Tuesday: muffled

Sunday night was capped by the death of a coworker.  While I wouldn't call her a close friend, we did always stop to chat for a minute in the hallway when we saw each other and there was a relationship.

Grieving yesterday felt muffled.  I was at home and the family didn't know her.  They went about their day as normal.  I've noticed this with the few deaths that have happened this year.  It seems as though there should be more mourning, but it can be hard to do so when circumstances are already so weird this year.

Today all feelings felt muted.  Oh, except for the time Joshua spilled water on our good laptop.  Those feelings were loud.  (It is currently drying and I'm optimistic, but we'll see.)  It's been a hard few weeks, and so not having many feelings was a relief.

Every day is different, so we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Sunday: ...

I started the day out in a funk.

The day went downhill from there.

Saturday: made it

 The boys decided to do Lego fights with me this morning.  They always look a little different, but always consist of some Lego item coming upstairs to attack me.  Today I also got a lot of loot from them.  So much loot that it was about two handfuls.

At one point I started hiding in between attacks because...well, it isn't really a fun game.  Joshua decided to hide with me because at that point he was on my side.  So he took a blanket from the couch and put it in a place where it normally isn't.  Then he proceeded to put his head, but not his arms, under the blanket to hide better.  I just smiled and took a picture. 

Friday: eyes

 Isaac had his eye appointment today.  I remembered to go, so that's a bonus.  His eyes are great!

Yesterday I had a student who managed to hide their excel file while working on their exam.  (Instead of freezing rows.)  It took us five minutes, but we eventually found the file back.  The same thing happened today to a student while taking a make-up exam on zoom.  Her level of stress immediately went through the roof, but I knew what had happened and was able to walk her through it.  It wasn't stress-free, but I at least knew how to guide her.

Isaac is making a zoo-under-construction.  They let all the animals in too early.

Thursday: handwriting

 Isaac is learning cursive in school this year.  And by learning it, I mean he's doing a few pages in a workbook every week.

It has made me think about handwriting.  My grandparents' generation hand-writing was all cursive, all the time.  It also had a specific feel to it...handwriting between people is obviously different, but they were all taught it the same way.  It's a bit hard to read and a bit slanty.

I haven't really noticed much about my parents' generation, at least not that I can make broad statements about.  My mom had a wide cursive.  Dad...hmm.  I'm not sure.  The generation still writes in a lot of cursive I think, but I'm not as sure about that.

Then we get to my generation.  I've made my own print/cursive hybrid, which I think is rather common.  You'll notice on the chore list that I didn't even do "min" the same way within a minute.  Some words are print, some cursive, some a mix.  In school we had to write in cursive from 3rd-5th grade, if I recall correctly.  Enough to get it stuck in our brain, but not enough to make it stick well.  (I do tend to make my lower case l's in cursive though, because otherwise they look like 1's.  It's a problem in math.)

So I wonder about Isaac's generation.  Will he need to write in cursive in the coming years or is it something that is slowly dying out, with other things, like keyboarding skills, becoming more important?  What will his handwriting look like?  Will he incorporate any cursive?  For that matter, will his handwriting ever not look like a kid's?

Wednesday: VACCINE!

I got my first vaccine shot today!!  (It's the Pfizer one, if anyone cares.)  I had to go about a half hour away to get it, but my audio book is good.  I feel like I'm jumping the line a little bit, but I told the person on the phone that I'm not a K-12 educator but a higher ed educator.  She didn't seem to care and told me to take it.  (I'd like to note that I did refuse one in Holland.  They said that the higher ed people got lumped into the educator status before they realized the state was separating them.)  I'm not going to turn it down at that point!  As expected, the clinic was well run.  It was quite busy, but they were moving people through quickly too.  I got there a bit early...the paperwork said to get there 15 minutes early and then there was a sign by the door to wait until 5 minutes early.  Since I was already at the door I went in anyway and got my shot at 3:23, seven minutes before my scheduled appointment.  (The only reason I know the time is they wrote it on my paperwork because everyone has to stay around for 15 min.)  There was a place for a picture...it was supposed to be taken by someone else, but I just sort of snapped one on my way out.

Oddly enough, it is one year since all the COVID stuff started affecting me.  I was teaching last year (on a Tuesday) and was talking with some of the students before they left for spring break.  I had made a questionnaire to see which students would have problems if things were they didn't come back.  They asked if I thought we'd be back together after spring break and I said 50/50.  Little did I know...  It's really quite amazing what's been done in a year.  

All the virtual students are also getting some free meals through the school.  I thought about declining, but we really could use a change up in the food choices.  There's really only enough food for one student.  I'm not complaining because 1) it's free and 2) it's probably about the right amount of food.  I know the boys...they'll love the breakfasts but can split the lunches.  I made Joshua eat two green beans before he could have any more food and he really took it to heart, especially since I told him he couldn't even have food tomorrow if he didn't eat his two green beans.  He eventually put them in applesauce and got them down that way, but it was a bit of a struggle.

Tuesday: old

 Isaac looked rather old this afternoon while he was doing a search on something. 

Parent-teacher conferences were tonight.  Both boys are doing very well.  The biggest difference is that Joshua likes writing and Isaac doesn't.  Joshua needs to add spaces to his writing, but other than that the teacher is happy on how he is progressing.  Isaac's spelling is getting better.  (I've noticed it and his teacher noticed it.)  It's still not great, but he's about in the right spot for where he needs to be in third grade.  There are still some dumb mistakes that he makes, but it's getting there.  He also needs to do more reading aloud.  This one surprised me a little bit.  I've thought his out-loud reading has been fine.  Sometimes the cadence is off a bit, but it's not too bad.  (Some of that is probably because he can't read ahead while talking.  I've noticed I do that quite a bit to help with voices and different emphases, but it's probably an advanced skill.)  Anyway, we'll get it into the rotation homework.  He can read to Joshua, who probably needs a bit more reading to anyway.