On the first day of school I woke up early to go for a bike ride. Ya know, nothing like a little early-morning exercise before the 11th plague descends on your house — virtual learning. While cycling, I took a wrong turn and ended up going down a big hill. Not a huge problem, except
Well, here we are. Summer is nearly over; we’re in the countdown to back-to-school for the strangest academic year ever. That’s a true statement, right? I’m pretty sure I can say that without fact-checking. School has never been so strange, uncertain, controversial, and wildly different from one district to the next. My kids’ school will
My kids are both participating in their school’s summer school program this month. The main reason I signed them up was to get a preview of what virtual school might look like in the fall. I hoped this would give me and the kids a chance to get comfortable on the platforms they’ll be using,
In the past few weeks, my church has been slowly and cautiously resuming in-person worship services. In an effort to love and protect attendees, and out of deference to authorities, there is a litany of strange, “never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine this” precautions. Once everything started shutting down, church was the
For ten weeks I faithfully documented our quarantine. I published week 10 just after Thomas’s birthday, and after that I started wondering how long I’d keep this up. See, when I started, I thought the quarantine would be temporary. And I thought that it would end with us flinging open the doors and returning to
If you’d like a quick lesson on the lunacy of Confederate monuments, you should explain them to kids. Pare it down as much as possible, don’t let your bias cloud the water. There was a war — the north versus the south. The south lost. These statues are to commemorate the soldiers that fought for the
Are you planting a Quarantine Garden? Or, to use the more hopeful name, a Victory Garden. A few weeks ago I packed up my face mask, hand sanitizer, and my best “don’t you dare come within six feet of me” glare, and went to a local garden center. At that point, I hadn’t been out
Every now and then it’s good to have a moment that helps you see how you’re coping. A litmus test, sort of. A gut check. For me it came during Mary’s Google meeting with her class. Mary wanted to show Brigham for show-and-tell, and when I went to get him I saw a huge gash
Week five. Is it really just week five? Doesn’t it seem like longer? And also shorter? And like we’re already well into summer but yesterday was Easter? This week, SURPRISE, Tom got strep. Now we’ve each had it twice, and I’m living in a constant state of thinking I have strep. We were talking about
For the past few months I’ve had a standing social engagement on the calendar. As far as I can remember, it’s one of the only times I’ve done something like this in years. I don’t take the kids, and I don’t arrange for childcare. I just walk out of the house like an actual grownup