Not a Wasted Word

Today kinda wrecked me. It felt like chaos all day at school. Between the end of Trimester 1 and the start of Trimester 2 and my absences and the Thanksgiving break… it was a lot of running around and not feeling prepared. I really just need this week to be over.

But it’s not yet. It’s only Tuesday. And there is still much to get done. Especially if we want to give the kittens more space starting Saturday. Peeping the house for two tiny chaos agents that can fit literally anywhere has been quite the reckoning. I’ve had to deal with all sorts of shit I just pushed into corners. We’re also realizing how few of our doors really shut properly. Our house is, at its core, pretty shitty. It’s a bummer to be reminded just how many things don’t work right, and won’t ever work right unless we spend hundreds, probably thousands of dollars to fix them.

It’s sobering. But it’s not like we didn’t know these things. We just got to ignore them for the last ten years.

But tomorrow someone is coming to see if the downstairs heater can be fixed. And someone else is coming to fix the washing machine, which is leaking yet again.

When does one just give up and buy a new washing mashing? I’ve easily spent as much fixing it as it would cost to replace it. And it’s 10 years old. But it’s so bad for the world to throw it away. Sigh, I never know what the answer is and the decision fatigue is real.

Let’s just hope we’re not throwing too many hundreds of dollars away tomorrow. I put in the paper work for my dependent child care account reimbursement, so that will help.

How is your week going?

This morning my eye looked as bad as it ever had, but by this afternoon it looked much better; the swelling was way down and the redness was only noticeable if you looked closely. My face looked almost normal!

So I’m going to work tomorrow.

It’s for the best. We have Thanksgiving break next week so I don’t need to take a bunch of days this week. And because of our block days, the Friday holiday and the fact that I took Wednesday off last week, I haven’t seen my 8th grade class since last Tuesday.

Today was a good day, a nice mix of checking items off my to-do list and chilling out. I’m ready to go back to work tomorrow, probably because I know in four days I’ll have a week off. 😉

I’m honestly just so relieved my eye looks better. It was really rough for a couple days there.

So on Friday I got the kittens.

I also got pink eye.

And I also got antibiotic drops for the pink eye. I expected that since I had two more full days in the weekend, there would be no problem going to work on Monday.

But then on Saturday afternoon, 24 hours after I’d started taking the eye drops, my eye looked a lot worse. And then Sunday morning it was so swollen I could barely open it.

So I scheduled a video appointment where the doctor looked at my eye and prescribed me different antibiotic drops, along with oral antibiotics to deal with the swelling. She also mentioned that I might be allergic to the first drops. When I asked about the possibility of the (more common I think?) viral conjunctivitis (which will not be affected by all these antibiotics), she brushed me off. I found that kind of frustrating, but I went and got the new eye drops and the oral antibiotics and now I can only hope for the best.

Luckily my friend is able to sub for me tomorrow. I’m hoping I can go back on Tuesday but the thing about viral conjunctivitis is that you’re contagious until your symptoms go away, which could take a week! I really hope the new antibiotics work, because this is uncomfortable and I can’t see well and it sucks to look like this.

I had to drive down to work to be ready for the sub tomorrow. I just spent 45 minutes on the elliptical machine writing sub plans. All told I spent over 4 hours working so I could not be there for 8 hours of work. I hate being out. It’s the worst part of teaching.

Please welcome to our family, and thus the blog, Lynx and Panther, our two new kittens. They are not siblings, but they’ve been raised together and are a bonded pair. They’re about 4-5 months old.

We have given them different names, but since you can tell which one I’m referring to with those names, I’ll use them here on the blog.

We’ve been arranging their adoption from a program that rescues feral cats and kittens and fosters them until they find a forever home. We’ve also been keeping it a secret from the kids, who had no idea about their impending arrival until my parents brought them home from a sleep over this morning.

It’s been a ton of work getting the house ready, and making our living room a safe and fun kitten holding pen (where they will stay until we’re off next week for Thanksgiving Break). I still can’t believe they are finally here, and that the surprise wasn’t ruined. Our kids hoped we’d get a new cat at Christmas, they had no idea we were adopting two kittens in November.

So far it’s been an incredible 24 hours with these sweet little additions to our family (they are using their boxes and didn’t wake us up once during the night!). Our kids are over the moon. They keep saying this is the happiest day of their lives.

I’m sure these two will be the subject of many more posts. I hope you enjoy their cuteness as much as we do.

November is flying by. I can’t believe it’s already Veteran’s Day. Just one more week of work and it’s Thanksgiving Break. Yay!

But really it feels like Halloween was only yesterday. How was it almost two weeks ago!

I’ll can’t say much about today, but I’ll have a fun announcement tomorrow. Until then… have a great weekend!

And this one did too, with a trip to Walgreens to get my son’s bivalente booster at 7pm.

I HATE getting vaccinated at Walgreens, but the appointments at Kaiser are always several weeks (usually over a month) out and and walk up lines are long (at least they are when we can stand in them).

It feels like it was really hard to get all four of us a flu vaccine and bivalente booster. It required multiple trips over many weeks. It shouldn’t be that hard! No wonder so many people don’t get a flu shot or a booster. I can’t imagine how families with more kids, and fewer resources, get any vaccinations at all.

I’m so glad we’re all finally up to date on our shots. Hopefully they last us for a few months, and keep some of the crazy sickness circulating away.

I chaperoned my son’s field trip to the Exploratorium today. It ended up being a pretty nice, low key couple of hours. I’m glad I went. I promised him one chaperoned field trip last year and then in the end I didn’t do it. I forget what happened, but I felt really bad about it. So I’m really glad to be done with it so early this year. And the Exploratorium is definitely the best field trip of the year. It’s a really great location and it costs a fortune so my family rarely goes.

I was home by 2pm (his grandparents took him after school) and I went for a run because the day was beautiful after yesterday’s rain. It was chilly, but it felt great to be in the sun.

The afternoon was kind of frustrating, and now I’m exhausted but I can’t yet go to bed. Tomorrow I’m subbing during my one long block prep, which is going to SUCK. I almost never offer to cover during my prep, especially not on the block days (when classes are 75 minutes long), but I know other people had to cover me today, so it felt like I couldn’t ignore the request tomorrow, especially since I didn’t really have to be out. If I were sick I wouldn’t feel like I needed to make up for it, but since it was my choice to chaperone my kid’s field trip it felt like I should step up tomorrow.

It sucks to be so tired and to know that the next day you’ll be just as tired again, probably even more tired.

Thank god tomorrow is the end of the work week. That is the only thing keeping me going.

{Being away from work is such a massive pain in the ass. Helping cover when other people are out from work is also such a pain in the ass. It’s absolutely my least favorite part of teaching. I hate it so much.}

*Not nearly as fun to say as Spring has sprung .

It got “cold” last week. I use parenthesis because it’s never cold here in SF. But it got “cold” for us.

Today it never got out of the mid-50’s, which is quite chilly for this temperature climate. It also rained! Most of the day! That is always newsworthy in these parts, but especially now.

Today I was remembering that last year we had to leave all the windows and doors open all winter. The heater was blasting all day but it never got warm. I was so cold last winter at work. So, so cold. It really started to get to me. I’m SO GLAD we are not doing that anymore. I hope the variants don’t go haywire and require a return to the bullshit ventilation techniques that public schools employ. Why update the HVAC systems when you can just make people freeze their asses off all winter?

Anyway, I’ve only glanced at the NYT today. Instead, I’m focusing on how cold it feels. And how ready I am for this new season. And how glad I am that I can take refuge inside where it’s warmer this year.

Tomorrow is an important day in the US. It’s nerve wracking to wait to see what a few thousand people in states far from where I live will determine the future of this country. Our system is so broken. And it will never be fixed. And yet we keep showing up to vote. Even those of us whose votes truly don’t matter. We vote because the only thing worse than participating in a broken system is to not participate at all.

I am not ready for the next two years. I’m not ready for Trump to be a constant part of the national conversation again. I’m not ready for him to be the center of another election cycle. I’m not ready for him to be back on Twitter. I’m not ready for all the horrors the Supreme Court has in store. I’m not ready for the damage a Republican controlled Congress will do.

I feel like tomorrow is the start of another national nightmare. Instead of dwelling on it too much, I’ll try to make the Tetris game of lessons and assessments fit into the end of the trimester. Because that is what I can control.

Then I’ll go play some Two Dots.

THIS SATURDAY…

My daughter and I met my friend and her daughter at the mall. It was so nice to hang out with a friend. It’s been WAY too long. I really miss my friends actually, and while I’ve hosted a couple things with them this fall, no one else has been able to do the same, so we haven’t seen each other as much.

My son had a friend over. I know he really appreciated it too, so that was nice.

I watched some of the Black Belt test on zoom while scoring the final set of assessments. It was cool to watch people reach such an impressive goal.

I did a bunch of laundry and picked up around the house. We’ve been really good at keeping most surfaces clutter free since the 9yo’s birthday party, but the mess was starting to encroach in the shared spaces.

I worked out. It was just a short strength training video, but it was just what I needed.

THIS SUNDAY…

I made pancakes, both for breakfast and for my son’s lunches. I always kind of dread making a ton of pancakes, but this morning it was done fast.

My son went to a friend’s house for the first time. They had me come up and chat for a while when I dropped him off, which pushed by whole morning back, but I was happy my son finally got to hang out with this new friend.

I dropped four giant IKEA bags of clothing and (lightly worn) shoes off at the Salvation Army. It feels SO GOOD to have all of that out of the house.

We went to Alameda – the the pinball museum, the crazy toy store, the crazy soda/candy store and to eat. We’ve been meaning to go there again since our last trip (many, many months ago) and it was great to finally do it.

The kids made their lunches and did their chores.

It was a good weekend. I still feel like I’m kinda getting something, but that something never actually becomes a real cold. Maybe it is just allergies… which would suck because I’m years into my allergy shot regimen and if my allergies still make me feel low grade unwell all the time, it would be a huge bummer. My kids definitely seem to be sick a TON this year, especially my son, so maybe I’m doing that too? But I swear it’s like the first year of preschool! Worse even. My son ALWAYS is getting a cold, or in the middle of a cold, or recovering from a cold. The minute he starts to feel better the cycle starts again. Pandemic isolation really is the gift that keeps on giving.

This week at work will be a little crazy, especially since I’m taking Wednesday off to chaperone my son’s field trip to the Exploratorium. No one has picked up my sub request, which sucks, but what can I do? If I only take days off when my one friend will cover for me, I’ll never be able to take days (she travels A LOT). I hate knowing that my colleagues have to cover for me, but it’s not my fault the system is broken.

And of course Friday is a holiday! I’m so stoked Veterans Day falls on a weekend adjacent day this year. I remember being really annoyed when it was on a Thursday last year.

How was your weekend?