Today has been pretty good. My parents stopped by this afternoon (at a safe distance) to drop off some seedlings for my garden, mostly tomatoes and peppers (including a few chilies that my dad had grown from seed.) This was really great because I had been avoiding going to the…
My daughter's teachers have been suggesting that we give her the opportunity to choose her own schoolwork as a way of making her more willing to engage with school. We've been trying to give her a half dozen or so choices in a variety of subjects each morning in the…
I've been thinking a lot about how close to the edge we're all living right now. From worrying about our emergency fund to worrying about how my daughter will throw a tantrum about the smallest things, it seems that just a little push could be all it takes to wreck…
There were furloughs at my wife's job today. A LOT of people were affected. She was mercifully spared, but we were very lucky. A lot of her friends and colleagues were affected and will have a really hard time making ends meet. It is hard to shake the feeling that…
The tulips don't care that we're in lockdown. They care a little that I haven't been watering them as much as I might in a normal year, because I'm not spending as much time outside. (Though it's been raining on and off, so they are doing fine.) They probably cared…
My daughter has been going to dance classes at the same studio for a couple of years now. As with everyone else, they've been closed and struggling to figure out a way to serve their community. The solution they came up with was to offer classes on Zoom. I thought…
All that optimism from yesterday has pretty much vanished today. I realize that things take time, but today was a disaster. We followed the advice of our daughter's teachers and counselors and gave her a 'menu' of possible schoolwork to do today, ranging from academic exercises to things like art…
Look at this, I don't have anything to complain about today! We had a really good conversation with various teachers and support people at my daughter's school today. They reassured us that we are doing ok, that she is already beyond grade-level, and that they realize that not all kids…