we’re now hearing that millions of us probably had it and never even knew is not helping me cautiously assess my personal risk right now). I know OF four people who have had it (a friend’s adult stepdaughter, a colleague’s ex-husband, etc). None of them were hospitalized. The lack of personal experience with the actual virus also probably makes me naive in my risk-assessment.

On the other hand I hear about the economic devastation every day. Our district will be laying off a lot of people to manage an unforeseen $4 million dollar budget deficit (this might seem like a small number, but we are a small district and it’s a very big number for us). My husband spends all day helping small business owners shut their doors forever, after losing everything to just six weeks of economic shut down. (I’ve read we can expect 75% of small business in the country to close, which means we’ll be even more dependent that ever on the giants like Amazon, who already have little incentive to treat their employees fairly). I’ve watched my friends be furloughed, before they most likely (in their understanding) lose their jobs. I listen to my good friend, who is a single mom, worry about defaulting on her mortgage now that her hours have been cut to almost nothing. The economic devastation is not something we can ignore if we care about the overall health of this country. I don’t understand why it’s so inappropriate to say that out loud. Especially when our country provides no safety nets to the families that are losing everything.

And what this is doing to the kids who are homeless, or facing food scarcity, or stuck at home with an abusive adult, or unable to access the services they need through schools… these are all very real concerns. There are some students I haven’t heard from in six weeks and I’m devastated to think of what they are living through. I doubt many of them will ever make it back to school again. This pandemic has wrought so many tragedies, it’s just easier to ignore them because they are effectively invisible. They aren’t counted in the newspapers every day.

Again, none of that is a call to do something. Or a critique of what is being done. It’s just the reality. I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m very relieved that it’s not my job to decide what kind of answer can be cobbled together with the reality of our country’s situation. I’m just bringing all this up because THIS is what causes MY anxiety. These are the realities that keep me up at night. I am very lucky to have relative job security, and to not have to worry excessively over the health of my immediate family. I am not worried about me personally. But there is still plenty to worry about. And the secondary effects of flattening the curve are what keep me up at night. They are what make it hard for me to concentrate, and what deepen my depression.

We are not a country that is built to help the people who will live but will be devastated. And we will not be able to make meaningful changes in time to mitigate the damage.

I do not believe we are doing enough to acknowledge the very real ways in which we are failing the people who are physically healthy, but have no hope for the future.

If feeling that way makes me Trumpian, then I guess I’m more Trump-aligned than I realized.

Post script: This ended up sounding more… defensive… than I intended. I will admit I felt offended by being called Trumpian. And I feel defensive about putting this out there. I am not, fundamentally, worried about how I feel about all of this. I don’t think I’m a bad person who cares about the wrong things. I do worry that because Trump harps incessantly on the importance of an economic rebound – for his own personal gain, not out of concern for the well being of Americans – that suggesting the economic devastation is important, or a cause for concern and anxiety, will be seen as callous and shallow. I do believe I have an attitude that is respectful to the severity of the public health crisis, while also being concerned about the severity of the economic crisis. I believe you can respect the severity of both crises at once. I believe you can recognize the horrors of the coronavirus, and not be horrified about getting it yourself. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Maybe I am fundamentally wrong about this. Or I can’t express it in a way that comes off quite “right.” If I’m being called Trumpian, I must not be making myself clear, because being Trump-aligned is the last thing I would ever consider myself. I know other people who feel the same way, people who work in public service and aren’t worried for themselves, but despair for their communities. I don’t believe these people are Trump-aligned. Maybe I’m just not articulate enough to express myself effectively.

Or maybe I am Trumpian, and I just don’t realize it.

If you have information or resources that would help me better understand the reality of our situation, please send them my way. I am always looking for ways to broaden, or deepen, my understanding of what is happening right now.

This is one opinion piece that I feel better articulates my thoughts than I do.

I didn’t mention in either of my last two (super downer) posts: one of the things that significantly affects my mood (negatively) right now, is related to my kids.

One of my children is struggling with anger issues. Lately, there are frequent (very intense) outbursts that cause acute stress in all of us. Multiple times a day I’m sent into a fight or flight response. I feel my shoulders tense, and my neck kink, and my heart pound. The rest of the day I’m waiting, expectantly, for the next outburst. There is almost no respite from this cycle.

I do not believe our current situation is causing these angry outbursts – there were plenty of anger issues before – but it’s surely not helping. Presenting distance learning expectations, maintaining screen time boundaries, the frustration of not answering every questions correctly on learning games, all cause these outbursts. They are happening all the time. And they are making it very hard to make it through each day.

It’s exhausting. And it makes being stuck at home with my kids all day very difficult. We’re trying to find effective ways to help our kid manage their anger, but we’re feeling pretty helpless. Obviously now is not the time to seek outside support. I’m reading books and enacting strategies but so far nothing has helped. I know that right now compassion and empathy are the most important responses, but they are also the most exhausting.

Some days it feels like I’m being held hostage by my kid’s outrage. I’m trying to complete my stress cycles but the frequency of the outbursts makes that all but impossible. Mostly I just try to get through each day, and hope the next one will be better. Until this changes, I doubt I’ll be able to pull myself out of my ever deepening depression.

I thought a lot yesterday about why I’m struggling so much with this situation, when so many other people seem more able to grin and bear it.

As an extrovert who relies on interactions with other people to energize me, limiting my interactions to my immediately family is exhausting. I haven’t found screen interactions to provide the connection I need to feel better. In fact, usually I feel worse after attempting connection via a screen.

I think I rely on the positive, nourishing experiences of my other roles (daughter, teacher, friend, martial arts student) to help me manage the more complicated and depleting roles of mother and wife. Being a mother and wife are all about giving. I get very little in return. Or at least I’m getting very little in return right now, when we’re all stressed out and sick of each other.

My husband and I manage stress very differently and we generally fall into dysfunctional patterns when circumstances challenge us separately or together. We grow very distant and disconnected and it becomes harder and harder to find our way back to our relationship in a positive way. I think this has to do with our different ways of seeking and needing connection. Each of us struggles to show up for the other in the ways that are most meaningful for them, so when we’re depleted by the stress of external circumstance, we lack the reserves to show up for each other in ways that are meaningful. Instead we drift farther and farther apart until we are so disconnected it feels daunting to attempt finding each other. We’ve talked about it several times and we aren’t even trying to be proactive anymore. At this point we’re just giving each other space and staying out of each other’s way. It’s so much more lonely when you’re lonely around people you love.

Slipping into depression would be so easy right now. I know that path so well. I could slip into the ruts and stumble through the next few months on autopilot. Hopelessness and despair are tracks that would guide my thinking like the metal rail on those amusement park car rides. I could stay the course without even looking. With so much uncertainty, that path is seductive.

And even if I do everything I can to stay out of those ruts. I might end up back in them anyway. Right now nothing that should feel good does. I don’t want to talk to friends on a screen so I don’t organize meet ups. I’m not declining them yet, but I don’t organizing them myself so they don’t actually happen. I’m still going to virtual martial arts classes though I’m starting to loath them. I’m making myself go outside even though it feels more like a burden than a release. I’m meditating even though I don’t recognize that it’s helping me. I ask for time away from the family and read a book in the quiet, but I spend the whole time agonizing over the prospect of going back up. I’m trying to take care of myself, but it doesn’t feel like it’s helping. And maybe the allure of depression feels so strong because subconsciously I recognize I can’t actually escape it, even if I tried.

Taking it one day is the only coping strategy I can manage right now, and hopefully that will be enough. I don’t think about the future because I assume it will be more of the same and facing that eventuality sends me into a panic. So I don’t think about it at all. When I’m forced to figure out the date of a future weekday for school I can’t believe we’re looking at May already. I’m living so in the immediate day that it’s jarring when amy outside context is thrust into my consciousness.

I’m guessing that lack of anticipatory joy is also exacerbating the stress and sadness of the day to day. I didn’t realize how much I relied on looking forward to something in the future, to manage the banality of the present. But I guess I do. and I guess instead of anticipatory joy I should be finding joy in the moment. But that feels more impossible than ever right now. Right now I’m just trying to maintain the routines I’ve been told should help me, so I can look back at the end of this and at least know that I tried.

Today marks six weeks since the shelter-in-place order took effect here in San Francisco. The first one was set to end on April 6th. It was almost immediately extended to May 4th. The schools announced not long after that that we weren’t actually going back on May 4th. That we were not going back at all this year. I guess that is when we shifted to an amorphous end date. The governor’s shelter-in-place order has never included an end date. He knew early to play the long game.

There are seven more weeks of my school year. Five of my kids’. On the one hand it’s important because distance learning makes things more stressful, so knowing we can set it aside eventually is a relief. On the other hand. I know that once distance learning ends we lose the structure that keeps our kids vaguely sane, and that setting limits will be harder once their days are open and they think they should be able to do whatever they want.

Camp Mather is cancelled. The summer camp registration never even happened. I never bought tickets to St. Louis. Right now summer looks like eight weeks of the same. Except I won’t be working so it will be assumed that I’ll spend all my time with my kids while my husband gets his work done. I am very tired of spending all my time with my kids. I love them dearly, but I don’t particularly like them right now. I’m sure they feel the same way. We all need some time and space from each other but there is no time or space to be had.

I’ve been out twice this week and it felt like there were way more people on the sidewalks and way more cars on the road. It feels like we’re shifting from, “okay we can shut it all down and stay in our houses for a while,” to “if this isn’t going to end we need to find a more sustainable normal.”

I don’t really understand what the end game is. We can’t possibly keep this up until a vaccine is found – that is at least a year away if they even find own, and our economy would be destroyed beyond repair by then. The death and suffering wrought of joblessness and food scarcity would far exceed that of the virus if we kept the current restrictions in place for over a year. A flattened curve means our hospitals can manage the case loads but it also pushes herd immunity out by not just months but years. So how does this end? How do we determine our new normal when every choice is the wrong one?

My depression and anxiety are so prevalent these days. The wheels of my thought processes have fallen back into the deep ruts of hopeless and despair that mental illness laid down in my brain for so many years. For over a decade a combination of medication and exercise has kept my thought process away from this ruts. Now our circumstances have pushed me back into them and my medication and exercise can’t push my thoughts out of those deep ruts. I don’t think anything can.

The hopelessness of depression is so familiar. It’s easy to succumb to the numb of not caring. The gray tint blurring the edges of my days is the obvious filter. Depression fits like a well worn glove that is still soft from all those years of flexing my fingers inside it. Despite a decade of being folded away, it feels familiar, and familiarIty, even a familiarity that scares me, is a comfort. A part of me just wants to put it on completely and wear it like an armor, and let it take me wherever it may. It would be so easy. But another part of me knows that if I follow the deep grooves of that thinking too far I’ll maybe never being able to get my wheels out of them again. The inertia needed will be to great. And inertia will be in short supply for a long while.

The problem is I may not have a choice.

I’m learning that now, in the upside down, I hate Thursdays. Thursday seems to be the day I crash and burn and everything feels like too much and I wonder how I can possibly make it to mid-June. And then I remember this doesn’t actually end in mid-June and I start to cry.

I cry a lot on Thursdays.

I’m crying way more than normal every day, but Thursdays? Thursdays I sob.

I’m not quite sure what it is. On Wednesdays I usually get some time – I take my noon exercise class and I work in the yard after the class, before I shower. I usually have my Thursday push ready early in the day so I’m not stressed about getting that done. And Thursday should be a low key day because I don’t have to push out work again until Monday morning.

I think what it is, is that by Thursdays I am exhausted. I work from the minute I wake-up until right before bed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I work while I’m with my children. I work while I eat. I work constantly. And by Thursday I’m just done.

Thursday is also my Zoom meeting day, and I hate Zoom meetings.

So yeah, now I hate Thursdays. And that is weird because Thursdays used to be a good day for me. Just another thing that is different in the upside down.

I’ve been struggling to show up here again. It’s hard to look at this screen to write posts, when I have to look at this screen ALL DAY to do work. I spend so much time in front of this computer screen that when I’m not working I want to do something else.

So there might not be as many posts as this continues, because I’m getting tired. And it’s hard to show up here when I’m showing up every minute of every day. At least it feels that way.

Sorry for the bummer post. Turns out I hate Thursdays.

I’ve been sleeping downstairs for about a week now. I like it. I certainly don’t miss making up the couch bed every night and putting it away every morning. And somehow, my son stopped waking up in the night right when I went down there. Interesting…

We moved the dresser downstairs a week ago to. This past weekend we moved our clothes out of the armoire and into the downstairs closet (my first real closet since I left my parents’ house at 22! Why do I always end up sleeping in what is supposed to be the living room? SF living I guess…)

{We’re taking it slow because the threat of bedbugs is one you don’t let go of easily. Someone has been sleeping down there for over a month with no sign of them and I still worry they will suddenly come back with a vengeance. Evidently after 6-8 weeks we can feel very certain they are gone. Right now, at 4 weeks, we can feel fairly certain.}

We’ve made a couple of big purchases related to the move downstairs. We got the Couchbed that I slept on for three weeks, and that will remain upstairs for when we rent out one of our spaces, or have guests stay (obviously neither will happen for a long time). We bought an electric standing desk for the downstairs. I had been using a standing table at work for years and loved it, so I started looking at them when we had to shelter-in-place. We’re both working from home for the foreseeable future and we needed a desk anyway, so we went big with a 30×60 standing desk. My husband thought it was kind of ridiculous but now he loves it, which is good because he ends up using it more anyway.

I also got a new Dyson cordless because our old one was VERY old and since those don’t have bags, we risked bringing bed bugs upstairs if we used the same vacuum in both units. So now, after a Costco sale last month, the old one lives downstairs and the new one lives upstairs. Our old one was probably first generation and the new one is an X and it’s SO MUCH NICER than the old one. I heart it very much.

So there have already been some big purchases around here. But with a whole new space to move into I have more stuff on my list. I’ve spent weeks looking at different possibilities and have compiled a sheet with the links and prices. We have plenty of time to furnish the downstairs and transform the upstairs, so there is no hurry. Well, there is no hurry, except my own desire to buy stuff.

Luckily I’ve spent enough years learning about my spending habits to recognize what is going right now. First and foremost, “window shopping” online is a fun way to pass the time. It gives me something to look forward to when all the other happy things I was anticipated have been cancelled. Second, I recognize that I want these things because I want to love my house more, but the main reason I don’t love my house already is because it’s messy and stressing me out. Getting something new is not going to solve the issue of clutter overtaking our house. If anything, it will make things worse because there will be less space to put our stuff.

So I’ve made an agreement with myself – un trato if you will (It’s funny how there are some words I just prefer in Spanish, usually because they have a slightly different meaning and the Spanish meaning fits my idea better than its English counterpart). I can’t get anything new until I’ve dealt with my current pain points in the house. I haven’t decided exactly what needs to happen before I can buy certain things, but I have some preliminary ideas. We have a GIANT cupboard in the downstairs bathroom, and since the upstairs bathroom has NO storage (except a paltry space under the sink) collecting all the toiletries from around the house (there is even a box in the garage that was taken out to the shed when the house was heated for the first bed bug treatment), purging the old and organizing what we’ll keep in bathroom cupboard would be worthwhile task. The garage also needs a massive purge and would make me feel better about things in general.

I am reticent to start purging though, because I am finding it harder to get rid of things these days, and not just because there isn’t anywhere that’s accepting items (that I know of – maybe I’m wrong about this?), but also because having been thrust into this, I’ve definitely found that I’m using things I might have gotten rid of otherwise. I definitely hoard resources (books, games, etc) more than most things and it’s harder to throw things out now that I know life might be turned upside down. Having said that, I recognize that if I’m not planning on using some of those resources right now, I probably will never use them. So I guess it helps and it hurts.

We need a new vertical chest of drawers (maybe two narrow chests) downstairs because our bed has to be in the corner with our wider dresser and we don’t like the bed in the corner. So that is the first things to get. We also need nightstands as we were using the mantel above our bed (remember, we slept in the living room, with our bed pushed up against the fireplace) as our nightstands before. I think if I get the bathroom stuff done, we’ll get the bedroom furniture and then hold out for a while on the other stuff (a convertible sofa and coffee table for downstairs and eventually a California King bed! EEK! MY DREAM!)

I guess the good news is we won’t be spending anything on summer travel or camps so we’ll have the money for this stuff. We also have some stimulus money to spend (though most of it will be donated because we don’t think we should have gotten any if the first place). One step at a time…