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janky home school day one: everything is copy

3/16/2020

4 Comments

 
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Today was the first day of this...thing...that we are doing now. I needed to come up with a name for it, and here were my first two ideas:
March Madness - because we don't get actual March Madness, and this situation right now is legit madness. But the words made me anxious, so I didn't go with this choice.
Spring Sabbatical - Because a sabbatical seems like something that only fancy people do. (Side note: I tried to explain the meaning of a sabbatical to my nine-year-old boy this morning, and I made the mistake of using the example of a college professor taking a semester off to go to Iceland to study volcanoes. So now if you ask my son what a sabbatical is, he will tell you it's when a college professor goes to Iceland to study volcanoes.)

Anyhoo, I nixed Spring Sabbatical in favor of a more realistic description of this...thing...that we are all doing now, which is:

Janky Home School

Shall we begin? Today was day one of Janky Home School, in which I introduced the schedule that I swore I wouldn't make because schedules turn into straight jackets when my rule-following little hands get hold of them. But I caved and made a schedule late last night because I needed a security blanket, and mommies get schedules instead of security blankets. (Although I do have a security blanket that I keep in a desk cabinet and wear all day when I'm writing. No big deal, let's move on.)
I separately showed each kid the schedule and they each independently found it personally offensive that they would be expected to take a shower EVERY DAY. Other than that, they were cool with the schedule after their customary 9,536 questions about anything that involves them, ever. I just noticed that this schedule has just as much screen time as it does learning time. OH WELL. Life be janky.
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Since we hadn't picked up our packets from their teachers yet, the kids got to pick what they wanted to do for learning time. Will chose to teach Emily division with remainders, and Emily was all about it. Better him than me. My earliest memory of crying about math (not my only memory of crying about math. My earliest memory of crying about math) had to do with division.
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The rest of the day flowed along well, and we got a chance to pick up packets from their teachers, which was swell because the kids had no less than 5,765 questions about what would be in the packets, and it was a relief to be able to answer at least 4,567 of them. Seeing their teachers and their school was like another security blanket. Everything feels weird right now but their teachers are still THE BEST EVER and their school is still the sweet, old, stable, friendly place it's always been. Also, it smelled really clean, for the record.

After we got our packets we dropped off eight bags at Bags of Hope, a local nonprofit that supplies free food provisions to students experiencing food insecurity. Not because I am such a philanthropist, but because Emily's Girl Scout troop put together enough bags to feed eight children for a week, and I volunteered to keep the bags in my trunk, which turned into me driving a lot of food around to a lot of places without having my act together enough to figure out where and when and how to drop them off.

I finally had time, so we did it today, which worked out nicely because the kids got to be involved, and because these bags were supposed to be for Spring Break, which doesn't seem to be a thing right now, so we were happy to do one small thing to help children who rely on our school cafeteria (you know, the one that's closed indefinitely?) for meals.

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After the Community Service portion of Janky Home School, it was time for Physical Education, also known as Dog Needs to Poop. We took a walk on a local trail and it was gloriously refreshing and beautiful, even with the gray mid-50s weather. We brought some friends and I was reminded that no matter what is going on, kids always find a way to have fun with sticks and dirt and water. It made my heart happy, if you want to get all schmaltzy about it.
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This would be a good time to remind you (and me) that I have a job. I tried to squeeze in priorities whenever I could but I really have to figure out a better way to get work done while my kids are out of school. I am definitely the first and only person to have this problem. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

For dinner I made Change Your Life Chicken because The Lazy Genius is my life coach who doesn't know it yet. Emily in particular is a big fan of this dish because she likes the crispy chicken skin. However, I am not a big fan of the questions she asked at dinner, which included:
Is this chicken skin I'm eating?
Is this what human skin would taste like?
Are humans edible?


It's probably best if we move on now.

When Nora Ephron was growing up, her mother constantly told her that everything is copy. I take this to mean that everything will make a great story someday, even if it feels uncomfortable, or sad, or uncertain, or frightening. As someone who likes to have a schedule and a blueprint, I am not feeling particularly warm and fuzzy these days. But I am writing it all down, and I am looking around and noticing how my kids are taking all this upheaval and uncertainty like champions, and how my friends and neighbors are cheering each other on, and how strangers are offering free resources and support to each other.

It may be a janky home school, but it will make a great story some day.
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The Eyes Are the Window to the Soul, or Something

9/29/2018

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Eye doctor equipment inspired by Disney Pixar’s “Wall E”

Welcome to the eye doctor! Hard to believe it’s been a whole year. My, how you’ve grown slightly bigger, and aged! I know you enjoy going through life using your corrective lenses and pretending to be just like everyone else, but here at the eye doctor we feel it’s important to remind you at least once a year that you are, as the kids say, “nearsighted af.”

Let’s start in this room with me, a person whose title will forever be a mystery. Am I a Registered Nurse? A Physician’s Assistant? A receptionist from the temp agency? That is for me to know and you to not know, ever.

I (whoever the heck I am lol) will now ask you the first set of questions that you will just make up the answers to, including “how often do you change your lenses, do you ever sleep in your lenses, and what brand of solution do you use?”

Keep in mind that you will be summarily thrown out into the gutter if the answers to these questions even approximate “I change them whenever they are so covered with crud they are rendered opaque, sometimes I fall asleep in them, hee hee, why, is that bad, and how tf should I know the name of my contact solution, it is literally saltwater.” It should be noted that “just use my answers from last year” is also an unacceptable answer for which you will be judged.

Let’s proceed to the part where you have to take out your contacts and really come to grips with your visual situation. We enjoy seeing our patients go from “I’m winning at life,” to “I’m that old man from The Twilight Zone who survives nuclear annihilation only to break his glasses and be condemned to a life of misery.” We believe humility is an important step in acceptance, which is an important step in our secret plan to overthrow the government and install an optometric dictator, wait, I mean eye health.


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The world is over and you can't see. Womp Womp.

Now that you are staring blankly ahead and awkwardly not seeing anything, I will leave you alone with your thoughts while you wait for the doctor. We have a fantastic selection of magazines for you to not read while you wait!  

Hi there, I’m the eye doctor. I hope your favorite thing is when an old man turns all the lights off and sticks his face millimeters from yours while shining laser pointers into your eyeballs!

After that, I will pull this old-timey contraption up to your face and make you look through different lenses and tell me which letters you see. Then I will slightly change the lenses and ask you which of two lenses is more clear, one or two (sometimes I will use different numbers, with no detectable pattern in my number choice). Most of the time the two lenses will look exactly the same to you and you will just randomly pick one, growing ever more anxious as you make up more and more answers and dig yourself into a hole of pure lies. One or two? Two or three? Three or four? Sixteen or Thirty-two? π or θ?

This will last for 550 minutes or until numbers and letters begin to look like meaningless symbols, (whichever comes first) and then the Fun Train will keep on chugging down to pupil dilation! This is where we drop some brackish yellow burny stuff in your eyes and make you wait some more while you look at blurry pictures in People Magazine or just hang out with your own relentlessly unhelpful thoughts.  


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I heard through the grapevine that you have astigmatism.


​Then we shine some more laser pointers into your eyeballs, after which you finally get to go out in public, wearing disposable sunglasses that look like something that would happen if the California Raisins and your grandma designed eyewear together.

You have now completed your eye doctor visit. Go out into the unbearable sunlight, dear patient, with your keepsake glasses, your scarily-dilated pupils, and your ego squashed back down to a healthy size. “See” you next year bwahahahaha!

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This Is What I'm Up Against

3/1/2018

2 Comments

 
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Here is a list of actual, word-for-word questions my children have asked me. Read at your own risk...

Who invented life?

Is Cupid real? Do people be mysteriously waking up and getting in love?

How did God get so popular?

Does space ever end?

Can you repeat time?

What controls the sun?

How did God become God?

How old was I when I met my childhood?

Is the future real?

Can the future happen to you?

What's the opposite of New York City?

Is Mother Nature God's wife?

Do bad guys have to learn how to swim?

Do girls have armpits?

Is there such a thing as hedgehogs?

Special section for questions whose innocence broke my heart:
What's a bullet?

What's a spanking?

What's regret?

And, my all-time favorite question, and one that I honestly will never have an answer for: 

What is the point of golf?

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I DO EXIST. Sheesh.
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Shazam the World, Make It a Better Place

2/7/2018

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I can't believe I have a picture of Justin Bieber on my blog.
Shazam is an app that identifies the title and artist of any song it hears. While apps like “Selfie Editor” and “Order Unlimited Quantities of Chipotle Without Feeling Like You’re Spending Real Money” have not added to my life in a positive way, I can say that Shazam has legitimately made my life better.

It’s helped me discover new artists I love, and it’s brought me back from the brink of a nervous breakdown when I couldn’t remember who sings this damn song. Shazam always gets the last word in marital disagreements about classic rock songs, before said disagreements escalate into yelling matches (YES IT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE JOE COCKER BUT IT’S GREGG ALLMAN WHO’S NO ANGEL!!! WHY DON'T YOU BELIEVE ME???)
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I thought Joe Cocker had brown hair...
For all these reasons, Shazam is one of my favorite apps. Apple’s recent purchase of Shazam is the perfect opportunity to increase its reach and help it solve even more of our first-world problems.
 
Apple Bigwigs, I humbly submit my list of Shazam Spinoff Ideas:
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Treezam: I’ve always wanted to be the smart person who could identify trees during nature walks. The problem is, you could tell me the name of the tree and it would go in one ear and out the other. I think it’s brain damage from being a mother of two children who never stop asking questions. I have no current capacity for retaining things like tree names. With Treezam, you can point your phone at any tree and it will tell you not only the regular name, but the Latin name as well. You know, so you can feel smart and stuff.
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L-R: Me, Bob, Betty, and some other lady.
Shazname:
Let’s say you’re at a party and you have to introduce Bob to Betty. Problem is, you can’t remember Bob’s flippin’ name. (Refer to brain damage mentioned above.) Just discreetly point your phone at Bob (pretend you’re checking the weather) and it will display his name, along with any information you may want to tell Betty (Bob just got a new job) along with any information you may want to withhold from Betty (Bob gets butt hurt when you talk smack about his hockey team).
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Lester Holt and Chill
​​Shazdunnit:
I love me some Dateline, but I’ve noticed it’s about 75% longer than it needs to be. Ain’t nobody got time for the umpteenth photo montage of the same dead lady with her shady-looking husband who may or may not have dunnit. Just give us the good stuff so we can go put the laundry away! Shazdunnit allows you to point your phone at Lester Holt’s face and get an immediate run down of whodunnit, why they dunnit, and the length of their prison sentence.
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Shaznomnom:
On Monday I am Miss Meal Prep Pinterest Lady 2017. By Thursday I am melting Cheez Whiz on leftover Chick-fil-a waffle fries and calling it poutine. With Shaznomnom, all you have to do is point your device at your open fridge, and it will give you a list of recipe options based on what you have. If your fridge fails the dinner test, it will give you the phone numbers of five local restaurants that deliver.
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Shaz-amor:
Have you ever wanted to get to the bottom of your Forever Roommate’s current ‘tude without having to actually talk about it? With Shaz-amor, just point your phone at the resentful/irritated/concerned look on his or her face and you will get a rundown of what you did, why you are a bonehead, and what you can do to make it better. No more guessing! Just unpack the GD suitcase from that trip you took two months ago, for the love of Samsonite, and peace will be restored to your household. 
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Shazroom:
It happens to the best of us: you walk into the room and completely forget why you’re there. Instead of feeling like you’re one step away from needing full-time Adult Day Care, just point your phone at your own confused face, and Shazroom will tell you that you came into the kitchen for the labelmaker. Now if you could just remember which cabinet you put the DANG LABELMAKER in. Do any of you know a good Adult Day Care center? Asking for a friend… 
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The elf is pushing all my guilt buttons

12/19/2017

2 Comments

 
My friends are absolutely killing it with this Elf on the Shelf thing.

My social media feeds are full of elves doing creatively mischievous elf things. The Elf is riding in a Fisher-Price school bus with a Barbie on each arm. The Elf is pooping chocolate chips into a wine glass and reading a tiny newspaper. Elves are swinging from chandeliers, hiding in fridge drawers, wearing a Trump wig made out of yellow yarn and standing in front of a podium with a handmade "Make Christmas Great Again" sign. Next-level stuff.
 
Meanwhile, our elf spent the first half of Advent in a beat-up cardboard box in my son’s closet. When I finally remembered to get the elf out, I immediately delegated the nightly moving of the elf to my husband.

Our elf situation got pretty sad while my husband was out of town for work. My kids began to wonder if our elf (whose name I forgot two years ago) had gotten fired by Santa and was now just loafing around our house in the same spot all day and night.
 
The truth is, my kids have a mom who goes into survival mode on December 1st and stays there until January. Doing creative things with the Elf on the Shelf is not part of survival mode. End of elf story.
 
It’s taken me seven years of motherhood to accept my limitations when it comes to the holidays. When my son was a toddler I bedecked our mantle with a sparkly, homemade Advent calendar with a different holiday activity for each day. We made cookies, visited Santa, did Christmas crafts…basically turned into Pinterest People for the month of December.
 
I know it sounds lovely, but that everloving Advent calendar almost took me over the edge that year. I turned into an overwhelmed, cranky woman who was one Advent activity away from becoming Mrs. Scrooge. 
 
Part of being an authentic person is giving yourself the grace of acceptance. That is never harder than during the holidays, when expectations take steroids and descend upon us in a hailstorm of Sign Up Geniuses, cookie exchanges, and Secret Santa gifts.
 
When I scroll through Facebook and that elf starts to push my guilt buttons, I consciously remind myself that I have limitations, and that’s okay. For me, the grace of acceptance means being okay with the fact that I suck at Elf on the Shelf, I totally forgot to buy my kids an Advent calendar this year, and my cookie exchange contributions were no-bake and no-frills.
 
As long as I have some realm of motherhood that I feel pretty good about, I’m okay with phoning in my holiday obligations. For me, that realm is going to the library, reading to my kids as much as possible, and having lots of books all over our house. Someone else's realm of confidence might be cooking wholesome organic meals for their families (this is not my realm, btw).

And I am so sincerely glad that some of my friends are rock stars when it comes to putting smiles on their kids' faces every morning through elvish creativity. They are all amazing moms who still find the energy at the end of the day to pose the elf in a Barbie bathtub full of cotton balls.

We each have our thing that we rock at. I think it's our job to stay in our lane, keep rocking, and appreciate the many ways other people rock. Especially during the holidays. 

Elf Moms of the world, I tip my Santa hat to you...from over here on my Survival Mode couch, with my sauvignon blanc and my Netflix. 
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