COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 51

TGIF! We've nearly made it through another week! As usual, we'll spending Friday looking over the week's assignments and making sure we haven't missed anything. We're losing our motivation a little, despite the short week, so once the most important assignments are done we may move on to something more fun, like a science experiment or a baking project. We'll play it by ear.

7-8:30am: Get up get dressed, bake cinnamon rolls, eat them, scrub frosting off of everything, brush hair and teeth.

8:30-9am: My son is working on a research assignment for his Challenge program, involving taking notes and putting them in outline form. I love that he is learning these organizational skills early. He loves to research and discover new information but he tends to just toss it out haphazardly, so it will serve him well to learn to both think through it and present it in a logical, orderly fashion. We hit a HUGE frustration point when the formatting of his Table of Contents kept getting messed up (I can sympathize; I have dealt with this all the time in the past). I tried to convince him to not worry about it and just get the information down on the page and we could format it afterwards, but he couldn't work that way, so I got into the document and formatted it for him, so now he's able to add his information points. Phew, crisis averted. My daughter is working on her Zearn math and also Math Playground. Added degree of difficulty: they're both working at the kitchen table and my daughter has no brain-to-mouth filter so needs to both talk out loud to herself while she works and to add commentary to her brother's questions about his work. I'm torn between wanting to separate them so they get their work done or leave them together so they can practice "real" classroom behavior. For now, I'm leaving them together.

9-9:30am: My son is continuing to fill out his Table of Contents, and my daughter has moved on to reading with Epic. I have retired to the porch to watch both the hummingbirds and the neighbor's new couch being delivered, as well as to get some kind-of-alone time. My introversion is kicking in a little more than usual today. Once my son finished and submitted his Table of Contents, I let him take a quick stretch break, then he chose to continue with a couple of virtual tours of Fenway Park and a lesson on the history of baseball.

9:30-10am: My daughter is working on her favorite, Typing Club, which is a very short assignment. My son reviewed his assignments for the week and he's finished everything. So I told them we can bake anything they want (within reason). They're both surfing around looking for recipes, and trying to agree on one. They debating a number of options, including chocolate chip cake, snickerdoodle muffins, and sugar cookies. They're also checking carefully to be sure we have all the required ingredients.

10-10:30am: We remembered a chapter in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books where the family made popcorn balls, so we decided to search for a good recipe for those. We finally agreed on this recipe for Old-Fashioned Popcorn Balls! I had forgotten how long it takes to bring sugar to the hard ball stage, so after the kids had combined the ingredients and taken turns stirring for a while, I let my daughter take a break while my son went to get set up for his trombone lesson.

 

10:30-11am: My daughter is continuing her break (she actually writing an animated skit, so it's schoolwork, but she doesn't need to know that), and my son is logging on to his online trombone lesson. I am finishing boiling the sugar syrup and moving on to forming the popcorn balls. I'm not sure if I didn't let the syrup cool for long enough or if I didn't get it quite up to temperature (we don't have a candy thermometer so I used the "dropping a bit into cold water" technique, which has always been less than successful for me), but the popcorn "balls" are more popcorn "blobs," or possibly simply caramel popcorn. Eh, there's popcorn and there's sugar, the kids will be happy.

11-11:45am: My son is moving over to his online Challenge class, and my daughter is working on her FlipGrid math problem.

11:45am-1pm: Lunch break and free time! We enjoyed the popcorn balls as "lunch dessert."

1-2pm: We're watching a British series called "History 101." The first episode focuses on the history of fast food. It's really interesting! It's more of a lesson on nutrition and marketing than history, but it's still worthwhile learning. We went on to watch a second episode about the Space Race, which was also interesting, and much more science- and history-based. Good stuff! We'll be watching more episodes of this series next week.

And that's it for today, and for this week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 50

Day 50?!?? What a milestone. With a couple of holidays thrown in there, that's more than TEN WEEKS we've been learning from home. Yay for us!

This morning I was up early (I'm always awake early, but rarely up early) and baked some French bread as a thank-you for a friend who is doing my husband a professional favor. (The side benefit being that, since she lives alone and will not be able to finish off two full loaves of bread before they get stale, we get to keep one.) It's a beautiful morning, warm but with a little bit of breeze, and it was lovely to enjoy my coffee quietly and without interruption. Plus, I find kneading bread to be incredibly therapeutic and satisfying. So, the day began on a high note. Let's hope it continues that way!

7-8:45am: Since I was busy baking bread, breakfast was a little later than usual. So I gave the kids a little extra time to eat and then get dressed, brushed, washed, and ready for the day.

8:45-9:30am: I sat with each of the kids to look over their weekly assignment lists and plan out their lessons for the day. They both have their favorite subjects and assignments that they tend to want to do at the expense of other important assignments, so every now and then I need to look at their lists and be sure nothing crucial is being overlooked (inadvertently or on purpose). My son is working on an "angle classification" assignment, followed by ReadWorks, reading "A Slice of Summer." I like this reading assignment because it includes questions to answer and submit to his teacher. My daughter is working on her Typing Club exercises.

9:30-10am: My daughter is moving on to Math Playground and my son is doing independent reading, reading Robin Hood on my Kindle. After my daughter finished, she did some reading on Epic. We also watched a workman on our neighbor's roof using a leaf blower to clear the gutters, because home improvement and maintenance is an important life skill. Also, it was cool to watch.

10-10:30am: What do we always do at 10am? Circle Time with Miss Tracey and Atlantic White Shark Conservancy! Also, I took a shower, because hygiene is important, and also I experienced the king of all night sweats last night. Like, I literally had to go splash cold water all over myself for fear I would actually spontaneously combust. My daughter went on to work on Zearn after Circle Time (which was a short story reading today).

10:30-11:30am: My daughter moved on to Greg Tang math while my son finished up AWSC's presentation on fossils. Then he went on to Finish up a few math worksheets and ReadWorks assignments.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. My neighbor is feeding her baby on the porch and I am blatantly Mrs. Kravitz-ing from my kitchen window. He's singing happily between mouthfuls and waving his arms around wildly and it's the cutest thing ever.

1-2pm: Both kids had a Google Classroom Meet with their teachers. They both finished a little early and then chatted with their classmates online for a bit. The weather's looking a little dicey, so I don't think we'll jump in the pool this afternoon, but if it clears up later I'll send them outside to run around and burn off some energy. But for the moment, we're all kind of being couch potatoes and that's okay, too.

One more day left and this week will be over!! FIFTY AND FABULOUS!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 49

We survived the big push to get the house ready for pictures, so now we're ready to get back to non-feral homeschool! Today should be a much more efficient day than we've had in a while (I hope). Since it's a short week with the Monday holiday plus what little we did yesterday, I'd like the kids to stick to the "core" subjects for today to make sure we don't get behind, and to make sure they've completed anything that should be done before their online class meetings tomorrow afternoon.

So let's get this show on the road!

8:30-9:15am: My son is watching a couple of engineering and science videos posted by his science teacher. He's definitely a STEM guy, so I try to get him to do as much science as possible. At his school, science is only a weekly subject (sadly), so we take advantage of extra science lessons whenever possible. My daughter got a bit of a late start this morning, but when she finally got going at about 8:45, we looked over her daily class assignments and started doing some catch-up work from yesterday. She started with a Greg Tang math game called "Coin Bubble" to practice 10 frames, then she's moving on to do 20 minutes of Zearn math. I'm always happy when she works on math, because that's not her strong suit. I'm staying nearby because she gets easily frustrated when she doesn't understand right away, so I like to try to talk her through figuring it out on her own before she melts down. I've found that one of the biggest difficulties of having smart kids is that when they don't immediately understand something or they're not able to solve a problem with minimal thinking, they get very frustrated. They need a lot of reminding that life doesn't work that way, and the reason we go to school is that nobody understands everything immediately and automatically. That's a harder lesson to learn than you might think. But learning it now will make their lives a lot less frustrating.

9:15-10am:  My daughter is doing one of the dreaded (by me more than her, at this point) FlipGrid math problems. Let's see how smoothly this goes. She got stuck at first because you can't fill in the responses on the screen, but once I got her paper and pencil, it helped. Like me, she tends to be a visual learner and thinker, so problems you solve in your mind are a struggle. Most of our math discussions are not the "nuts and bolts" type, but the "how to understand what the situation is and what they're asking" type. Word problems will always be her bane, but she's learning how to think through them. My son is working on some more logic-based math problems, including figuring out the most efficient placement of security cameras in a housing complex and some other "figure it out but also use math" problems. I like these real-world application math problems.

10-10:30am: Miss Tracey's Circle Time and Atlantic White Shark Conservancy Facebook Live programs, as usual. My daughter gets a quick break afterwards, since Circle Time is only about 15 minutes or so. I've started baking a couple of batches of bread, some for us and some to share with neighbors. I've done this "one-hour" recipe so many times now that it really does take me only an hour!

10:30-11:30am: I suggested that both kids do some independent reading on Epic, since most of our books are still packed away for the move. They didn't really get much of a chance to do any reading yesterday, so I'm encouraging them to read for at least 45 minutes and preferably a full hour - and they both went for pretty close to the full hour!

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time.

1-1:30pm: My son is now taking a turn with Zearn math, and my daughter is starting with Mystery Doug and learning about what causes rainbows. After she finished watching the video, she went outside and sprayed the pool with the hose to make some rainbows of her own. It took a good bit of discussion and experimentation to convince her that she needed to have the sun behind her in order for it to work, but eventually she caught on.

1:30-2pm: My daughter worked on a collection of video logic problems (you have a key to a door; it's to the left of the red door, it's not the door with the #3 on it, etc., which door does your key open?). My son is working on a ReadWorks assignment on the topic of disease spreading.

And with that, we're all ready to jump into the pool to cool off! Have a great afternoon, everyone!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 48

Do you remember, back when you were in elementary school, especially when it got close to the end of the year, sometimes you'd have a day when you really wouldn't do anything at all? Like, the teacher would tell you to spend the whole morning cleaning out your desks and doing independent reading when you were done, and then after lunch the whole class (or sometimes the whole grade, or even the whole school) would watch a movie until it was time to go home? I have fond memories of both Johnny Tremaine and Oliver!, both of which we must have watched a dozen times over the years. Well, that was the kind of day we had today.

Today was the day that the photographer/videographer came to take pictures for the 3-D virtual tour of our house. So I was up at 6am (oh, who am I kidding: I was awake at 4:30am doing all of it mentally) putting the finishing touches on the staging: removing bathmats and trashcans, rinsing out sinks, re-sweeping the floors, vacuuming everything one last time, fluffing and arranging pillows, making beds so they looked like they came out of a home decorating magazine. When we finished, my husband looked at me and said, with great satisfaction, "Well, I'd buy this house!" And at 8:15am, we packed the kids into the car and hit the road to let the realtor and the photog do their thing.

We started with breakfast at McDonald's, as an apology for not feeding the kids until 8:30. We ordered at the drive-thru and then sat at one of their outside picnic tables to eat, since it was an absolutely glorious morning. I'm not exactly a fan of McDonald's food, but I have to admit that those were just about the most delicious hotcakes I've ever eaten.

After we finished, we headed over towards our new house. We weren't able to go in, but since the kids hadn't even seen the outside in person, we wanted them to get a first-hand look. We parked at the park across the street and went for a walk around the pond, looking for turtles and frogs and fish.

Can you spot all 4 turtles in this photo?

We heard a lot of galumphing grandfather bullfrogs and spied a few. We saw lots of sunfish of all different sizes. We saw turtles swimming and sunning themselves. We saw water lilies ready to burst into glorious bloom. We explored the cool grassy amphitheater and peeked over the fence at the playground and tried to find all the different places where you could see our house through the trees.

After our hike, we drove around town checking out some of the places we were likely to go often: grocery stores, several different elementary schools, various restaurants, other parks and recreation areas, gyms and dance schools, and three or four shopping centers. I have a terrible sense of direction so it will take me a while to figure out how to get to any of those places, but at least now I kind of have an idea of what's grouped together and how long it's likely to get somewhere. I am relieved that our new street dead-ends not too far past our house, so at least I don't have to worry about which way to turn when I pull out of the driveway, no matter where I'm going.

We ended our adventures by ordering ice cream from a fabulous farm not far from the house. Ice cream for lunch helped to ease the disappointment the kids had from not being able to actually go inside the house. Plus, ICE CREAM! Ice cream is always a good thing.

We got back home at about 12:30pm, and my husband had to dive right back into work. At 1pm, both kids had a call with their teachers. Normally my son's classroom meets are Monday and Thursday, but I think they're doing Tuesday this week because yesterday was a holiday. He's supposed to have a band rehearsal at 1:15pm, so I asked him to stay in his class meet until 1:20 and then switch over. But it's nearly 1:30 now and I don't hear the sound of the trombone coming from upstairs, so he may have decided to stay, which is fine with me. (He came down at 1:30 and I asked him if he had switched over to band, and he blurted out, "Oh, shoot!" and then raced back upstairs.)

I've spent the past hour wandering around the house trying to find all the things that we tucked out of sight for the photo shoot: trash cans, soap dishes, toilet plungers, Alexa devices, extension cords, power cords, THE COFFEEMAKER, the hamster. I'm trying to only bring out the items that we really need for the next few weeks, in case we get some short notice on someone wanting to come and look at the house. I don't look forward to the quick "clean up and get out" events that I'm sure will happen, but I know the more we have the better the chance that we'll sell the house quickly and for a good price. It's a great house and I hope it finds a new owner who will love it and enjoy it the way we have.

There's a little-known musical called "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" which tells the story of the first century of the White House and the various families who lived in it during that time. Written by Alan Jay Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, with a Broadway cast starring Ken Howard (whom you may recognize as The White Shadow) as "The President" and Patricia Routledge (whom you may recognize at Hyacinth Bucket in the British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances") as "The President's Wife," it seems like it should have been a huge success. But instead, it was a complete flop, running for only 7 performances before it closed. But one of the more successful numbers was "Take Care of This House," performed on Broadway by Patricia Routledge, and recorded since by such luminaries as Julie Andrews, Barbara Streisand, Frederica von Stade (who sang it at Jimmy Carter's inauguration), Judy Kaye, Marilyn Horne, Joanna Gleason, Cynthia Erivo, and Kelli O'Hara. The First Lady sings it as she prepares to hand it over to the next first lady, with these lyrics:

Here in the shell of a house
This house that is struggling to be
A beacon of light shinning all through the night
So bright that the whole world could see

But now there's a chill in the room
Windows are starting to leak
Floorboards are starting to creak

And hope, hope may arrive
The house will survive
If only these walls could speak

Take care of this house
Keep it from harm
If bandits break in sound the alarm

Care for this house
Shine it by hand
And keep it so clean
The glow can be seen all over the land

Be careful at night, check all the doors
If someone makes off with our dream
The dream will be yours

Take care of this house
Be always on call
For this house is the hope of us all

Beware of full smiles that lead you astray
When someone is telling you lies
Let truth lead the way

Take of this house
Be always on call
Care for this house
It's the hope of us all.

And so I say, to my home's next occupant, whomever that may be: Take care of this house. It may not be as important as the White House, but it's a pretty special place. Take care of this house.

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 47

Feral homeschool continues, and I suspect it's about to get even more feral. Although today is the first day in a week that we haven't had some kind of worker around the house that we need to work around, or a specific appointment or task I need to get ready for that day, I'm feeling the pressure of getting/keeping the house clean and cleared for the photoshoot on Tuesday. Since the photographers will be here first thing in the morning, I need to spend Monday doing last-minute things, like washing the windows, vacuuming and dusting everything, scrubbing the bathrooms and kitchen, and clearing out every sign that our family actually lives in this house - including daily-use items like the toaster, the Keurig, our toothbrushes and hairbrushes, etc. This will be tough to do with children underfoot, so even though it's the Memorial Day holiday, I'm considering making it a homeschool day in exchange for Tuesday, when we will all need to be out of the house once the photographers start.

Which is all to say that I'll be fussing around fixing lots of not-quite-last-minute items, like the broken peg on my cheval mirror, steaming the window sheers, ironing the table runner, etc., and will not be doing a lot of chaperoning today. That said, I do expect the kids to do some work today. My son has two scheduled video meets and my daughter has 2 online dance classes, so even if that's all that happens today, they'll have done something. But here's what we attempted:

8:30-9am: I asked my son to spend some time reviewing and completing his assignment for Challenge, which his teacher will be going over at the 11:00am Google Meeting. Last week he swore he had already finished the parts of the assignment that were due today, so I want to be sure he goes back over them to a) refresh his memory, and b) re-read the assignment to make sure it truly is complete. He has a bit of a history of half-reading instructions, especially when he's doing them well ahead of time, and missing part of what's required, so I want to be sure that's not the case, but without helicoptering too much. He moved on to some math puzzles after he finished. My daughter is starting with Epic reading.

9-9:30am: My son is continuing to go through his teacher's assignments for the week and make sure he completed everything. My daughter got a late start on her Epic reading so she's continuing on that.

9:30-10am: My son is doing a project that involves a virtual exploration of the White House. I am learning more White House trivia than I realized there was. (Did you know that it takes 570 gallons of paint to paint the exterior of the White House? Or that it has 35 bathrooms? And 3 elevators? Which my son thinks must have been very handy for Franklin D. Roosevelt.) My daughter is doing a Mystery Doug problem. I am repairing the window dividers, several of which have chosen to jump to their deaths over the past week. I think they know we're leaving them behind and they're being dramatic.

10-10:30am: There was no White Shark presentation today, so my son did Zearn math instead. My daughter watched Circle Time with Miss Tracey, then took a break. I walked around the house, scrubbing every switchplate and outlet cover I could find, then I started on the painted wood trim in the downstairs bathroom, including the louvered door of the linen closet.

10:30-11am: I wasn't watching the time while I was scrubbing so my son was late signing on to his trombone lesson. Oops. He was even more delayed because he has to stop and put on pants. But he got logged on eventually and fortunately, his teacher was still waiting for him. It makes me heart happy listening to him explain the difference between a tie and a slur, and especially just listening to him play. I love that he seems to enjoy making music as much as my husband and I do. I let my daughter goof off for a little longer, then she worked on her Zearn. I'm still in louvered door scrubbing purgatory.

11-11:30am: My son switched over to his Challenge class, and my daughter did independent reading. I gave up on scrubbing the louvered doors, finally accepting that the highest level of cleanliness it was reasonable to expect without a fresh coat of paint is "tolerably grubby." I can live with that.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. You know what? We're done for the day. I'm going to let the kids go for a swim in the pool if they want, or they can just hang out. But they've done enough for today. Happy weekend to all of us! Have a wonderful, safe, and relaxing long weekend, everyone!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 46

After a late night of carrying boxes down from the attic and packing the POD, combined with a terrible attack of allergies and resulting sinus headache, I didn't roll out of bed until 8:00 this morning. Which is around when the truck arrived to pick up the POD. So our day started, not with breakfast, but with a cool physics and engineering lesson.

We all watched the driver maneuver the lifting frame carefully around the POD, and then lift it off the ground as easily if it were still empty. Then he neatly backed the truck up underneath it, lowered it down, and drove away. See you next month, POD!

8:45-9:15am: The kids were starving by then, so I made them some scrambled eggs and grilled toast (one of their new favorite treats) and let them start school late.

9:15-10am: My daughter is working on a Typing Club assignment and my son is reading about "She Persisted." They're both sprawled out in the middle of our now-empty finished basement. It's not the classroom situation any of us would have imagined a few months ago, but it's working.

10-10:30am: My son watched his usual Shark Conservancy program, but I needed to work on my laptop and Circle Time was pre-recorded today, so my daughter did some reading instead and I'll have her watch Circle Time later.

10:30-11:15am: My son is having trouble with his headphones (the wires are loose), so I gave him a roll of black electrical tape and challenged him to repair them himself. My daughter is working on a Happy Birthday sign for a friend. My son joined in to help after he finished fixing his headphones. It was hilarious listening to their discussion while they worked. They've been going through all their favorite video games and TV shows and discussing their relative merits and well as which characters are their favorites. It's nice listening to them getting along so well (mostly). They were still having fun at 11:00, so I let them keep going. We all need a low-pressure day today.

11:15am-1pm: We took an extra-long lunch break today. Both kids helped their dad do some work around the yard, including watering the plants using the garden hose, which they both love to do.

1-2pm: Thursday is the one day a week that they both have Google Classroom Meetings, and both at 1pm. So I got them launched on those and got to work mending some broken window dividers and a few other small projects on my to-do list. When I'm done with that, I'm going to bake some French bread that we can have with our chili for dinner tonight. And once all that is chugging along, doing its thing, I'm going to take a nap in the sunshine! [Note: Said nap ended up in my actual bed and lasting 2 hours. Sometimes you just need to listen to your body.]

At dinner time, my husband declared that our pool was officially ready for swimming, so the kids spent most of the evening splashing and swimming and jumping into the water like a pair of otters. It reminds me how happy I am that the new house also has a pool.

Summary for today: We did a little schoolwork, we did a little housework, we got a little exercise, some of us got a little nap, nobody killed anybody else. It was another good day in Quarantine Land.

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 45

Today's Challenge of the Day: Our wonderful housecleaners, who have been not been able to come clean for us for several months, have agreed to come and do a deep-clean of the house prior to putting it on the market. So today, we'll be working around them. I think we can manage hanging out in the basement while they clean the rest of the house, and then when they're ready to work down here, we can either move outside (it's an absolutely glorious day at the moment) or the kids can go up to their bedrooms.

As for me, I'm not sure what I'm going to work on today. Most of the tasks remaining on my to-do list will be difficult or impossible to do without getting in the way of the cleaners, so I'll put them on hold. I'm having a huge attack of allergies - I woke up my poor husband in the middle of the night with a combination of repeated throat-clearing, approximately 23 sneezes in a row, and blowing my nose what felt like a hundred times - so I have a feeling I'm going to be somewhat useless today anyway, so I may treat it as a rest and recovery day and give myself permission to be useless.

The kids, however, are slowly learning to manage their time and get some assignments done. Here's the schedule we ended up with today.

7-8:30am: Get up, have a quick breakfast. I gave them a 5-minute warning before I cleared all the bread and the microwave from the counter but no-one took advantage of it so breakfast turned out to be a premade frozen breakfast sandwich for one child and chicken nuggets for the other. Who says you have to have breakfast food for breakfast? Judging by the state of their hair, no-one made it to the "brush hair and teeth" stage, but they're both dressed, so not the hill I'm dying on this morning.

8:30-9am: My daughter read me some of her journal up to this point (it's mostly descriptions of her friends and classmates), then went on to write more in it. I encouraged her to write more about what it's like doing homeschool, including what she likes and dislikes about it. My son is doing a project on ReadWorks. I am drinking coffee and blowing my nose. I suspect I'll be doing this a lot today.

9-9;30am: My daughter has moved on to read a book on Epic. This one happens to be on harp seals and has a lot of photographs, so there is much squealing. She continued on with one about pandas and there was even more squealing. She'd love to read a real paper book, but unfortunately most of those are packed at this point. I do appreciate that as much as both children enjoy reading, they generally prefer a physical book to an e-book when they read to themselves. especially my daughter. I love my Kindle books, but there's nothing like physically turning the pages of a paper book. I may have thrown away a lot of CDs and DVDs in favor of "cloud" media, but like Captains Kirk and Picard, I will never lose my love for actual books.

My son is now reading a book on Epic as well, this one being assigned by one of his teachers.

9:30-10am: My daughter hemmed and hawed for a while trying to decide what she wanted to work on next. She decided to work on Typing Club, which I am learning is one of her favorite assignments. My son is doing his daily 20 minutes of Zearn. He is also sitting in a rolling desk chair, which he is rolling around the room while he works so...P.E. credits, too?

10-10:45am: Both kids are watching their Facebook Live programs; my daughter with Miss Tracey's Circle Time, and my son with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. Since my daughter borrows my laptop to watch, I'm going outside to soak up some sunshine and look for hummingbirds. I hear that vitamin D is good for COVID-19 prevention.

10:45-11:30am: My son worked on some more math and a few other assignments. My daughter goofed around for a while and eventually worked on some assignment. I don't know. I was catching up on to-do lists and trying to stay out of the cleaners' way.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. My husband had to bring the carpet cleaner back to Home Depot (and return a set of attic stairs that were the wrong size), so he stopped by D'Angelo's and brought us all subs for lunch. I had no idea how much I was craving their Thanksgiving sub until I was licking gravy off my chin.

1-2pm: I fell asleep in my daughter's room. I have no idea what they did. Possibly schoolwork.

My husband and I spent the rest of the evening and well into the night doing a virtual staging walkthrough with our realty team and packing up the POD for pickup tomorrow.

We ended the day with much-deserved champagne.

So how was YOUR day today??

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 44

Day 2 of feral homeschool! Since day 1 was a reasonable success, we're continuing on. I'll spend the day frantically packing and organizing and cleaning and occasionally checking on the kids, while they basically do their own thing, hopefully mainly work from their classroom assignments. Kid 1 has online band rehearsal at 1:15pm and Kid 2 has a Google Classroom Meeting at 1pm, but other than that, they're allowed to make their schedule any way they see fit, provided that they work from 8:30-11:30am and 1-2pm.

I don't really know exactly what they're working on, so I'll tell you what I did:

7-8:45am: I got up, got dressed, brushed my hair and teeth (wait, I didn't actually brush my hair and I'm not entirely sure I brushed my teeth, but I definitely put on deodorant). I made scrambled eggs and grilled scali toast for myself and the kids (my husband generally prefers to fend for himself for breakfast), then cleaned up the kitchen.

8:45-9:45am: I vacuumed the last half of the basement (including the closet where we discovered yesterday that the hamster had been hiding for a week, which was full of seeds and crumbled bits of hamster treats), then finished using the carpet cleaner on that half. I went back over some of the more stubborn stains. Somewhere in the middle of this the tile guy came but he's the same guy who was here last week so I let him in and then pretty much just left him to do his own thing while I continued cleaning the carpet. Feral tiling!

9:45-10am: Now that the bedroom rugs were completely dry, I moved my son's furniture back into place. My daughter was just starting to watch Circle Time with Miss Tracey in her bedroom, so I figured I would wait until later to move her furniture. At some point I stepped on a small rusty pin that went pretty deeply into my foot. I stopped to put some antibiotic ointment and a bandaid on it, but my last tetanus booster was when my now 10-1/2 year old son was born, so I'm probably about to succumb to lockjaw. It's been nice knowing you.

10-10:45am: I figured out how to use the upholstery attachment on the carpet cleaner and scrubbed the living room sofa and armchair and their cushions.

10:45-11:30am: I figured I should probably check in with the kids a little bit to make sure that they were at least pretending to do some schoolwork. They were playing with the hamster, but they were able to give me at least a semi-believable list of assignments they'd worked on. I hung out in their bedrooms for a little while, making sure they were doing something useful (they were, with minimal protests), so I think we're good. I'm taking a break for a little bit. Using a carpet cleaner is tiring! I also took a look inside the POD to see what we still have room for. My husband did a lot of POD tetris last night so things are packed pretty rightly and there's not a lot of room left, other than tucking in random items to fill in small gaps. By God, we just might make it!

11:30am-1pm: The tile guy came back to finish the tiles in front of the kitchen sink, so I held off the kids from having lunch until he was done, so we didn't get in his way. This resulted in them being a few minutes late for their 1pm and 1:15pm online classes, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

1-2pm: My daughter had a class meeting, during which she got to show off her portrait of Queen Elizabeth, and my son had a band rehearsal. In the room next to his sister, so it's only a shame he didn't learn to play "God Save the Queen." While they were doing that, I was packing up my jewelry etagere (e.g., sticking all my pierced earrings through pinholes in a piece of cardboard and then taping them down with blue painters' tape). Once they were through, I finally finished putting my daughter's bedroom furniture back in place and went back up to the attic and pulled down anything that could fill in the remaining spaces in the POD. My husband gets to do the actual packing, but I wanted to give him a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and weights of items so he can tuck things in all over the place.

But I overdid it a little, so I am now stretched out on the sofa in the basement, listening to my kids playing video games. The good news is that we found out that the videography session won't be happening until next Wednesday, May 26th, so we have until then to completely ready the house for pictures. The bad news is that I have no idea how I can keep the house in the condition it's in (or at least the condition it will be in once the house cleaners come tomorrow) for an entire week without my kids completely destroying it. Let's all pray for good weather!

And with that, their day is done, my day is done, and this blog is DONE!

COVID-19: An Introvert's Perspective on Quarantine

For the past couple of months, we've all been seeing memes like this one. Extroverts are craving human contact, desperately needing to interact with people other than the one or two they may be quarantined with, while introverts are content to stay at home, interacting with co-workers and friends virtually if at all, and happy as clams, living in their dream world, right?

Well, that may be true to some small degree, but from the perspective of this introvert, it's still not all roses and sunshine. Although virtual interactions are just fine by me, and I'm happy to have limited to no contact with random strangers, I do have one major introvert problem that I'm sure many other introverts quarantined with their families are struggling with: I am NEVER alone.

For the past 65 or so days, with the exception of 2 three-minute drives to a public mailbox and back, I have literally never been more than 20 feet away from another human being. And two of the three human beings that are quarantined with me are constantly asking me for stuff and needing my attention or at least needing me to nod and grunt occasionally while they talk at me. It's a little stressful.

I love them all, but it's driving me crazy. I am developing a kinship with Greta Garbo.

I get you, Greta. I get you. And I think you get me:

It's exhausting to an introvert to never have that alone time to recharge, just as exhausting as it is for extroverts to not have access to other people to recharge. We all need to find a way to recharge our batteries, or we're all going to lose our minds.

So if you live with an introvert, please try to give them some space. And if you can't give them space, please give them some slack. After all, we are all in this together, separately. Just not quite separately enough for some of us.

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 43

We're in the home stretch for getting the house packed and staged: Over the weekend, I organized and purged the attic, we continued packing boxes and putting them in the POD, and we cleared out and cleaned up the pool and backyard. Yesterday we rented a carpet cleaner and I cleaned the first half of each of the three bedrooms. Today I'll move the furniture and do the other side of those three rooms and hopefully also the basement carpet, and also the Fire Department will (may? there's a little confusion on the scheduling there) come and hopefully give us a certificate of compliance for the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Tomorrow the tile guys will come back and finish replacing the tiles in the kitchen and patch a few spots of cracked and missing grout in the kitchen and guest bathroom. Wednesday our housecleaners will come and do a deep clean throughout the whole house. And on Thursday, the POD will be picked up and - weather permitting - the Matterport photographer will come and photograph the whole house in order to create a 3D "virtual tour".

Which is all to say that I'm letting the kids pretty much go feral in regards to homeschool today, and probably for the rest of the week as well. I have asked them to work on their Google Classroom assignments from 8:30-10am, at which time they may watch their usual Facebook Live presentations and then take a quick break. From 10:45-11:30am, they should both continue with school assignments. They should take a lunch break from 11:30am-1pm, including getting their own lunch. Although if I'm taking a lunch break at the same time I might give in and make them something like scrambled eggs or macaroni & cheese, just because I'd happily eat that as my own lunch. And finally, my son has a Google Meeting with his class at 1pm that will finish up his day, and my daughter can continue with her classroom work. I have also asked them both to keep a record of what they work on and at what time. We'll see how well that works out.

As for me, I spent several hours moving the furniture to the other side of the bedrooms so I could clean the remainder of the carpets, and I also cleaned the first half of the basement carpet. Hopefully that carpet will be dry enough by the end of the afternoon that I can finish cleaning the rest of the basement carpet so we can return the cleaner, but if not, we'll just keep it an extra day and finish it tomorrow morning.

Next I'm going back up to the attic for the final sweep of purging and organizing up there. The majority of what's up there is nicely organized in bins that will be easy to have the movers take care of, but I'd love to get most of the un-binned (or at least un-boxed) items into the POD. Being campers, we have 5 or 6 rolled sleeping bags and 2 or 3 tents in bags. Being big Christmas decorators, we have several train sets and a Christmas village set in giant cardboard boxes, a 3-foot high wooden Nutcracker that's only wrapped by being covered with a kitchen trash bag, several wreaths in boxes, and a large and heavy artificial tree in its cardboard box. There's a large stack of framed pictures and large mirrors. And there are some random items, like a large HEPA filter, a tabletop humidifier, a bunch of hula hoops, and several collections of theatre costumes in oversized hanging bags.

In addition, I remembered that the closet under the stairs needed to be sorted. It was full of bag after bag of CDs that we had taken off our bookshelves in the living room a few years ago but couldn't quite bear to part with yet. Four heavy-duty 55-gallon drum liners later, we've borne the parting. I also discovered that my husband has a secret stash of tennis rackets, I found where the two-person camp chair was hiding, and I also discovered where the hamster had made her nest when she escaped last Christmas while we were on vacation.

I've also created a new packing category called simply "Long Things," which includes a hockey stick, a projection screen, a particularly tall folding camp chair, two rolls of plastic picnic table covers, and my husband's camera tripod.

I'm torn between feeling accomplished that I keep finding stashes of things to sort, purge, and pack, and feeling terrified that we'll never finish the job in time, or at least that we'll have more stuff than the movers can fit on the truck. I just keep telling myself that I drive a minivan and we're moving less than half an hour away, so as long as the movers take the big stuff, we can always come back for the smaller bits and pieces.

As for the kids, I think they did some schoolwork today, and they didn't kill each other or stop me from getting stuff done. So...yay! Good day.

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 42

TGIF! At the end of today, we will have successfully navigated through yet another week of homeschooling. My kids' last day of in-school school was March 12, so we are several days beyond the two-month mark. Learning may not be happening at the same speed it did in the classroom, but it is happening, and it's being supplemented with plenty of life skills, including cooking, home repair, home economics, and dealing with people in close quarters that you can't get away from who annoy you beyond belief. (Don't trivialize the latter; you know that skill will come in handy in every job they ever have, not to mention if they ever have a roommate or a spouse or children.) Today's only interruption is expected to be a visit from the smoke alarm inspector later this morning, so I have high hopes of things progressing smoothly today. (I know, I probably just jinxed it. Oh, well.) Also, we are due to sign our P&S agreement on the new house today, so I'm a little edgy until that finally happens.

So here's how today went:

7-8am: Breakfast, get dressed, brushed, and washed. It's a cloudy, overcast day, so we're all a bit slow in getting moving. But my son actually asked if he could start school early (I'm sure with the intention of also ending it early, which is perfectly fair), so I launched him half an hour ahead of her.

8-8:30am: Last night I received an email from my son's Challenge teacher with a reminder that they should have chosen their "energy-related topic and two books they plan to use to research it" by their 11am Google Meet today. When I asked my son about it, he said he hadn't done anything for the project and he sounded less than enthusiastic. So he will most likely be spending a good part of the  morning getting that together.

8:30-9: We walked through my daughter's assignments to decide where to start. She has to find a biography of someone famous from a a given list, and fill out a form, then make a picture of that person. (We tried to start this assignment on Monday, but she couldn't find the password. I didn't have time to help right at that moment and then I forgot to follow up with it.) She really wanted to choose Mozart, but he wasn't on the list, so she decided to choose a British royal instead. She checked out Kate Middleton, Princess Diana, and Queen Elizabeth II, then decided to go with Queen Elizabeth. My son is doing a riddle challenge and some extra math problems posted by his teacher.

9-9:30am: My daughter is continuing to work on her biography project, filling out an information form based on her research. My son is reading an article on the American Revolution and then worked on a "drama challenge" using a story prompt, and then he did an EstiMystery.

9:30-10am: My son is doing independent reading, reading further along in Robin Hood. My daughter has moved on to making a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. She's using a paper plate for the face and tinfoil for the crown. Elizabeth would be flattered. I let her take a short break when she was done.

10-10:30am: My son is participating in (at least part of) an optional science Google Meet. Unfortunately, he has a trombone lesson via Google Meet at 10:30, so he has to miss the end of the class. My daughter is watching Circle Time with Miss Tracey.

10:30-11am: My son is having a trombone lesson in his room via Google Meet. I'm working with my daughter on today's math problem and FlipGrid response. Today was a much easier question to answer, so there was no meltdown and no tears. And it only took five minutes! Hooray! I rewarded her with independent reading for the rest of the half-hour. She chose Superfly again (I think this makes reading #17??). Ironically, as she is heading upstairs, my son is doing a practice exercise involving buzzing through his mouthpiece, which sounds remarkably like a cartoon version of a buzzing housefly.

11-11:30am: My son has yet ANOTHER video meeting, this time with his Challenge class. They reviewed their choices and references for the energy project. My daughter is continuing her reading. The smoke detector inspector (sounds like a great sitcom) just arrived, so I'm glad they're happily doing their own thing while I deal with him. Looks like everything checks out! Quick and easy - it's nice to have something during this process that is nice and easy [gives the side-eye to the kitchen tiles that were supposed to be a quick replace with tiles we had on hand but which turned out to require additional new tiles that don't seem to exist in this universe].

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. I need a break as much as the kids, which is weird seeing as pretty much the only thing I've accomplished personally today is accidentally gorilla-gluing the window dividers I was supposed to be fixing to the floor. And just to add to the fun, right as both kids were getting ready for lunch, the power went out. I ended up grilling us all English muffins on the gas griddle on the stove top (luckily, I haven't packed the lighters yet!), plus my constantly-starving son made himself a roast beef sandwich. Fortunately, the power came back on after less than an hour, so I don't have to worry about my daughter missing her dance class later today.

1-2pm: My daughter worked on Mystery Doug and learned why we get goosebumps when we're cold. After that, she did Epic reading for the rest of her time. My son did some followup on his biography project, as assigned during his Challenge class, writing up a few paragraphs about what he'd learned in his research. They both finished their work a little before 2pm, so we called it a day then!

And with that, the week is over! Happy weekend, everyone!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 41

Today is Thursday, which means today is Trash Day. One of my son's chores is bringing out the trash and recycling bins first thing in the morning on Trash Day and bringing them back in after school. With all the purging and de-cluttering we're been doing, there are bags (and bags and bags and bags) and piles (and piles and piles) of trash to go out to the curb in addition to the usual bins. Most of them are quite heavy, so my daughter is excused from helping, but since my son is as strong as an ox, he helped my husband and I haul them all to the curb. And just to keep things fun, my husband sat on the corner of our bed to put his shoes on before he started hauling the trash, and the corner of the bed frame split. One more thing to add to our fix-it list. So that was an exciting start to our day! Let's see how the rest of the day goes.

7-8:15am: As mentioned above, my son spent most of his morning hauling heavy trash, including a barbecue grill, several bags full of heavy glass and ceramic items, and a couple of piles of disassembled small furniture. He earns a full week of P.E. credit for that!

8:15-8:45am: I told the kids they were in charge of their own breakfasts, and they both wanted one of the homemade English muffins that I baked yesterday. (They came out great, by the way!) I told my son he could start school a little late because of all the work he'd already done, and just because I needed time for my coffee and breakfast, I told my daughter she could start a little late, too. She begged to wear her pajamas again. I agreed, but they're fleece and it's supposed to get up to the low 70s today, so I'm holding out hope that at some point she might want to change to something cooler and go outside to play.

8:45-9:30am: We looked over each of their weekly and daily assignments. My daughter is starting with an EstiMystery and then moving on to a math assignment from yesterday that she didn't do. It's another FlipGrid, so I suspect it will turn out to be another meltdown situation. But maybe not. Either way, it will definitely require significant supervision and assistance from me. [Note: Today's FlipGrid was a great success, with the exception that she had to re-record her response several times because she accidentally deleted it.] My son has an optional immigration project. He swears he's finished everything that's required. I'll look more closely at that later, but for now, immigration it is.

9:30-10am: Since my daughter did so well with her first math FlipGrid, I encouraged her to go back and try to redo the one she struggled with on Monday. We reviewed the problem together first. My son is continuing on with his immigration project.

10-10:45am: My son is watching Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. My daughter is still struggling with her FlipGrid. There's no Morning Circle with Miss Tracey today [Note: She posted a video a little later, so we'll come back to this later in the day], so I'm having her continue to work. We walked through the solution several times, and I think she understands it, but she's still somewhat in meltdown mode, which makes it hard to record her FlipGrid. She's also not quite solid on the solution, which makes it harder to explain. But she's already dodged doing it for several days, so I want her to plow through and get it done. I know it's hard but she'll feel so much better once she does it. I haven't been choosing a lot of hills to die on, academically, but this is one. I'm gritting my teeth, but we'll get through it. We ended up writing out a script so she could read it rather than having to explain on the fly. It was still hard for her, but she did it, and I'm very proud - and I think she is, too. I gave her a break after she finished, and she asked if she could take a little nap. I remember when I was in school and I struggled with something that brought me to tears, I always needed a nap afterwards, so I told her sure. Of course, as soon as she went upstairs, she got distracted by the hamster and her brother, but it seems to be putting her back into a good mood, so I'm letting her roll with it.

10:45-11:30am: In lieu of independent reading for both of them, I'm reading the Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. It's a slightly more accessible Holocaust story than Anne Frank (and was also recommended by several teacher friends whose 3rd and 4th grade classes love it). I wasn't sure they'd stick it out for the whole 45 minutes, but they did, without even complaining or asking when we were going to be done.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. I spent it hanging a somewhat recalcitrant set of venetian blinds. I have neither sweated nor sworn under my breath that much in a very long time, but it's done and I am quite proud of myself.

1-2pm: Both kids have a Google Classroom Meeting today, so I can take a break from supervising them and get more work done around the house. And also sit down and eat lunch.

There was plenty of frustration mixed in with accomplishments today, but in the end, we got some good stuff done. We're still nibbling away at that elephant!

COIV-19 Homeschool, Day 40

We're one week away from an important deadline: Completely staging the house for photos and videos so we can put it on the market. I thought I knew how difficult it would be to empty out a house while living in it (with 2 children, no less), but I had underestimated it. Like many things in life, the first 80% or so wasn't too bad; it's that last 20%, comprised of little bits and pieces, that makes it difficult. So even as we're reaching a big milestone of 40 days of homeschool, we're also approaching the milestone of making the house look not currently lived-in while at the same time living in it. No wonder we've all been struggling a bit over the last few days!

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. The dining room is completely staged with the exception of re-hanging the sheers, once we find the curtain rods which vanished while the painters had taken them down to paint the window frames (possibly having been accidentally packed in the POD). The living room is completely staged with the exception of hanging new sheers (the old ones disintegrated in the wash) as soon as they are delivered, and finding a home for the large stack of framed artwork that has been removed from the walls all over the house and which is currently leaning against the piano. We also have a lovely oil lamp in that room that I have no clue how to pack safely (I am currently leaning toward wrapping it in an old bath towel and holding it in my lap when we drive to the new house) and a small, beat-up side table that is the perfect height for using a laptop camera for video conferences like my daughter's dance class and my son's band rehearsals and trombone lessons. Oh, and there are also two lovely large pots of begonias that belong on the front steps but that are taking refuge inside because it's been in the 30s overnight for the past few days (ah, New England). All three bedrooms are close to being staged, needing only carpet cleaning, removal of a few small pieces of furniture, and the arrival of one "neutral" bedding set (which reminds me; I also need to search the attic for a twin-sized comforter because I realized too late that I had ordered a duvet cover rather than an actual duvet). The basement is in decent shape other than a collection of boxes, furniture, and some more framed pieces of art that need to find their way into the POD at some point.

So that's what's on my mind these days. I suspect that means that today will not be our most effective day. But as long as we get in a little math, a little reading, and possibly a little science and/or social studies, plus both kids get on their online classes at the right time, I'll call it good. Here''s what actually happened:

7-8:30am: Breakfast, get dressed (child #1 requested a Pajama Day, which I approved, but then the hamster peed on her so she had to change into clean PJs anyway), wash and brush, clean up breakfast dishes.

8:30-9am: My son asked to do a follow-up assignment on his Patriots reading, involving making a FlipGrid response to a question. My daughter is starting work on a biography assignment: Read a biography of a historical character, then write up a summary and make a picture of that person using whatever materials you have on hand. I look forward to seeing/hearing the results of both assignments!

9-9:30am: My son is working on a science assignment of some kind; my daughter is doing her daily reading on Epic.

9:30-10am: My son continued with science, while my daughter moved on to independent reading. She's still infatuated with Superfly. I've lost count of how many times she's re-read it, but it's definitely in the double digits.

10-11am: Miss Tracey's Circle Time for my daughter, and Atlantic White Shark Conservancy Facebook Live feed for my son. Followed by a snack and stretch break. (For them, not for me. I spent the hour scrubbing banisters and deciding that my family is gross and never washes their hands, EVER.)

11-11:30am: My daughter is spending some time writing in her journal, and my son (surprisingly willingly) agreed to work on his, as well.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. While they're relaxing and playing, I'm attempting to make homemade English muffins.

1-1:30pm: Neither of my kids has a Google Classroom meeting today and it's kind of throwing me off. I wasn't sure what to have them do, so we looked back over their school assignment lists and chose from there. My daughter opted for Typing Club and my son is doing math on Zearn.

1:30-2pm: I sent them outside to run around and play for a while. It's chilly but gorgeous and sunny and they both need to burn off some energy and look at something that's not the same four walls. Plus, that way I could cook the English muffins undisturbed.

And that was our day! I got stuff done, they got stuff done, and no-one cried. Hooray!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 39

The painters are done and gone, the tilers aren't coming back until the additional replacement tiles they ordered come in, and the dust has literally settled for now. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and we all feel more positive this morning. Let's hope our work today reflects our fresh attitude!

6-8:30am: We agreed that the hamster cage would be in my daughter's room for a few nights and then my son's room for a few nights so she wouldn't get overwhelmed by the paint fumes. Last night was my son's turn. He slept well despite her noises - until his sister burst into the room at 6am to play with Ricochet. A slight kerfuffle was settled (or at least muted) by a sleepy "Hey, knock it off!" from the parental bedroom. Everyone was breakfasted, cleared up, and brushed and washed by school time.

8:30-9:15am: My daughter tried to finish up her math FlipGrid assignment from yesterday, but had another mild meltdown. I walked her through the solution that she figured out yesterday, but she still wasn't comfortable with how we solved it and wasn't ready to explain her answer on camera. So I had her move on to today's math assignment, which fortunately did not include a FlipGrid, but was an assignment on equivalent fractions in GregTangMath. I asked my son to work on math as well, just to keep them on the same general topic. He worked on Zearn until I noticed that his feet were FILTHY and I sent him upstairs to scrub before he got dirt all over the furniture.

9:15-10am: My daughter opted to listen to some books on Epic; my son is doing a class assignment on ReadWorks. While they were doing this, we actually had some additional workers come to repair and repaint the front door (I had forgotten they were scheduled today) and do a bit more touch-up work in the basement, but fortunately, for the most part they were quiet and out of our way.

10-10:45am: My daughter watched Circle Time with Miss Tracey, then I let her take a "hamster break." My son watched the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy live feed.

10:45-11:30am: They asked to play "Workout War" together upstairs, since the weather is getting icky. They did start off with a deck of cards, but judging from the running, squealing, and thumping going on up there, it's moved on from Workout War to simply "run around chasing your sibling." As long as they keep up the "run around" part, it counts as P.E.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time.

1-2pm: My daughter has a Google Classroom Meeting with her teacher. I'm hoping they'll be going over the math that she is so struggling with. I'll be eavesdropping a little to see if they do, and if so, how exactly they teach it. One of the hardest things about teaching math is that they use specific solving strategies which will be used as building blocks for the next skills, so even if I teach them how to solve the problem, it doesn't always teach them the intended lesson. My son has band rehearsal at 1:15, but the living room is still in a bit of a shambles, so I'm letting him rehearse in his bedroom instead. I hope the hamster has earplugs.

One more day under our belts! One day closer to the end of school, one day closer to getting our house on the market, one day closer to being in our beautiful new home. As I keep telling my husband, anyone can eat an elephant, as long as they keep nibbling. Nibble nibble!

COVID-19 Homeschool, Day 38

As we get closer and closer to the date we plan to take photos and videos of the staged house, the chaos gets more and more...chaotic. Today we're working around teams of painters in 3 different rooms plus a couple of tiling guys who are also installing baseboard covers in the bathroom and new attic stairs. Which means that literally the only rooms in the house that aren't being worked in are my son's bedroom, the basement office where my husband is working, and the laundry room (which currently has a couch standing up in the middle of it). And thunderstorms are expected to roll through, so sitting on the porch or in the backyard is not likely to be an option. It's a distinct possibility that we may end up sitting in my car at some point, although even that isn't a great option because with all the workers' trucks parked outside the house, I don't think my car can get close enough to get a WiFi signal. But we'll manage somehow.

Here is how we ended up managing today:

7-8:30am: One child was up at the crack of dawn, the other wandered out looking for breakfast at around 7:45ish. Grilled English muffins has become a favorite of late, so I'm thinking that we might need to take a crack at making homemade English muffins over the next day or two, or at least English muffin bread. Everyone was required to be dressed by 8am when the painters were coming, but hair and teeth brushing may or may not have happened by the start of school at 8:30. Not a hill I'm going to die on today, especially since I'm not entirely sure I remembered to brush my own.

8:30-9am: Both kids logged on to their Google Classrooms for the week's assignments. My daughter chose to start with Epic reading; my son is doing a math EstiMystery. Once he solved the EstiMystery, he moved on to a series of math logic puzzles (i.e., simple pre-algebra games). Every now and then he challenges me with one. They're not that hard, but I do find that I need to write down each answer as I figure it out (there are usually 4 or 5 unknowns to determine), otherwise I forget what I've already solved. I'm impressed that he can solve them without taking notes. At this moment they're both stretched out on my daughter's bed with their headphones on. We'll see how long this arrangement lasts (peacefully).

9-9:30am: My daughter is continuing her Epic reading; my son is now reading about women's soccer on ReadWorks. And suddenly also something called "vulture bees." Which are fascinating, and also kind of gross (kind of like my son himself), and have introduced me to the term "meat honey." What has been learned cannot be unlearned. And then he moved on to a Revolutionary War project. Thank goodness for the decrease in violence level.

9:30-10am: My son is working on fractions and decimals, as assigned by his teacher. My daughter is working on math on Freckle and Math Playground. The tilers have arrived and are chipping out the cracked tiles, so it's a good thing the kids both have headphones, even though they don't really need them for math. I'm wishing I had a pair, myself. Good thing they're only removing 7 or 8 tiles. In other news, I just ran down to the basement to get a new battery for my computer mouse, and I had to go outside and back in again to get around all the workmen, then when I went to go back they had moved and I was trapped in the living room for 5 minutes or so. A very interesting and chaotic day, indeed.

10-10:30am: Facebook Live time! Morning Circle Time with Miss Tracey and Atlantic White Shark Conservancy. Not really part of school curriculum, but it's become a nice tradition, and it's certainly good learning. My daughter took a 15-minute break after circle time.

10:30-11am: My daughter is doing independent reading. More Superfly. Wonder what insect-related questions will come up today? My son is doing some reading for his Challenge class. The current peace and quiet from both children, the workmen, and even the hamster is a little disconcerting. But I'm rolling with it.

11-11:30am: I read some more of On the Banks of Plum Creek to both kids. We we just about to start the chapters on Nellie Oleson, so I thought they would both find that interesting. Laura Ingalls Wilder includes some wonderful descriptions of the sorts of toys and dolls that the children played with, so it was an interesting comparison to the sorts of toys and dolls that kids play with today. There were also some good descriptions of the differences between Laura's house and furniture, which were mostly hand-made by her Pa, and Nellie's house and furniture, which were all "boughten," since her father owned a store. It led to an interesting discussion about social classes and the whole town-vs-country conflict, including the idea of "better" vs. simply "different". Hopefully we'll get to discuss this further as we get further along in the book.

11:30am-1pm: Lunch break and free time. We're still kind of trapped upstairs until the workers take a break. I was about to designate myself the lunch-bringer to avoid multiple trips past the fresh tiles, but my husband just appeared to say that he needed to run a quick errand and would pick up lunch. So we put in our orders for McDonald's! I'm not generally a big salad-eater, but with grocery shopping limited to once a week or less, a fresh salad sounds incredibly appealing and although I'm not a big fan of McDonald's food, my mouth is watering thinking of the Southwest Chicken Salad in my future. But then my hopes were dashed when my husband called to say that McDonald's is not doing salads so I got a buttermilk crispy chicken sandwich instead which is heaps of grease and salt but yay comfort food. I get credit for trying to eat salad, right?

1-1:45pm: My son has a Google Classroom Meeting with his teacher and the rest of his class. He told his teacher we were moving and she said she's going to email me. Not quite sure if it's just a "we'll miss him" thing or if it's a "Here's what you'll need to do to transfer his records to another town" or a "These are the skills he needs to master to officially complete 4th grade," or a "If you guys are moving before the end of the school year and you keep him in my class for the rest of the year the police will come and arrest you and your whole family for fraud" thing. Probably not the latter. (I hope.) My daughter just had a total meltdown while working on a math problem that she's supposed to answer via FlipGrid video. I talked her through the problem (why is it that word problems are so easy when the numbers involved are under 10 but so difficult when they have 3 digits??) and she figured it out, but puddled up and needed a break before making her video. Normally I'd work a little harder to get her to suck it up (she tends to fall apart whenever anything is the least bit difficult), but I just got a little teary myself when I realized I'd had my husband order the wrong type of baseboard register covers (not to mention 16 other issues we've come across while inspecting the new house and fixing up this one), so we're all cutting each other a little slack today. I'm only surprised that it took this long for all of us to hit the meltdown point.

So, it was kind of a rough day emotionally, but we checked a few things off all our lists, the majority of the workmen marching through the house will be gone tomorrow, and I'm planning comfort food (and possibly another loaf of bread) for dinner tonight, so we'll soldier on. In the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara, "After all, tomorrow is another day!"

COVID-19 Cocktails (Volume 1)

As we pack up our house in preparation of putting it on the market, I have challenged myself to finish off as many random, nearly-empty bottles of liquor as I can find in our liquor cabinet, just so we don't have to pack and move them. Here are the results of my efforts!

For the record, on Facebook I have dubbed this effort "Use Up That Bottle Cocktail Roulette," aka UUTBCR.

Girl Scout Cookie

2 parts vodka
2 parts peppermint vodka
1 part white creme de cacao

Combine in a shaker over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. If you want to get fancy, you can drizzle the glass with chocolate sauce and/or garnish the rim with crushed candy canes or other peppermint candy. This cocktail is excellent paired with a slice of warm leopard bread. 


Blue Lagoon

2 parts vodka
1 part blue curacao
heaping teaspoon of lemonade mix

Combine all ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry, if desired.


Peppermint White Russian

Combine equal parts vodka, peppermint vodka, and Kahlua, and a generous splash of half and half in a shaker over ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with shaved chocolate, if desired.


Jellyfish

Layer equal parts vodka, blue curacao, and Sambuca, in that order, in a tall glass filled with ice, by pouring gently over the back of a spoon, then top with a float of half and half, and swirl gently with a spoon for a jellyfish-like effect. [Disclaimer: My layering was not especially successful, the drink looked much less impressive after being stirring, and was not generally a hit in my household.]


Tuaca Daquiri

1 oz rum
3/4 oz Tuaca
3/4 oz lime juice
1/4 oz honey

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice and shake hard. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lime wedge, if desired.


Blue Angel

2 parts brandy or cognac
1 part Tuaca
1 part blue curacao
generous splash of lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a lemon peel or wedge.


Jean Harlowe

In a cocktail shaker over ice, combine equal parts (good) rum and sweet vermouth, then add a dash or two of bitters. No need for a garnish, but the sweetness is an excellent accompaniment for salty pretzel bread.


Xaviera

3 parts triple sec
3 parts Kahlua
2 parts amaretto
4 parts half and half

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice. Garnish with whipped cream.


Glenmorangie Old Fashioned

50 ml Glenmorangie
1 teaspoon sugar
4 dashes of bitters

Combine all ingredients in an old fashioned glass and serve with a large ice cube or ice ball.


Electric Kool-Aid

2 oz limoncello
1/2 oz blue curacao
2 oz club soda (or lemon seltzer)
2-3 oz cranberry juice

In a tall glass over ice, combine limoncello, blue curacao, and club soda and stir. Top with cranberry juice and stir slightly. [Note: It wasn't a bad drink, but it looked cooler than it tasted.]