Well, my mid-winter break is over. I pretty pleased by how it went. Some highlights:
- We had a fun, family trip that wasn’t even ruined by one of us having Covid!
- Nobody else seems to have gotten Covid!
- I saw my friend quite a few times and she even got to see my kids once (we met her in Chinatown yesterday for a quick visit).
- I bolted my son’s bookshelf to the wall, which absolutely should have been done when he was toddler (because he could have pulled it over onto himself) or anytime after that (earthquake preparedness), but that I was only motivated to finally do because of KITTENS! They like to climb up to the highest shelves and they would absolutely knock it over eventually, so I finally got that done. Feels good too – it always filled me with a little dread when I looked at it.
- I relearned my last form in martial arts, which means I can start learning the new form I need to test.
- I prepped work for my possible absence (though it looks like I won’t need to be out!? Fingers crossed!)
- My kids both got to see friends this weekend (because my daughter started testing negative Thursday night! Might have even been early – I didn’t think to test her before that. It took us so long to stop testing negative in May, but this time she tested negative less than a week after symptoms started.).
- We got some free Covid tests (4 each from Kaiser, plus 4 from the feds) which means I can take back one of the five-packs I bought at Costco.
- I washed a repacked all the snow clothes.
- I graded two sets of quizzes and one test.
- I finished all of the forms I need for Wednesday and Thursday of next week.
Things I didn’t get done:
- I didn’t organize my daughter’s desk with her (though that might happen this afternoon – UPDATE, it did!)
- I didn’t categorize February spending (though I copied my credit card purchases to the spreadsheet).
- I didn’t do any bigger organizing projects around the house, like the contain drawers, or the hall closet.
- I didn’t get the bags put away, or the snow clothes and boot boxes back into the shed (hoping to do that this afternoon – UPDATE, I did NOT because it didn’t stop raining until it was dark).
- I didn’t do any work in my grade books (our second trimester ends this Friday, 3/3).
All in all, it was a pretty good break. A couple people mentioned how well I was taking my daughter getting Covid (“She finally found her zen!”) which I was a little annoyed by because of course it’s not that stressful to have a kid home from school all week, or to wonder if I’m going to get Covid and have to stay home myself, when I’m not coordinating who will stay home with my kid, or wondering if I need to leave work every day prepared for a sub. I’m usually stressed by shit like that because being out when you’re a teacher is a giant PITA! I really do not think people who can work from home regardless understand how hard it is to be out when you teach K-12. It turns out I’m not just a stress case, my job makes me one (or a much bigger one).
I still can’t believe none of us got Covid from the 12-year-old, because we were all together SO MUCH, not just at the cabin, but in the car with all the driving to the cabin, and then to and from the Sno Parks every day. It I didn’t believe that who gets Covid and who doesn’t is a total crap shoot, I do now!
I also wonder when we’re going to move into the next phase of Covid-positive protocols. We obviously can’t ask people to stay home when they test positive forever. At some point that guidance will have to change. At this point, it feels like a bit of a fool’s errand. How many people have symptoms and never test? How many people have symptoms, and test a ton, and never get a positive? I think next (school) year we should be asking people to mask if they have symptoms (lingering cough or runny nose) and let them carry on with their lives. That has been my strategy (I also test, but I don’t think asking people to test is fair, unless they have access to free tests). Of course a lot of people don’t wear masks correctly, so maybe even asking for that is ineffective. I know you can wear a mask well, so that it effectively protects yourself and others, but I know very few people actually wear the right kind in the right way, for the right amount of time. I can’t tell you how many times our own principal has pulled her mask away from her face to talk to us. She was doing that back during the mask mandates! I wanted to scream at her! Yes, it sucks to talk to a big group with a mask on – WELCOME TO OUR WORLDS! But if we have to do it right, so do you!
If only we had invested in effective air purification! But we didn’t! At all! Oh well!
(((ALL THE FACE PALMS)))
Okay, rant over.
Back to the grind. Let’s do this.
Impressed by all you did! Hopefully as a result this week will be smoother. Glad (since covid did hit your house) that it was only the more independent 12 year old who luckily recovered rapidly.
Had to really stop and consider the changing covid realities. People are ignoring it more and more. “Other” people will die and/or become disabled as a result; all around the world. The long term consequences look highly unpleasant but denial and ‘it won’t be me/mine’ combined with BIG LIES pushed by highly visible Personalities are more comfy than science that is still figuring it out and changing as more is learned.
I think you are VERY correct in predicting that things will relax even more (You are not pushing for letting covid or polio or measles/mumps/rubella/TB etc run wild ~ just observing what IS happening, and I agree YOU ARE CORRECT IN OBSERVATION) ~ just as more people are not vaccinating children against all those illnesses that once created so much damage, but few see today, so many believe they are not real. Antibiotics are becoming less effective. But I have seen people die of preventable illness, so …
I just think that requiring the remnants of old policies without the supports in place to require them is the worst of both worlds. As teachers we have to stay out until we’re negative but we also have to burn our own sick days to do that. So we have to use our sick days even if we’re just home and not sick, but testing positive. And if we’re not making PCRs available easily and without cost, but RATs aren’t very effective anyway, are we really trying to keep people home when they have it? Or are we just pretending to? I feel like we’re not even sure what we’re doing anymore. We’re just hanging on to some stuff and unofficially letting go of other stuff by letting things slide more and more. Eventually we’ll have to make more conscious choices about it.
And yes, the refusal to vaccinate children (who have no medical reason not to be) is unconscionable in my opinion, but I don’t usually write about stuff like that here because I’m not interested in getting into that debate in my own space.
I think some people might not know they have it. I’ve read that the RATs in circulation are not as effective at detecting the new strains. And many people don’t have access to RATs at all, or in the quantity needed to test effectively. And I honestly think some people are not isolating when they think (or know) they have it. I know people who have flown while they are positive because changing their flight would have been prohibitively (for them) expensive. And that is people from the Bay Area, where I assume we’re still a lot more cautious than in other places. A lot of people still wear masks here regularly. A lot. I assume that in other parts of the country, where mask mandates were very unpopular and vaccines uptake was low, there is very little testing or isolating happening when symptomatic.
As someone with 4/5 people in my household having never (yet!) had COVID, I sure hope those sick with it stay home… especially since 3/5 of us who have not had it have high risk factors for serious illness.
Glad it was so mild for your daughter this time!