Not a Wasted Word

We’re four weeks into the school year and we’re starting to find a rhythm. Even though I still have way too much work to do in the time allotted, this week feels more manageable than past weeks, and we even enjoyed a busy weekend without me feeling like it screwed me for the rest of the week.

For some reason, this week things just feel better. This week is just a good week. And the reason might ultimately be… one I have absolutely no control over.

I mentioned a little while ago that I was spiraling at the beginning of the school year. I vague blogged about it then because I expected to write more about it soon after. Of course the school year revved into full gear, I quickly felt totally overwhelmed, and blogging was pushed to the (way, way, waaaay) back burner.

So here I am trying to circle back to a topic I barely alluded to almost a month ago. And doing a piss poor job of it. I guess there isn’t an eloquent way to say it so I’ll just type it out.

The reason I was spiraling in mid August was because I realized I am officially in perimenopause. Since late June I’ve been having my period every two weeks. The ablation kept any menstrual bleeding away for about a year, but then I started noticing my cycles again. It was always a very light affair – mostly just some sustained spotting – which was the point of the ablation. I can’t wear tampons because of prolapse, and I wanted to be able to swim even if I were having my period, and I can technically still do that, so I guess it’s fine. But when you’re having your period every two weeks, even three days of spotting starts to get old. When I got my period again in mid August, two weeks after I’d gotten it in early August (and in mid July and early July and mid June), I kind of lost my shit. I also started to recognize the nights when I woke up really warm, and needed to shed all the blankets for 15 minutes before I could get back under the sheets and fall asleep, was a new kind of night wake up. And the kicker… I realized that I felt very unwell, mentally and emotionally.

When I lined it all up, it was so obvious what was happening, but I’ve been so distracted by Covid and the start of school that I honestly did not realize until it was not just staring me in the face, but repeatedly poking my nose.

And then I kind of freaked out. Not because I’m only 41 and experiencing symptoms of perimenopause, but because I was so mentally unstable that I felt more like the me of my mid-20s than the me of the last five years. The me of my mid-20s was a mental health DISASTER. I NEVER want to be that woman EVER AGAIN. And the thought of falling back into that terrified me.

When I was trying to have a second child, my RE warned me that I would probably experience menopause in my early 40s. I’ve been waiting for it, but I have to admit, I didn’t expect it to start quite so soon. I only just turned 41 in July, so I am VERY MUCH in my early 40s. But I guess diminished ovarian reserve doesn’t play. If, at 32 I had the ovarian reserve of most women in their mid 40s, it’s not surprising my body is already readying itself for the next stage.

I’ve been worried about it because my mom had a rough time with her (difficult and protracted) experience of perimenopause. I remember it being pretty awful for her: my stoic mom who always seemed to float above the fray was suddenly at the mercy of internal forces she couldn’t control. We have very similar reproductive histories so I’ve always assumed I’d have a hard time of it as well.

Luckily, most of my friends are 5-10 years older than me and many of them have been able to share their experiences and offer their commiseration. Even more luckily, Captain Awkward recommended this book, which had just been published, and which I ordered literally immediately. (It’s amazing and I highly recommend it.)

On Monday I saw my OBGYN; I was due for a pap smear, and wanting to talk about my concerns finally spurred me to make the appointment. Unfortunately I had to add a endometrial biopsy to the order because any bleeding that occurs inside of a two week window is considered “abnormal” and checking for precancerous cells is the “standard of care.” So on Monday, after my pap smear, I had to undergo a truly painful procedure that left me curled up cramping for the rest of the night. It certainly doesn’t portend Western medicine’s help in the coming months and years.

And that’s fine. Western medicine has rarely provided solutions for my specific reproductive woes, and I didn’t expect it to be of much help here. I started taking a women’s multivitamin and a B-complex along with my daily Magnesium pill. Right now I’m alternating the days I take the multivitamin and the B-complex because they both have lots of Vitamin-B6 and B12. About four weeks in, I think it’s helping. My mood seems more stable. It might be the placebo effect – and I’m fine if it is – but some weeks are definitely better than others so we’ll see.

It’s crazy to me how much more manageable this week feels when really nothing has changed. I guess I just need to really appreciate these weeks moving forward, and give myself more grace when I feel totally overwhelmed. My cycle has also stretched some since I started taking them, which isn’t surprising. B-vitamins helped me stretch my normal 20-21 day cycle to 26 days when I was trying to conceive. I don’t think I would have gotten pregnant without regular old vitamin supplements. Vitamin B supplements are known for helping mood anyway, and I’ve been meaning to take them again, but the good ones are expensive and it was always easier to put off buying a bottle. Now I have a renewed interest in laying down my credit card.

So yeah, that is one of the things I’ve been dealing with during the last month, along with all the normal insanity of starting school, and the increased anxiety of returning to in person learning, with unvaccinated kids at home, during a deadly wave of the pandemic. It’s been a lot, and I’m just taking it one day at a time, trying to prioritize sleep even when I need to get work done, trying to educate my husband about something I don’t know nearly enough about.

I want to write more, but this is all the time I’ve got, and I’m going to set this to publish because otherwise it will never go up. If you have any advice on weathering this massive change please send it my way!

This past weekend was just what we needed to reset after the insanity of last week. We got some QT with our kids, some QT without our kids (so very needed) and some general down time. I definitely feel better going into this week than I have any since we started school (it being a four day week certainly helps).

As things settle down, I’m trying to figure out how to return to certain aspects of our lives. Martial arts has been sorely neglected, especially by me, and I’m trying to figure out which classes work best with my schedule. I’m also trying to figure out when to get my son to the dojo, which is especially complicated now that he plays soccer. He’s never had a second activity vying for his time, and I have to admit, I’m struggling with it.

I’m also struggling to show up here. I have an hour – 9 to 10pm – to myself between the kids’ bedtime and my own. So far I have been loathe to spend that time in this space. Usually I need to get some work done. Or at least I should. But even when I don’t have to do something, I don’t generally want to do this. Mostly I don’t want to do anything at all. I feel perpetually behind at work, but I’m hoping I’ll fall into a rhythm and I’ll feel more on top of it all soon. Maybe if everything else feels more manageable, this space will feel more manageable too.

The news cycle is dire these days. I mean, it has been for what feels like forever. I guess I hoped things would calm down, but they don’t. But maybe new cycles are built that way, to always make everything seem catastrophic. Things these days really do seem to be catastrophic though… I don’t know. It’s hard to just keep reading about it and then going through life as if it’s not happening.

I’m feeling really adrift lately. My friend group is socializing in ways we don’t feel comfortable with and I feel like I’m being left behind. I know I’m mostly “telling myself stories” about what is happening, but I also know some of the stories are true. I’m so bad at being the one to drive meaningful interactions forward… if they are doing that with each other in other spaces, I’m bound to get left behind. For the first time in a really long time I had something I’ve wanted forever. It was so amazing while it lasted, and it’s really sad to watch it change into something else. Maybe it will go back to how it was some day, or maybe I can keep a small piece of it going.

I’m not sure what the end game is anymore. I mean yes, my kids getting vaccinated will take a huge weight off, but will it really change much in our day to day lives? We’ll still all be wearing masks all day. We’ll still be quarantining when there is a close contact. How long do those measures stay in place? When will it finally feel like we’re coming out of this? Will we let our kids see their friends inside after they are vaccinated? That would be something to look forward to at least.

I just need to keep taking things one day at a time, but planning at least a week out. That is the current game plan.

Back to School Night went fine. honestly I’m not sure how it went (I can never tell how it goes), but it’s over and that is all that matters.

I was at school for 13 hours today. When I finally got home it was to a house that had been without power for over 6 hours. My poor husband. He has had quite a week.

The power is still out. It was projected to come back on at 10pm, but that was back at 2pm when it went out and there haven’t been any updates since then. We’re worried it won’t come back until much later.

We have a set of lanterns and plenty of batteries. Our little travel battery happened to be charged. I picked up Chinese food on the way home.

I know people go without power for a days at a time. I know we’re lucky that an outage like this is rare for us. But it still sucks. We don’t even know why our power is out. We probably never will know.

I still need to finish my sub plans and send them to my school. Thank goodness for hot spots.

Tomorrow I’m taking the day so my husband can get some work done. I’m taking my son to get tested in the morning, but otherwise we have nothing planned. He has a giant packet of work slog through. I want to get him outside at some point. I hate Thursdays, and after such a long day today, I’m not sad to miss work tomorrow. And I’m very relieved I can give my husband a break. Luck sure isn’t offering him any.

My kids can’t fall asleep so I’m being called. I hope tomorrow is better.

UPDATE: The power came on at 9:56pm! Woot!

UPDATED #2: I got my sub plans done at 11:03pm! Double woot! (The staggering amount of work required to miss just one day of school is mind boggling.)

I did not mean to be gone for so long. I kept insisting to myself that I’d get a post out, but it just doesn’t happen. I’m so tired at the end of the day – my brain is like oatmeal – and I just can’t bring myself to open the tab to type.

Last week was a rough one. I spiraled WAY DOWN. WAY DOWN. I felt like a crazy person and frankly, I was afraid. There was a reason for the spiraling (it’s nothing awful and I’ll write more about it later) and by the end of the week I was able to pull myself out of the depths, but it sucked and I was exhausted by Friday.

I knew this week was going to be rough – my son’s virtual Back to School Night is tonight and mine is tomorrow night IN PERSON (WHY?!) – but I wasn’t expecting my son to be stuck at home for most of it because someone in his class tested positive for Covid. That really throws a wrench in things.

This morning, an hour into my husband FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE (he has literally not stepped foot in his office since the pandemic began), we got an email, voicemail, and text saying that our son was a close contact and had to be picked up as soon as possible. Luckily my husband was able to leave work and get him because it would have been REALLY HARD for me to step away from school in the middle of the day, let alone get there quickly. So now our son’s whole class is out until next Tuesday and there will be no distance learning even though everyone is home and it could easily happen. (In my opinion this is some bull**** and I will be asking why this is the case. What is the teacher even doing all week?!)

I can’t really take off tomorrow because it’s Back to School Night so my husband is taking the day (but trying to make some meetings), and I’m taking off Thursday (which is a day I hate and a day I was REALLY dreading this week after the late BTSN presentations I have to give in person tomorrow) so my husband can work. We’re still not sure about Friday – I have a minimum day so I think I’ll just go and take the afternoon after I get home.

As stressed as I am about the disruption, I recognize that we kind of lucked out because the exposure was last Friday, and they only got the positive result today (the student has been out with symptoms since the weekend) and since this coming Monday is a holiday, he’s only missing 3.5 schools days out of the 10 days of quarantine. We can get him tested Thursday and feel confident that the test will be accurate because it will have been 7 days since his exposure. They may even be able to spend the night at my parents house on Sunday night like we had planned. So yes, it really could be worse. We are the first class at the school to be quarantined this year, and I’m hoping they will learn how to better manage it when it happens again. I will definitely be sharing my input. 😉

So that’s where I am at. Still here, still hanging in there, but just barely. It kind of feels like I’m hanging on by my fingernails. I’m hoping that next week I’ll feel better, and things will be back to normal. I have high hopes for this long weekend to reset.

How are you doing these days?

WHAT WORKED

Big prep each night. I’m trying to get out of the house by 7am, which means I need to get pretty much everything done the night before. I have a long list on the board in our kitchen so I make sure I don’t forget anything. Last week I did a lot myself, this week I’m going to make my kids start helping me.

Leaving before the kids get up. The one day I didn’t leave before the kids got up, I ended up leaving WAY later than I wanted. Now I know I NEED to be out the door before they are out of bed, otherwise a quick five minutes stretches into 15 minutes before I know it.

Sending them little videos to start their days. Since I don’t see them before I leave, I stop the car a couple blocks away and record a little 30 second video for each of them, and then I message them the videos so they can watch them when they get up. They really seem to like them, and if I forget a detail I can put it in the video. I also put little emoji stickie notes on their lunch boxes (which I finish packing before I go).

Double weekend workout. I try to work out four times a week, and usually I get three of those workouts done during the week, but last weekend I doubled up in case it was too hard to get my third workout in, and that ended up being a great strategy. On Thursday I was too zonked and on Friday my friends planned an impromptu “we got through the first week” get together, and I was so happy that I didn’t have to fit in a workout either day. I worked out both days again this weekend, so I have some leeway this week too.

Daughter taking bus home. The aftercare program at my daughter’s school is free, so she is going some days. Other days she just wants to get home after a long day, and she can do that on the bus! She’s still only taken the bus with her friend, which suits us all just fine.

Pseudo seating chart. I adopted a flexible seating arrangement this year, but I was nervous about starting the year with free seating. My friend gave me the great idea of labeling each seat with a letter, and then handing each student a letter as they walked in. This gave us three days for them to try different seats, and for us to really talk about our flexible seating arrangement – and the expectations – before they get free seating this coming week. It was a great idea and I’m so glad my friend shared it.

Huband’s new pillow. My husband’s new pillow came early last week. It’s the Easy Breather Memory Foam Pillow from Nest Bedding. He snores less, and his neck pain is gone. I’m thinking of getting myself one because it’s also Wirecutter’s #1 recommended pillow for side sleepers.

Surgical mask refusal workaround. And, my crowning achievement… finding a way to get my kids to wear surgical masks, despite their hating the feel of them on their faces! When I realized the cloth respirator masks I got my daughter wouldn’t arrive in time for the first week, I started brainstorming ways I could beef up their cloth masks. I had a bunch of kid sized paper surgical masks, and two kids who refused to wear them (they are itchy!). I also had a TON of Athleta cloth accordion masks, which are super breathable. I realized that some of them didn’t have nose strips, so I released the stitching on the bottoms, opened them up and put a surgical mask inside. The disposable mask fit perfectly inside the cloth mask, creating a 5 layer mask that provides the filter of a surgical mask but feels soft like cloth! I was SO THRILLED that this worked, and that I had exactly ten of the Athleta nose-stripless masks (they were $4 for a pack of five at one point and I literally bought every pack of 5 they have – evidently two of the four sets have nose strips and two do not!)

Natural latex respirator masks. My daughter’s masks did come on Friday, and they fit her great. They are kind of crazy – you need to hand wash them, dip them into boiling water for 10 seconds and let them drip dry (you can’t wring them out first). This is obviously not ideal, but I got five of them, so I can wash them all on Friday nights, and let them dry over the weekend. Here they are on Saturday morning, dripping into the downstairs kitchen sink. After seeing my daughter’s, I got five for my son as well, since they were having a sale, but they will take a while to get here.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Starting laundry at 9pm. There is a big push in California to avoid running major appliances from 4pm to 9pm, when household electricity use is at its highest, and clean energy generation is at its lowest. It wasn’t so hard to get laundry done outside of this window when I was working from home, but it’s a lot harder now. I tried to run a load starting at 9pm, but I wasn’t done folding it until after 11:30, even though I remembered to switch it right when the cycle was done. I’ll only be running loads that don’t need to be folded on week nights from now on. 11pm is too late to go to bed these days.

Attempting to skirt afternoon work traffic. How did I forget how AWFUL the traffic is around my school at dismissal? There are four schools within two blocks of each other, and they all get out around 3pm, which means there is NO WAY to get out of the area quickly. I tried to park off campus on Friday, but the parking spot was a 10 minute walk up the hill. I will not be able to leave work most days until 3:45, which is not what I was expecting. This is incredibly disappointing.

Quick pick ups. My only two years of a common kid pick up were lost to a global pandemic (it’s cool, I’m not still bitter) and unfortunately my kids’ new schools are in opposite directions, so pick up takes a really long time. Luckily, my daughter takes the bus home herself some days! I think soon that might be all days… It also takes FOREVER to pick up at my son’s school. The lines is always 15 parents long, no matter what time I show up. It takes forever and I’m always tired and hangry by that point. I am not a fan.

Running errands after work. Between the delayed departure time on my school’s end, and the lengthy pick ups on my kids’ schools end, running errands right after work just doesn’t work. This sucks because it means I have to run errands in the evenings or on the weekends, when stores are way more crowded. I am a sad panda about this – I REALLY hate shopping during peak times.

Staying organized for class. I have not created good systems to stay organized in my new classroom, and… it shows. I need to spend some time this week trying some new systems.

Down time. At this point I’m not getting any down time during the work week. My kids still go to bed at 9pm, and I have to start my lengthy “big prep” around then, after which I go to sleep. I hope I can find some time to unwind at the end of some nights.

Back-to-School Shopping. I’ve been trying to get my son some new black pants (part of his uniform), but he’s in between sizes (his current pants are too short, but he swims in the next size up). I hit up Target (their size 10 fits him best), but the kids’ clothing section was like the toilet paper aisle at the beginning of the pandemic; there was nothing left. It was crazy! I tried to get some stuff online but most of what I wanted couldn’t be shipped (and obviously wasn’t in stock anywhere). I hope I can find a couple pairs that will get us through to his next growth spurt.

The weekend. I committed to an event I didn’t really want to go to on Saturday, and it ended up being a super depleting three hour thing that I really regretted attending. I need to be careful with weekend commitments, I just don’t have the energy for stuff I don’t want to do. And yet, we need to do something, because Sunday felt interminable (in all the wrong ways) and we ended up letting the kids play way more video games than we wanted. They didn’t play them all week (it might have been the first four days my son hasn’t played video games since the pandemic started), so we were more inclined to let them play, but in the future we need to have a better plan for filling the days.

What has been working, and not working, for you lately?

We made it to the end of the week. It felt like two weeks, maybe even three. I’m bone tired, and it’s only just begun.

As I expected, it’s better, but it sure ain’t easier.

There is more to say, about how hard it is to wear a proper mask all day. About how wet my face gets from the sweat and my breath. About how hard it is to learn who the kids are when 2/3s of their faces are covered. About how all three of our schools have had notices of Covid exposure, but that none of us has been a close contact yet.

Every night it feels like I’m maybe getting sick. My ears ring and my throat is tickley. But I wake up the next morning feeling better and I know it’s just exhaustion. I wish I could get tested regularly but my work won’t pay for it and Kaiser has long waits for testing and longer waits for results. In either case I have to lie and say I have symptoms to be tested.

It’s going to be a really long fall, but seeing how happy my kids are at school, in the same room with their teachers and out on the playgrounds with their friends, gives me the strength to face it. I’m sure they will get sick before they are offered the vaccine, but hopefully their masks will keep their bouts mild. That’s my hope at this point.

I am so thankful we live in an area where masks are not a flash point. Our incredibly high vaccination rates might not have saved us, but hopefully our willingness to wear masks will.

Now we need to keep our fingers crossed that our air quality won’t plummet. That is when things will really get hard.

I know there are more important things happening in the world. More tragic devastation coming to pass. It puts things in perspective.

I’m really grateful it’s the weekend. I need these two days to rest and unwind.

The kids started on Monday. I start today. This has almost always been the case (that they start two days before me) and I appreciate those extra days to get used to their routine before I’m thrown into my own.

The first two days went well. I took each of them to school on Monday since I didn’t have anything pressing waiting for me at work. Both of them ended up in classes with their friends which REALLY helped calm their nerves and kept Monday morning drama free. They both tried out their new after care situations on Monday afternoon too.

My husband attempted his first solo morning yesterday and it went well. He takes our son to school on the bus around 8am, getting home by 8:45. Most of this time was spent just watching our son play on the blacktop (supervision starts at 8:10 and they line up at 8:30), so it will probably shorten as they both get used to it. Then he is back home to walk our daughter to the bus by 9am. Her friend met them there and they were off! Their school doesn’t start until 9:30am! I’m guessing that later in the year they can meet each other at the bus stop without my husband (they both have watch phones so they can coordinate themselves).

Yesterday I hung around until 7:45ish because I had an all-district welcome back event at another school at 8:30am. Today I’ll be leaving much earlier (especially since I woke up at 5am and finally gave up on trying to fall back asleep at 5:40, when I started writing this post). I lay out their clothes the night before and I’ll be packing their lunches before I leave. It helps me to participate in those little ways.

I think I’m ready for today. It’s a minimum day so each class is only 30 minutes long. My classroom is ready. I have an activity planned but am giving myself enough time to just take it slow and focus on expectations. I have a few little fillers to get us to the end of each period in case they blow through my activity super fast.

I have not taught a real class on campus since March 13, 2020. Its been way too long and I am so ready to be back. I was able to implement my flexible seating plan and I LOVE my new room. I have three smaller classes of Spanish 1A and one full class of Spanish 1B – my Spanish program has finally grown to meet my aspirations! There is a lot of positive to focus on and for this week at least, I’m going to focus on it.

Thanks for sticking with me while I managed my freak outs about the beginning of the year. I still feel a lot of anxiety about starting school during the Delta surge, but I’m also feeling a lot of gratitude that we get to go in person. Fingers crossed that today goes well!

Today we finally jump off the cliff we’ve been been standing at the edge of for so long. Today we take the plunge.

I’ve been standing on this cliff for… well it feels like an eternity, wondering what the water will be like, if riptides will carry us away, if dangers lurk down in the deep, if we’ll hit the water wrong and seriously injure ourselves.

But today we jump, or the kids do. I’m trying to focus on their normal, understandable anxieties, and not harp too much on the importance of wearing their masks correctly. They both have other concerns, like what their new teachers will be like, if they can find all their classes, and how fun will aftercare be; I don’t want to add, “possibly getting Covid” to that mix. At least not in their heads, though it will always be floating around in mine.

I feel like there are so many headlines about how many kids are getting Covid at schools where masks are not mandated, but I haven’t read anything about whether masks are keeping transmission of the Delta variant down in schools that do require masks. I know we have lots of data about how safe schools were last year, but if Delta is a whole mew hyper-transmissible ball game then I don’t understand how that data applies. I am taking comfort in the lack of headlines about outbreaks in local camps this summer. Maybe masks will provide the protection we need to keep schools open.

That’s all I want – for it to be safe enough to keep schools open.

Sending good thoughts to anyone starting school today or soon.

Tomorrow my kids will start their new school years at their new schools.

They are both nervous. So, so nervous. But they are excited too. After over a year of distance learning, they have high hopes that this year will be different, better, or at the very least more normal. They are not hoping for too much – these are very reasonable expectations! – and yet I worry their hopes will be dashed.

Neither of them will wear a surgical mask on their face – too itchy! – but they are both willing to wear a cloth mask with a surgical mask over it. So that is what we’re going to do. As my friend says, the most effective mask is the one they will actually wear. The new masks I got my daughter have not come yet. When they do, if they work well, I will buy some for my son. I think once they are well masked, I will feel better.

I was reading an older blog post today and one of the comments was pointing out how joyful the blog space was. It got me wondering again about what makes some people more joyful. At this point in my life I am pretty darn content. If this pandemic weren’t raging these may have been some of the best years of my life. My kids in pretty decent places – they don’t require so much supervision and can actually be fun! My marriage is doing well. I don’t hate my job. I love having the extra space in my house. I have good friends that I see regularly. Besides the pandemic, things are really good. And yet I wouldn’t consider myself joyful. Content maybe. Satisfied definitely. But not joyful. And there is always that undercurrent of stress and anxiety. It’s just who I am. And it prevents joy from really taking hold.

This is not a woe-is-me, why can’t I be joyful lament. It’s just something I think about from time to time, especially when I read the blogs of women whose outlooks seem to be so different from my own. Sometimes I can attribute their poise and positive attitude to more resources, but not always. And even when they are in a different tax bracket, I can tell I would not have that attitude even if our incomes were comparable. It just makes me wonder what happens in people’s brains that determine their general disposition, and their outlook on life. I also wonder, if I could pick a different attitude or disposition, would I really want to change mine?

Anyway, a weird tangent to go off on, but it’s what’s in my head at the moment. Maybe I’m trying to choose joy today, on the eve of my kids’ first day of school, during the unexpected and overwhelming resurgence of Covid-19. Maybe I’m trying to have the attitude of the women who have not mentioned the pandemic once on their blogs in the past 17 months, even as it raged all around them. Maybe I want to know how to compartmentalize like them, to hold the unknown and the can’t-be-controlled at arm’s length, where it does less damage. Maybe I just want to know how to seem so unfazed.

Or maybe it’s just Sunday morning, and I haven’t had my coffee yet.

Last night I had a dream. A work dream. An anxious work dream. Usually my anxious work dreams involve me lost on a large, unfamiliar campus, unable to find my way to my room. I know I’m late, and that my students are waiting for me, but I can’t for the life of me, figure out how to get to my room. I hate that dream, and I have it all the time.

Last night’s anxious work dream was different. At first it was all about how I couldn’t get my students to line up outside my classroom. No matter what I did, they would not line up to listen to my directions. I was getting increasingly more frustrated, so I walked out to where they were, and saw there were two giant pot holes in the asphalt, right where they were supposed to line up. One of them was massive, big enough for four or five kids to fall into, and deep enough that they wouldn’t be unable to climb out once they fell in. I was flabbergasted, and then despondent. These gaping holes were clearly safety hazards, and no one had done anything to protect my students from them! They weren’t marked or cordoned off or anything, they were just massive holes that any kid could fall into at any moment, and they were right where I was asking my kids to line up. As I was trying to figure out why no one was doing anything to protect my students from the holes, I woke up.

Well, that dream wasn’t hard to interpret.

I left a (probably inappropriately) long comment on SHU’s post today, letting her know that she was not alone in feeling overwhelmed by everything happening right now, especially the start of the school year. My whole family is on edge. No one is sleeping well. My kids are (understandably) nervous about starting school again after spending only 10 days in their classrooms last year (really since March of 2020). That anxiety is compounded by the fact that they are “returning” to completely new schools that they know nothing about, and that they will know nothing about until they first step foot on them this coming Monday. It’s a lot.

If I’m stressed out by a new classroom and a return to in person learning after meeting students on campus for only two days last year (also since March 2020), I can only imagine how they feel.

At this point I think we just need to jump in. Right now we’re standing at the edge of the cliff, wondering what the water will feel like, worrying about what creatures might be swimming in the depths, fearing that we might hit the water wrong. The longer we stand here the harder it will be to take the plunge. I’m thankful that school starts on Monday. I do think we’ll feel better after we jump in.

And hopefully, in real life, we’ll feel more prepared to avoid the safety hazards, even if it feels like they aren’t clearly marked, and no one is protecting us from them.