gone

 Friday was an easy teaching day but became a hard day when communication with some parents didn't go well.  Apparently, "many people are upset with my communication style," which was news to me.  I told my admin, you can take the girl out of Boston but you can't take the Boston out of the girl.  I'm direct but I try to be as kind as possible.  There are times, though, when parents have to be told things they don't want to hear.   As the school year progresses and we work to hold students accountable, we're finding some parents aren't with us in that struggle.  

If you're talking about being "triggered" because your kid was assigned a detention for too many missing assignments, you've taken on a victim mentality.  That evil philosophy has no place in a Christian heart.  We all suffer, and we unite our suffering to Christ's on the Cross, but we work through our suffering as best we can to accomplish what we were put here to do.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so prickly about all that if it weren't happening now.  I did not intend to work until 5PM on Friday, but I did.  Even so, when I came home, DS2 and I went over his packing list and then went out to pick up the last few things he needed.  Even with the new packable down jacket, he could still fit everything into his backpack.  The packing list was remarkably short. 

I sat beside my baby at Mass yesterday so I could hear him sing one more time before he goes. 

Today I made a blueberry cake, a taste more than any that says "home."  But after fixing us all breakfast, I've basically been spinning my wheels all day.  We dropped the boy off at the recruiting station at 2 o'clock, and then did a few errands and came home.   He gave me a really wonderful hug and even said, "I love you, Mom."  By this time tomorrow, he'll be in Missouri where he'll go through boot camp.  We'll see him next at Christmas. 

My heart is feeling very squished.

I was feeling very "Christopher Robin leaving the Hundred Acre Woods"  (near-crippling nostalgia) so I called DD and had a lovely chat with her, and am feeling a bit better.  

It's just going to take a while to get used to this new reality, and for my heart to get used to that particular piece that resides in my younger son to be so very far away.  

attenuated

 I am stretched so very thin right now.  

I had this conversation with my partner teacher today.  We are both in the same place, where every night we are frantically preparing for the next day.  I haven't entered any but a few grades in the online grade book for going on three weeks now, but I'm so exhausted by the prospect that I'm writing this instead.

This week in particular feels like the difficulty setting has ticked up a few notches, but most of that is on me, because I'm choosing family over work more than usual this week.

There was a confluence of events: DD hit the wall up in Flagstaff, where her senior year of online classes and isolation, combined with being down with the flu for a week -- in spite of all the precautions! -- put her behind in most of her classes and feeling overwhelmed.  She needed a change of scenery at the very least.  Also, DS1's departure date has been finalized, and by this time next week he'll be at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri.   We talked Saturday evening and I decided to drive up and get her on Sunday so she could see her brother for a bit before he heads out on his great adventure. 

The thing is: Friday my students turned in their research papers, and I graded all of them before going to bed late Friday.  Saturday was a blur of curriculum development for religion and 8th grade, which left me on the hook for just 7th grade after getting back from Flagstaff (at least a 6 hour round trip.)  It's usually not too bad, I port my power points into Google Slides, make a few quick forms, no big deal.  This week? Nope -- a chapter review and an assessment, neither of which I could find from last year.  Making this stuff from scratch is so tedious! Eh, I finished what I needed last night, but now I've been up past midnight, sometimes well past midnight, four or five nights in a row and I feel like death.

Oh yeah.  I was supposed to have my observation today, so of course that involved extra planning and making sure I had something at least somewhat following the usual lesson outline.  My admin never showed up, so I suppose I'll have to reschedule.  I can not express how little I care about this right now.  I'm just too tired to waste any energy on it. 

We had a couple of lovely family dinners before DD headed back up to Flagstaff, driving herself up in that fourth car we no longer need.  This gives her the flexibility to come down for Thanksgiving on her own timing, not having to rely on anyone else.  She'd like to trade it in for a pickup truck, so that will be her project once her semester is over.  

The house is already too big but it's going to seem even more so after DS2 heads out. I told him I don't know what I'll do when he's gone, because sometimes he's the only person in the entire family that understands me.  My conscience brain is happy and excited for him to be moving on with his life, especially in such a productive way.  My heart, though, feels like it's being squished.  I don't want to make time stand still -- especially not now -- it's just my old struggle against change.   I know it's futile and I don't talk about it, because there's nothing to say.  I just know that once he goes, he's never coming back, at least not as he is now. Growth is a good thing, a wonderful thing.  I wish I could be there to see it all.

shingles?

Man, I am cranky. Like I want to yell at everyone and everything.  I did, in fact, yell at DH after dinner today for doing something he does all the time: challenges me on a detail when I have just, in fact, said I wasn't sure about said detail.  I had already warned him I was super cranky, so I quite loudly asked him to give me a break and could he just knock it off for once.  I think he's afraid to talk to me now.

I'm blaming whatever is going on with my back for all this negativity.  I noticed it yesterday afternoon, an odd kind of itchy, burning sensation in a strip between my spine and shoulder blade.  It varies from killing me to being totally ignorable, and I dug around a bit and found the symptoms are consistent with shingles.

Great.

I used my entire lunch hour being on hold with my doctor's office but finally getting through at the last minute, and then miraculously getting an appointment with a PA during my prep time.  I was gone just a smidge over an hour, but the PA was great and agreed there's a good chance that it's shingles.   Right now I don't even have a rash, just a tiny area of redness, but the area of sensitivity is much larger and apparently now wrapping around through my armpit to my breast (yay)... but that's off and on.  The back discomfort/pain/weirdness has been steadily getting worse all evening, to the point I broke down and took some ibuprofen, then hemmed and hawed for another 10 minutes, then finally took the first dose of the anti-viral.

I read the info sheet.  I think I should  never read the info sheet because then I know about the side effects and immediately think I have all of them.  But screw it, I don't want to wait any longer to see if this gets worse, because then the anti-viral will be basically useless.  On the other hand, the PA assured me that taking the anti-viral if it's not shingles isn't going to hurt me in any way.  

The pills are HUGE and really bright blue.  Very weird.  I hope they work.  I hope the ibuprofen kicks in soon, and I hope this chip on my shoulder goes away in the process.  Wanting to bite everyone's head off is no way to go through life. 

I am taking myself off to bed in the further hope of feeling better.  Nerve pain is the worst. 

You can get used to anything.

 Last Monday, I realized it had happened.  We'd survived 2 weeks of in-person hybrid teaching and were about to embark on Week 3 when I caught myself mentally ticking off the things I needed to do, with no extra anxiety or irritation.

You really can get used to anything.  

Now we've been through three weeks of this insanity, and we're adjusting as we go because it doesn't seem as if it's going to end any time soon, in spite of AZ's continuously improving COVID-related metrics.  Chandler public schools will be back in-person after their fall break on Oct 13, but we have no such promises, being a private and lawsuit-shy school.  At this point, I just shrug and say, we do what we have to do. 

At least this week will be short, I'm taking off Friday's professional development day.  Next week will be, as well -- we have Monday off as a holiday.  Yay! 

DS2 is now Army Private DS2, and will be leaving for basic training in Missouri on October 26, exactly 2 months after he was originally scheduled to leave.  His MOS has changed completely, and he'll be working under Top Secret clearance when he has completed his training.  I can't really believe it's happening, but I suppose it is.  It will be so good for him to not be idle.  It has been too long since he's had something productive to do.

Science fair is well under way, more or less.  Again, continuous improvement (she laughs) -- this year I literally told each student exactly what he or she needed to look up for their research, and so far the results are somewhat better.  I just spent about 2 hours making a clickable Research Directory, and looking up articles for new topics my students are experimenting with this year.  Is it possible for something to be simultaneously tedious and fun?  I suppose not.  Making the Research Directory, with its 100+ links, was tedious.  Finding new articles for my students was fun.  

So, tomorrow will be grading research paper drafts.  I managed to get all my lesson planning and curriculum development done for all 3 subjects between yesterday and today, which is fantastic.  I made the effort this week to work on planning and curriculum during my prep hours, and it paid off.  I need to keep that up, but there has to be a balance between grading and planning/development.  I must do the planning (can't have idle students!), so the grading gets pushed.  Fortunately much more of the grading this year is of the "Import Grades" variety, where I push a button and Google tells me how the students scored.  Of course I created all these assignments so it's not as if I'm not investing anything there, it's just that the investment is up front.  I'm sincerely hoping I can use all this stuff again next year.

I'm loving the new tools I have for student engagement, but I'm still struggling with how little discussion there is in my classes these days.  Mostly because students are writing their responses, but I miss the talking that's not me!  I will see what I can do about that this week.  Last week I managed to convert two of my favorite assignments, one for 7th science and one for 8th science (the Laws of Motion workbook.)  I'm reasonably certain the 8th graders will be able to handle using Google Draw to create their force diagrams.   We'll see how it goes.

That's all anyone can do at this point, right? Even though we're all used to this now.