This week has so many interesting/momentous/significant things in it, and I am so much less equipped to deal with such weeks after having a year or so of not going anywhere or doing anything.
• Elizabeth applied at my same library to be a library page. She’s been waiting YEARS to do this. I really hope they have paging hours available and that she gets them! I know they LIKE to hire the children of staff. And William worked there, too, so it’s getting to be a bit of a family thing. One thing that was convenient when William and I were both there is that we could sometimes cover each other’s shifts, which is handy for the library and also comfier for people who don’t like to have to ask for time off when they don’t work many hours to begin with.
• Rob has left to go live with my parents for a couple of months. I felt surprisingly bereft after dropping him off at the airport, considering we hardly ever see him, and also he’s 22 years old and if there hadn’t been a pandemic he wouldn’t have been here. But still: I remember there was a cozy feeling when we brought both college kids home back in March 2020 and then closed the doors. And while I don’t think anyone is going to say “Gosh, I miss lockdown!,” it was comforting to have all the chicks home, and feels odd to have them start going out again.
• Elizabeth and Henry both got their second doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. Both of them have experienced headaches: Henry had one in the evening of the afternoon he got the shot; Elizabeth woke up the next morning with one.
• I have a mammogram tomorrow. I know it’s not a big deal, and I’m not even particularly modest about it now that I’m used to what to expect, but I just always dread that whole thing. And you know what, I think mostly it’s the no-deodorant thing! Which feels a little silly, but it’s something that registers as being a little stressful to deal with: remembering not to wear it, using a wet wipe or something right before the mammogram, remembering to bring deodorant to put on afterward (though they do have an aerosol available for anyone who forgets).
• The twins turn 16. Double the cakes to make, double the presents to acquire/wrap. It’s a fun kind of busyness, but it’s still kind of busy. And it’s become clearer to me over recent years just how little Paul does for birthdays/holidays, except sit happily in a chair enjoying the party, and that might need to be adjusted.
• Edward has a Remicade treatment. When I donated blood recently, they tested it for Covid-19 antibodies (and found them, indicating the vaccine Took). I’m going to ask if Edward’s blood can be tested similarly as part of his usual bloodwork, to make sure his vaccine Took, too; I would feel so much better knowing it had.
• Henry is having a final exam that has to be in-person at the school. We don’t know the whole story, but I’d say the clues point to some other remote-student parent doing the good work of bringing the school from its initial position of “This test has to be indoors and in-person, that’s the rule we’ve always followed, your other option is to let the student fail the class and take it again next year, *SHRUG*,” to “Hey, can we offer you individual outdoor testing at a time that works for you, with a fully-vaccinated test moderator?”—a shift that occurred while I was still fretfully working on the tone of my email response to the first position.
• School is wrapping up for all three youngest. I am so glad. I have never been happier to see the end of a school year.
In spite of the chaos and incessant warning away from phones (“THOSE ARE NOT TOYS!”) and mini-fridges, I used to have the same cozy, closed-door feeling in hotels. I remember the sheer contentment that I could reach out and touch every one of my best beloveds. I didn’t, of course, because that would have surely sent someone to play with the temperature controls, but I COULD have.
I laughed. The last sentence is gold. Thanks.
It was alarming to me how much I missed Noah when he was at Beth’s mom’s house for 2 weeks. I’m totally used to having him around. I think when he leaves for school in August it will be nearly as bad as the first time. Has Rob graduated? Is this a transition to living on his own somewhere?
I’m often grumpy about the end of the school year because I work at home and everyone’s about to be in my space again, but as they’re all in my space most of the time anyway, I don’t really care one way or the other. On the plus side, we don’t have to worry about keeping them on track with online school which does not fit their learning style well. On the minus side, instead of spending nearly all their time in bed on TikTok, I guess it will be all their time.
He’s doing a 5-year program and has one more year to go. But he’s starting to think about where he might like to live after graduation, so he’s checking out the area of the country where my parents live. (And/or he’s getting pretty tired of living with his parents!)
If they won’t test Edward’s blood for antibodies in conjunction with that, there’s a Lab Corp test you can order for yourself for $10. (From what I understand, the testing itself is free and you are paying the ten dollars in order to get someone at Lap Corp to do the doctor part of ordering it for you.) A lot of the people in the trials are getting them since we have to do a bit of our own information gathering in order to make decisions. It not only gives you a positive/negative result about the presence of antibodies, but it measures the amount of antibodies you have. (Of one kind and there’s not yet a know “you need this many antibodies to be immune” so it’s not a perfect measurement but it’s another piece of information.) But message me if you want all that information about how to access this test.
WOW that is a busy week. Holy moly. Happy birthday to the twins, and YES to the end of the school year. May we never walk this path again. What a year. Good luck with the mammogram; once I taught a class right before my mammogram and so obviously I was wearing deodorant. I never did wipe it off (I forgot until I was actually getting my mammogram and then it felt weird to say “oh wait…”) and it was just fine. I think it just makes the skin more slippery, and that is why the rule. Anyway. Good luck with it all, and I’m glad your whole family is now vaccinated! I know how important that is FOR EVERYONE but especially for families in which someone is immunocompromised. Also also ALSO WTF school with the in-person final, thank god for the change in rules.
Yesterday was the last day my middle child will set foot in his high school (he went to return a textbook, but skipped the commencement rehearsal because he’s not going and the picnic afterwards because the weather was DC-area swamp heat)
Yesterday was the day the youngest got his braces off
Today is the day the oldest leaves for his summer camp job, driving himself and a friend in what is now his car (previously mine, so total nerdmobile). He comes back the day before the two of us drive him back to his college town and get the car registered in the distant state where he plans to live indefinitely after graduation
I am both the person who rolls her eyes at the infantilizing parents on college FB pages do, insisting on saving their children from ever experiencing difficulty or disappointment, and the person who wants to grab her kids and wail, “Hang out with meeeeee!”
Wait, did I miss that Edward had his shot? Is this… is this 6/6 Thistles vaccinated? WHAT? WHAT? YAAAAAAY!
YES, he’s had his first shot! He can’t have his second until four weeks after (timing it with his other medications), but by July 6th ALL of us will be fully vaccinated!
My two eldest sons (age 13 and 8) have now been in virtual school since March of last year and we are OVER IT. We could’ve opted for them to return in person after spring break, but at that point they still weren’t offering vaccines for even age 12 and up. Our 13 year old got his second shot on Saturday. And my 8 year old has approximately 10 minutes left of 2nd grade. I’m sad in the way that I’m always sad at the end of a school year because my kids are getting older. But again, we are OVER IT.
11 and 7 here and we are also OVER IT. And we also could have sent them back but 1) neither are vaccine eligible at this point 2) our town sucks at compliance with ANYTHING 3) why rock the boat with like 6 weeks left? we’ve done this now for over 52 weeks, 6 more doesn’t seem like a stretch. But I am OVER IT.
There have been some really cool moments and it’s fun to hear the teachers read to the first grader, and to hear the teachers interact with the children (in ways that both work and DO NOT work). But. Egads. Yes.
That IS a busy week! Hoping all goes well and smoothly and that it is over quickly.
I am having similar feelings with Oldest who is a HS senior and leaves for college in the Fall. He is fully vax’d and so are all of his friends, his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s friends, his baseball team etc, so these last few weeks he’s been gone virtually all the time between school, games, and senior year end-of-year celebrations/get togethers. I remind myself that if we hadn’t had COVID this is probably what most of his senior year would have been like, so in a very perverse way I’m happy that COVID meant he was home for 6 months of his senior year but I still miss him a bit and am pre-missing him when he’ll be in college 2,000 miles away from the family but never want to repeat this kind of lock-down year again. I am absolutely thrilled for him going to college while also being a bit sad for us AND still sometimes thinking he can’t leave soon enough (like when he leaves the kitchen a crummy mess after eating god knows what late at night after I’m asleep). Basically, I’m a stew of conflicting emotions and probably an absolute delight to live with these days ;-)
There is no chance that someone going through Conflicting Momfeelings is anything other than a gosh-darned delight, and that is not open to debate.
I LOVED the way you wrote the last paragraph about Henry’s exam and the sudden change in policy! Three cheers for the apparent good work of that other party.
I didn’t see any previous comments about this but BE AWARE – the COVID-19 vaccine can mess with your mammogram results!
Here’s an article from Johns Hopkins explaining: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid19-vaccine-can-it-affect-your-mammogram-results
I was just going to say this! Maybe mention to the tech that you e had your covid vaccine & in which arm?
They were completely familiar with this issue when I called to book the appointment, and asked me about it, and then made the appointment for 6 weeks after my second dose, explaining to me why they were doing that.
They seem very on top of / aware of this: when I scheduled, they asked if I’d had the Covid vaccine, and which one; and then they made an appointment for 6+ weeks after the second shot.
As a teacher, being asked to give an individally-scheduled final outdoors would be a HARD NO from me. God bless your school district for managing to do so in a way that does not make already burned out employees feel still more taken advantage of. I’m assuming they have done so, or they would not have offered the option to parents.
The school district brought this on itself by coming up with a stupidly inflexible rule. It doesn’t deserve blessing for being called on it.
I hope you have a restorative summer. Goodness knows you earned one. Or several, really.
My guess is that the teacher, who has young children and has chosen to teach remotely, was not any more excited than we were about going inside the school to breathe air with a bunch of other people, and likely joined her remote students/parents in our Hard No reaction to that ridiculous initial idea. If we’re going to ask a deity for blessings, I suggest requesting them for her, since it is probably her work-around idea and not the school district’s. (It’s the school district that thought it made sense to suddenly say that remote-only students had to come into the school to take their tests in person—and to tell us this only two weeks before exams. They get no deity blessings requested by me.)
My school district canceled finals altogether, which seems like a more equitable solution than having staff, students, and families jump through yet more hoops this school year. I think both your district’s options were unreasonable, but I wonder if the impetus came from state standardized testing? Our state required the regularly scheduled standardized testing to be done on computers, but in person. (???) The district circumvented this by making the opt-out procedure super obvious and easy, which they don’t normally do. That way, all the fully remote kids could easily and legitimately opt out of a test that required them to come to school.
It wasn’t the state/standardized testing—we opted out of that.
I think the reasonable option would have been to have remote exams—just as they’ve done for ALL quizzes and ALL tests ALL YEAR for remote students. If the school MUST offer ONLY unreasonable options (either testing indoors, where carefully-lockdowned students and teachers share air with unvaccinated and/or uncareful people in the building they have otherwise deliberately/officially/successfully avoided for OVER A YEAR; or else testing outdoors), then I definitely choose the relatively easy and MUCH SAFER option where the remote-teaching teacher and the remote-learning child have their health and safety valued and protected.
The freaking APs are remote this year and the IB assessments are being handled by the school rather than the international IB organization, so why your school district picked this as their bright line is just baffling.
Us too – my grade 9 daughter has had no exams at all, and the school went to a quadmester system for the year. All her marks were based on quizzes and projects/assignments.
This all sounds like A LOT and most of it is good, but still A LOT. I am ON BOARD with making your husband aware that he needs to Step Up.
My son left for college in NYC, where all four of my parents live, last August. I saw him in April and will see him again in July. We FaceTime all the time and send each other TikToks and texts. But I miss him so much. Those 5 months we had him home last year after schools went virtual and before he went to NY were really lovely. We all went for long Pokemon Go walks and drove around to raids and stuff.
I too am totally out of practice at being busy/leaving the house/talking to strangers. CALM BLUE OCEAN. A bunch of things converged this week- a Dr appointment for myself (because I have an earache, like a BABY), taking my three year old into the city to the pediatric ophthalmologist (I deserve a doctoral degree for spelling that correctly), and spending approximately one million hours on the phone with Home Depot and GE about the washer dryer that were damaged during shipping and which neither one of them wants to deal with. But today I finally got someone on the phone with the guts to authorize a return, and it’s Friday, and it’s sunny, and things are looking up!
You really jumped in the deep end! This week I finally got my car smogged (it was due in September so I’ve been driving with expired tags) and I had to come home and take a nap afterwards. The smallest things feel like Too. Much.
Just ordered the Cerave night cream and a firming lotion from them, too. I’m excited to see if it helps my rosacea (nitraminamide and ceramides or something). Also, I am so jazzed to hear what samples you chose!
Yeah, you are going to be flat out after all that. I am so happy we are able to see people outside again, but I literally feel drunk after no drinks after actual face time with a few people. I have mostly made my piece with all the ways my graduating student is getting shafted, but every now and then I feel really sad about it. And Angus went back across the border to school in January and we haven’t seen him since and it is terrible. I fully agree that the first lockdown, when I had my whole family here and safe, was not good, but had its pros.