Distance learning: Monday

8:00 am    My alarm goes off. I reach out and turn it off and go back to sleep, lightly.

8:30 am    I get out of bed and go to the twins' room to wake them up. Monday seems to be the one day everybody sleeps in. The school thinks we should start work at 8:30 am, but since that is earlier than we start working on any other day, we think 9 am is better. I go back to my room to dress, then make tea and bring the paper in. Rocket Boy eats breakfast.

9:00 am    "OK, guys, you're supposed to do Dreambox or Lexia for 45 minutes. Which do you want to do?" Kid A chooses Lexia, Kid B chooses Dreambox. Kid A has trouble signing in to Lexia. We email his special ed resource person for help. Finally, at 9:40, he manages to sign in and I start the timer for both kids (for 20 minutes, since we are running late).

10:05 am    According to the official schedule, we're supposed to spend 30 minutes getting organized, reading teacher feedback, and making up late assignments, and 15 minutes doing a brain break, but that all goes by the wayside, because we're late on account of the Lexia problem. "Shall we do math, social studies, language arts, or do you want to do your classes in the order you usually have them?" We spend ten minutes or so arguing about this.

10:15 am    We start math. Kid B and I read through his teacher's complicated instructions, finally locating today's work. I get him started and move over to help Kid A. Kid A is supposed to work on assignments in Khan Academy, but he has forgotten how to log in. We spend an hour or so changing his password, signing in and realizing we've signed in to his 5th grade class, searching through old assignments to try to find the code so he can sign in to the 7th grade class, realizing he should have used a different user name, trying to change his password for the different user name, and finally emailing his teacher for help. During all this I start laughing hysterically, never a good sign.

11 am    Kid B has finished the first part of his math on his own, but now has to calculate his walking speed. This involves the sidewalk. We find a tape measure and some chalk and my phone and head outside. "You should use this tape measure, it's better," says Kid A, so I put back the first tape measure and take the one he's holding. Kid B and I go out to the sidewalk and start measuring. It turns out that Kid A's tape measure only has inches and we're supposed to use centimeters. We put Kid A's tape measure back in the house and get the cm tape measure. We measure out ten meters and use my phone to time him walking the distance (10 seconds). Then we time it again (8 seconds). We decide the second measure is more accurate and go back in the house.

11:30 am    Kid A's math teacher hasn't responded yet, so we decide to do social studies instead. He first has to check in, which involves filling out a form and submitting it. We discover that it has a 12 noon due date (why? why?), so he gets it in just in time. Then we have to read two pages about different types of government and do a worksheet. The worksheet seems embarrassingly easy to me, but is very hard for Kid A, who gets every single question wrong until I point out things he's missing.

12:15 pm    I check on Kid B, who is having trouble with his math. I help him understand some graphs and then get him started on the third part of his math assignment. I check my email and there is a response from Kid A's math teacher, thank goodness.

12:30 pm    Kid A manages to sign in to Khan Academy using a link from his math teacher. Not reading carefully, he zips past the place where he's supposed to enter her class code and ends up in a session that looks wrong to me. Ignoring my concerns, he starts doing an assessment (but why? it's not supposed to be an assessment). I leave him and go back to help Kid B.

12:50 pm    I help Kid B with the last problem on his math and get him to start social studies. Since social studies check-in ended at 12 noon (why? why?), he is marked "late." We work through the same reading and assignment that Kid A and I did earlier, and fortunately he understands it better and it doesn't take so long. He submits it and I tell him he can have a break before we move on to reviewing for and taking his make-up social studies quiz.

1:30 pm    I make chicken nuggets in the microwave to feed my hungry children. Kid A also has a piece of pie. At some point during the morning I ate breakfast, but I honestly can't remember when. For lunch I have crackers and dip, because I am losing my mind and those feel comforting.

2:00 pm    Back to school. Kid A is having trouble with his strange math assessment thing, so I try to help him. The problems he's working on have nothing to do with what he's been doing in math class. I express my concern about this once again. He finally looks closely at the screen and notices that it says "5th grade." We're still in 5th grade! I take over, log him out of 5th grade, log him in to 7th grade, put in the code his teacher sent, and finally we find the homework. There are 10 things to do! He throws a fit, but I point out that the fit wasted time he could have spent working on his 10 assignments. He finally gets started and realizes that some of the 10 are videos he's supposed to watch. There are really only 3 assignments. I leave him to it and go back to Kid B.

2:20 pm    Kid B now has to review what they call a "pear deck" to get ready to retake the map portion of the social studies quiz he failed last week. We sit down together to review it, and immediately I get confused (because I have not been studying Central Asia as closely as the kids have). I end up dragging out an atlas to help us, but even it is confusing regarding the exact location of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Finally Google Maps shows us where they are. Encouraged, Kid B settles down to retake the quiz (I don't help with that).

2:40 pm    I go back to Kid A, who has done some of his math on his own but has gotten most of the questions wrong. I work with him to re-do them. He knows the concepts but doesn't read the questions carefully. Even when I read the questions to him, he gets them wrong. I have to get him to slow down and pay attention. When he slows down and pays attention, he gets every answer right.

3:20 pm    I go back to check on Kid B. He is struggling because his language arts teacher has a check-in deadline of 2 pm and it is now way past that. (School is supposed to end at 3:15 on Mondays, but we need to keep going because we aren't done.) Unlike with social studies, he isn't just marked late -- he can't submit the check-in assignment at all. I tell him to go on to the main assignment, but it apparently depends on his having done the check-in assignment. Nothing shows up for him to do, so he has nothing to work on.

3:30 pm    I officially lose it. I go back to my computer to write an angry email to Kid B's language arts teacher (who I actually like a lot), my hands shaking too much to type. Rocket Boy asks me what's going on. I start screaming at him, shut the door, finish my email, hit send. Then I start to cry. I go out to the front of the house, stand at the front door, crying, and bang my fists on the door in frustration. Rocket Boy tries to get me to stop, so I go out onto the front porch. But there are people walking by, as always. I go back in the house and out to the backyard, the tears flowing freely now. I lie down in the middle of the backyard, sobbing my heart out. (It's possible that some of the tears are for Chester, who died a week ago.) Rocket Boy tries to get me to stop, warning me that our next-door neighbor might call the police if she hears me. I say, "No one is going to call the police about someone crying!"

4:00 pm    The crying is very cathartic. I eventually calm down, sit up, and then go back inside. I write Kid B's language arts teacher another email, apologizing for the first one. Then I try to get Kid A to do his language arts assignment. It isn't too long, but it is mystifying. He is supposed to finish a magic planner, or something like that. "Do you know what this means?" I ask him. "Yes." "Have you started it?" I ask. "Yes." "Can we work on it?" "No, I'm tired." After bugging him several times, I realize that he is worn out (and of course so am I), and my meltdown was hard on everyone. I email his language arts teacher to explain what happened. I also email his math teacher to thank her for sending the code earlier and I tell her a little bit about what happened.

6:30 pm    We decide to walk to the grocery store to get sushi for dinner because nobody wants to cook. It is cold outside. The walk does everyone good. Tomorrow is another day. Unfortunately.