Welp.
...
I hear nothing but the clock tick. tick. tick. ticking. The little black dog softly snoring next to me. He shouldn't be on the bed. Two dogs accustomed to sleeping in bed is too many dogs, but he is still small and soft. Anyway, the brown hippo dog is sleeping with one of the kids at the moment.
I hear my own mouth breathing. Or, my whistling nose. I can kind of breathe through my left nostril at the moment, although that is usually the bad one.
Breathing slowly. Tick. tick. tick. It's so quiet I can hear my ears ringing a bit, another testament to my perpetually pressurized head.
I hear the brown dog snoring across the hall in my daughter's room, and then her little voice in the dark. "What?" I say. "Nothing, Ferd was snoring and I was making him stop. Love you!" she chirps. "Love you too!" I reply. Then silence again.
Tick. tick. tick.
I hear a click down the hallway as the thermostat engages, and then the furnace powering on beneath my feet in the basement. It sounds like a space shuttle for a second.
I need more back support, so I grab another one of my husband's extra pillows and stuff it behind me. I think he has 4 or 5 pillows to himself. He's working nights this week though, and has been for seemingly forever. I love the quiet and the independence, but it has just been me and the kids for ages and I'm pretty exhausted. Not that it's at all quiet until the kids are in bed, and then it's disturbingly quiet.
Tick. tick. tick. Puppy sighs heavily.
I rest my head against the wrought iron rail of our headboard. It's not super comfy. I stare at the wall and the crooked pictures. The sloppy stacks of laundry and clothes that need to be donated. The pile of mail and paperwork that I moved from the kitchen when we were having company, intending to go through it later but now it is just languishing in our bedroom indefinitely. It's on top of an empty metal filing cabinet that for some reason my husband thought we needed, which also came to die in our bedroom. This is the sexiest room in the house, as indicated by the presence of the vacuum cleaner and the dog kennel, and the armoir with no doors.
Despite the fact that he's been working nights for a month, this is the first night I felt like I have time to myself after putting the kids to bed, that I don't have more work to do or that I'm not so tired that I also pass right out at 9pm. I've had a nagging urge to write for weeks now, about parenting, my teaching job, the pandemic, and politics, but there's so much to unpack that I don't even know where to start.
So I stare at the wall and listen to the clock tick. tick. ticking and commence with this stream-of-consciousness.
The furnace just kicked it up a notch, activating a quiet tinkling sound in the bathroom. I temporarity relocated an outdoor windchime that was too raucous in the wind. That temporary relocation was months ago now, so now I get windchimes when the heat is in high gear.
Now the heat is off again and I'm powerfully aware of the overwhelming silence. God, how loud is that heater? My typing is deafening. The wind sounds like the ocean in the trees outside.
My toenails are too long. My legs are hot under these blankets with these sweat pants on. I need to put my glasses on for my tired eyes but the lenses are smudged and I can't stand it. I tried cleaning them but just made it worse.
Tick. tick. tick.
I think it's been 2 years since I've written and I am rusty. So much change in two years' time. The kids are 10 and almost 12; we have amassed a collection of 4 dogs, 1 cat, and no livestock.
It's almost a year since Covid-19 hit the fan, and I feel like I can count the number of times we've left the house on one hand. Not literally of course, but since I have been teaching remotely and the kids have been attending school virtually since last spring, there's not much need to leave.
The introverted homebody hermit in me rejoices.
The guilty mother weeps.
...
In 2019, before everything, I somehow scored a job teaching art at the local middle school. It's a great school with wonderful admin and staff and an awesomely enormous art room. I was concurrently taking online classes at a university for an alternative licensing program while completely winging it during my first year of teaching full-time at a public school. Our school is on trimesters, which I dislike, but that's neither here nor there.
My first trimester was a whirlwind of college coursework at night and building the plane while flying it in class, with thirty 12-15 year olds in classes back to back with a 3-minute passing period. My second trimester was more of the same, but I was starting to get in my groove at school. My third trimester was just getting started and I was feeling pretty good, when we got word of a new virus. I bought a few extra cans of Lysol to spray down the community paintbrushes and was suddenly hyper aware of how often I was touching my face.
Then we were shut down. Just for a week, they said at first. Then it became a month. Then it was the rest of the trimester. Last spring, teachers had to "pivot" in a day from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom. I had to figure out how to record lessons and art demonstrations and post everything online--it was all new, and we were on our own. No training, no technology supplied. At that time, we were just posting asychronous classwork for students to complete on their own time, rather than scheduling virtual meets. The very idea of having that much screen time--an entire school day--on the computer in Zoom or Google meets was abhorrent.
Now look at us. I'm on Google from 7:30am-2:30pm, sharing the shoddy internet with both my kids who are also logged into school meets all day. I have mastered the art of live demonstrations on a doc cam, streaming through one laptop while I moniter the participants in the other laptop, making conversation with blank screens and cheerfully calling the names of ghosts that never respond or turn in work.
I will say there are some perks to teaching remotely. A few students that have blossomed in a remote environment: some painfully withdrawn, depressed kids that I had in person last year have become the most active, engaged participants in our remote "classroom". I have also enjoyed being able to focus on basic art and drawing skills, due to the limited supplies, and it's nice to actually take the time to complete my example artwork. My voice isn't hoarse my the end of the day and there are no behavior issues. I can go upstairs and pet the dogs and hug my kids and grab a snack. There's no commute. There's no clean-up. I can wear sweat pants and slippers.
Since August, our district has gone from hybrid to remote to hybrid several times already. Lots of teachers did not and do not feel safe teaching in person, and some were able to get remote assignments for the year--myself included. I was, and am, intensely conflicted about it. Yes there are perks, but also significant disadvantages, particularly the lack of connection with students, and missing my coworkers. And the seven-layer guilt cake.
But this is a new virus. We are learning more every day about the effects, both short-term and long-term, and how different people react differently to it. With myself and 3 members of my immediately family having asthma, it just wasn't, and isn't, worth the risk. Couple that with my horribly effed sinuses that force me to burn through a box of kleenex a minute and there's no way I would ever even pass the basic screening questions meant to weed out anyone with cold and flu symptoms.
That said, I am getting the vaccine this weekend. The controversial yet highly in demand vaccine that was just made available to teachers, on the heels of the high risk and the elderly. Teachers were scrambling to find one available, signing up with every grocery store pharmacy and health care center that offered them, constantly reloading webpages and making phone calls to see if they could find an opening. There was a batch of 200 announced available to our district of 14k employees, if they could make it in an hour, and thousands of them rushed to the site to abandon their cars in the traffic jam and race to the building. It's surreal.
Thankfully, my school managed to schedule a clinic for our staff. I don't know what is happening with the rest of our embarrassingly disorganized district though. Strangely, I was notified of my vaccine appointment via text message at 9:30 this evening by my friend the orchestra teacher. Not the district admin, not the medical center, nothing official. A text from a friend. I suspect it was just my little staff that put this together, with no help from the higher-ups. No surprise really.
The whole thing is absurd. Such a lack of leadership. On the federal level on down to the school district. Now that Biden is in office, thank God, he is trying to organize the previously nonexistent pandemic response but it's already such a disaster. I'm not prepared to get into politics right now, but I'll just say that I am happy to never hear 45's name ever again. We just need to get his pesky post-presidency impeachment trial about his inciting the Capital insurrection over with. No biggie.
Sigh.
Tick. tick. tick.
Anyway. I'm getting my vaccine. I'm having sinus surgery in a few weeks. Then I'll most likely go back to teaching in person. At least until I get laid off...
Apparently there is a budget shortage and the district needs to cut $6.5 million or some insane figure, with nearly half a million just from our little school somehow. New teachers are the first on the chopping block. (Never mind the hundreds of central admin making over $100k). So there's that. I'll be devastated if that happens, but then again, will I?
This last year and a half has been a crash course in our dysfunctional school system. Everyone knows teachers are underpaid, and it's true, but I knew that getting into it. What I had to experience first hand to understand fully was just how overworked and underappreciated teachers are. I regularly work 10-12 hour days and every weekend. I'm neglecting my own family and home because of how much I work. The classes are too big. The expecations are too high and too many. The amount of paperwork, meetings, and extra bullshit is suffocating. The resources and support are too scarce. And this pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the great disdain and disregard the general public--and district admin--has for teachers.
I love my immediate school and coworkers. I love teaching art to middle schoolers. But this has been an overwhelming initiation to say the least. I just want one regular year with no extra college coursework, no induction classes, no pandemic, and no remote learning. ONE. NORMAL. YEAR. So I know what this job is actually supposed to be like.
But hey. C'est la vie.
Sniff. Sigh.
Tick. tick. tick.
...
My 6th grade son and 5th grade daughter have been incredible. They are sweet and smart and happy and wonderful and rarely complain and I love having this time with them. On the other hand, they yell and argue and fight constantly and aren't completing their schoolwork and never pick up after themselves and are generally irritating to be around. I feel like a stay at home mom all over again, except that they can feed themselves and don't wear diapers.
I love them so much though. I am so lucky. They are really amazing humans and are weathering this storm with aplomb.
But good God I am burned out. Burned out from teaching. Burned out from parenting. Burned out from pandemic-ing. Burned out from blowing my stupid nose constantly. At least there is a light at the end of some of those tunnels.
All I want is 3 feet of snow and no obligations and a month on a private tropical beach. Simultaneously. Is that too much to ask? Oh yeah, and to lose the 20 lbs I've gained this year, instantaneously.
...
I'm going to bed.
This was quite cathartic. Thanks for listening, internet void. Maybe next time it will be more fun.
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