Saturday: kids

 Well, I was rather fed up with the kids today.  I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what set me off.  My to-do list is larger than it's been since the beginning of the year.  It isn't all super important, but it does include things that I'd like to get done.  And the kids are just so messy.  I have enough to do without reminding them over and over to clean up.  Or, let's be honest, cleaning up for them because it's easier.

I called them upstairs a few minutes before dinner time to do a few minutes of extra cleaning.  They weren't happy about it, but they didn't really complain either.  Which was lucky for them, because my mood had gone down surprisingly fast and they weren't going to get any dinner.  At least, not dinner prepared by me.

In better news, Joshua ended up making his own lunch today.  I think I was taking too long.  Surprisingly, he cleaned up after himself!  (I understand that I just complained about them not cleaning up.  I still think my point above is a bit valid.)  He put the crunchy beans back in the chip area with the clip on...but neglected to realize that it works best when the top is folded. :D

Wednesday: we're all at home

 Hmm.  I don't have much to say.  I almost made both boys cry today, but they held it together even though they did want to do whatever it was I asked of them.  

It was Ben's first day of working back at home for a while again.  Sort of.  I mean, he was on medical leave and then back in the office for not very long (three days?  week and three days?) and then working at home for his cold and then back in the office for two days and now working back at home due to whatever catch-phrase we have now.  The boys can't keep straight whether Ben is downstairs working or at work working.

Tuesday: spice rack

 I got a new spice rack today.  I realized that the old one wasn't doing it for me.  It was a little bit too high and so I didn't put the spices away well.

I opened up the shipping box today and noticed that the spice rack box had been opened and was lumpy.  Oh, I must have gotten a return.  I hoped it was ok.

After I opened it, I found an extra spice rack inside!  It still must have been a return, but they returned an extra one in the box for some reason.

I don't have a before picture, but the before picture didn't look all that bad.  There's plenty of space in this cupboard because I try not to put too much in the deep corners.  The second shelf got moved up and now isn't super useful, but we're going to give this a try.

In other news, while I was making dinner Joshua decided he wanted to put holes in a box with a chop stick.  He was having so much fun that Isaac immediately joined him.  I'm not sure why Joshua wanted to do such a thing, but it brought them both joy.

Monday: remote learning

Yesterday the governor announced that all high schools and colleges would transition to remote learning as of this coming Wednesday.

Bother.  We were so close.  We got through everything except final exams.

Now, if this were just an excel class I wouldn't mind.  I've been giving remote exams all semester; I've got it down pat.  The problem is that we also spend a few weeks at the end using Microsoft Access.  1) Access doesn't work on Macs.  2) The remote desktops aren't working from off-campus for Macs.  (Why?  They used to work. I gave up for the semester.)  3) Most students have Macs.

If we could have transitioned oh, two weeks earlier that would have been great and I would have just pivoted the learning plan.  So now the students are getting fill-in-the-blank/short answer/multiple choice questions for the Access part.  It seems a bit dumb, because I feel as though even if they've never seen Access before they'd still be able to pull at least 90% on this part.  I suppose we'll find out; maybe I'm overestimating.  

A few things that I need to keep in mind...the final exam affects their grade but not by a ton and it will be significantly easier to grade.  And sometimes it's nice to give the students something easy.  It's been a hard semester.

Ah, the adventures of living through a pandemic.

(In other news, the boys' school is all going to be learning virtually for the week after Thanksgiving, which I think is a great idea.  However, for any students that are transitioning back to in-person school, they'll be at school for all of 2.5 days and then have Thanksgiving and then have a week back in virtual.  It seems awkward.)

Saturday: Lego sets

 We took apart most of the Hidden Sides Lego sets that were up for Halloween yesterday.  We realized we started the project too late.  So we started the Christmas Lego sets today!  Well, Joshua worked on his own thing, but we all worked at the same time.  It was a lot of fun.

Friday: negative

 Ben is negative for COVID!!!

The results came through at 4:30am.  Ben woke me up at 6:30 and I got to sleep in a bed for the last hour.  Oh, it was so nice to have him back.  The boys greatly enjoyed it too.

I hope this is the only time I need to say, "I didn't go* to work for a week and a half** because my husband had a slight cold."

*I still worked.  It was just virtually, which really was probably harder because a lot of things I'd normally just do I had to reassign.
**It was really 8 days, but it managed to get three class periods.  Since I only teach twice per week, I can say a week and a half.

Thursday: technology

 Today was the last day of classes!  I wasn't there because we still don't have results, but they were pretty small.  Review days often are, especially when the review is now on-line.

Anyway, remember a few days ago I complained about not being able to get remote desktop working for Mac users?  Well, it still doesn't work.  So we're getting creative.  Two students in quarantine are borrowing old laptops that the department still has.  The rest get to use their zoom skills.  We join a zoom meeting and then they take control of my laptop and do what they need.  (There's nothing important on laptop and I don't really pay much attention.)  But here was the cool part.  Today one of the students in quarantine needed the PC for a tutoring session.  So they both did a zoom meeting with my laptop and I gave the student control of the laptop.  It seemed like a super weird way to get around the problem, but it totally worked.  It's the small victories.  I need all the small victories right now.

In other news, we also had parent teacher conferences.  Video conferences this year!  Joshua is doing great and we actually finished before our time was up.  (Although I'll admit, there isn't quite as much to talk about because I'm much more involved and there aren't as many social skills to discuss.)  Joshua is coming out of his shell though in the smaller meeting that they have.

Isaac's teacher is really pleased with his progress too.  She said that he needs to slow down a bit with ELA, but based on everything I think they really need to tell him to use more words.  He is a boy of few words but we've been talking about it for the last few weeks and it's getting better.  She also said that the help that I'm giving him is appropriate.  Sometimes she very clearly directs a student what to write (minus actually giving it to them word for word) so that made me feel better.  It's a fine line between making them do it on their own and doing it for them sometimes.  She's also going to start giving him slightly harder math, which will be good.

Well, still no pictures.  Sometime I should take a picture of Joshua's desk.  I now understand why teachers want 48 pencils and two of everything else.  Joshua drops them all the time and then "can't find them"!  It's a treasure chest under there.