Month: April 2020

Coronatine, Day Thirty-eight

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these organized shelves

ready to be fully stocked

with his last paychecks:

they represent us,

our Coronatine journal,

worry turned to work

work we’re still doing

with tiny pics on small screens

working for our kids

our creative kids

with a cat-house-building night

paw prints, love, and all

“new normal” softens

as we make the best of fate

on day thirty-eight

Coronatine, Day Thirty-seven

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i’m back to haikus

(they suit the whole me better)

they’re written on bikes

the Denver sunshine

wins this quarantined Sunday

for those who listen

it seems so simple

to follow the rules. stay home.

be careful outside.

and at home? snuggle.

love the soft spaces of life.

soft spaces of love.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-six (10×10)

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I’ve made it to the final day of gratitude! The ten last bits of gratitude for the Coronatine.

  1. Always love a bike ride. We wore the new masks my friend made, even though I’ll admit they weren’t wholly necessary because I planned a route that did not involve crowds (I have avoided the Cherry Creek path like the plague, pun intended).
  2. We stopped at a local cafe. Of course, it wasn’t the same. We couldn’t sit down, we couldn’t have a nice brunch, but we could still get some lattes and support a local business and tip the server with a 50% tip.
  3. While we were riding, we saw the Thunderbirds fly right over us on 12th Avenue!
  4. I spent a lot of time this morning reviewing our budget. I rarely do, and in fact don’t really deal with our money because Bruce is a money master. But I think it might be possible, if we are very careful, to live on my salary (which they’re already threatening might be frozen soon) and our savings for a year, so hopefully, that will give the economy enough time to recover and Bruce to be able to find work.
  5. Speaking of that salary, I am SO GRATEFUL that I just got a raise on March 1 because of my National Board Certification. What a difference that will make!
  6. I reorganized the garage, the hall closet, and the basement storage room to make more space for stocking up on supplies while we still have two paychecks. It really is nice to have time to do this without the craziness of working so many hours, especially since Bruce was going to be laid off anyway before the quarantine was put in place.
  7. I really do work at an amazing place with extremely dedicated teachers and students. Our school’s weekly news show has continued during this crazy time, and this week included an in-depth interview with an NFL player who graduated from South in 2004. He couldn’t stop talking about how influential his teachers were and how his experiences traveling to New York on a student trip and participating in the musical made high school so special. It’s so nice to hear that and to know how important schools are in the lives of students.
  8. My counselor colleague helped me (through a Facebook post) avoid paying the AP exam fees for the four AP exams for Izzy and Mythili! I really hope that this virus will help everyone realize what a scam standardized tests are. I’m so over the College Board and AP. It’s a bait and switch, most colleges won’t give you credit, and most students can’t get the score they need anyway. So I’m hopeful that all of these tests will become less important in the future.
  9. In cleaning out the garage, I found the tent stakes I’ve been meaning to put in the tent bag, and since a neighbor girl needed to earn a Girl Scout badge by setting up a tent and didn’t have her own, the tent was already out! I have been trying to get those stakes into that stake bag for three years, and it took coronavirus to make it happen!
  10. Let’s hope we can camp this summer, or at least go on hikes. Let’s just keep hoping that something is gonna give, soon. Testing, isolation, whatever it takes. Because we gotta make this work for our world. We just gotta.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-five (10×9)

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This will make 90 things I’ve managed to muster for gratitude during the quarantine. Today is not hard. I am going to try to make this easier day by day, but today is unique.

  1. What a sunrise. There are benefits to never being able to sleep in.
  2. Mythili let me cut her hair. Sure, I’m not a hairstylist, but why not? Thank the lord my girls didn’t get my curls, otherwise I surely would have screwed this up.
  3.  Izzy let me braid her hair, and I think, after fifteen years of this, I have improved!
  4. Riona made this lemon pound cake for Izzy. For all of us. For tonight.
  5. Fabian helped me move all the furniture in the basement. Or, as he pointed out, he moved all the furniture while I was a spectator. He also blew up all the balloons, nailed these sheets to the wall, and made our basement Virtual Prom ready.
  6. We managed to surprise Izzy!
  7. This man. Walking home with champagne to put into the orange juice I spent an hour hand-squeezing and a bouquet of flowers for his daughter’s Virtual Prom 2020.
  8. This family ready to eat risotto, filet mignon, and cashew salad (thank you Costco). Everyone wearing their best.  
  9. My middle Mythili making this professional-grade prom poster with some of the tagboard I snatched in my five-minutes-allowed trip to my classroom, tagboard that’s the wrong color for our theme, but who the fuck cares? 
  10. My girls being girls and kicking me out of the basement for taking pics or videos. Being teenagers. So happy, so full of sass, so themselves.

Be grateful. Be yourselves. Make the best of this shit. That’s all for today.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-four (10×8)

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So grateful for:

  1. My pup in my lap. Even though he got a new bed. He’s very warm on a cold day.
  2. We played cards last night for Mythili’s “Yes Day.” She managed to explain Egyptian Rat Slap to me in a way I could easily explain it to Fabian, and everyone had a good time with it coming down to a contest between Mythili and Fabian!
  3. Being able to make French toast and eggs with strawberries on a Thursday morning.
  4. I was so happy to deliver food again today for one of my Newcomer families.
  5. The Facebook page #aworldofhearts. This page is so inspiring, and our heart picture (V for Vittetoe and Victory over Virus!) is, well, heartwarming every time I’m walking home.
  6. My orchid is fully bloomed. Bruce got this for me for my birthday three years ago, and it’s fully bloomed for this year’s Coronatine birthday.
  7. Streaming services. It’s not just Netflix, but Amazon Prime, Apple Music, and Pandora. I use the music ones more than the video ones. I love being able to listen to whatever music I choose, commercial-free, all day and night.
  8. My dog loves the snow, and he was pretty grumpy when I got him all shaved and it started to get cold. Today he finally felt confident enough to really play in the snow, and he had a blast! Muey3gWUR86%vEq3gC0jQg
  9. My move streak. Not including today, I’ve managed a 207-day streak. I’m hoping to make it to a year just like David Sedaris!
  10. After two days of using the district-created lesson plans, I am very pleased and will continue to use them. Each one leads to great questions for the kids to practice in our daily video chat.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-three (10×7)

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I can do four more days of gratitude, right? Because I am getting anxious to return to my usual bitching.

  1. This Little Free Library. I was walking the dog in my neighborhood and saw this! Hilarious! And it’s at the house of a woman in my book club.
  2. To go along with the toilet paper theme, a trip to Costco led to the longest line of my life, but first: toilet paper. Toilet paper displayed where one usually puts hot tubs or tents or magical camping pads or the latest in cruise trips… Toilet paper that has won its place in Coronatine history. Toilet paper crammed down every last aisle till we couldn’t possibly think that we ever hoarded it, that it would ever disappear, that we were hopeless.
  3. I know I wrote about masks yesterday, but my mom made me a couple more, and this one matches my jacket! And it’s actually kind of cool to see the fashionista masks appearing in the stores these days (see video, where you can also witness the endlessly long line)!
  4. This is something disturbingly new, and as a high school teacher with three kids in high school at the moment, it’s so important: March was the first month since 2002 that we haven’t had a school shooting! I guess it just took a pandemic to tone down gun violence…
  5. Howling at the moon at 8pm! Denver’s trending with this, a way to thank healthcare workers for the major sacrifices they’re making, and I couldn’t be happier to go out and ring my cowbell and rile up my dog every night.
  6. While I haven’t loved the snow after seeing that it killed my rhubarb, Denver is just not a rainy city, and I have loved seeing how green the grass is getting after the recent storm. More snow tomorrow means more green grass. More green grass just makes spring feel sweet.
  7. I got an email from the SPED team at school saying they haven’t been able to contact the family of a recently-arrived student of mine who is hard of hearing, and they’re trying to get an IEP going. Well, I was able to share my Google Meet link, my former student from Iraq also logged in,  her brother logged in, and the hearing coordinator logged in… There was a lot of translation and chaos, as always during these meetings with sixteen teenagers on the line, but we got our message across! People are really doing their best to help our students out, and I have been truly impressed with the efforts put forth by our school district. And I am still so grateful for my former student who was willing to help me out!
  8. Speaking of the school district, after I have failed at having the kids use Flipgrid AND ESL Library online, I finally decided to use one of the lessons that my school district made for the Newcomers today, and it was SO much better! It was a Google Doc, much easier for them to follow, and they even took the time to make an audio recording. I think DPS has really come around to support students through this crisis in many ways, not only with lessons like this, but having multiple device distributions, connecting students to free or low-cost internet, and consistently providing breakfast and lunch every day. I really am proud to work here (even though my “here” is at home at the moment).
  9. I do hate Zoom meetings, but I reluctantly logged on tonight and (mostly) actively participated in our book club! It really was good to “see” everyone, to talk about the book, and to share our Coronatine stories. Plus we got to see some pets and kids, and that always makes it more fun. And I had a good laugh with my book club friend who had the Little Free Library with the TP!
  10. The girls all got to chat with their grandparents today while dropping off some meds. So nice to have Izzy as a driver. AND they told me that they really did follow the rules and stayed on the porch. It’ll never be the same as a real visit, but at least it’s something!

Coronatine, Day Thirty-two (10×6)

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More than a month. We’re more than a month into this. Here goes day six of ten things I’m thankful for during this daily hell.

  1. Despite my husband being an essential worker, it seems that all of us are still healthy. Of course, it’s possible that we have it and are asymptomatic, but hopefully, that’s not the case.
  2. My mom made us these great masks. I’m grateful to have my parents still here, still healthy, still ready to help when needed. Even though we can’t hug, we can still see each other, and I can’t wait for the day when we can all get together and have a family dinner.  Grandparents are so essential to childhood, and my mother has spent endless hours teaching my girls to sew, draw, and paint. I can’t wait for her to have that time with them again.
  3. Speaking of masks, my first friend in Denver has been making hundreds to give away. She is a massage therapist, so her business has shut down. Now she’s using her healing hands to help the world. I first met her when I was eleven years old, where I moved to a very diverse and crowded Merrill Middle School after a very sheltered upbringing in an upstate New York town of 300 people. She was sitting behind me in math class, and when we compared our schedules, we realized we had every class together, including G/T, and became immediate friends. Just like that. I knew she was a golden soul, and she’s still shining her light in the world.
  4. Light (again). We had two FREEZING, snowy days, but of course, the Denver sun has returned, and isn’t it perfect?
  5. It is refreshing to see how many corporations are now working for the greater good. Distilleries making hand sanitizer. Sports equipment companies making PPE. We live in a capitalistic world, but at least it can help when we need help.
  6. Speaking of corporations and bringing a little more hope, NPR reports today that two of the biggest pharmaceutical competitors are working together to develop a vaccine. I feel that this is just another sign that the world will change after this is over. Companies, led by HUMANS, will realize that the common good is more important than the common dollar.
  7. And… maybe this quarantine is working? Though there were more deaths today, the hospital bed use is flattening. So people CAN collectively come together for the greater good. Hopefully they’ll remember in November!
  8. And now for a personal news report: Izzy asked me for advice about two essays she was writing today. My fiercely-independent 17-year-old hasn’t asked about homework since middle school, so this was a Coronatine-homeschooling-groundbreaking moment.
  9. With “homeschooling” comes so much extra time for art. For listening to music. For crying over our favorite songs and books and movies. And for my middle Mythili to create for me, with Avett Brothers lyrics, this beautiful picture on Procreate (through the iPad) that I cannot WAIT to one day print. I gave her the lines from the song and she created an image that is so me in every way with that beautiful full moon over us all.
  10. I almost even feel like a good mother! And according to one of my students who graduated almost four years ago, I am! Out of the blue, he wrote me a beautiful, detailed letter of gratitude. This is a student who’d seen two wars in his life, in Iraq and Syria, and worked tirelessly to finish high school in fewer than four years, finishing just as he was turning twenty-one. This is the student who sat in my room every morning, every lunch period, but would never eat; he would only study. (I hated how he wouldn’t eat, and often said so, and he mentioned this in the letter: “The things I faced before when I came to America are very hard and almost no one can survive if they live it.  The transition to life in America developed gradually, once we accustomed to the norms and culture everything started becoming easy.”) He writes to me now about how much I influenced his life, about what a great mother and teacher I am, about how much I encouraged him. And of course, being the selfless human that he is, he wants to help translate for my Newcomers, has already spent time translating for the Red Cross.

How lucky am I, thirty-two days into this hell? How lucky are we?

This actually wasn’t that hard to write after all. Be grateful.

Coronatine, Day Thirty-one (10×5)

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Not gonna lie, this is getting harder day by day. But here are today’s ten things I love about you, Coronatine.

  1. Snow. Say what you will about snow in April, but just listen to this video. All you will hear is… the soft sound of snow and some birds. No traffic. The world is so quiet right now, as if it needed a rest.
  2. With a quiet world in quarantine, it is nice to see reports of how much air pollution has decreased throughout the world. Being able to see the Himalayas. The air quality in Chinese cities improving. Even NYC has much clearer air. Maybe this quarantine will give us an idea of how much we really should cut back; that we can survive on much less and still have a good life. And we can actually try to save the Earth we have been destroying for so long.
  3. Fabian has not been very motivated to learn English or to watch the videos online. But he finally came upstairs and sat with me for an hour, reading a whole passage in English about Ramadan, answering questions, and really understood a lot. It was a major breakthrough, and I hope we can continue this every day.
  4. Even though they bitterly argued with me yesterday about having to do so, all the girls did get up at 8:30 today as I asked. I want to have some semblance of a routine, and sleeping till noon is not working for our family.
  5. Speaking of the girls, I allowed Izzy to take Riona to the pet store to get things from the pet store for her new cat, and Izzy took her to Chik-Fil-A as well. They both agreed to wear the masks (finally!) though I need to encourage Izzy to wear hers the right way.
  6. A friend of mine suggested a Yes Day for each kid to choose something that everyone in the family has to participate in. I met with the kids yesterday, and they agreed. So we’re having our first event tonight, organized by Riona: Monopoly!
  7. My Newcomers have consistently logged into my office hours every day. Almost every student. They love seeing each other’s faces, talking over each other, and just being their crazy selves. My paras have also both been logging on, and I review each day’s work and they help translate. It takes a village!
  8. Bruce didn’t have to work today since he works this Saturday, so he’s making meatloaf tonight, everyone’s favorite!
  9. Social media. Say what you will… but can you imagine being stuck in quarantine during the 80s? With nothing on TV, no internet, and no one to communicate with? Social media allows an escape, but it also allows a connection. I use it for news updates more than anything else (I probably read 20 articles a day from news agencies I follow or that my friends post), I connect with others (even got a phone call from someone I haven’t talked to in ten years based on something I’d posted!), and I think it can add a personal relevance to what is happening. For example, one of my high school friends lives in Queens, so she is at the epicenter of the NYC nightmare right now. It’s good to hear her first-person account. My college roommate lives in Wisconsin and experienced having her ballot not counted in that primary fiasco. Another high school friend lives in Canada and verified the tweet about actually applying for and receiving help, within two days, from the government.  Social media allows you to see the human connection behind the news stories. And… I love the memories feature on Facebook. Since I post every day, I have memories going 10 years back. I love seeing pics of my girls and me on a farm in the Netherlands, skiing, riding bikes, or even a regular old Monday when we made waffle sandwiches! And my girls would feel even lonelier without their social media connections. As much as we hate it, this is a time to be grateful for it.
  10. To go hand in hand with social media, just being able to connect with the world in unique way and to EXPOSE EVERYONE who is not helping us get out of this horrible situation… I think it’s a good thing. Social media has led to an increased awareness of all different types of people in the world, and has allowed people to read more firsthand accounts of their experiences with world events, and I do think change WILL HAPPEN once this is over. So, number ten for today comes back to hope. We just have to have hope.

Coronatine, Day Thirty (10×4)

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Well, we’ve officially made it through what feels like the longest month of our lives. I’m trying really hard here to keep up the positivity!

Ten things I love about you, Coronatine:

  1. This begonia. Pets are nice, but plants are constant. I have for years made brownies for my colleagues. After years of this, not knowing much else about me, one of my former colleagues gave me a tiny cutoff from her great aunt’s fifty-year-old elephant-ear begonia. I put it in a pot and it grew into this magnificent masterpiece. It sometimes produces flowers in the spring, but it doesn’t even need to because its red-green leaves are so perfect as they are. It adds constant comfort to any window, and bends toward the light as if reaching for God. If ever there were a perfect plant, this begonia is it.
  2. Speaking of brownies and all things baked… It may be superficial of me, but this KitchenAid stand-up mixer is pure heaven. I don’t know how anyone could live without one. I did for a year and it about broke me. This is more than a mixer: it’s one of the final gifts from my late mother-in-law. It’s a maker of birthday brownies. Of meringues by my youngest. For years, Bruce made bread every week and pizza twice a month. It’ll beat up eight eggs, a pound of chocolate, and two sticks of butter for the best ganache you ever tasted, all without you having to do work to froth those eggs till they’re shiny. It mixes up ingredients and produces love.
  3. We may not be able to travel this year, but we still have our memories. I used to collect postcards when I was younger, but after I married Bruce, he suggested we start collecting magnets from all the places we visited. We’re just getting started, twenty-two years later. 🙂
  4. My patio/outdoor space. While it’s snowing today, I’m just so grateful to have such a perfect patio that is in the shade of giant trees for the majority of the day. And we added a new string of lights this year to make the perfect ambience for those warm summer nights.
  5. What else fits on this patio? A fire pit. Maybe we won’t be able to go camping this summer, but we can still roast marshmallows.
  6. And behind that firepit? Siblings. Quarantine is kind of a lonely hell. And they may not always get along, but for at least part of every day, they do. Look how cute they are, sitting together on the swing like three little girls, not three young women.
  7. Cats. They’re not as good as dogs, but they’re pretty and quirky and have already mostly destroyed this catnip my friend brought! And they tend to be better at “posing” for pictures, much more than the dog!
  8. Speaking of cats, we’re getting another cat. No, my life is NOT crazy enough with four kids, two cats and a dog, thank you very much. And right now, pets need to be adopted, and Riona doesn’t have her own cat, so… In twelve days, we’re adopting this sweet little thing.
  9. My morning walk. Every day at dawn or just after, just me and the pup and this park and its endlessly changing bridge views. A moment to listen to an audiobook, to begin my collection of steps for the day, a way to get going. And oh, his face. Today the view has spring snow.
  10. Riona will still smile for pics and made all of our Easter findings into deviled eggs. Nothing really beats deviled eggs, even if we can’t have the traditional Easter meal with Grandma and Grandpa.

Coronatine, Day Twenty-nine (10×3)

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Here we go. It’s a Saturday, so it’s automatically easier for me to write this because my husband is at home. All you all out there who get tired of your spouse’s company, I’m sorry. I never get tired of mine.

Ten things for today that I am grateful for during the quarantine.

  1. Setting up the sprinklers. In our first house, we had a sprinkler system, and it was nothing but a nightmare. It was old, needed thousands of dollars of work on a regular basis, once burst in November and flooded our basement… I could go on. We change up our yard constantly, and not having a sprinkler system gives us the flexibility to do so. In Denver, with its endless sun, sprinklers are necessary to have greenery, and it’s a sign of spring.
  2. I have a second job. It’s mostly a curse, but I start a new class tomorrow, and I am grateful for that. I’m grateful that I’ve been doing online teaching for eleven years, and I have a pretty good idea of how it works, now that I’ve been thrust into it full time. The University of Phoenix doesn’t pay much, but in the year leading up to and the year in Spain, I had back-to-back courses, and it was literally the deciding factor in us being able to live there or not when I made virtually NO money with what the Spanish government offered. So… I keep on keeping on with this job. Sometimes it’s just a vacation fund, but right now it’s going to save our asses, again, with paying actual bills.
  3. Speaking of online learning… Screencastify is pretty much an awesome Chrome extension that I’d never heard of and now love. I have tried Flipgrid as well, but it sucks in comparison. I love being able to record videos on Screencastify that show both my face and the screen so that students know just where to click. Google has it figured out.
  4. Riona decided to get creative with the pancakes this morning, and Mythili joined in. I have a couple of little artists in these two.
  5. Egg coloring. We are not a religious family, so Easter is really just a celebration of spring. This is an extremely rare activity that ALL children agreed to do together, so as the parent of four teenagers, I call this a parenting win! And it is so nice out today that we were able to do it outside! Fabian, of course, had no idea what I was talking about, and he was mildly intrigued by this strange celebration.
  6. Riona wanted to mail art supplies to one friend and deliver some to another, so we fit in a bike ride. Everything is always better with a bike ride.
  7. The peas are coming up! I was a bit wary, but I’m happy to see them fighting the good fight.
  8. Riona finally started doing her piano lesson through FaceTime, and it has instantly motivated her to practice more! We’re trying to enjoy these last couple of months of piano lessons, because it’s something that will be unattainable soon…
  9. Speaking of artists, it’s so heartwarming to see all the artists coming together online to sing Hamilton songs or Carole King songs or have online choirs, dance routines, museum exhibits, etc…. We can’t officially call them essential workers, but art literally makes life worth living. And what do we all turn to when we are trapped at home? TV shows, movies, music, books, visual arts.
  10. Light. Pure sunlight. This is why I live in Denver and nowhere else. But in my bedroom, I’ve suffered for 4.5 years with very little light because we stupidly bought this massive king-sized bed before moving into the house. We’d been together for eighteen years and had never had a king-sized bed, so we were so excited to get it delivered the day we moved in that we didn’t take time to measure. And it has covered half of this south-facing window for the entire occupation of the Dream House. Bruce suggested cutting it down and placing the slate tiles onto the other part, admitting he didn’t have the tools to do so… But today, as we were folding laundry, he pointed out that we could just remove it. And, voila, boy-who-lives-with-us-and-can-carry-it-out-with-him, that headboard is gone! And there is SO MUCH LIGHT. My “home office” is brighter, my room is brighter, and goddamn it if my life isn’t lighter!

This is why I really don’t mind having my husband at home. He makes my quarantine so much more tolerable.