The Neverending Noise of the Everyday

My middle child goes back to school next Tuesday. We have been homeschooling her for the first half of her kindergarten year because of the uncertainties around Covid19. This far in and it looks like schools really aren’t a hell hole of infections and death so The Wife and I feel a bit more comfortable with her going to an honest to goodness classroom and being around other people.

Also, she has been driving us certifiably batshit and I am woefully incapable of making sure she gets everything she needs out of the distance learning option our school put together.

And her lack of everything is entirely on my shoulders. Between her and her 10 month old brother the past few months have been a daily description of how I have been measured up to what is needed and exactly how short I have come to meeting it.

I have been trying to carve out time for myself to start writing again. For awhile my time was the 45 minutes or so I had sitting in the car at my daughter’s dance studio (that sounds so…upper class. She takes dance lessons in the way so many little girls take dance lessons, it’s not exactly some high end place in NYC but it’s nice and adorable and wonderful)(so, maybe not a “studio” but a different word that feels appropriate is escaping me right now). But that got eaten into by other priorities, mostly christmas shopping.

Trying to carve this time out at home has been…difficult. It’s just so damn loud and distracting. If The Wife is around I just want to spend time with her. If my daughter is around she just wants to spend time with me. If the 10 month old is awake it is demanding everyone spend time with him. With everyone comes their associated noises. Computers. Tablets. Video game systems. Various loudly colored toys with loudly noise making buttons and lights that flash different colors in accordance with different buttons and sounds.

My day didn’t “end” until 1120 tonight. That’s when I finished hanging the clothes that can’t go through the clothes drier and at this point I’m just done. I don’t know how people do it. I’ve been surrounded by everyone’s noise and errands for 15-16 hours today and I can’t really think straight enough to do anything else now. I just misspelled “else” three times. Just burned out.

I don’t get to see her

Covid has been a horror show for a lot of us. We see stories about hospitals beyond capacity, people living as shut-ins. People losing their jobs. Their homes. Their loved ones.

My youngest has been schooling at home. She has zoom meetings every day with her teacher and classmates. It is a pale place holder for going to actual school, for running around with other kids. For the structure of it all.

but this post isn’t about that.

My little girl stayed got on late to one of her meetings, and the teacher let her step in to the math group after hers. They do the same thing, so it isn’t a big deal. Her normal math group was ending, and some little girl was staying behind and talking with the teacher.

These are kindergarteners. Six year olds. If you have kids, or nieces, or nephews, or whatever, picture them here. As six year olds. In this horrible scary time. But that isn’t what this sweet little girl is upset about.

Her mom works nights. That’s her job. She doesn’t have a choice. She works nights. And she doesn’t get to see her little girl. Her little girl doesn’t get to see her. She only gets to see her mom when her mom has a day off from work.

I have to assume that this little girl gets herself onto the computer. Gets into the zoom sessions herself. Goes to all of the different places on the website to do work for math, science, reading, writing, social studies, and specials (art, phys ed, library, music). By herself.

Six years old.

It’s so fucking easy to write these things off as, well, that’s life. Yeah, it is. It isn’t right. It isn’t healthy. It’s not good for that little girl. And just because that is what life is now, and has been, really, for a very very long time, that does not mean that is how life has to be in the future.

Eavesdropping on this just broke my heart today. I’m ready for the world to stop breaking my heart so much. I’m ready for more six year olds to see their mom. every day. I’m ready for a better world.

Another First Not Happening

Well, yesterday was the end of something I had been looking forward to. My kid’s school had released plans for returning to class, both online and in-person.

I’m sure everyone involved in the process have been trying their best. I’m also sure that this is going to be an imperfect process for pretty much everyone.

At the same time, we had to make a decision Sunday with the school providing incomplete plans, schedules open to heavy revision, and counties around us having increasing rates of the coronavirus (C19 is how I’ll refer to it from here on).

So, my daughter isn’t getting on the bus this fall. She isn’t going to her first day of kindergarten. I’m not going to get to hear about all of the fun things she got to do, all of the other kids, her teachers, etc.

Instead, she’ll be logging into something here at home every day. She’ll have distance learning, video interactions through google hangouts.

she’s too young to really be crushed by this. She wants to go to school. She is an incredibly people oriented little girl. She thrives on the interaction and is sorely lacking it since things have went south. but she isn’t old enough to be crush by this.

I’m pretty crushed by it. She missed out on having her bridging ceramony from preK at Head Start because of this, and now she’s missing out on this moment. She lost out on having her first dance recital. We haven’t been able to take a vacation like we normally do. We haven’t been able to see family like we normally would. I’m just…I’m severely not happy about how much of this horror show my little girl is having to shoulder.

And I know there are all sorts of other little girls and boys out there shouldering it, too.

For all of the whining I’ve heard about people not wanting to wear masks, or not being able to go to their vacation homes, or whatever. Our decisions that have led to this thing being a prolonged hellfire in the states is really being shouldered by the moments taken from our children.

I’m really ready for a vaccine.

It goes fast! argh!

So, there is a new Mustang in town and it is electric.

Which is cool. I like electric cars. I want one. I can’t afford to buy one, but if I could I would.

And I don’t really have anything against the electric Mustang.

Except for how it has to be marketed.

To be fair, it’s not exactly different from how Tesla and Porsche push their cars. They push out 0-60 times, top speeds, etc.

It is all so much crap.

Most of us drive stop light to stop light. 0-60 isn’t going to happen except for the three seconds weren’t on the on-ramp for the express way, and once we’re on the express way it’s doubtful we’re going to scream along at 120 mph.

Or at least we shouldn’t.

But what are we given to know about the Mustang? It’s horsepower. It’s 0-60 time. It’s top end.

We see it with pretty much every car on the market. I just bought a minivan and what did the kid tasked with dealing with me talk about? It’s horsepower. It’s torque.

I’m middle aged. I’m buying a minivan. I have three kids. I’ll probably have another minivan when this one breaks down. I don’t care about the horsepower or torque.

I care about its dependability. I care about its crash test ratings. I care that parts are cheap, so don’t gig it up with a bunch of special parts that can’t be easily sourced.

but these things aren’t talked about in car ads. Not even with electric cars.

Instead, it’s 0-60 times, as if it matters at all. We need to quit puffing our egos with our cars. They get us from Point A to Point B. And Hopefully back again.

Anyway. Got to go to the store and get some milk.

It just sucks the fun out

I’ve been playing Minecraft lately. I went through a Minecraft phase several years ago. then I stopped. I’m not sure what made me pick it up again, but I did.

And I enjoy it. I enjoy building the house, setting up the farm, getting the animals penned up, etc.

This time I was really enjoying trading with villages. I found four of them in my world, all of them unique and fun with their own set of people offering several unique trades. It was a process learning what I could trade with one community to turn around and deal to another to get what I want and to try to keep all of the communities healthy.

Then they just started to die off.

I went back to one after spending a few days in a mine and there were three people left, all crammed into weird nooks and crannies in the environment, unable to move.

Trying to get them down, two were attacked and killed by zombies.

It was a thriving village and it was then essentially dead.

Another village, again returning to after a few days, they had all but disappeared with one dimwit still alive and iron golem moping about.

Another village was wiped out with just one butcher left.

I’ve tried reading up on what to do to keep these villages healthy, and I think I was doing it.

In response to seeing these villages go to pot, I’ve started fortifying the one decent village left, except the villagers don’t seem to want it. They refused to go to bed the first night, so I could just seal them in their homes and not have to worry about it.

I see a lot of Minecraft talk about building your own village from scratch, transporting villagers, and I’m not sure I see the appeal. It’s a ton of work. A lot of it just flat out tedious.

If I start another world, I think I’m going to search out a village and just set up shop in it, and fortify around it from the start. It would save a lot of hassle, and I can mooch off their various work stations. And their farms. For now, I’ll continue to fortify the one village next door to me, and maybe start trying to move villagers over from the one or two dead ones. Which shouldn’t be fun at all.

Progress is Slow

Finally started making progress on one of the (many) unfinished rooms of the house. Got the attic stairs out, patched the hole, and am almost done mudding the room before sanding everything down and painting.

It’s been…hard. I struggle with motivation. I guess my stick-to-it-tiveness isn’t that great. I also lack confidence.

I do the best I can. the end results usually aren’t terrible. but I can’t help feeling that whatever I am doing is a slow-motion car accident.

Very slow-motion.

the room I’m finishing is going to be my daughter’s new bedroom. She’s looking forward to it. I think we all are. she just lost her first tooth yesterday. She’s growing up so fast.

Which doesn’t help my motivation.

weirdly.

I just want things to slow down a bit. Which is maybe a little odd, considering we’ve been trapped at home for a few months now. Life seemingly taking out a go slow order.

We lost our dog awhile back, and it sort of opened the mental gate for her in regards to touching death for the first time.

It breaks me.

I think that as all of us grow older we come to grips with the idea of a world without us in it. Something I didn’t understand until I had kids was having to come to grips with the idea of a world without them.

But she’s growing up.

And I’m growing old.

Slowly.

Having A Hard Time

Been down lately.

I’m sure this is common for most folks being cooped up by C19. It’s stressful. It’s almost absurd.

I’ve been gaining weight.

I have an increasingly quicker fuse with the kids.

A lot of what I do just feels pointless. Though, granted, I had this feeling a bit (a lot) before C19 trapped me inside the house.

Just ready for things to change. Go back to normal. Yeah, I know “normal” probably isn’t happening. But I also don’t think we can live like this forever.

I want to try doing this more and with more focus but tonight…just a blah night.

You Weep For Hope

I think my president has been a jackass (among other things) whose actions at a time of crisis will likely lead to people unnecessarily dying. I just flat out agree with that assessment. at the same time, I think I’ve seen tremendous leadership from a handful of state officials.

I think our health workers are going to be heroes. They are heroes, arguably have been, but they are going to be walking into the flames and (some of) our leaders have not worked nearly hard enough to ensure they are likely to be even minimally prepared.

And there are things like this coming together to desperately try to provide some of the equipment likely to be needed over the coming weeks. It’s a Planet Money episode looking into GM trying to work with other companies to boost production of ventilators and what all has to come together for it.

It is inspiring. I don’t think it’s wrong or exaggerated to say that. It is inspiring. Yeah, there is likely to be some money being made here. I have to assume these companies are going to get paid for these machines.

But listen to these people talk.

I don’t hear someone counting their dollars.

There is pride there. There is hope.

Way way too any people will not be coming out the other side of this. Even the president has finally admitted that, yeah, this is going to be bad. It looks like we’ll be considering it a success if 100K people die from it, rather than some of the higher numbers talked about at the beginning of all of this.

And the reason that number could be so much lower than originally feared is because of that pride. That hope. It is people coming together and pulling for something because it is right and because it is needed.

I hope this is something that does come out the other side of this. That we take with us. From everything I see these next few weeks are going to be…bad. But maybe it won’t be in vain.

And when we come out on the side of this, maybe we work to elect people who will be able to tap into that better nature of our country and put that to work.

so, maybe some new neighbors

I have woods bordering two sides of my property, roughly 38 acres of trees running down on side and all along the back. It’s a mess. It keeps encroaching on my yard and I keep having to hack it back.

But it’s still just woods.

Today I saw a new survey stick in the ground at the back of my property. There was another out by the road. And a whole row going through the woods.

When we first bought our house seven years ago the woods had been for sale for nearly $900K. It was a stupidly high amount for a swamp and a bunch of dead fall. But if the wife and I could have bought it we would have just to ensure no one else would buy it.

Of course, there is no way we could afford that.

And now it looks like someone either could afford it or its original owner has decided to make some plans for it.

Which isn’t entirely surprising. People have been putting up their cookie cutter ugly crap houses all around us lately. slowly pricing us out of our neighborhood with the increasing property taxes their constant building is fueling.

The Wife and I kick around the idea of moving. She’d like to get closer to work. I’d like…I don’t know what I’d like. Ideally, I would move to the middle of nowhere but I have two young kids, one about to start kindergarten and one a few years off from it.

Living in the middle of nowhere usually means you’re going to a school that’s not exactly the most well funded thing in the world. So, I kinda just go with the idea of living with neighbors for the sake of the kids. This house seemed a nice middle ground.

Unless someone starts tearing down the woods and popping up their cookie cutter homes all over the place.

What really gets me is that this area doesn’t hurt for homes on the market. And if you’re looking at the $200-300K range that these new homes cost, the already built homes are pretty nice. Or you could pay a bit less, and go in and renovate and still come out a bit cheaper and get the house you “want.”

Anyway.  Just sort of down over this turn of events. And with the whole coronavirus thing it feels like I just get to sit in my house and stew on it.

Maybe We Should Have Been Paid Better From The Start

I hope everyone is well out there. We’re doing alright here. Kids are driving me nuts, as the oldest seems to have gone off the rails a bit and the 5 year old has decided that sleeping is optional. Then there is the newborn… . But that’s not what is on my mind.

If you’re from the US, you’re aware of the recent stimulus passed by the senate and likely to be passed by the house. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of that.

Instead, I just want to touch upon what I have in the title.

This money is going to be a godsend for a lot of folks, especially those who aren’t able to work right now. Who are trying to make ends meet where one end isn’t even there any more.

It’s also going to be a godsend for a lot of folks who are working through this. I am very fortunate to have an income that is likely to stay pretty stable through these next few months. We are probably not going to have to worry about making the mortgage or putting food on the table.

But we’ll still qualify for that money from the government. And it is still going to be of massive help to us.

And we have family and friends who are either working or are retired (and still working, in more than a few cases) who will be even happier to see some extra cash roll in.

Which has me thinking that maybe spending the last forty plus years devaluing the American worker, stagnating the minimum wage, and tearing apart unions have become chickens come home to roost.

Maybe, just maybe, this financial windfall the government is handing out wouldn’t be quite so necessary if we had made it a goal of this country, a priority, to make sure that the majority of people made enough money not to just sustain themselves but to thrive. To pay off their bills. To save for tomorrow. To also have some sort of wealth to pass down.

Instead, as we have become a society of service jobs rather than manufacturing, we have chosen to devalue that work. To say it doesn’t deserve to be paid more. It’s cheap labor.

So we have a growing number of people living paycheck to paycheck. Who rack up credit card and loan debt. Who accumulate a mountain of college debt because we are led to believe a degree is necessary for anything (and it’s not entirely wrong).

When this is over, when we can finally start looking forward as a nation again, maybe it’s time to go over our values a bit. People complain about government, but they keep electing the same people. Who do the same horrible things. Who accrue a bunch of debt on the backs of our kids, while eroding social safety nets to pay for it.

Maybe our priorities have been a bit skewed. I don’t know. This is just off the top of my head. Maybe I’m wrong. Stay safe out there, folks.  Stay healthy.