As April whizzes past

Although the days are rather dull and anxiety-filled, I feel like they go by quickly. Here it is April 26th and it seems as though March were yesterday. I suppose that's because time stopped in mid-March and we're still waiting for it to resume.

April is not my favorite month, but it is not my least favorite either (that would be March). Things start to green up in April, followed by massive, messy snows. I remember thinking, last December when I was putting this calendar together, that the background was ugly. It's kind of a pale, unpleasant Aegean blue, not a color I like. Also, I couldn't find good photos, just some Easter stuff, the kids at the neighborhood egg hunt, that kind of thing.

And whaddaya know, the actual month turned out to be really sucky too. Or dull, I guess. Just waiting for this all to be over.

This wasn't a bad week, as stay-at-home weeks go. Last Sunday, the kids and I set out for a walk only to be stopped by the rapidly-melting snow on our front lawn. We ended up not going anywhere, just playing in the snow. This could be our last snow of the season (or, alternatively, we could get two more feet), so it made sense to enjoy it. The boys threw snowballs down the street competitively, they threw them at each other, and they rolled up the snow like a carpet and built a snow chair, which for a while was a snow wheelchair. I think this photo shows the wheelchair stage, but it's a little hard to tell. Before we went back inside, they destroyed it, hacking away with glee. When I told Rocket Boy about this later, he expressed disapproval. "It's going to be in the 50s tomorrow," I told him. "The sun would have destroyed it if they hadn't." And sure enough, by the end of the day Monday you could barely tell that we'd had any snow, much less 17 inches. Springtime in Colorado.

It feels crazy to say this, but I'm starting to enjoy distance learning. Maybe "enjoy" is too strong a word, but I need something stronger than "tolerate." Some of the time it's still awful, but some of the time it's fun.

What I love is when I'm dragging them through some assignment and then they take over and do it themselves -- and do it well. However, this photo is not an illustration of that. For Earth Day (Wednesday -- see the total absence of snow by then?), their science teacher suggested they go outside and pick up trash, and then analyze it to see how much plastic it contained. The other option was to make a poster, and that would have required research, so the boys both chose trash, but they were really not enthusiastic about it. I found bags for them to carry and gloves for them to wear, and they objected to both. "So, what, are you going to pick up trash with your bare hands?" I asked. No, they were planning for ME to pick up the trash and carry it home. Yeah, right. It turned out that there was essentially no trash in our neighborhood, not even on the creek path where I always see trash. Clearly, other science students had been out before us and picked it all up. But even when someone spotted a candy wrapper or a piece of styrofoam, they didn't want to pick it up. After much screaming and fighting, I got them to put a couple of things in their bags and we went home. On Friday they made videos about their trash and posted them.

Not much else happened this week, but as the days went on I started to feel really anxious. When this whole pandemic thing started, I believed (as did many people), that I would not get it, or if I did, it would be a mild or symptom-free version. I was worried that Rocket Boy would get it and die, but I wasn't worried about myself. But as time has gone on, I have gotten worried about myself. One of the main risk factors is obesity, and, well, that's me. My BMI is over 40, and since this whole crisis started I've gained a few more pounds from crappy eating (chocolate, chips, more chocolate). Rocket Boy is six years older than me, but he's skinny.

Every day, sometimes several times a day, I suddenly feel convinced that I have it -- a dry cough, a moment of chills, the scary few days when I couldn't smell the cats' litter box (still can't figure out that one). I've started imagining terrible scenarios where I get the virus, get very sick, have to go to the hospital and into Intensive Care, DIE, and then Rocket Boy comes back to Colorado to take care of the twins, catches the virus because they probably have it too, goes to the hospital, and DIES, etc. What would the twins do? Who could take care of them? Could they take care of themselves for a few days if they had to? Could they take care of the cats?

My anxiety for some reason seems to be focused on the cats. I worry that I should have had Pie Bear put to sleep, because no one can take care of him except me (those insulin needles, you know). I worry that if someone did move in to take care of the twins, they would be baffled by the cats. Finally, Friday night, I decided that the time had come to write up cat care instructions. And also a phone list, so the twins can use our home phone to call their relatives to ask for help. So when I got up on Saturday, after making tea and feeding the cats, I went straight to the computer and typed up those instructions. They're now taped to the kitchen wall and the phone list is on the little wall by the kitchen phone, and I feel somewhat comforted. I imagine a kind rescuer reading the instructions and knowing what to do (with a little help from the twins).

The other thing I did on Saturday was finish making masks. Although I had managed to make one a week ago, I couldn't seem to make any more, and the stupid ironing board sat sulking in the middle of our tiny kitchen. As part of my "let's beat anxiety by doing practical things" challenge, I decided to make three more masks -- a second one for me, and one each for the boys (doughnut fabric for Kid A, orange cat fabric for Kid B -- the photo also shows an old mask of RB's that I wear sometimes). I did this, though my sewing machine broke toward the end and I had to sew the last bits by hand. But I did it. And I was so happy that my sewing machine broke! I felt as though it broke on purpose, to let me off the hook for any more sewing. Of course, if it's not fixable (whenever the sewing machine repair shop opens up again), I'll be sad, but right now I don't want to be able to sew. I'm too anxious, still, for that to be fun.

I just want this all to be over.

Quite a week

Well, this has been quite a week. I was pondering what to blog about and then I thought, oh! Easter! And then I thought, oh, the snow! And then that other snow! Yes, it's been a week.

So, Easter, last Sunday. I wasn't looking forward to it at all. Easter is a funny holiday for us, because we don't do it religiously. I'm quite familiar with the religious version, from the years I was a churchgoer, and it seems odd to ignore all of that. Palm Sunday, Good Friday -- they aren't just words on the calendar to me. But I don't get into it much with the kids. We've sort of by default not given them any religious education, and I can't see myself starting now. They'll have to decide for themselves whether they want it in their lives.

What we've done at Easter since they were toddlers is what many people do. We hide eggs and baskets and bunnies. Every year I bring out the old baskets and bunnies and plastic eggs and plastic grass, and I buy a bunch of candy from the grocery store (sometimes Target, never anywhere fancier), and on Saturday night after the boys go to bed, Rocket Boy and I fill the plastic eggs with jelly beans and the baskets with everything else. We laugh a lot, reminisce about when they were little boos, and eat jelly beans. And then I hide the baskets and he hides the plastic eggs. Only this year he wasn't here, so I hid everything. And it was sad.

The first holiday challenge was getting the Easter box down from a high shelf in the garage. I couldn't get anywhere near the shelf because we have a train table in the garage and I'm too fat to fit around it. I ended up leaning across the table with a hoe, hooking the hoe into the finger hole in the box, and pulling the box down onto the table. Then I just left it until Easter because the twins don't usually go in the garage.

My strategy this year was to avoid mentioning Easter. I just wasn't up for it. So when Kid B said he'd like to dye eggs, I bought white eggs on my weekly shopping trip, but I didn't mention them again and neither did he. Likewise, I didn't say, on Saturday, "Go to bed early so the Easter bunny can come!" I didn't even get out our collection of Easter books. Maybe next year, if there's no pandemic going on.

So on Saturday night I just casually read them a chapter of our current bedtime book (The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman), said good night, and left them. After I figured they were asleep, I fetched the box from the garage, filled the baskets with grass and chocolate and bunnies, filled the plastic eggs with jelly beans (3 or 4 per egg, preferably matched to the egg's color), and hid everything. Rocket Boy always hides eggs in their bedroom and ours, but I did not want to risk waking them up and I hate having them rummage through my stuff. I made a rather grouchy sign that I taped to my door: "No eggs in bedrooms! No rabbit was here! Not even one!" And then I went to bed. And I was so sad.

The next morning I woke up a little late -- they were already up -- and again I felt sad. No little people creeping out to see if the Easter bunny left anything. No Rocket Boy to giggle with. Just the clicking sound of middle-grade people playing on iPads. Then I got up to pee and as I was heading back to my room to dress, Kid A called out, "I already found four eggs!"

"I saw some in the bathroom," I said, and they were off. Acting like they were five, not twelve, they raced through the house looking for rabbit treasure. They dragged a lot of stuff back to the computer room so they could eat it while playing games, but it's fine. They were happy and even I cheered up.

We spent the rest of the day eating chocolate and jelly beans and watching the snow come down. Because Easter was the beginning of our first big April snow event. It lasted through Monday and totaled around 17 inches. Fortunately it had been so warm beforehand that the snow didn't stick to the pavement, but there was plenty of snow on the lawn and the trees.

By the next day, Tuesday, April 14th, all 17 inches began to melt, and so for P.E. class we went for a walk to the park. They've never been big on building snow people or any of that stuff (though they're always up for throwing a snowball, preferably a really icy one, right in their brother's face), but for some reason at the park they started rolling balls of snow as if for a snowman. The snow came up like a carpet, revealing the bright green grass underneath. For some other reason, Kid A decided to bring one of the balls of snow home. "Coals to Newcastle!" I shouted at him, and then had to explain what that saying means, an explanation which I don't think he even listened to. Mom's comments are so boring.

So the week passed in an orgy of candy-eating (I even bought more jelly beans on my weekly shopping trip, since King Sooper's had an abundance of leftovers). It was a four-day school week for us, because Friday was a "conference exchange day," but most of the teachers didn't seem to realize it was a four-day week until right at the end, and they all had things due on Friday. All the Friday things had their due dates moved to Thursday, but the things that had previously been due on Thursday were still due on Thursday too. I decided not to complain to any teachers, because I get the impression they are all still so stressed out. But we didn't actually get all the work done, especially for language arts/reading. Kid B only submitted one of the pieces he was supposed to play for band. He didn't finish writing all his haiku. It's OK. We just do what we can.

By Wednesday evening just about all 17 inches of Easter snow had melted, so it was time for another storm. It started as rain, turned to snow overnight, and by Thursday morning we had another huge dump -- maybe 10 or 11 inches at that point, and it continued to snow all day and into the evening. I couldn't find the newspaper! (It turned up the next day.) We got another 17 inches of snow out of that storm, bringing Boulder to a total of 151 inches of snow for the year so far -- our snowiest year in recorded history. Also, that's more snow than any other U.S. city with a population of at least 50,000 has had this year. More than Anchorage, Alaska; more than Rochester, New York; more than Duluth, Minnesota. And of course the year's not over! We could easily have a big storm in May, or more in April, or both. Something to look forward to.

Well, as we wait for the delivery of our Chinese food (our Saturday treat), I will share one more set of photos. Yes, I finally made a mask. After how many weeks? Two? Three? I finally got with it and sewed some of the fabric that's been sitting around on the ironing board in the middle of my tiny kitchen. The fabric had cat hair on it, but I brushed that off and went ahead. The whole "for some reason I can't sew a mask" thing has really been getting to me.

Isn't it lovely? The inside is pink and purple flowers (see below -- I read somewhere that you should use different fabric on the inside and outside, so you can remember which is which.

I got this pattern off the CNN website and I ended up rather displeased with it -- it was missing key instructions, such as how much of a seam allowance to use. Also, I messed up the bobbin on my sewing machine twice, burned my fingers on the steam from the iron, and in general was just very very unhappy with the process. But it is done -- I have a mask. Now I should make another, plus some for the twins. Maybe tomorrow. This is enough for now.

Reading Post: Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson

Another reading post; skip if you're not interested.

Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson is the fifth book I've read for the Classics Challenge, and I read it for the category of "Classic by a Person of Color." The novel, published in 1859, is Harriet Wilson's life story, and like the last few books I've read, it was depressing. Unlike the other books, it had a very realistic feel. Since Wilson wrote it to support herself, she may have exaggerated her story to make it more marketable. But I felt as though I were reading someone's truth and that made it especially sad. Our Nig is believed to be either the first or second novel written by an African-American woman in the U.S., with the term "novel" used loosely, since this is mainly autobiography.

The main character (based on Wilson) is sometimes called Frado, but often just "Nig," which in itself was enough to make me sad. Frado is the daughter of a white woman, Mag Smith, who marries a kind "African" man, Jim, after her family rejects her for bearing a child out of wedlock and she nearly starves. That child dies soon after birth, but Mag has two more children (Frado and a son) with Jim before he dies, after which she takes up with his partner, Seth. Facing financial difficulties, Mag and Seth eventually decide to move on.

"It's no use," said Seth one day; "we must give the children away, and try to get work in some other place."

After discussing who would want "the black devils," they decide to give six-year-old Frado to the Bellmonts, a white family who live nearby. They don't actually arrange anything, just leave Frado there one day and promise to pick her up that evening. That's the last Frado sees of them.

The section of the book about Mag is a part of Frado's (and Wilson's) history that she would have been too young to have known or remembered. Perhaps she learned her mother's history from others. She portrays her mother as a victim at first, but eventually becomes more critical. Her description of how Mag might have felt about marrying Jim, Frado's father, is chilling:

He prevailed; they married. You can philosophize, gentle reader, upon the impropriety of such unions, and preach dozens of sermons on the evils of amalgamation. Want is a more powerful philosopher and preacher. Poor Mag. She has sundered another bond which held her to her fellows. She has descended another step down the ladder of infamy.

Remember, this is Frado trying to put herself in her mother's shoes. By describing her parents' marriage as "another step down the ladder of infamy," Frado implies that Mag held society's view of interracial marriage. And perhaps she did, since she later abandoned her daughter of that marriage. Or perhaps Mag was just a bad person, which is also implied.

Most of the rest of the book is devoted to Frado's subsequent miserable life with the Bellmonts. Wilson was born in New Hampshire in 1825, so this is a portrayal of antebellum life in New England, not the slave states. Frado is "free," but she is now an indentured servant, essentially a slave to the Bellmonts until she is 18. However, because she lives in a free state, she is allowed to attend school. On her first day of school the other children are mean to her because of her color, but her kind teacher rescues her:

"She looks like a good girl; I think I shall love her, so lay aside all prejudice, and vie with each other in shewing kindness and good-will to one who seems different from you," were the closing remarks of the kind lady.

When Frado is 9, Mrs. Bellmont decides that "such privileges should cease." Still, Frado has learned to read and write, legally, quite a contrast with people of African descent in the slave states.

Mr. Bellmont, his sister Aunt Abby who lives with the Bellmonts, two of the Bellmont sons (Jack and James), later their wives (Jenny and Susan), and one of the Bellmont daughters (Jane) are all kind to Frado and view her as a human being and a lonely, abandoned child.

So, who isn't kind? Primarily Mrs. Bellmont, who is described as

self-willed, haughty, undisciplined, arbitrary and severe. In common parlance, she was a scold, a thorough one.

Frado's other abuser is the younger daughter, Mary, who "was indeed the idol of her mother, and more nearly resembled her in disposition and manner than the others."

The two, but especially Mrs. Bellmont, torment and torture Frado for nearly 12 years. The puzzling thing is why this abuse is allowed to go on, when most of the family object to it, strongly and repeatedly. I felt as though I were reading a story not so much of racial prejudice but of sadism. Many horrible incidents are related in the book, and in the introduction Wilson notes,

My mistress was wholly imbued with southern principles. I do not pretend to divulge every transaction in my own life, which the unprejudiced would declare unfavorable in comparison with treatment of legal bondmen; I have purposely omitted what would most provoke shame in our good anti-slavery friends at home.

So, apparently, Frado's/Wilson's life was even worse than she describes. Supposedly the book did not sell well because it showed Northerners in a bad light, but it's not clear to me that it does, exactly. It paints a clear picture of a sadistic woman, Mrs. Bellmont, who is cruel not only to Frado but to anyone she dislikes, including her son Jack's wife. But many of the Northerners in the book are more reasonable. Maybe the key is that no one would have been able to get away with this cruelty had slavery and racial prejudice not existed. If the other Bellmonts had not been part of a discriminatory society they might have tried harder to change Mrs. Bellmont's behavior.

Frado eventually turns 18 and leaves the Bellmonts, but her life does not improve much. She is too sick (from years of beatings) to work hard, marries a man who turns out to be a bounder, and is unable to support her one son who dies in a care home. Wilson's own life seems to have improved after the publication of this book -- she married again and later became a Spiritualist, known in the Boston area as "the colored medium." She died in 1900.

A book like this is a sad little window into someone's life, a free Black woman's life, long ago. I'm glad I read it, but now every time I think of it I feel sorrow for Frado, wish she could have had a better life.

It's not about you

A week ago I wrote a very sad post about distance learning and how miserable we all were. I'm happy to report that while it's still horrible and awful, it's better. Monday was a terrible day, Friday was a terrible day, the days in between were varying degrees of dreadful, but we're finding our rhythm, getting it done.

I now start each school day by writing the day's schedule on a page in my notebook. I get into Schoology to see exactly what they need to do for each of their classes that day and add that to the page so I can check off each thing as we do it. I've learned from two weeks of experience that I have to do this -- I can't depend on the boys. Each teacher organizes their Schoology page differently, and in some cases it's very hard to figure out what's supposed to be done each day. I have a PhD; figuring stuff out is what I'm good at. Kid A's special ed teacher told me last week that it's important to let the kids do it themselves, that that's part of what middle school is all about. OK, fine, but the principal also sent out this message yesterday, asking parents to be more involved:

We are noticing that some students are less engaged during the second week of Home Learning. In contacting parents, they thought students were engaging, because the students said they were. I am encouraging parents to take a deeper view of what students are doing in their online learning. Ask your child to show you their work, have them tell you about the learning or check in with their teachers to see how learning is going. We are also asking parents to remind students to check their school email daily.  

To me, this says I'm doing the right thing by taking charge. The kids can figure out things for themselves when they go back to in-person school (and Kid A gets back to his special ed support system). In this weird, in-between phase, which is not really homeschooling because I am not setting the lessons or due dates, I need to take charge or nothing will happen.

While I'm doing all this organizing, the twins are in bed with their Chromebooks, playing the games they weren't supposed to be able to play on them (but the blocking software is easy to get around). So much for hiding the iPads (which I still do each morning) -- they can do almost everything they want to on their school-issued laptops. Sigh.

"Check your email," I say, and reluctantly they do so, though I come over and read the messages too, because they miss things. Some of the teachers send a lot of messages, and sometimes the messages say things like, "I've decided to do things differently today" -- which is why I have to make our plans that morning, not the night before. It's OK, the change is usually for the better. Twice a week, Kid B has a Zoom call from 9 to 10 am, but otherwise we start work at 9:30 (more zoom calls are coming next week -- we'll have to figure out how to accommodate those). Monday they have work for periods 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, Tuesday and Thursday they have 1-3-5-7, and Wednesday and Friday they have 2-4-6.

The trickiest part, by far, is figuring out how to help both of them at the same time. They have two classes together, they have the same math teacher but at different times/days, and they have different reading/language arts teachers, so those assignments are completely different.

In some cases, they will work independently. Kid A, for example, is supposed to read for 20 minutes each day for his reading class. I can set the timer for 20 minutes and let him go, which gives me 20 minutes to work with Kid B. Kid B can practice his instrument on his own while I sit with Kid A and help him with his. If the assignment is to watch a video, they can usually do that alone -- though I've learned that Kid A likes to increase the speed of the video, so that it goes by faster -- and consequently he can't understand what's being said, thereby negating the whole purpose of watching the video. (!!!) Sometimes it's just hard, and I have to tell one to sit tight while I work with the other. There was a lot of that on Friday, when it took us 6 hours to finish what's supposed to be 3 hours of work.

So it's not fun. But we're figuring it out, and I know we're doing better than many other families where the parents have to work -- or don't have internet -- or speak only Spanish and can't understand their kids' assignments -- or are too depressed to put in the effort. That's one thing I learned this week: no matter how crappy things are, we're doing better than a lot of other families, and my angst about the process is uninteresting. It's not all about me. "Don't worry that it's not perfect, just turn it in," I said, over and over and over. We turned in a lot of sub-standard work, but hey, we got it in, checked it off, moved on.

What I didn't manage to get done this week was make masks. I have no idea why I can't do this. I got the rest of the material cut out -- I now have everything ready to make 6 masks, including two kid-sized. The sewing machine is set up on the dining room table (we've been eating at the kitchen counter instead). The ironing board is driving me crazy, I bump into it whenever I try to do anything in the kitchen, but do I do the work that would allow me to put it away? No, I do not. Chester thinks it is a great place to sit (soft, unlike his usual perch on the printer), but otherwise it's a pain having it there, a pain that I could so easily cure. And of course we are now supposed to wear masks whenever we go outside, even for a social distancing walk, so I really have to get this figured out. I have some old masks of Rocket Boy's, but two of them make me sneeze, and the third has broken elastic, so I have to use a binder clip and it's horrible. An hour ago we went for a walk and I wore a scarf enhanced by a hair elastic -- suffice it to say it didn't work, and I spent the whole walk trying to pull it up, adjust my hair, pull it up again. I need to make those masks!

One thing happened this week that really upset me, so much so that my immune system clearly dropped and I started feeling sick. I finally feel better this morning, but I need to be careful. Anyway, on Thursday around noon we walked to the kids' old elementary school, as we usually do for our official 20-minute activity for P.E. class. The playground has been closed for a while, but at first they didn't close the fields. We played gaga ball briefly and then moved onto the field to play frisbee. I should note that the fields and basketball courts themselves were closed a week or so ago, to discourage gatherings of unrelated people. But there aren't actually any signs that say the fields are closed. And you are allowed to walk through the school grounds on your way to somewhere else. And I'm totally justifying our behavior, here, ignoring the actual rules. Anyway, after we'd been playing for a few minutes, a man wearing a cloth mask (who had been helping distribute food in the parking lot) walked over to the basketball court, where a man was shooting hoops by himself. The masked man said something to him, and the man took his basketball and left. Then the masked man walked over to us. I knew what was coming and my heart sunk. "Hello, folks," the man said pleasantly. And then he proceeded to explain that the fields were closed. "I know, I'm sorry," I said, and then proceeded to try to justify our behavior: "They have to exercise for P.E. -- they're in middle school -- it's such a good place to play." "I know," he said, sounding as though he really did know. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to leave."

It's not about you, I told myself, as we walked home. It's about flattening the curve, helping prevent deaths. You did something wrong; now you're going to stop doing that. It's not about you. But still I felt my immune system crashing because I felt so ashamed. It's not about you. It's not about you.

Today when we went for our walk, we didn't go to the school. We went to the big field in the park, where you are still allowed to go, and played frisbee for a while, trying not to hit the various small groups here and there enjoying the sunshine. While we were there I got an "Extreme alert" on my phone, telling me that Colorado's statewide stay-at-home order has been extended to 4/26. It's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow, with a chance of snow every day all next week. I guess we'll be exercising mostly indoors for a while, except for shoveling snow. And that will be fine. Cause it's not about us.

School is no fun at all

This won't be a long post, because I'm really low tonight. The school week was awful. We had one day that wasn't so bad -- Thursday -- but Wednesday and Friday were dreadful. Friday was possibly the worst day of the whole week, because a lot of assignments were due that day -- Kid B had to turn in two different papers, neither of which he understood how to write.  He got angry with me because I was helping Kid A with his math assignment, and when I finished that and said "OK, let's work on those papers," he was too upset to respond. So I'm not sure what he turned in and frankly I don't care. Both Language Arts/Reading teachers are assigning too much work, in my opinion. I think they'll figure that out when they see what kids are turning in. Of course, it's possible that other kids aren't having any trouble with the work.

My kids get so frustrated, especially when they don't understand what to do and when I'm helping their brother instead of them. A lot of fighting goes on. Kid A will just suddenly lash out at Kid B for no reason except that he's overwhelmed. Then I yell, and -- yeah, the stress and frustration level rises further. It's special.

I made the mistake of posting a message about our struggles on our neighborhood listserv -- that I'd had a terrible first week of online school and how did everyone else's week go, etc. A couple of people responded, and then someone decided that we were insulting teachers and started posting about how unfair that was, and someone else chimed in with a diatribe about how while we were all baking organic bread and playing outside during spring break, the teachers were home desperately trying to put together an online learning plan. I know this has been terribly hard for teachers and I don't want to discount that, not at all. But I also don't think I blamed teachers in my post (I've gone back and re-read it several times). I just accidentally hit someone's trigger. So I'm not going to post about that again, probably anywhere except here (my safe little blog that almost no one reads).

A big part of the problem is that Kid A has a lot of support at school, both in his regular classes and in a special class he takes. I have to be that support now, and I'm not sure how to do it. But Kid B seems to need a lot of support too, at least with the type of assignments they're being given now. One math assignment this week involved estimating the number of grains of rice in a half cup. I know, sounds so marvelously creative. The kids don't like rice, so I almost never fix it anymore. But I dug the rice canister out of a high cupboard, found a 1/2 cup, and we measured out the rice. Then we filled a 1/8 teaspoon with rice, counted the grains, and extrapolated. This was all my idea of how to solve the problem -- the teacher didn't offer any suggestions, at least not that the boys and I could find. Bottom line: the boys were lost, or would have been if I hadn't guided them through the whole project. I can't imagine what they'd be doing if I were working (at home or otherwise). Probably nothing.

Well, it's the weekend, so I'm trying to let go of my stress about school. Instead, I am stressing about masks! They're now recommending that people wear cloth masks when they're out and about. I'm not going to worry about it when I'm taking a walk, but at the grocery store I probably should. OK, so it's time to make a mask -- something that should be easy for me, with my sewing machine and my storage tub filled with fabric and my adequate sewing skills. But I just can't get myself to do it. I found a reasonable-looking set of instructions online, printed them out, and managed to cut out some fabric. But I can't seem to go on, even though there is nothing difficult about this pattern. I'm going to give it another try tomorrow.

We had takeout tonight (sandwiches from Snarf's, expensive but at least I didn't have to cook). Also, I managed to get caught up on dishes. Tomorrow morning I'll try again to make at least one mask, maybe do a load of laundry, maybe go to the store. I'll see. When depression is kicking my butt, it's hard to do anything at all. I need to try to find the strength to keep going.