What worked, and what didn’t (first week of school addition)

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?