Holy shit, it’s Week 50. I can’t believe I’ve been at this for almost an entire year…
An entire, shitty year — entirely shitty. An entire entirely shitty year.
Alas, I’m spent. Can you tell?
Sunday
I’m early with the Christmas cards this year. Or… holiday cards, since they’re more about connection during this season than they are about Christmas. I put on my “Channel Your Flannel” playlist and wrote out thirteen or so cards. I believe in a handwritten, personalized message. Sammy supports this effort by curling up behind me and purring.
Monday
What are parents for, if not to come over to your house and fix stuff for you while agitating each other with miscommunication.
Tuesday
Sammy says, “Let me help you with this video you’re making for your students.”
Wednesday
Tyson and Sammy had a good twenty-minute stare down. It’s… saying something… that this was the highlight of my day.
Thursday
Sammy thought our meeting was a waste of time. I don’t even remember what we talked about. Everything blurs together these days. But I know later we had our meet with the superintendent. Over an hour and a half of the faculty trying to explain to her that we’re stressed AF, that instruction is suffering, and that it’s time to go fully remote.
I wasn’t going to speak up — I feel guilty about being home on doctor’s orders because of this flippin’ autoimmune disease. My coworkers are the ones physically in the building dealing with those stressors and those risks… But after I put something in the chat, three people immediately text me and told me to ask my question aloud. One of those people was my principal. So I did. I respectfully asked a question and the superintendent respectfully admitted that she didn’t really have an answer any more.
I felt like we’d been heard. Until a few hours later when we got another official message saying 38 MORE students and faculty need to be quarantined, but that our schools don’t need to close. On our team (students are split into teams at our school) of 96 students, over 40 have been quarantined. It’s unreal.
But I was mostly very proud of the way the faculty discussed the issues with our admin. We were professional, but we spoke candidly. We advocated for ourselves, but with our students’ best interests in mind as well. And though we were pissed as hell to get the call later that informed us the superintendent knew about more cases and more contact tracing before our meeting, ultimately we were victorious. Friday evening we received a notification that we will be remote until January 19th. So that’s something.
Friday
Nick: “Sometimes you have these moments when you look at where you’re at and you ask yourself if you’d ever have expected this. Like, a year ago, if someone had said ‘A year from now, you’ll be sitting on the garage floor eating Christmas cookies with Ash and Tiff,’ I’d have been like, ‘Really??’“
So we had Nick put it in his phone. In one year he’ll get a notification saying he was sitting on the garage floor eating Christmas cookies with us. And I guess we’ll see how much has changed in that time.
Saturday
Sammy is helping me with the groceries. He likes to check and make sure the Hannaford To Go people didn’t try to hide anything shady in my bags, like bombs or cat meds.