Sunday, November 15, 2020

Working from home updates

When the world started ending, I kept my 5 day a week office schedule. It was hard for me to imagine trying to be available to my team without being physically on-grounds when they were. We slowly built in a good telework schedule and so for the last few months, I've been taking a day each week. It works in nicely into our distance learning adult supervision rotation, gives C a regular day to go into the school,  and let's me work in my comfy clothes one day a week. 

Here are some tips and tricks that I've learned along the way:
When the dogs are being shits, it helps to put whichever one is being worse on a leash and tie them to me. For some reason this makes them stop wrestling, whining to go in/out constantly, and barking at the wind. 

This is NOT a good solution during video calls


And speaking of video calls. I'm back to teaching and it's WAY DIFFERENT. Rather than a 3 hour lecture course, I'm running a one hour zoom discussion meeting each week. On Mondays I run home from work, throw whatever dinner I prepped in the oven, work out, and then rush to get my zoom up and running. It only took me one week of trying to play off my workout top as professional wear to realize that I could be business on top, yoga pants on bottom. It took me one more week to invest in a ring light. If you don't have one yet, get one! Best $15 I've spent on "the new normal." Mine clips on to the woodshop stepstool that I'm using as a desk. Behold the man behind the curtain. 

Also not pictured. I have to lock the door so the kids don't interrupt class. Averson has been sliding the cutest notes under the door and it's fun to read them when I'm done (even if the answer to nearly all her questions should be "go ask your dad.") 

The kids are slated to go back to school in January, but on a modified schedule that will 100% make all of our lives significantly more complicated. I think we'll send them, but with cases on the rise and our county shutting down again, I'm not feeling super optimistic. If/when they do go back, I suspect that I'll also need to modify my schedule a bit so we can do all the driving. We'll see I guess.  
 

Sunday, November 1, 2020

#Halloween2020

I turned 40 yesterday and it was as perfect as 2020 would allow. C surprised me with a new coffee pot to replace our 15 year old Mr. Coffee. My mom had flowers delivered to the house (growing up in the country, I will ALWAYS be excited to have things delivered to my house.) The kids made and picked out sweet and thoughtful gifts. My birthday donut was pumpkin spice flavored.



We really struggled with what to do for Halloween. After a lot of thought and efforts to come up with ideas, we settled on “measured and thoughtful decision making.” We didn’t have people over, but we let Eli hang out with a friend and I took the girls trick-or-treating. And we decorated the hell out of the house.


Averson REALLY loves our skeleton collection and plays with them constantly
Case in point: the Morning After still life

Syd had a VERY last minute costume change that found me at Party City on Halloween morning and Thank God because otherwise I never would have impulsively bought a Bob Ross costume to make C laugh only to find out that it’s been his dream costume



Dr. Dolittle, Hermione Granger, and an inmate (OMG I had some feelings about this one until I remembered that I was a Playboy Bunny in 4th grade. At Catholic school.)

Trick or treating 2020 style. Our neighborhood did so many cool candy delivery systems. The girls were great about masks and overall it felt really okay