In Which I Share a Valentine Reflection: Love and Perseverance

 It's Valentine's Day again, and time for my Valentine homily/reflection. For the one or two people who might just happen across this post, let me share some background.

More than a quarter century ago (wow, that makes me sound really old), on a college campus far away I was a woefully single student looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day as Black [insert whatever day of the week it was going to be here]. However, at the last minute, I had a change of heart and vowed to reclaim the day as a day to celebrate the love of family, of friends, and especially of God. I sent an email to some friends and family members to that effect. They liked it, and thus an annual tradition was born. It has since evolved into a reflection on my faith and life, with some kind of tie in to love and Valentine's Day.

Last year, when I titled my post "Love in the Time of Covid" it did not occur to me that a year later we would still be in the time of Covid. I won't go into my feelings about all the things that went wrong to put us in this place. The fact is we are here, and going into year three of the pandemic, the theme in my mind is perseverance. It's well past the time when we can use "unprecedented" to describe what we're living through. There are now nearly two years full of precedent. I think the appropriate word to transition to is perseverance.

For students, teachers, and school staff, this can mean persevering through yet another incredibly stressful school year. Most students are back in school in person now, but all is not well. Many of the teachers I know are feeling crushed under the burden of being responsible to enforce Covid safety measures (or, in contrast, crushed under the feeling of terror that there are none). Teachers are reportedly retiring early or otherwise leaving the profession in droves. Those that remain are persevering because of their love of their students and what their job used to be and hopefully can be again in the future. I don't know many healthcare workers personally, but I know they are suffering under a burden as well. 

My hope and prayer is that our love for our fellow human beings will cause those of us who are outside these and other high pressure professions to continue to persevere in the changes we have had to make to try to keep Covid in check so that someday (hopefully sooner rather than later, maybe this spring or summer?) we can come out of pandemic mode and move into the long term stage of living with Covid-19 not as a constant threat but as one of many endemic respiratory diseases that are part of our lives but don't control them. 

We're all incredibly tired of this pandemic, so it's no longer seen as fashionable or heroic to make the choice to avoid large indoor gatherings (let alone cancel them or move them online) or even wear a mask inside. We all just want to be done. The sad fact, however, is that wanting something to be over or even pretending it's over doesn't actually change the situation.

So, how am I tying this into Valentine's Day? Is this just a rant about Covid thinly disguised as my annual homily? Don't you worry, there's a point to all of this. I think that, pandemic or not, all love requires perseverance. Long term romantic relationships require perseverance. My husband and I have been married for almost 19 years. I love him at least as much as I did the day I married him, in some ways more. however that doesn't mean every day is perfect. Some days are downright bad. A successful marriage requires work and perseverance on the part of both partners.

The same holds true with my kids. My kids are amazing. It's incredible to see them turning into productive, wonderful human beings. However, there are plenty of times they're incredibly annoying or their needs are inconvenient. Just today I had to run home after dropping Squirrelboy off at his internship instead of heading straight to the grocery store so I could bring him pants (don't worry, he was wearing shorts, but long pants are required). Just as I was about to pull out of the driveway for the second time, I got a text from Kittygirl, who forgot to bring a mask to school. The school provides disposable masks if a student forgets, but she wanted one of the good masks from home. Both of these things cut into my morning and changed my plans, but I did it because my situation allows for that kind of flexibility and I love my kids, even when their forgetfulness inconveniences me. 

Our faith requires perseverance as well. Especially when the world is on fire and it often feels like your prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling, it's seriously tempting to just throw in the towel and assume none of it was true to begin with. When I'm in a valley like this (and I'm not at this moment to be clear), I'm thankful that I can look back on times when I witness God answer my prayers and felt His presence. A similar principal can apply in marriage, in parenting, in friendship, and in any relationship.

Yes, there are relationships that are toxic and relationships that are truly abusive and dangerous. Let me be clear that I am not advocating remembering the good times and persevering in an abusive relationship. However, in the case that your relationship (with a spouse, with a friend, with God) is simply in a slump, it's worthwhile to put in the work and persevere. 

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you are able to celebrate love in some fashion today, whether it's the love you share with your romantic partner, with cherished friends, with your child(ren), or with God.

In Which My Luck Didn't Hold Out, But It's Okay

Well, the first quarter of the school year is over and it's almost Halloween. It simultaneously feels like yesterday that I wrote my last post in August and a year ago. I was looking forward to Squirrelboy and Kittygirl both returning to in-person school, but also terrified about potential Covid exposure, especially for Kittygirl.

Overall, they've both enjoyed school and it has gone well. Squirrelboy is taking two dual credit classes this semester. This means, in theory, that these are college level classes and he's earning both college and high school credit for them. One class is taught by a teacher at his school who is certified to teach college level classes using curriculum from the University of Kentucky. That class has been great. His dual credit Math class has been underwhelming because it's a self paced video class. The content is college level, but the actual teaching certainly isn't. However, next semester he'll start taking classes two days a week on an actual community college campus, so he's excited about that.

I'm very proud of how hard Squirrelboy works and how well he's doing in school. Ten and a half years ago his kindergarten teacher told us she thought he should be retained. We refused that and instead got him the help he needed to learn to read. Now he's getting excellent grades in dual credit classes. I kind of want to look up his old kindergarten teacher and send her an email, but my conscience has won out and I've decided that would be petty.

Despite the fact that he probably sees at least 60 different people every days, Squirrelboy has not yet been exposed to Covid at school. With the Delta variant surge finally going down, hopefully that will remain true. Because he's fully vaccinated, the school policy is that he would not need to quarantine, but we'd still get him tested.

Kittygirl is also loving school. Her fifth grade teachers are great and she's learning a lot and really enjoying being back with all of her friends instead of just one friend. She has joined the Battle of the Books Team (which makes me extremely proud because I did that back in the 1980's) and a club called Team Greenpower, which will build some kind of green powered car and race it with other teams near the end of the school year.

Unfortunately, Kittygirl, the one member of our family who can't be vaccinated and the one with a chronic illness, has been exposed to Covid at school. Not just once, but twice. Both times we had her tested even though all that's required is ten days of isolation unless the child has symptoms. The second time, she tested positive.

Thankfully, she only ever had one symptom and only for one day. There's a niggling fear at the back of my mind that the virus had some kind of long term effect we won't see for years, but I breathed a sigh of relief when she was cleared to return to the world with no apparent ill effects. Mostly she spent the time complaining that remote school was boring and she wanted to be allowed to leave the house. Especially since she was about to finish her ten days of isolation after her class exposure when we got the positive result, it felt onerous to add even more days of isolation.

The instruction she received the two times her class had to quarantine was great. Her teachers taught them over zoom and they followed the same schedule they would have followed in the classroom. When Kittygirl had to isolate without her class, however, the instruction was pretty pathetic. She just had google classroom assignments to do. Her teachers were supposedly checking email regularly to answer questions, but she went days without getting answers about some assignments.

I don't really blame the teachers for this. The fact is, teachers are stretched to their breaking points. This seemingly neverending pandemic has called on them to do more and more with less and less. Teach remotely. Teach in person with masks. Enforce mask wearing. Don't enforce mask wearing even though we know it's effective. And on and on. I do, however, wish the government had invested more in schools from the beginning. If every classroom were equipped with mics and cameras, students who had to isolate could participate via zoom. But apparently no one who has the resources to do it has thought about that. Or they decided it wasn't necessary who knows.

Early in the pandemic I was relatively chipper. I figured this couldn't last forever and we just needed to make the best of it. However, as it drags on, I find myself getting weary. I'm incredibly frustrated, sad, and even angry that so many people in our country who could be vaccinated have chosen not to be. I'm not talking about people who are "anti-vaxxers" in general. I'm talking about people who are generally accepting of vaccines but are suspicious of this particular vaccine, despite all the evidence being put forth that it's safe and effective.

It breaks my heart that so many people are dying or being permanently disabled by a pandemic that could have been tamed by now. An old friend, who was Squirrelboy's godfather, lost a month long battle with Covid earlier this fall. A high school student in our district died a few weeks ago. Sometimes it just feels like too much. I'm incredibly sick of telling my kids. "No, you can't do that thing." Or "Yes, you can do that but you have to wear a mask." Pandemic parenting is even more challenging than regular parenting.

All I can do, however, is to keep doing what I know is right. Keep masking in public indoor spaces. Get Kittygirl vaccinated as soon as it's approved for her age group. Keep saying no to some things I really want to say yes to. And keep praying that this plague will not actually be endless and that even those who make choices I disagree with won't have to pay the ultimate price.

And to end this on a lighter note, I recently got a pumpkin cat house for our kitties. Here's Shadow being the perfect Halloween cat. Happy Halloween!

In Which I Am Simultaneously Excited and Terrified

 Today is the first day of school for my kids. Kittygirl is back in the building for the first time since March 13 2020. Squirrelboy returned in person for the last quarter of last school year, but he's excited to be back and to be starting dual credit classes this semester. When school was ending last year, infection rates for going steadily down and vaccination rates were going steadily up. I had a lot of confidence that, though Covid wouldn't be a thing of the past by the fall, it would only be a minor concern. I even dared hope that masks in school wouldn't be necessary, or at least not for Squirrelboy since all high school students are old enough to be vaccinated.

However, that was not to be. At the same time mask mandates and other emergency orders were lifted, vaccination rates slowed down and case rates began to rise. Here in Kentucky, our case rates are now as high as they were back in January. Squirrelboy, Mr. Engineer, and I were all fully vaccinated by the end of April, but we continued to wear masks in public indoor environments to protect Kittygirl. Most people didn't, and, unsurprisingly, we now have yet another surge in the U.S. I'll breath a bit easier once a vaccine is approved for Kittygirl's age group, hopefully by October at last report. In the meantime, we've sent them back to school with masks and extra distancing and sanitizing in place and we hope and pray that that will be enough to protect them and all the other people in our schools. The fact, for the large majority of kids, in person learning is phenomenally better than virtual learning, and I'm glad Kittygirl is able to start her last year of elementary school in person. I just hope the calculated risk that most schools are taking by offering only in person learning with mitigation strategies pans out.

Speaking of calculated risks, I probably owe readers an update related to my last post. Even though it looked like a spike was beginning by the time Friends for Life Orlando rolled around the second week of July, Kittygirl and I headed to the Coronado Spring resort. We had an amazing time, both at the conference and at the parks. It was especially wonderful to reunite with Kittygirl's diabestie and her family, whom we met at our first conference in 2018. I was a bit nervous at the parks because, despite an official rule that unvaccinated guests should wear masks inside, cast members were not enforcing it, and there were plenty of unmasked kids under twelve indoors. Kittygirl and I wore our masks anytime we were inside or in crowded areas and we stayed safe.

We finished out the summer with a family trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. This felt pretty safe because we spent the large majority of our time outside when not in our rented cabin. Highlights including horseback riding, rafting, and multiple moose sightings.

As we move into yet another fall of this pandemic, I'm feeling tired. Not to disparage what people without kids have gone through, but I think this pandemic may be extra tiring for parents. Mr. Engineer and I have spent the past 17 months figuring out how to balance our children's physical health with their mental health. In the very early stages, when little was known about Covid 19, vaccination was a distant dream, and no treatments were available, that meant staying at home basically all the time. As it became clear that masks helped mitigate the spread of the virus, going out occasionally with masks became an option. As the pandemic put more of a strain on our kids' mental health we began to carefully open up our circle. We opened it up even more this summer, while never entirely going back to normal. 

Now that case levels are on the rise again, we have to go back to the drawing board when it comes to deciding how to balance our kids' needs. They're back in school in person because there was no other good choice. Our school did continue to offer a fully virtual academy, but since both kids are in magnet programs that was not a good solution for them. We burned out on virtual church this spring and started attending a church that was worshipping outside. When that church moved back inside in July, we went back to the church we're members of. However, as case numbers have continued to rise and many churches have started requiring masks, our church has not yet made the decision to do that. Looking at calculated risks, there is no reason to keep attending that church when there are options to worship in person at a church that requires masks. That makes our kids mad because they love our church. I'm sure there are others at our church who won't understand our decision because our kids are back in school so we're obviously not isolating. 

However, the fact that our kids are in school in person is a large part of the reason it doesn't make sense to attend worship in person at a church that's not requiring masks. If Kittygirl didn't have diabetes our decision would likely be the same, but that does in fact add an extra layer to our concern.

Pandemics are hard. I hope this is the only one I have to live through. Parenting is hard too. Parenting during a pandemic is extra hard. But I wouldn't trade it for not being a parent if I were given a chance.

In Which I Take a Calculated Risk and Hope I Don't Regret It

The past 14-ish months have been hard, haven't they? When my kids' schools closed in March of 2020, I had no idea the pandemic would be a very real thing that we were still dealing with in May of 2021. But the fact is that, while things are looking up in the U.S. we are not out of the woods yet and in many other countries the outlook is still very dire.

That's why I was incredibly upset yesterday when the CDC announced that it's okay for fully vaccinated people to be unmasked in nearly any situation. Since simultaneously we have decided as a society that we want to protect people's privacy and not make anyone reveal their vaccination status, this feels like a recipe for disaster. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that a combination of lowering cases and rising vaccinations means that vaccinated people plus unvaccinated people who never believed in masks going unmasks will not lead to a speak in cases. Obviously since this change was announced yesterday the jury is still out.

I have been fully vaccinated for over a month now. Mr. Engineer was fully vaccinated a week later and Squirrelboy (who turned 16 in March, just in time to qualify to be vaccinated when that age group came up) was fully vaccinated two weeks after that. At ten, however, Kittygirl does not qualify to be vaccinated. Vaccines are being tested for her age group and they'll hopefully be approved sometime this summer or early fall at the latest, but, in the meantime, with the new guidance only one member of our family is required to wear a mask.

I tell my kids life is unfair all the time, but this is one little bit of unfairness the rest of the family can rectify just a tiny little bit. Even if lots of other people in our community choose not to wear masks because of the new guidance, our whole family will continue to mask in all the places we have before. We're not going to make Kittygirl be the only one.

With vaccinations on the rise and cases on the decline in the U.S., in person events are starting to happen again. Most relevant to our family, the Friends for Life Orlando Conference, which I blogged about in 2019, is being held in person this summer. In summary, in case you don't want to read that whole post, this is a conference for people with type 1 diabetes of all ages and their families. It's an incredible place to find community with others who understand diabetes, learn new things, and simply have fun. The flagship conference is normally held every July at the Coronado Springs resort at Disney World. In 2020 the Orlando conference went virtual, and the parent organization, Children with Diabetes, has since held several other weekend virtual conferences. They have been well done, but nothing beats an in person experience.

As of the announcement, there was a promise that a ton of safety procedures would be in place. Those include masks for everyone except when eating (and only eating when seated), assigned seating for meals, and significantly reduced capacity allowing for social distancing. We had about a week to decide whether we wanted to take the risk of traveling to Florida at a time we knew the pandemic would still be going on before registration opened. I knew that if we wanted to do it, we should register as soon as possible after registration opened. For the children's programs in particularly, capacity was significantly reduced. There were only 60 spots available for Kittygirl's age group. Mr. Engineer and I talked about it and decided that the risk was small enough with the protocols in place that the experience was  worth it for me and Kittygirl. Unfortunately, it won't work for the whole family to attend this year because the dates overlap with Boy Scout camp. We also decided that our risk wasn't greatly increased by spending two days at Disney theme parks after the conference ends.

I'm hoping that the news from yesterday won't change the protocols that are in place in July. Either that or that case counts get so low it doesn't seem particularly risky to be around a bunch of unmasked people. I know some people whose kids have type 1 diabetes and/or other chronic health conditions who have hardly left their houses since March of 2020.  I know others who have had a much more nonchalant attitude than our family has had. As seems to happen often, I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. We've been more careful than average, but we've allowed Kittygirl to go to stores with us, have outdoor playdates with friends outside our bubble, and play at public parks. This trip to Friends for Life and Disney World, however, will be by far the biggest risk we've taken during the pandemic.

My calculus is that the psychological benefit far outweighs the smallish health risk. Let's hope I'm right.

In Which I Share a Valentine Reflection: Love in the Time of Covid

Just in case someone happens across this who has never read one of my previous Valentine homilies, here's a quick recap. A long time ago and a few states away (really more than half my lifetime ago now, boy I'm getting old) I was a woefully single college student planning to celebrate Valentine's Day as "Black [insert day of the week here]". At the eleventh hour I did an about face in my attitude and decided to use the day as an excuse to celebrate the love of family, the love of friends, and the love of God. This was decades before "Galentine's Day" or "Palentine's Day" were trending, so clearly I'm a genius innovator :) (also, how did I get so old ?). I sent an email to some friends encouraging them to do the same. Then I sent a similar email the next year and a tradition was born. The tradition has since evolved into an annual reflection on my faith and life, with some kind of tie in to Valentine's Day. As always, feel free to share if you're so inclined. And on to the message.....

Last year at this time I was typing my Valentine Homily on my phone with one finger. Fourteen days earlier I had broken my wrist at Kittygirl's skating birthday party. The lesson it taught me was to rely on others in ways I don't usually like to do. I naively thought at the time that breaking a bone at my daughter's birthday part would be the most notable party of my year. Little did I know what 2020 had in store for the world. 

We're now 11 months and one day past the first of the stay at home orders here in Kentucky. The last time my kids attended school in person was March 13th of last year. The last time I ate at a restaurant was March 5th of last year. I don't even remember the last time I watched a movie in a theater. My purse now always has several cloth masks in it at all times, with spares in my car. I obsessively tell Kittygirl not to touch things on the rare occasions I bring her with me to the store. We lost spring and summer plans in 2020, and spring break travel this year isn't looking wise either. Even summer plans are very lightly penciled in. We really have no idea from day to day what's going to happen, it seems. Oh, and just for fun, our nation went through some pretty serious political turmoil too. You know, because 2021 had to show up 2020 or something :).

Even with all of that, though, this year has been filled with a lot of good. I fell back in love with writing middle grade fiction and started taking it seriously. I finished two manuscripts and learned how to query agents. I found a community of writers in a similar place on the journey and also began to interact with writers on social media and learned that even the famous ones are more often than not completely normal and really nice people. 

I've enjoyed our Covid-enforced reduced and/or virtualized schedule. Many of the meetings I used to have to drive kids to are now on Zoom. There's no more "Let's make sure to get dinner on the table in time for the guys to leave for Boys Scouts!" There's "Hey, it's 6:59, better log onto to Boy Scout zoom". School starts later, and there's no commute to that either. Mr. Engineer has started to go work in the lab for at least a few hours most weeks, but there are still many days when no one has to leave the house and it's pretty great after having spent years feeling like we were constantly going from one thing to the next.

At the same time, I haven't always enjoyed our Covid-enforced togetherness. My introverted soul is thirsting for more time alone. I survive by taking walks alone most weekdays and grabbing some alone time when the kids are otherwise engaged or after they've gone to bed (Which is often way too late. Did I mention remote school starts later than in person school?).

Loving your family during forced togetherness isn't always easy. Who am I kidding? It isn't usually easy. If I have to tell the kids not to touch each other's couch cushions during online worship one more time my head just might explode. Yet I guarantee I'll do it again next week. And then again. Maybe at some point they'll learn to respect each others' space, but I'm not counting on it. What I AM counting on is that the kids will come out of this pandemic not having hated the time. We've done our best to make this ridiculously unprecedented season not horrible and, dare I say, sometimes actually really good. Our big plans got cancelled, but we did little fun things instead. We played more games. We had more movie nights. And we'll continue doing our best to make this time as good as we can until it's over (because, as much as I hate to say it, it'll be awhile).

Back in another life, when I was a graduate student in Hispanic literature, one of the many books by the master Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez that I was required to read was Love in the Time of Cholera. It really has almost no relevance to what I'm writing about today, but every once in awhile I need to pull out the degrees I don't use and dust them off. The one comparison I can draw is that the protagonist has an awful lot of patience. He literally waits decades after the love of his life marries someone else so that he can declare his love again after her husband dies. Now that's dedication for you. Love in the Time of Covid also requires a lot of patience. You may be patiently waiting for a vaccine appointment so that you can be one step closer to being able to see the loved ones you've had to be apart from during the pandemic. You may be patiently (or not so patiently some days) helping your kids engage with online school even though they're totally over it. You may be patiently donning that mask you're really sick of to go into your job that can't be done remotely.

After all the turmoil of this past year, pandemic-related, politically related, or personal, what I've always come back to is that more than anything else we need to give our fellow human beings love and grace. That doesn't mean people who wrong your or wrong society shouldn't be held accountable. What it does mean is that you're only hurting yourself if you focus your energy on hating them. Grieve the wrongs that are done to you or others. Take action when appropriate. But also look for the good. Look for the love. Look for the joy. It's there, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

In Which I Play Catch Up

Remember back when I started this blog and I posted five days a week? Those were the good old days. You know, when the kids actually went to school somewhere other than our house, I could blithely run errands to six places during the day without thinking about it, and I didn't own a collection of masks. Ah, 2019, how we miss you. Who would have thought that breaking my wrist at Kittygirl's birthday party on the last day of January this year would not be the most eventful part of our our family's year?

Anyway, the pandemic isn't the only reason I haven't blogged recently. Life just has a bad habit of getting away from me. I suppose I can partly blame it on ADHD, but that's not the only reason. There are just so many immediate things to be accomplished on a daily basis that things like finally sitting down and blogging fall by the wayside. Who am I kidding? It's not just blogging. It's also important but not every day task things that fall by the wayside, like scooping the little boxes and cleaning the guinea pig cage. You do not want to know how much poop was in the litter box when I cleaned it this weekend.

To update you on my last post, Squirrelboy was super excited to receive a letter of acceptance to the National Honor Society a couple weeks ago. Looking back on his early school experience I'm just blown away by how far he's come. I'm regularly amazed by how much he cares about school and how hard he works to submit his best effort. Many of his teachers allow retakes of tests and quizzes. This weekend he retook a geometry quiz twice to get a perfect score. Reader, he got 18/20 the first time so it's not as if he absolutely needed to retake it at all.

I completely missed posting during Diabetes Awareness Month in November, so here's an executive summary of what you should know about type 1 diabetes if you're unfamiliar with it: It's an autoimmune disease. It is not caused by diet. It is lifelong unless a cure is found. It can strike at any age. In fact, about half of new diagnoses are in adults. It's relentless, and something you have to deal with 24 hours a day every.single.day. The one bright spot to having diabetes or having a child with diabetes is the diabetes community, which is amazing. See last November's daily posts for details about these statements and much more.

With this year being totally out of whack, our big summer vacation plans being cancelled, and more recently Thanksgiving and Christmas travel to Grandma and Grandpa's house being cancelled, it's been nice to immerse ourselves in our familiar Advent traditions. In case you don't know, Advent is celebrated beginning four Sundays before Christmas. The name comes from the Latin word "coming", and it is a time to step back, reflect, and prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas as well as to reflect on Jesus' eventual second coming.

We established a tradition when Squirrelboy was quite young of lighting an Advent wreath every evening as a family and reading both a Bible passage and a fun Christmas story. After the reading the kids get to open the Advent calendar. Our Advent setup is below. My ADHD brain, while it struggles to make routines happen, at the same time functions much better when they're in place and established as habits, so Advent, as a many years long habit, is a particularly meaningful time to me and a pleasant break from the chaos that December often brings to a family with school age kids. There's a lot less chaos this year what with the pandemic cancelling so many activities, but at the same time the pandemic causes its own chaos, even if it's just internal, so the break is still welcome.

Another of our Advent traditions is the annual visits of Sam, our Elf on the Shelf, and Isaiah John, our shepherd. I'm presuming you know what an Elf on the Shelf looks like, reader, and if you don't, I'll spare you his slightly creepy visage. I will, however, introduce you to Isaiah John, who is quite cute.

Isaiah John's visit reminds us to focus on Jesus during Advent, as he spends every night while we sleep searching for Baby Jesus, whom he always, conveniently, finds just in time for Christmas morning.  Isaiah John also returns just before Easter, looking for a sheep he seems to lose every year at about the same time. Silly Isaiah John.

Surprisingly, the pandemic hasn't been as bad for our family as you might think it would have been. I think following routines has been part of the key to that. Our kids have consistent places to do their schoolwork, I'm able to give them consistent supervision, one of their favorite activities (scouting) has continued with a mix of digital and outdoor meetings and activities, and we've been able to have unrushed family dinners nearly every night.

I'll be happy when the U.S. is able to get the pandemic under control (not until a decent portion of the population has received a vaccine is looking like the likely timeframe) and we can return to normal activities and normal life, but for the moment I'm choosing to focus on the things that are going well. For whatever reason, that doesn't seem to leave much time for blogging :).

 

In Which Virtual Is Actually Pretty Good

If you had told me six months ago that my 9 year old would be using Zoom regularly this year I would have believed you. Then the pandemic hit, and most of us started using Zoom or some other video meeting interface pretty often. Our first experiences were kind of mediocre. Her teachers had a weekly class Zoom meeting, but it was poorly attended and not that engaging. Random kids in her grade would have their parents set up a Zoom meeting so that they could talk to their friends. Some parents set up meetings with grand intentions for the kids to speak Spanish with each other, but that never happened. Kittygirl tried one of those meetings, but it was set up by a boy and she was the only girl who joined. She left the meeting after just a few minutes. 

Virtual school as a whole was pretty unimpressive this spring. I don't blame the teachers. This was thrown on them very suddenly. They were provided with no training. They were also told they were not allowed to lower students' grades during the last 9 weeks when we had to go virtual and that they couldn't introduce new content. It was a pretty terrible set of circumstances.

Our first positive virtual experience was with a virtual Cub Scout campout in April. There was a whole schedule of suggested activities with the opportunity to share what you were doing via Facebook, plus Facebook live events where you could interact with others. Frankly, the planning was better than some in person campouts we've attended. We even had a real campfire in the backyard during the closing campfire program.

This summer everything the kids had planned to do was cancelled, but we managed to have some really impressive virtual experiences. We were particularly sad that FFL Orlando, the amazing diabetes conference that we've attended for the last two summers, had to go virtual.this year. However, it was actually done extremely well. They even had virtual versions of the Thursday evening banquet and the Saturday social events. One of the best parts of FFL is connecting with other parents of kids with diabetes and adults living with diabetes, and the organizers did their best to recreate those random connections by having virtual "hallways" - Zoom meetings that you could join at any time  between 8am and 8pm. 

It was disappointing that kid and adult sessions alternated during the virtual conference so I had to find something for Kittygirl to do during my sessions, but I understood practically why they did this. Many families simply don't have enough devices for multiple family members to be on Zoom at the same time.  Both the kid and adult sessions themselves, however, were quite good. I figured the adult sessions, that are often lecture type presentations would be pretty easy to translate to a digital environment, but I doubted the kid sessions would fare as well. To my great surprise, Kittygirl absolutely loved her first year in the Tween group even though it was virtual. They did an amazing number of fun activities along with learning some things about diabetes and meeting some famous people with diabetes. They even made "carb creatures" out of food and showed them off.

FFL was just one of several positive virtual experiences we've had this summer. Kittygirl also did a virtual diabetes camp that was surprisingly good. The week of the virtual FFL conference and for a week after that we were isolating as much as possible so we could safely visit my parents, so we signed each kid up for a week of virtual camp the second week. They were both excellent. 

Squirrelboy did a Cyber Film Camp with the Verdugo Hills BSA council, which is based in California in the heart of the moviemaking industry. He got to learn from professionals who do the kinds of things he hopes to do for a living, and he managed to cooperate with a group of 7 other scouts from 4 different states to make a short film. All the films made by the campers were shown in a film festival this Sunday, and I was really impressed. Squirrelboy's film even won the audience award, which was voted on by the Zoom seminar attendees.

Kittygirl did a virtual camp with Lexington Children's Theater. She at first wasn't excited about the idea, but then I told her it was based on a Percy Jackson book, which she is obsessed with, so she agreed. For three hours every day over Zoom the kids rehearsed a short play and then they presented it via Zoom on Friday. It was kind of surreal to have the kids saying their lines on camera in their homes instead of together on a stage, but it was amazingly good despite that. As a bonus, my in-laws who almost never visit and my brother who lives in Germany were able to join the Zoom meeting and watch Kittygirl's play. That never would have happened if it had been a normal end of camp presentation.

This year has not been what we expected. It looks likely that it will continue like this at least until the spring of 2020. Sometimes this makes me really angry. I'm particularly angry that the government in the U.S. has done a really pathetic job reacting to this pandemic. However, lots of individual organizations have really stepped up and embraced this unusual time. So many new people signed up for the virtual version of FFL that the organizers have committed to having a virtual version even when the in person version is safe again (hopefully that will be 2021, but all bets are off at this point). The Verdugo Hills council is planning to do the Cyber Film Camp again next summer. My husband's company is investigating allowing employees to work from home in come cases long term. I think this pandemic is going to fundamentally change the way we do some things, and in many cases it will be for the better.

These positive experiences are why, even though our spring experience of virtual school was pretty pathetic, I'm cautiously optimistic about what it could look like in the fall. Our district has announced that we will begin two weeks later than originally planned, on August 26, and that school will be virtual only at least until the end of September, at which point local conditions will be reevaluated. If we do go back later in the fall it will be part time to begin with and 1-3 days a week will still be virtual. This time, there has been more time to prepare, it is expected that new content will be presented, and the superintendent says that work will be differentiated. I have a healthy skepticism about how this will go, and am mentally preparing to pull Kittygirl and homeschool her if she's as miserable as she was in the spring, but for the time being I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Overall, virtual is normally not as good as in person. However, I have experience really well done virtual and really poorly done virtual. Here's hoping that school this fall is closer to the former.

In Which I Propose a Completely Unrealistic Plan for Education During the Pandemic

Back when schools closed in mid March most of us really had no idea what that meant or how long it would last. A tiny part of me hoped the kids would be able to come back before the end of the year, but the more realistic part of me knew they wouldn't be coming back. However, at that point I was still hoping we could have a somewhat normal summer and I was confident kids would be back in school in the fall even if extra precautions needed to be taken, and that that would be the right choice.

Well, if 2020 had gone according to plan my kids would be starting school on August 12th, less than a month from now. That's definitely not happening. The school start has currently been pushed to August 24. The school has yet to release an actual plan for how they're going to do in person school safely during the pandemic. A survey came out a couple weeks ago for parents. A survey went out to staff too. It was supposed to be more comprehensive, but, according to friends of mine who are both parents and staff, it was exactly the same.

The survey proposed three options. All options included school buildings being closed every Friday for deep cleaning.

Option 1: All students (except for those whose families choose 100% distance learning) are at school 4 days a week. Masks are worn at all times (presumably except when eating, but this wasn't addressed).

Option 2: Schools are divided into A and B groups and each group is in the school building 4 days a week alternating weeks.

Option 3: Schools are divided into A and B groups and each group is in the school building alternating days (one M/W and one T/Th).

When I filled out the survey I ranked the options in order 1, 3, 2. Given that the Spanish Immersion at Kittygirl's school and the collaborative educational style at Squirrelboy's school are pretty much impossible to replicate through distance learning I really thought it would be best for those students to be in the building as much as possible, and definitely not just every other week. 

However, the more I've learned about the logistics of opening a school during a pandemic with actively increasing cases the more I think virtual school is the only safe option pandemic-wise. Yes, it pretty much totally sucked in the spring, but, if they have to do it for the whole school year, hopefully it will be better.

That, of course, presents its own problems. How will special needs students be served if everything is virtual? What happens to students who have a personal aid? What happens to students who have a reader due to a visual disability or dyslexia? What happens to English Language Learners? Who is going to make sure they're actually understanding the content? Will gifted students receive additional content during virtual education? Will students receiving remediation in a subject receive that virtually?

Kittygirl's and Squirrelboy's needs are actually served fairly well through virtual education. It's easier for me to handle Kittygirl's diabetes if she's at home learning than if she's at school. Squirrelboy's ADHD is unlikely to impede him when he's working alone in the office downstairs without a single distraction.

It still sucks, mind you, and they're still going to hate if that's the way it ends up going. I'm pretty sure most students will feel that way. And let's be honest, for most students, virtual/distance learning is going to result in a whole lot less learning than in person learning would have.

This leads me to wonder (and here's the completely unrealistic proposal), why don't we just call this school year a wash for traditional learning? The families with parents working from home or one parent not working can just keep their kids home. If they want to teach them traditional academics more power to them. If not, the kids can play outside, read books, draw, play with legos, whatever they want to do. The one think I think would be helpful would be to put strict screentime limits into effect.

What about the kids whose parents have to work outside the home? Perhaps we could open some school buildings and operate them the way emergency childcare centers (which have reportedly been largely successful at warding off outbreaks) have been run. Keep kids in small groups, wear masks inside except when eating, have surfaces cleaned frequently, etc. If accomplishing particular educational tasks isn't  on the agenda, I think this might actually work. Provide a lot of books, have a place to isolate books for a couple days after students read them so that any virus on the surface dies, and you should be good. Also spend as much time outside as possible.

What about teens? In my completely unrealistic plan, high schools would be retooled as teen hangout centers (distanced and with masks of course) that would also offer limited life skills classes. I think even seniors would not be dramatically hurt by spending a year learning life skills instead of traditional academics before entering college.

Is anything like this going to happen? Of course not. And there are probably serious health risks to this plan that I haven't even considered. The fact remains, though, that students, parents, and teachers are all seriously stressed out right now. If the pressure of accomplishing a traditional academic year could be removed while the pandemic is raging I think it would be better for everyone's mental health.

And just because I like including a picture with every post, here's a picture of my cats, who would be quite content if we chose never to leave the house again.

In Which I'm Not (Very) Afraid of the Big Bad Global Pandemic

When I last posted just under a month ago, my biggest problem was the fact that my wrist was broken and I couldn't drive or do much around the house. My wrist is now in a splint instead of a cast and I can drive, and do some, though still not all, household chores. I can also type on a regular keyboard, which makes posting a bit faster. However, in the space of a month, the world has become a very different place thanks to Covid-19.

As a history buff, I've read a lot about the recurrent bubonic plague outbreaks in the middle ages as well as the 1918 flu epidemic. My adulthood has featured SARS and H1N1 flu, but those did not rise to the level of global pandemics. It never occurred to me that I might live through something akin to the 1918 influenza epidemic.

It appears as if the current outbreak is approaching that level, however. A month ago it was centered in Asia with a smattering of travel related cases elsewhere. Now Italy has the highest percentage of deaths. the United States seems to finally be taking the virus seriously. Colleges around us started closing down or moving to online classes early this week. Yesterday our governor issued a strong recommendation for all schools prek to 12 to close down at least until the end of March. After today, my kids will be out of school until April 6, and that's presuming the virus is on the decline at that point, which is questionable.

Wednesday my church cancelled classes, and last night they announced that they will be live-streaming a worship service without a congregation on Sunday. Boy Scout and Cub Scout meetings have yet to be cancelled, but I'll be shocked if they don't follow suit. Thankfully, the den I lead just finished the work for their Wolf badges on Monday so it won't he a huge loss if we don't meet for a month. So far, our only regular activity that has declared itself open is The Little Gym, where Kittygirl takes gymnastics.

Technically, Kittygirl is at higher risk because she has diabetes. From what I've gleaned, however, as a child with well controlled diabetes, her risk is only a tiny bit higher. If she got the virus it would affect her blood sugar and add an extra component to treatment, but I'm not any more concerned for her than I am for myself, my husband, or Squirrelboy. I'm more concerned for my parents and in laws, who are in their 70's and 80's. Both my father and father in law also have chronic health conditions that increase their risk. However, they both have practiced a lot of social distancing since retiring, spending most of their time in their homes, so hopefully that will keep them from getting infected.

As a parent, I'm trying to remain calm about this pandemic for the sake of my kids. They're both bummed about school closing starting next week (which surprised me in Squirrelboy's case because he's having a rough semester). Kittygirl has heard lists of who is at higher risks, including those with chronic diseases like diabetes, and asked if she needs to be concerned. At this point, I believe I'm being honest when I tell her that she's still not at high risk because very few kids have gotten the virus and those who have have had mild symptoms.

The kids will come home today with some suggested educational activities but no firm assignments, from what I understand. I'm going to try to make the best of the downtime and the forced time together. I hope to finish reading aloud Little Women to Kittygirl (we just finished chapter 4, so we have a long way to go). I may be able to re initiate storytime with Squirrelboy. Hopefully the kids will get along well enough to play some board games together. If we're all feeling well and there are no specific instructions issued against such activities we'll take walks around our neighborhood, go out to the mountain bike trails, and do some hiking locally.

While I would take this burden away from the world if I could, since I can't, I'm doing my best to think of this forced downtime as an opportunity to step back from our busy lives, rest, and reconnect. I was particularly struck by this poem which has been making the rounds on social media. I don't know the blogger etiquette for sharing someone else's poetry, so hopefully I'm not breaking any rules here.


Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

--Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

We are all deeply interconnected, maybe even more than we thought we were. We're seeing a serious negative consequence right now, but there are positive consequences as well. After this crisis subsides, I hope we can find new ways to bless each other. During the crisis, I hope that those of us who are not sickened but choose to pull away to protect others, can embrace the forced rest from our regular lives and find some of the rest our society often lacks. And in case  you're stressed out and needs some cheering up, here's an adorable picture of a kitten in a box.