Not a Wasted Word

I’m taking another break from the news cycle. I can’t stand watching Republicans talk about how inconsequential this virus is, telling Americans to just go on living their lives.

I hate Republicans. I really do. At least I hate Republican lawmakers. And I hate the person I am when I read about them. I don’t want to hate people. I don’t want to be someone who delights in the suffering of others. But that is what I do when I read about Republicans right now. I don’t want them to have that kind of control over me, I don’t want them to drag me down to their level, so I’m going to disengage.

I’m very glad that my Republican extended family is far away from me, and that I’m not on social media so I don’t see the horrible, ugly, falsehoods they surely post. If I knew, really knew for sure, that extended family still support Trump and the current Republican party, I don’t think I could engage with them again in any kind of meaningful way. I’m glad I just don’t know, and I hope I never know.

I know that makes me a coward. But being a coward is all I’ve got right now.

Does this make me close minded? Am I the one who is failing to embrace empathy and understanding? Am I as bad as them when I say (and feel! – truly feel!) things like that?

Maybe.

Everything feels so unfair right now. It feels monumentally unfair that I have to worry about the future of my country because of uneducated, bigoted people who don’t live anywhere near me. I recognize that things only feel unfair to me now because the whole system was set up to support me and ensure my success, which is why things felt so “fair” for so long. I recognize that for so many people in this country things have always felt this unfair, and this fraught.

That makes me even sadder.

I don’t know how to create positive change. I believe the system was created so that positive change is all but impossible. The system has been honed over the years (decades) to give the rich white men all the power, and to make it very hard for anyone else to create change.

Yes, I can vote. And I will vote. But my vote won’t really matter because California always votes democrat and the electoral college assures that my vote, my actual vote, is all but meaningless. The biggest impact my vote might make is in the tally of popular votes that are counted, but don’t actually count. Instead someone thousands of miles away from me has a vote that is worth far more than my own.

I can’t believe I used to marvel at the complexity of our government, of all the safe guards that were put in place to ensure things were balanced, and fair. I marveled at the three branches of government, at the idea of “checks and balances.” I was such an ignorant fool.

But most of all, I hate that the people who undermine the system are the ones that claim the moral high ground, that they call me the heathen living in a liberal hell hole, and proclaim themselves on the side of goodness and truth. The people who do nothing but lie and maneuver themselves around actual facts.

They probable believe it. And if two people can believe such different things. I don’t really see how we come out of this together.

I think what’s happening is that I’m realizing that no matter how the election ends, or what happens in January, I will never love my country again. I will never have faith in that fairness. Which is probably for the best, because that fairness never existed in the first place. All of it has always been a lie.

Sorry for such a downer post. It’s where my head’s at these days.

This will be a series of unrelated paragraphs that having nothing to do with each other. And may not even make sense on their own. You’ve been warned.

It’s Thursday! (I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon.) I’m so happy when it’s Thursday afternoon because on Friday I only teach one class and that is a relief. Also next week I’m only giving my students an assessment, in “real time,” so I don’t have much independent work to create and finalize over the weekend.

Next week is also conferences, which are sure to be a total cluster fuck.

I did end up deciding that I need to bring down the volume of work I’m giving my students. I was pushing hard in September so they would be ready to learn about Día de los Muertos in Spanish and I believe we got there, and now I’m going to pull back. I’ve been showering them with praise for how much good work they’ve been doing and letting them know that we’ll be doing less moving forward. I hope they are feeling proud of themselves, along with relieved that Spanish won’t be as hard next month.

I invited my principal to my zoom today (mostly because we were using Pear Deck and I really want our site to buy us all Pear Deck so I don’t have to pay for it myself, so I wanted her to see how great it is) and she was super impressed with my class. It was nice to have an adult tell me I’m doing a good job. Teaching on zoom is so isolating, and it can really start to feel like you exist in a professional vacuum.

My son, who is in first grade, started reading the Dog Man books by himself. He’s also listened to the Captain Underpants audiobooks enough times that he can read those without much help. He is right on the cusp of really reading and I’m excited for him. Right now I’m incredibly grateful to Dav Pilkey for creating a set of books that make my 1st grade son incredibly excited to read.

My husband and I are refinancing our mortgage. Our new rate will be 2.7%! We thought we had an amazing rate at 3.25% but 2.7% is pretty great. We’ll continue to pay at our current rate (the same monthly amount) because we have the money, but it will be nice to have the option to pay $500 a month less if our financial situation ever changes. We are also saving to do some work on our back room which has water damage, so hopefully we won’t have to take out a HELOC later.

Our coffee maker broke last week and we could not commit to buying another one. The level of indecision, for a fucking coffee maker, was not proportional to the importance (or cost!) of of decision at all. And for two weeks I was using our aeropress to make coffee in the morning, which was a total pain in the ass for two people. And still I couldn’t commit to a coffee maker. It was totally infuriating. And I think it speaks, yet again, to the fragility of my mental state.

We did, eventually, buy a coffee maker and it came today. Hallelujah!

My son’s backyard play date, my daughter’s running club, and my own street side dinner with friends, were all cancelled today because our AQI is back in the orange, and eventually red, today. It’s been almost two months of having to watch our air quality and it’s really wearing on me. (And yes I know how lucky I am that my house hasn’t burned down, but it’s still hard to have the specter of fires looming over us after all these weeks).

Honestly, the worst part is that my house is so hot and stuffy and I can’t open any windows and there is nothing else to do because we have no air conditioning. It was only 75* in SF but my house feels so stuffy. Ugh. I just want to open a window.

My friends and I had a text chain today about whether or not we need to stockpile before the election. Actually it was more about what we should stockpile, not whether or not we need to. Like do we need to buy tons of water, or just food (and booze 😉 obviously. It’s a total mind fuck to realize that I had a completely serious conversation about that, in the United States of America. I have accepted that everything I learned about my country was a lie, and it only functioned as long as it did because most people in power followed a set of unsaid “rules” that weren’t actually written anywhere and don’t actually need to be followed (or can be changed at the whim of those in power), and once someone who doesn’t care about them gets into power, the whole thing comes crashing down. The most troubling thing is that even if the Democrats gain control in November, and eventually are allowed to take that control, I don’t believe they will take the steps necessary to ensure this won’t happen again, and Republicans, who represent the minority in our country, will continue to exert their control over a majority that doesn’t agree with them or share their values.

I was realizing recently that if I could choose to be fast forwarded to the eventual outcome of the election (be that November, December, January or beyond) or the conclusion of the pandemic, I would choose the election in a heartbeat. I think that really puts into perspective how stressful our current political situation is, because that pandemic is no picnic.

Speaking of the pandemic, my husband wants us to go into super strict quarantine for two weeks so we can spend some time with his parents. His father is 75 and they have been very cautious about their exposure – they get their groceries delivered and really only leave their house to bring our kids some magazines once a week, and even then they only pass them to us from the car. We would have to quarantine as strictly as they are to see them, which would be a big change for us. I’m not entirely thrilled to go back to never leaving my house again, but of course I’ll do it for my husband, kids and in-laws. I think we’d spend a lot of time with them for 1-2 weeks, and then go back to grocery shopping, and seeing the kids” friends in outdoor spaces with masks on for a while again.

San Francisco and San Mateo counties are back in the “red” pandemic wise which means that schools can open again if they are following county health guidelines. Private schools up and down the peninsula are opening, and even some public schools in places like Menlo. Our district’s union has been negotiating a possible return and already it’s getting ugly. I am not looking forward to whatever fight between teachers, the district, and parents, is sure to ensue.

I’m tired. So very, very tired.

Happy Friday everyone.

It’s Sunday, which is the day I make sure everything is ready for the week. I have to have all my assignments scheduled to post on Monday morning, and I usually spend Sunday night scoring the stuff that came in (the official due date for work in my classes is Sunday night, which I allow so students can finish work on the weekend if they need to).

Tomorrow I’m having my students do a group project and the amount of work required if I want even a chance of it being successful is incredibly high. It has been just so, so much work. If the whole thing ends up being a disaster I will be very disappointed.

So far “group work” in breakout rooms has been a bust. I will hop in and out of the rooms and find the kids just sitting there silently, doing the assignment themselves. Tomorrow’s group work will be the first time they’ve had to create something together, on a shared slide deck, each with editing privileges. I really wanted it to go well, so I asked them to tell me one or two people they think they work well with, and I spent quite a bit of time creating groups that honored their suggestions. Then I had to grab all the emails for each group so I can create a copy of the slide deck for each group and share it with the group’s members right before we start (otherwise some of them might claim a job they want without asking anyone else for their preferences). I also have to create a video of the directions so they can be watching those while I am finalizing the breakout rooms because not all of them log in with their school emails. I want the whole thing to get finished during one 45 minute “period,” so I gave each group member a small amount of work that I assume they can accomplish. I really, really hope it goes well. It probably won’t.

I spend a lot of time working on work, thinking about work, prepping for work, and grading assignments for work. I spend a lot of time worrying about work. I’m worried that I’m giving them too much to do. I worry that they are struggling and not telling me (even though I give them ample and varied opportunities to let me know). I’m worried they hate my classes and want to drop out (although the kids who are struggling refuse to drop out, no matter how many gentle emails I send them nudging them in that direction). I’m really proud of what I’m giving them – I was very lucky to find a program that uses strategies that allow for maximum language learning (in my opinion) even via distance learning. But I know how hard to is to stay engaged when it’s just you and a computer at home from 8:30 to 3pm. And I know that many of them have more significant obstacles to overcome than difficulties engaging.

When I’m not thinking about work, I’m worry about my kids. They are doing fine, all things considered, but I can see they are struggling. My son especially struggles to stay engaged with distance learning. He wasn’t a huge fan of school before the pandemic started, so I don’t know how much is distance learning specific and how much is just me being around to see how much he dislikes regular school work (and for him to be home to express that dislike, which he wouldn’t have done at school). My daughter is doing well, but it’s hard because she wants to be independent and 5th grade is an important year to start flexing those muscles, but she still needs a lot of scaffolding and support from us, organizationally, to get her work done. She is back on her ADHD meds and they are definitely helping, but we are still navigating appropriate ways to support her while letting her take responsibility for her own work.

I’m so, so grateful they both have opportunities to do activities away from home that offer social and physical outlets and remind them how to function in groups with other adults at the helm. My son’s first three weeks at the dojo end soon and I’m really hoping he gets to go again in October. It’s been really positive for him.

My husband is… really struggling. Even with the anonymity of this blog, I don’t feel comfortable sharing too much of what he is going through, but suffice to say it’s hard to be a public servant right now when the government is failing, so spectacularly, from the highest level down. He has been taking some days off, so he doesn’t have to engage with the misery five days a week, but it’s not enough of a respite to keep the depression at bay. It’s been very eye opening for me, someone who dealt with depression for over a decade, to recognize how hard it is to support people who are truly depressed (or very close to it). I have a lot of empathy, but it’s hard to provide the support he needs when I’m barely keeping my own shit together.

My own mood has been fluctuating a lot lately. I’m doing the things I know are necessary to keep me on the evenest keel possible – exercising 4x a week, getting seven hours of sleep most nights, taking my magnesium – but I still find myself upset without a specific triggering event. I’m sure it’s just the incredible stress we’re under because of the pandemic, compounded by the uncertainty of the coming election, and the lack of connection that quarantining creates.

I also am realizing that it’s just really hard to jump between teaching and my family multiples times a day. Usually our schedules are so tight that I have to run upstairs within minutes of teaching a class. It’s hard to be so on – smiling and energetic and engaged while getting almost nothing from my students in return – and then going immediately upstairs to deal with a 1st grader who just wants to listen to podcasts and eat Pirate’s Booty all day, but instead has to show up for his next class, or finish an assignment on Seesaw.

I titled this post “Playing catch up” because that is what I felt like I had to do here after so many weeks of being away. But I’m realizing my whole life feels like I’m playing catch up. It’s exhausting. I keep reminding myself that I have more flexibility in my job than most when it comes to what I’m actually teaching and how much energy it requires to teach that way. I could put the breaks on my own program, but that is very hard for me to do. Next week is conferences and I decided to break up the assessment I’m giving my students into three short chunks, and to not give them anything else. I’m hoping that provides a little break for all of us, even me. Maybe that will give us all some ample time to play a little catch up…

The last two weeks have been a roller coaster. So many ups and downs, and while it felt interminable while it was happening, now that it’s over it felt like it flew by.

The last time I wrote here was during the apocalyptic orange sky day. That day was a serious mind fuck, and the five days of red and purple air quality that followed were hard to get through. We couldn’t even open our windows, let alone go outside for five full days. It was horrible.

Then, finally, the bad air quality lifted and we could go outside again. The end of last week felt amazing.

Friday was a good day. My daughter and I went shoe shopping because my daughter is participating in Girls on the Run and she needed a proper pair of sneakers. Stores like Foot Locker recently reopened in San Francisco so we were able to go in and actually try on a pair, which were $120 marked down to $30 because they were the very last pair, and exactly her size. We also stopped into a book store to get the newest Dog Man. It felt awesome to be walking around, casually visiting stores again. It’s been months since I did that.

Of course later that day we heard the horrible news. I cried a lot Friday night. I realized for the first time in my life that I don’t love my country. I actually hate it. I absolutely wish I didn’t live here anymore, and I don’t want the future here I see forming for my children. I’m not quite sure what any of that means yet. I’m still processing it. And I’m definitely taking a break from the news cycle for a while. I absolutely cannot stand the hypocrisy right now.

The weekend was better, but the cloud of reality hung over everything. Saturday was super packed – I took the kids bike riding in Golden Gate Park and then had my daughter’s friends over for a book club in the backyard (we discussed El Deafo and made warm fuzzies like in the book). Sunday my daughter had sailing (she’s going for three Sundays in September) and I went over early to run on Treasure Island before picking them up. I don’t think there is a more beautiful view of the city than from Treasure Island.

At home I finished picking up my house so I could – finally! – clean all the floors on the upstairs level. They needed it so bad, and it took hours of picking up shit, sweeping and vacuuming to get to a place where I could actually do it. But it did get done and my house looks clean for the first time in months. I’m reveling in it.

Of course I aggravated an elbow injury doing all that sweeping, vacuuming and steam cleaning and today it hurts worse than it ever has. Sigh. I’m resigning myself to the fact that I have an overuse injury and I’m going to need to take definitive steps to making it better. The problem is I have no idea what those steps might be. Blerg.

It’s weird that my kids have actual activities again – my son has karate camp three afternoons a week and my daughter has running twice a week – which add a structure to the weeks that we had been missing. Distance learning still isn’t great for us, but I’m so thankful that the have structured activities that give them regular social interaction and exercise.

I’m still working pretty much every waking moment during the week, but I’m getting better and taking breaks during the weekends. At least on Saturdays.

And I guess that is where I’m at. I hope you’re all doing well.

I don’t know if it’s because California, and especially the Bay Area, has a rather narrow definition of “normal weather” (we rarely experience severe storms and even lightening is rare here), but the disorientation from yesterday is lingering. Today the air quality is very bad – it hurts the eyes and lungs – but the ominous orange tinge and the dark skies are gone.

I feel like this video encapsulates how disconcerting yesterday felt. It really does seem like we’re living in some dystopian future, except it’s happening right now. A dystopian today. It’s been hard to shake.

Brilliant: drone footage of San Francisco yesterday to blade runner 2049 sound track pic.twitter.com/bHKBvqOLLv

— jason@calacanis.com (@Jason) September 10, 2020

We woke up this morning at 7:30am but it was still dark outside. Now it’s 11:14am and it still looks like early dawn. We have to have all the lights on, because we can’t see. The sky is orange and ominous.

It really and truly feels like the End of Days. This is definitely what I image the Apocalypse will look like.

My son and I went outside to play laser tag (somehow our air quality is not bad right now, I guess the smoke is higher up) because we could see the lights, which are normally dimmed to nothing by the sun.

It’s very disorienting for it to be dark at almost noon. It’s very disconcerting for the sky to be this color. It really does feel like something horrible might happen at any moment.

I guess it already has.

It was a long, hot weekend. It was in the high 90s up in San Francisco, which might not sound that bad for people in parts of the country that deal with 90 degree weather all summer long, but you have to remember that almost nobody in San Francisco has air conditioning. And all the places we’d usually flock to for some respite from the heat, like movie theaters, malls, and even restaurants, are closed. Most of the nearby beaches weren’t open either so it was a really hard weekend to get through.

Saturday night was nice though. We had a social distance viewing of Mulan in my friend’s driveway (we projected the movie onto her garage wall) and the weather was beautiful. We were expecting to be bundled up in our down jackets and blankets by the time the movie ended at 9pm, but I was still wearing a tank top! It’s unusual to be able to wear a tank top in SF during the summer, and unheard of to do so after the sun sets, so that was a nice experience.

Unfortunately Sunday, the hottest day, was not so nice.

We were lucky to be invited to my mom’s friend’s pool on Sunday. It was 107* down at their house, but the water was an inviting 83* and we spent most of the day in it. But it was still so hot that the kids felt sick for much of the afternoon. It was hard to get them to eat and stay hydrated. My kids slept at my parents’ house that night, and they do have air conditioning upstairs, so they slept okay. We were struggling at our house, which felt like an oven. Luckily the downstairs, where we sleep, wasn’t as bad.

Last night the fog rolled in, but it’s still supposed to be in the high 80s up here today, and much hotter every where else. There are new fires spewing smoke into the air, and the light has a weird yellow quality to it. It looks ominous outside. We’re also dealing with rolling power outages to take pressure off the grid. Power outages make teaching and learning online really difficult…

It’s hard not to let the stress accumulate when these difficult situations drag on and on. The first fires started three weeks ago, right at the start of school, and they never properly resolved before new fires started. Three weeks of fluctuating air quality, when going outside is the only thing you can do besides being stuck at home, really starts to wear.

I really hope things get better soon. I’m just trying to accept things and take it one day at a time.

It’s been three weeks since my kids started school. Two and a half since I started.

It’s not going well. The days are long and hard. There is a lot of unhappiness, frustration, anger, upset. There are raised voices and tears and sighs and screams. I want to say we’re finding a rhythm but we’re not really. Maybe it will come.

I work constantly. I’m tired all the time. I don’t know how to turn off and stop working, because there is always more to do and never enough time. I start working the moment I wake up and the last thing I do before bed every night is on my computer. I spend every waking moment that I’m not with my kids doing work.

I know it’s not sustainable and yet… it doesn’t feel like it works otherwise. I think I can take a weekend day away from work every week but that is about it.

This past week was especially brutal. Wednesday I taught three 70 minute block periods, went to a two hour training and then talked to parents on zoom for over an hour for Back to School Night. Thursday my brain was mush, but I had two more 70 minute periods to teach.

This weekend I have to review 150 “getting to know you” slide decks and ideally make a short comment on each. I have to input five scores for each of those 150 students. I have to create more asynchronous work for next week, and plan my synchronous periods.

I’m glad Monday is a holiday. I totally forgot about Labor Day this year and was so thrilled when I was reminded it was this weekend. I need a day off, and it hasn’t even been a month of school yet.

We still wake up to unhealthy air quality most mornings. Our house smells like smoke until noon most days. It’s been almost two weeks since the fires started and we still don’t go outside much.

This is hard. And I have it better than most. The news is so depressing I can’t even read it. I honestly don’t know what else to say.

It was not my intent to come here and drop despair all over my site, but I realized that if I didn’t I might never come back.

It’s that time of year again (or time of every-three-years) when I have to cough up $$$ to keep this space running. Usually I wax philosophical for a couple of entries about what this space means to me and whether or not I should keep paying for it. But I’m way too in the weeds with the rest of my life right now to even consider letting go of this space, so it will auto renew for now. Maybe in another three years I will have the time and mental bandwidth to consider stepping away.

I’m kind of relieved I don’t have it in me to think about it too much right now. And I’m grateful that my financial situation makes paying for it a reasonable expense right now. I know that for so many people that would no longer be the case.

Everything feels untenable right now, but I can keep this space. I will consider that a small win.

My kids got up way too early today and I have a lot of work to do this weekend to be ready for next week. I guess I should get at it.

It’s been a helluva week. The kids started distance learning, and it’s going okay. They aren’t getting nearly the amount of instructional time the state has mandated, but we’re giving it a couple more weeks before we ask the teachers when we can expect more.

My husband has been off of work and doing an amazing job with the kids. He has created a schedule that really works for them. They seem happy and fulfilled when I come up. Everything is running incredibly smoothly without me.

I’ve been super busy this week. Monday and Tuesday were packed full of meetings and work. Wednesday was my first day teaching. I only had some orientation groups to lead because the elective class lists aren’t ready yet, so the teaching piece wasn’t that hard. I’ve also been tasked with creating the curriculum for our orientation and advisory time, which has been very time consuming. My colleagues are very appreciative of the work I’m doing, and I have to teach these “classes” myself so it’s nice to be doing work that benefits myself and others. But it’s a lot of time and I’m not getting much done for next week when I really start teaching.

I have to admit, it’s been a bit of a shit show at my district. We lost administrators and tech staff and it shows. Families were supposed to get schedules on Friday morning – they were finally emailed Tuesday afternoon. The elective classes didn’t even get populated. I spent four hours putting together my own class lists last week (overlaying two different survey results to separate the students who really wants to take Spanish and the students who are taking it this year because most of the other electives aren’t being offered). No one else did that for the other classes and they just aren’t done. We may not even start on Monday.

So many kids want to take Spanish that I’ll probably be teaching an extra class and working 120% of full time this year.

My district is small and understaffed, but we’re usually on top of our shit. To see how difficult it’s been for them to put this schedule together, and to make everything happen, has been sobering. Our schedule had to be workable in distance learning and if we go back to some kind of hybrid model, and that was really hard to put together. We have a lot of staffing gaps due to budget shortages. The whole thing is a mess and we are struggling to start successfully.

I will say, my colleagues are good people and they are doing good work, but man, this stuff is hard. This year is going to be a big challenge.

Having my husband cover this week has been great, but it’s also been eye opening for him. He’s realizing just how difficult this year is going to be, and he’s panicked. I’ve been panicked about how hard this year will be all summer, and it’s hard to engage him on his newfound realization of the shit show we’re heading into. We did have a good talk about it last night, and I think we’ll eventually find a system that works. But it’s going to be really, really hard.

Oh, and fires are raging everywhere and our air quality is so bad we can’t go outside or open our windows. It’s truly Armageddon.

So that is where I’ve been this week.

Has anyone else started distance learning? How is it going?