What is bringing me joy this morning is having the perfect blog post title pop into my head as I was in non-stop motion this morning — if you know me and and have my same sense of humor then you’ll get that this real life drama feels like a poorly written, unintentional comedy. Those who don’t get the reference should go watch The Office immediately.
I started writing this yesterday on our 3rd day of remote schooling. This week has been a blur of activity as the kids were home, but I had to go to work at school. I can’t remember who I’ve told what to, but schools here are closed for 4 weeks and all kids are restricted from campus, but staff still has to go work to get this remote learning thing off the ground, so I’ve been busy with the tech team sorting and getting tech items into the hands of those families at school who need them. We had 2 distribution evenings where parents came to pick up the ipads or computers that their elementary students usually use in class so they can continue working from home.
So I’ve been at school in the morning and the evenings and the kids have been like feral animals at home. That’s probably not a fair assessment, since I think they’ve all been getting their schoolwork done, but between church and work demands, I’ve not had any time to supervise them other than through text or yelling at them over the phone.
This week there has been lots of yelling, lots of apologizing, and lots of texting to 3rd parties to tattle on each other in a Round Robin of blame. As soon as one blowup is resolved, another one erupts — all centered around what they are allowed to do when not in class. I want them to look around and see what needs to be done; they think freedom from class means freedom from responsibility and a free for all on TV and games.
When your college age son calls to ask what’s going on because son number 2 has been ranting to him via text about how unreasonable mom is being . . . meanwhile I’m messaging Josh to tell him how I’m not going to make it through the next month if his boys can’t stop thinking only of themselves and having fun, and I’m pretty sure one of the Aunties had to step in to smooth things over via text . . . it’s not been a stellar week all around.
Thankfully I don’t have to work today, day 4 of this made for TV movie. We started with apologies and a promise to work harder to understand each other and I did see that wet towels were picked up off of the floor and the bathroom wasn’t left as if a tsunami had swept through it, so that’s real progress.
Right now I’m waiting to see if we can meet for church tomorrow or if the government has cancelled all gatherings. All public events have been cancelled for March and April (as of last night’s announcement) and rumors are spreading that we might continue with remote learning until the end of the year. I’m not worried, just worn out as things are changing by the day.
I hear you! My boss is closing all of his offices today, worldwide. Although many have been closed for a week. And we expect all the kids schools to be closed as of end of day. So we could have 6-7 people here weekdays for weeks and weeks. My schedule could be cut in half but I’ve already been exposed where they have been exposed and just drive home to my own house. It’s hard to get my head around. The kids have no clue yet what this will look like…no going out to lunch and no playdates or “study” dates for remote learning. I love the kids…but en mass not so much.