Denver

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 (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.

Coronatine, Day Twenty-eight (10 x2)

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Day 2 of Quarantine Gratitude. It’s been a pretty rough day, and I’m disappointed by online learning for Newcomers, so this is going to be hard, but I am trying here!

  1. Gas prices. I know Trump’s an asshole, and these countries are having a bidding war right now, and I should have an electric car, but these prices are eleven years old, this is the first time I’ve filled my car in a month, and it’s a relief.
  2. Speaking of cars… it’s nice to run an errand with just a little traffic. Denver has horrible traffic, and it’s been nonexistent lately.
  3. People listening to the governor. Went to the grocery store today, and they had it all set up for social distancing with one-way aisles, a line around the store, and most people were wearing masks! It was good to not be the only one.             
  4. Speaking of food: our school’s food bank, and in particular, Jaclyn Yelich. She called me two days ago because she just knew some students weren’t getting food. In the midst of a crisis, when she had to move her entire food bank to another location, she knew that some of my ELLs were getting desperate. We made a plan. She formed her delivery team, she asked me to help, and we brought food to six of my Newcomer families. She had a whole warehouse of boxes and bags ready to go for each family. This woman has worked all her life, raised her daughter, and now has given up her entire retirement to feed the families at our school, which takes more time than a full-time job. She gives hope when there is no hope.
  5. The moon. I have always loved the moon, and in high school even won an award for a story titled, “Catch Me a Moon.” In all its clichéd symbolism, its constancy is calming right now. Knowing that it’s up there, shining bright, so far from all of our problems, connecting us all with our own special glimpses of it wherever we might be in the world, is a comfort.
  6. Gardening friends. I am certainly not a master gardener, though I bought a house from one! What a joy today to receive the generous gift of an entire tray of spices and vegetables for my garden. Their petite green stems bring life to this sunny window, waiting, just like us, for the frost to stop and the world to be ready for a permanent move to a better life that is waiting on the other side of the glass.
  7. Audiobooks. In a house of six, it’s difficult to sit down and read. So many distractions and background noise. I love audiobooks because I can take them anywhere with me–in the car, walking the dog, gardening, or cross-stitching.
  8. Cross-stitching. I will never be a seamstress, but this I learned to do when I cross-stitched baby blankets for my three girls. It is relaxing and methodical, and fulfills my need to always be doing something with my hands. And when this is all over, I’ll have a pretty picture to hang! 
  9. Work flexibility. My district and school have handled these crazy circumstances very well, and they’ve offered us so much flexibility with office hours, grading expectations, and the amount of assignments. It has been so refreshing to work within a schedule that I create, which as a teacher, just never happens. It’s so nice to have time on weekdays to run errands, to fit in an appointment, and to make my own schedule.
  10. To go with the theme of weekdays and flexibility, it’s refreshing to be able to clean my house whenever I want and not try to cram the chores in between a harried workday, harried dinner prep, and a harried life. Cheers to vacuuming on a Friday morning and a non-harried life!

 

Coronatine, Day Twenty-seven (10×1)

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I’ve been bitching a lot (and crying a lot), so here goes: ten good things about quarantine for ten days straight.

No promises. But I will try.

  1. I actually love being alone. The older I get, the more introverted I feel. I have very few actual friends anyway (the blessing and curse of being overly opinionated), and see them infrequently, which is fine with me. So the social distancing aspect is not challenging for me at all.
  2. Dinner. Isn’t it every working mom’s nightmare to be running between work and children’s activities and trying to do laundry and trying to grade papers and trying to keep a clean house… and trying to come up with a dinner idea every night? Well, now that I’m home all the time, I can set out meat early in the day (see yesterday’s post, haha) and pull up recipes well before noon. I can easily fit in a meal plan without feeling pressured or rushed.
  3. My garden. You are about to be overloaded with images of flowers and vegetables. Raised beds. Compost piles. Green grass growing. Perfect pink crabapple and redbuds blooming. Weed-pulling. The two hundred plants that fill my yard and take hundreds of hours of work to truly care for… hundreds of hours that I now actually have at a time of the school year that is normally jam-packed with so many activities that I can barely breathe. Well, now I can breathe.
  4. My dog. Sleeps on my legs and keeps me up half the night, cuddles right up against wherever I’m sitting and takes naps throughout the day. Jumps into my lap for extra cuddles and when he fears I might be considering going back to work. Never says no to me when I want to take him on walk number eighty-six. Trots happily beside me, leash or no leash. Has no idea why none of us ever leave anymore, but couldn’t be happier. There is no purer love than a puppy’s love.
  5. Not having to pack a lunch. Just feeling hungry at whatever random time, combining various leftovers from the fridge and never having to lug the Tupperware, the lunch bag, the silverware, the cloth napkin back and forth and forth and back.
  6. The mute and no camera features during virtual meetings which occur 90% less frequently than the endlessly wasteful meetings I normally sit through. I just want my thoughts, not my face, on the screen. It’s quite magical to have that sense of privacy, to be able to listen without being watched to see what my reaction might be.
  7. Casual Friday every. Fucking. Day. I think my comfy clothes alone could make this time actually magical.
  8. Never having to deal with silencing and unsilencing my phone. So simple, so redeeming.
  9. Seeing my children blossom in different ways (when they’re not driving me crazy). Riona building up her YouTube Channel, taking on art challenges, endlessly chatting with friends on FaceTime, getting all her schoolwork done with zero nagging and her handy checklist when I can’t ever get her to do homework on a normal day, giving me hugs, helping me when I ask for help, and being her ever-sweet self. Mythili taking walks or bike rides with me, never commenting on the length or the speed, working on her digital and painted artwork for hours or days, piecing together puzzles, easily managing her homework. Izzy creating coffee drinks to share with everyone, garnering followers with her quick TikTok videos, working on her badminton skills and perfecting how to curl her hair (often letting me braid it just like when she was a little girl). Fabian never once complaining, helping around the house before ever being asked, pulling a too-heavy compost bin off me with the strength of an ox, building a weight with a bar and some chopped old logs, getting his schoolwork done before the rest of the class meets on Google Meets each day at 1pm.
  10. I am so damn lucky to live in Denver. In a city with a thousand days of sun. With easygoing neighborhoods and walking-distance parks. With snow today, gone tomorrow. With a liberal governor and mayor who offer support for all people, broken-not-broken, immigrant or citizen, homeless or homed. With a network of streets that you could spend your life meandering through and never get lost. With my beautiful school across the street from the greatest park ever known. With bike lanes and bike paths everywhere. With everything I need to feel safe in this nightmare of unsafety.

Coronatine, Day Nineteen

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weekdays are now strange

because today i did no work

and yet worked so hard

shopping for parents,

cycling thirteen miles,

playing badminton

trying to battle

all the darkness that surrounds us

with blue skies and sun

Coronatine, Day Eighteen

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should i skip a day?

is the sunrise worth noting?

will it save us all?

bare naked branches

waiting for a better spring

and a lifted tail

Colorado blue

that everyone came here for

ready to break you

(could you be grateful?

could you ride/walk/talk it out?)

Could that save him? No.

so I’m bitter. Yes.

afraid, bitter, hopeful. spent.

like a sunrise. Lost.

Coronatine, Day Sixteen

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a neighborhood walk

(though not in my neighborhood)

is good for the soul

Coronatine, Day Fifteen

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views from nearby walks

are all we have at this time

to get us through this

Coronatine, Day Fourteen

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My elderly uncle with the ‘No Solicitors’ sign on his door happily steps right out onto the covered porch to collect the three Costco-oversized boxes of tissues that I have brought to him.

“Are you going to come in?” he asks as I creep backward, down the three concrete steps.

“You better wash your hands now that you’ve touched those boxes,” I immediately reply. “I could have it, and it lives on cardboard for 24 hours.”

He brushes me off and acts, quite nonchalantly, as if he’s been expecting me. “Thanks, I was waiting for something like this. I use five or six tissues every time I have to clean my catheter.”

What a lucky find, I think. “Well, Floyd, you’re the master of social distancing. How have you handled the Coronavirus?”

It’s true. He’s been reclusive, the middle child and only boy wrenched between six sisters, for his entire adult life. He lives in the same house he bought as a young man, the 1950s Mayfair ranch decorated exactly the same as the original owner, and “Why should I change what’s already there?” He worked as a TV repairman for as long as there were TVs to repair, and happily retired twenty years ago to a lifestyle of only visiting the grocery store and denying most social invitations from his six sisters.

But now there are no tissues in his grocery store. No toilet paper. No frozen vegetables. No eggs. No sense of security for the five square miles he drives within any given week.

He talks my ear off in the fifteen minutes I stand in his front yard, keeping my six feet of social distancing requirement.

This isn’t like yesterday when I drove to all corners of the city to deliver my students their much-needed headsets, folders, notebooks, and supplies, when their parents seemed grateful for my latex gloves and, more importantly, my brevity. “Check Schoology!” I found myself shouting too many times, “It has everything you’ll need for your life right there!”

This is Coronatine, Day Thirteen: my elderly uncle, my not-so-elderly parents (who also need tissues), who I can only stand on the porch with, and not really visit.

“You’re really not going to come inside?” they inquire, and I mention Italy. We’ve all heard about Italy. My father’s mother was from Italy, still has living relatives there. “Over sixty, Dad,” is all I really have to say (my parents are 66).

And how did I manage in the Costco line today? The rain hadn’t started yet, nor the snow. It was cold, and I had my latex gloves on, plus my ski mask (I didn’t think far enough in advance to buy medical masks, so when I put it on in the parking lot, Fabian said he’d prefer to wait in the car. I didn’t care. I’m not fucking with this shit). I waited a good thirty minutes to socially distance myself, six feet back from the guy in front of me, to get in the store.

And they still didn’t have toilet paper.

This was after we visited the Mexican Envios, always open, line out the door, everyone ready to send money home to their poorer-than-any-of-us-here families back home. My boy was in and out in fifteen minutes, but his poverty-stricken father had to wait in line for three hours to get that money we sent him because this was the first day out of seven that the banks were open, and the seventh day out of infinity that he is unable to work and support those two baby girls.

Never mind that he lives in the most dangerous city on Earth with a corrupt government and police on every corner making sure you don’t go where you’re not supposed to.

Never mind that he doesn’t even have a mortgage because his house is a shack on his boss’s property constructed entirely of corrugated sheets of metal.

Never mind that however bad you think this is for us, standing in the cold in the Costco line, cleaning your catheter with the last bits of tissue, wishing you could hug your parents…

We still live here. Where capitalism, evil as it may be, allows me to trump the system and send an extra hundred dollars home to Honduras because, God, why the fuck not?

This is Coronatine, Day Thirteen: six boxes of tissues delivered. Check. Three hundred dollars sent to Honduras to buy food. Check. Wondering who has it among us, and which ones will die. Check.

What else is there to say?

I planted spinach just in time for the snow to water it. Please let it grow. Please, God, let it grow.