Entry 547: At Least I Have My Health... Mostly

I haven’t gotten Covid yet, at least I can say that.  But my medical woes (and bills) are piling up.  My arthritic shoulder is still arthritic and likely will be for the rest of my life.  It’s all about managing the discomfort now.  I take an anti-inflammatory when it real starts to flare up, but I quit doing physical therapy because it’s $70 a session and that adds up very quickly.  Plus, I feel as if I can get, like, 75% of the benefit doing the exercises on my own at home.  That’s good enough for me.  It’s not like I’m an NFL quarterback leading his team to the Super Bowl for the 10th time.*  If I have to scale back my activities or skip workouts every now and then, so be it.  My life isn’t really going to change if I do a few less burpees than I would with a totally healthy shoulder.

*Hat tip to Tom Brady who is playing in his 10th Super Bowl in a few weeks and is actually a bit older than me.  I’ve never been a big Brady fan, and I'll be rooting against him, but it is completely bonkers that he is 43 and still one of the best players in the league.  It’s totally unprecedented and legit impressive.  

And right now my shoulder is only a secondary medical issue.  My primary concern is my mouth.  My weird, expensive mouth.  I went to the dentist on Monday, because one of my teeth is hurting, and that’s pretty much the only reason I ever go to the dentist, because I have good oral hygiene (floss, brush, Listerine at least twice, usually thrice, a day) and never really need a cleaning or anything like that.  That’s the good part of my mouth.  The bad part – or, rather, one of the bad parts – is that I cracked a tooth some years ago, causing a lot of discomfort, and I had to get a root canal to fix it, and apparently root canals usually don’t solve the problem forever.  The pulp of my tooth is irritated again, so the endodontist has to open it back up, go back in, and clean up/remove the problematic area.  I have it scheduled for a few weeks from now.  Sounds like fun.

And that’s not the worst of it.  While I was at the dentist, she noticed I had some pretty severe lower mandibular absorption (the gums of my lower front teeth are eroding) and referred me to a specialist.  So, I saw the periodontist today, and she told me I was in danger of losing my lower front two teeth if we don’t do something to stop the bone loss.  (I’ll probably lose them anyway at some point, but there is a big difference, in terms of quality of life, between losing them at 44 and 84.)  So, I scheduled a restorative surgery that I know is going to be very painful, because I had the same basic procedure done when I got dental implants 25 years ago.  They are going to graft bone from the top of my mouth and sew it on to the area in need.  The part that receives the new bone doesn’t actually hurt that much, and if it does, you don’t even notice it, because the “donation” site absolutely kills.  Of the massive amount of painful work I’ve had done to my mouth over the years, the thing that sticks out as being the most miserable is getting bone grafted from my palette.  It feels like somebody is constantly pouring boil water on that spot.

It’s going to be painful on the wallet too.  Insurance is only going to cover so much; I’m going to be paying thousands of dollars out of pocket.  I’m sure it’s way overpriced too.  I bet I could get the same procedure done in a different country for a tiny sliver of what it will cost here -- but what can I do?*  I’m not going to single-handedly change our fucked up, price-gouging system in time for my appointment next month, and as it so happens, keeping my teeth in my head is a high priority for me at the moment.  I’ll just bite the bullet and pay it.

*Also, I’m reminded of S’s cousin who flew to India to get a dental implant, because it’s so much cheaper there, and then the implant fell out after she returned.

The truth is, S and I have been very fortunate to keep our jobs throughout this pandemic, and I feel lucky we can afford this at all.  If we were living paycheck to paycheck, I likely would not even do it and just take my chances.  Instead, I’ll dip into some money we set aside to get solar panels to pay for it.  Sorry environment.  This is a good example of why affordable healthcare is such an important issue.  It has massive knock-on effects in other areas.

So, that’s that.  There is a question of why – why is my bone eroding?  But I’ll probably never get a satisfactory answer to that.  I asked the periodontist, and she offered some reasons, but it was pretty clear she didn’t really know.  Like I said, I just have a weird mouth.  I have two dental implants because a baby tooth never came out, and the adult tooth, with no place to go, impacted sidewise, knocking out the roots of two neighboring teeth, effectively killing them.  Why didn’t my baby tooth come out?  Don’t know.  Why didn’t my adult tooth harmlessly protrude above my baby tooth, like it usually does when a baby tooth doesn’t come out?  Again, don’t know.  Shit happens, I guess.

I suppose it could be worse.  George Washington had hippopotamus teeth.  (Or is that a myth?  Nope, it’s true, and it sounds pretty awful.)  And outwardly, my teeth still look fine -- straight and clean.  I mean, they had better look fine, if you add up all the work I’ve had done on them over the years, I probably have a $50,000 smile.

By the way, one thing I noticed is that the dentist, the endodontist, and the periodontist are all women.  I’m all for equal representation, but I’d just as soon it be some other dude who has to visit all of them the same week.

Until next time…

Entry 546: The Pall Is Lifted

First post of the Biden Era.  It feels good -- or rather I should say it feels not completely and totally depressing.  "Good" is too good a word.  All my problems -- all our problems as a nation -- are still there -- they didn't evaporate at noon last Wednesday -- but at least the pall as been lifted.  The blanket of embarrassment, incompetence, and vileness that has shrouded us the last four years is no longer there.  Sometimes I think of something distressful, and then I lose it in a different train of thought, but I remember it was bad, and then I come back to it, and if it's something minor, like I lost in fantasy football or something like that, then I'm relieved.  Ever since Election Day 2016 whenever I would do that, no matter what it was, I would then think, "... and Donald Trump is president," and so my mind would not be at ease.  Now, I don't think that anymore.

And that's a good thing because the coronavirus is more than enough on its own for us to worry about.  And my number probably won't come up for the vaccine for, like, six months.  But at least people I know -- healthcare workers, teachers, old people -- are getting it.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In other bad news, Lil' S1 did the worst thing he's ever done yesterday.  Well, he did it about a month ago, but we just found out about it yesterday.  He was in a pod with his brother and his friend/classmate E who lives down the street.  And yesterday he was acting shady when I asked him for some coins from this little safe he has, so I drilled down a bit, and he confessed that he stole E's money, and he was acting suspicious because he didn't want me to see it.

I was very upset and disappointed, thinking he took a few dollars from her, but it got worse.  He stole her entire wallet, took out all the money, of which there was a lot (holiday/birthday gifts apparently), and then tossed the wallet to "destroy the evidence."  That takes it from a normal-kids-being-kids indiscretion to something damn near juvenile delinquency.

I called S, who was out on a walk, and we tried to come up with the best punishment.  He had to write an apology note to E, and he doesn't get any non-school screen time for a week.  I don't think that's enough though.  We have to come up with something that will stick with him.  He's a tough kid to discipline because he doesn't acknowledge that he got in trouble.  He'll accept his punishment, but then he'll just act like everything is normal.  I want to see some moping and some tears.  There was a little bit of that at first, but only a little bit.  I want him to have to dwell on this for a long time.  I want him to feel bad about it.

And maybe he does.  It could be pretending everything is okay is his way of coping with it.  He did fess up pretty readily, which means he probably felt guilty about it.  But then again, he didn't say anything about it for a month, and he only admitted it when I asked him to open his safe.  It could be he only copped to it once he thought he was caught -- I'm not sure.  It would have been so easy to play it off, by the way.  If he told me S's parents gave him the money, I totally would have believed it.  So maybe he wanted to admit it; maybe he wasn't savvy enough to cover it up.

I texted E's mom to tell her what happened, and to make things worse, they thought she lost the wallet and were annoyed with her because of it.  E actually suggested Lil' S took it -- apparently, she saw him alone in the room where her wallet was -- and her parents told her it wasn't nice to accuse a friend of such a thing.  So, it's just a bad, embarrassing situation all around.  

Thankfully, E's parents are very chill and understanding, but E legit doesn't want to be Lil' S1's friend anymore.  She refused to see him, so I delivered the apology note by myself (and ordered E a new wallet).  Lil' S1 included a Diglett card with his note, and so E at least wrote back saying that she liked the card. I joked with E's mom that it was atonement by Pokémon.

Anyway...

In non-child-rearing news, S and I started watching this show Derry Girls, which is pretty funny.  It's one of those British shows I have to watch with the subtitles on or else I miss every third line.  It's about these four high school lasses (and one lad) in Northern Ireland in the mid-'90s.  I love the setting since I was a high school student in the mid-'90s, not in Northern Ireland, of course, but a lot of the cultural references are the same.  In the very first episode there was a Pulp Fiction reference and the soundtrack is like a trip down memory lane -- Ace of Base, Snow, Cranberries, Cypress Hill, etc.  The show also prompted me down a Northern Ireland Wikipedia rabbit hole last night.  I think I have the basics of The Troubles down now, and I understand that U2 song "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" a bit better.  (The show is a comedy, however, and only tangentially touches on politics.)  Also, while I was in the rabbit hole, I learned the difference between Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (aka Ireland), and I learned the difference between the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England.  I've always wanted to get all that straight in my head.

Alright, that's all for today.  Until next time...

Entry 545: Impeach Me Two Times

Impeach me two times Nancy

Impeach me twice I say

Impeach me two times Nancy

I'm goin' away

Impeach me two times Nancy

One for my past crimes, one for those today

Impeach me two times

I'm goin' away

As I write this, the U.S. House of Representatives is in session, poised to impeach Donald Trump a second time.  This time, unlike last time, it will be a bipartisan effort, as at least six Republicans have joined the effort including Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney (what a weird sentence to write).  Furthermore, according to congressman Jason Crown (D-CO), backed up by credible reporter Tim Alberta of Politico, more republicans wanted to come out in favor of impeachment, but they were literally scared for their lives and those of their family to do so.  That's quite unsettling, if true, but no excuse, in my opinion.  Resign if that's your attitude.  Go live a fear-free life.  You don’t belong in Congress if you aren’t willing to stand up to terrorists.  It’s your job and your duty as an American leader.  People like AOC (D-NY) have undoubtedly faced these types of threats everyday since their election, and they still come out breathing fire and fighting back.  And part of me wonders how sincere these fraidy-cat Republicans actually are.  Is it possible they’re actually scared of the political/social backlash and are using physical safety as a cover?  I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case.

After the House votes to impeach, it will go to the Senate, where it will not be addressed until January 19, one day before Trump will leave office anyway.  Mitch McConnell, although he apparently believes the president committed impeachable offenses, will not allow the Senate to convene before then.  I almost - repeat, almost -- admire McConnell’s Machiavellian maneuvering (and I definitely like a good alliteration).  This way he gets to see a Senate trial against Trump, which he clearly wants, and possibly a conviction*, but it won’t be on his watch.  It won’t actually remove the president from power, and it will take away time and resources from other Democratic initiatives.  It’s win-win for him. 

*It’s a huge longshot that 16 Republican senators would vote “yea,” but there are rumors in the ether that the institutionalist like McConnell want to take back the party from the Trumpists, which, if true, would drastically increase the odds of conviction.  This would only vindicate McConnell’s bad behavior in placating Trump and laundering his misdeeds almost his entire term to get tax cuts and judges, but I’d rather have McConnel's team win this fight a thousand times over.  When one side would rather assassinate fellow Americans than accept the loss of a fair election (that wasn’t even that close), then I’m probably backing the other side by default.

I think impeachment is the correct decision, even if a Senate trial comes after Biden’s inauguration.  There must be consequences for Trump's Big Lie and his seditious demagoguery.  A bipartisan conviction would be a massive embarrassment for him, and I think it would prevent him from collecting a presidential pension and from ever holding office again – a non-trivial punishment given he could otherwise run for president again in 2024. (I’ve read conflicting opinions on whether or not conviction actually would carry such penalties, and I’m not sure what the truth is.)

With that said, I’m very sympathetic to Biden’s worry that a drawn-out impeachment trial will hamper his agenda.  Democrats won themselves a tremendous opportunity when they swept the Senate runoffs in Georgia.**  They will soon hold all three legislative houses, but possibly for only two years, and there is a lot to get done in that time, and it’s not going to be easy, as not only do they not hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a single Democratic defector can sink a bill.

**Despite the polls, which were almost spot on, showing both Dems with narrow leads, I considered them significant underdogs a month ago.  Then I went to Georgia for Christmas and felt the energy first-hand and talked to my sister-in-law who was "cautiously optimistic," and thought "maybe they can actually pull this off..."

In rough order of priority, here are the top ten things I think Biden and congress should try to do (not including impeachment):

1. Confirm Biden's cabinet picks

2. Get Covid stimulus checks out the door -- as much money as possible, in as many people's pockets as possible, as quickly as possible

3. Persuade Stephen Breyer to retire; replace him with a young liberal justice like Ketanji Brown Jackson

4. Massive infrastructure/jobs bill

5. Close the loopholes in Obamacare; move toward universal coverage

6. New voting rights act; end gerrymandering

7. Court reform

8. Green energy initiative (would be higher, but Biden can do a lot unilaterally on this front, I think)

9. Immigration reform

10. Police/crime justice reform

Trying to come up with the correct order of this list was very difficult, and I'm still not sure I got it right (and I'm probably missing something really important).  I feel pretty strongly that 1, 2, and 3 are correct, but after that you could almost put them into a hat and pull them out.  They all seem equally important.  And some of them might require changing the filibuster rules, which is a monumental task in and of itself.  So, you can see why I'm understanding of Biden not wanting an impeachment trial to be the central focus of the beginning of his presidency.

But it still has to happen.

Until next time...

Entry 544: Seditious Conspirators

Quick confession: I didn't even really know what sedition was until yesterday.  I had heard it before, and if I had had some multiple-choice options, like on a standardized test, I probably could have picked the correct one, but I'm not sure I could have given you a definition cold.  But I think it's the perfect word to describe what happened at the Capitol yesterday.

    Sedition: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.

That what's we saw.  Many people have used other terms -- act of terrorism, coup attempt, riot -- and those are all fine, but I like sedition best.

I have a ton of thoughts going through my head right now, so let's just plow through them in bullet-point form, because I don't think I can craft a nice through line for them right now.

-Trump, his enablers, and the extremist right-wing media are largely responsible for this.  Of course, people have individual agency, and have to be held accountable for their own actions, but the disinformation machine is very real and still going strong.  (See Ezra Klein tweet thread for more on this.)

-As an example of the above point, consider the latest lie that the rioters were actually Antifa is disguise.  Pure delusion, pure denial.

-As another example, consider that senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, were still objecting to the certification of electoral votes from certain states, because they wanted a congressional commission on voter fraud or some bullshit like that.  What they really wanted was to show their fealty to Trump's base.  The voter fraud commission makes no sense, because that's all already been adjudicated, many, many times, and the only reason a substantial portion of the population doesn't believe it is because of Trump's lies and the refusal of people who know better, like Cruz and Hawley, to repudiate them.

-Speaking of which, Twitter and Facebook completely (and unsurprisingly) dropped the ball on this. They waited until actual violence occurred before they (temporarily) blocked Trump's account.  What they should have done is -- well, what they should've done is shut him down for various reasons a long time ago -- but absent that they should have warned him the first time he said the election was stolen, and then suspended his account the next time he tweeted it.  The little red exclamation point wasn't sufficient at all.  "You can't spread lies about an election to millions of followers" is a clear, easy-to-follow, easy-to-enforce rule.

-Of course I give absolutely zero credence to Trump's teleprompter-measured speech today, but I'm glad he gave it.  We just need to hang on for 13 more days, and the fact he felt compelled to say something like that, for whatever reason, makes it slightly less likely he'll do something else totally insane in the meantime.  Also, it means he probably won't pardon his people who sieged the Capitol.  He called on them to do it (he even said he would be right there with them), and then totally threw them under the bus once they did and the consequences came to bear.  He does everybody like that.  And there is no greater schadenfreude than watching his minions reap what they sow.

-The epitome of the point above is Mike Pence.  I cosign this Jonathan Chait article 100%.  Trump almost got Pence killed, literally.  The mob was looking for him.  If they actually found him, what would they have done to him?  Maybe nothing.  But people don't bring bombs and guns and zip-tie handcuffs to do nothing.

-The Capitol Police utterly, amazingly, epically failed.  How do you let the Capitol Building be breached like that?  At this point, we can only speculate.  Which I shall do.  The first thing is that they obviously weren't prepared.  They should have been.  Everybody knew this could get violent and something like this could happen.  They were so outmanned, and I couldn't believe how little fencing they had erected around the Capitol.  I understand the optics of not wanting to appear like a opposition force to the peaceful protesters (of which there were many, misguided as they might be), but my goodness... the area around the White House has been totally barricaded multiple times over since summer.  Why they didn't do this for the Capitol Building in preparation for these protests, I have no idea.

-One contributing factor: There seems to have been a higher level of complacency on the part of the police than the situation warranted.  This is likely because a) many police officers are aligned with the rioters politically, b) white people don't scare police the way black people do.  The contrast of how the police responded to a siege of the Capitol -- a siege of the mutherfuckin' United States Capitol -- and violating curfew at a BLM march is blatant obvious to everybody.  (And backed up by data.)  Armed, violent, predominantly white protesters are often treated better by the police than unarmed, peaceful, predominantly black protesters.  And a big reason for this, I believe, is because police better identify with the white people.  A lot of the pro-Trump protestors were flying Thin Blue Line flags, and some police officers were downright chummy with the rioters.

-With that said, I'm not going to universally condemn the police on duty.  They were in an impossible situation.  Many were behaving appropriately and bravely.  They were trying to stop the onrush at first, but they were way overmatched, and once they realized that they didn't escalate things.  De-escalation.  That's what I want from police all the time.  As somebody on Twitter said (I can't find it, paraphrasing): "We don't want you to shoot them like you do us; we want you to not shoot us like you do them."  If police started trying to make arrests while outnumber 20-to-1 or worse started shooting people, that number would have been worse, way worse.  One police officer and one rioter were killed, and as terrible as that is, it would have been much, much higher if officers didn't stand down.  Get everybody to a secure position; wait it out.  That was the smart thing to do.

-Oh, and the second part of that plan: Find every last fucker who had any part in this, arrest them, and prosecute them as harshly as legally possible.  I'm talking prison sentences measured in years, not months.  The rioters shouldn't be difficult to track down -- many have already been credibly identified on Twitter.  The beauty of these people is that they specifically don't cover their faces, and they post everything they do online.

-Funniest tweet I've seen in a long time.  

Until next time...

Entry 543: To Peachtree Corners and Back

We are back from our trip to Hot-lanta, which at this time of the year is more like Chill-lanta.  The whether was about the same there as it was in DC, somewhere between 35 and 45 degrees for most the day.  We weren’t actually staying in Atlanta proper (ITP, as the locals say: inside the perimeter), but rather in a city called Peachtree Corners which is OTP north.  It was a relaxing, cozy getaway.  S’s sister, Sw, has a nice townhouse that isn’t too cramped with all of us (plus her little dog) in it.  It was a lot of lazing around, watching TV and movies, reading, drinking coffee, eating cookies -- the best type of vacation, if you ask me.

On Christmas morning, we FaceTimed S’s parents and opened gifts -- or, in the case of the adults, we watched the kids open gifts.  They’re at the age when the opening is much better than the actual getting, and they aren't big on patience, so they tore through everything (literally) in short order.  Often a gift wouldn’t even be completely out of the wrapping paper before they would move on to the next one.  The whole thing was done in, like, ten minutes.  We did another FaceTime with my family later that evening, and the kids didn’t even save anything to unwrap.  It was just as well, though.  It was a very frantic call.  Given the opportunity, Lil’ S1 will dominate the screen (often with his cousin Q), making it almost impossible for anybody else to speak (or hear).  If the adults actually want to talk, we have to put the kids on their own call and let them blather about Pokémon or Bakugan or what have you.

We did get to do a few things outside the house; we walked quite a bit.  We went to the botanical garden (see pics), which was bittersweet.  It was cool, but we weren’t able to get tickets to the evening lights display, so the whole time I kept thinking about how much better everything would look all lit up.  We went through a different drive-through lights display, which was fine, but not nearly as cool as the garden looked.  To make matters more annoying, Sw had tickets from her work for the botanical garden show for the night before we arrived, but they wouldn't let her exchange them for a different night, so they just went to waste.

[It was an Alice In Wonderland theme]

We also went to the zoo (see pic), which was fine.  We go to the zoo so much here in DC that I’m pretty much permanently zooed out, but at least they have some different animals in Atlanta, like giraffes and rhinos.  They also have pandas, which we have in DC, but they are often hard to see, because they’re the main attraction, and there are always, like, a zillion people crowded around their exhibit.  At the Atlanta zoo, you can just walk right up to their cage and look at them.  I couldn’t believe it.  I guess, that’s the difference between paying and going from free.  (The National Zoo, like many attractions in DC, doesn’t charge an entrance fee.)  I’d rather have things be free – everybody should be able to enjoy them – but it is nice to not have to fight the crowds just to catch a glimpse of Mei Xiang sleeping or Tian Tian chewing some bamboo.

Speaking of chewing, I certain did not go hungry this vacation.  I ate so much, I’d wake up and still be full from dinner the night before.  We really mixed up the food types – Mexican, Indian, Thai, and, if you count frozen pizza as Italian, Italian.  And then a massive amount of cookies – I probably ate 25 cookies in four days, no exaggeration – and even a cupcake for good measure.  It was so gluttonous and so glorious.  The walking is the only reason I didn't gain 50 pounds (although the belly is protruding more than I'd like it to; I really need Covid to end so I can get back in the Krav studio regularly).

For entertainment at night, I got the kids into Cobra Kai.  Season 3 releases on Friday, so I wanted to get them caught up on the first two seasons (and I wanted to rewatched them myself).  S wasn’t too happy about it.  There is some bad language and adult humor in it, and she is much more sensitive to that type of thing than I am.  But I won over a key ally to my side, Sw, who got hooked on the show, so it was four against one, and S had to cave or she'd be the Grinch.

It’s a great show.  It has the perfect amount of nostalgia and self-parody without being completely farcical, and the fight scenes are marvelously over-the-top (especially the final one of season two).  Also, the general premise – bullied kids who become the bullies – is interesting.  Lil’ S1 gets most of this, I think, but it probably goes over Lil’ S2’s head.  He’s just in it for the fighting.  That kid loves any sort of roughhousing.  He walks around the house going “Ike! Ike! Ike! Ike!” punching and kicking anything that gets in his way.  (Occasionally this is S, which doesn’t go over so well.)

Yesterday, he challenged me to a boxing match (he has a little pair of gloves), and then when I went into the room he had set up a ring using blankets, and he had gone into my gym bag and laid out my gloves and my headgear and mouthpiece.  It was cute.  (I actually wear headgear and a mouthpiece too, because he can hit legitimately hard now.)   We will see if he’s still like this as he gets older.  He took karate for a while, but he was too young/shy to really participate.  I think we will try again once Covid is over.  I’m not trying to turn my kid into a little badass, but I’m not not trying either.

I do have to rein him in from time to time, however.  Yesterday, while punching me he said, “C’mon, you pussy!”  And I was like, “Whoa!  You cannot say that!”  That’s definitely a Cobra Kai thing.  I told him it’s a bad word, and then I told him that if his mom hears him say it, she won’t let him watch the show anymore.  That did the trick, I think.  He switched to calling me a “weakling” after that, which is still not great, but acceptable.

[Some cookies we decorated over Zoom with my family before we went to Atlanta.  They turned out very nicely.]

In general, S and I have different views about this.  I don't mind them hearing bad language or seeing sex scenes (within reason), because I think it's a good chance to teach them about those things.  S's view is that they are going to repeat it at inappropriate times, but I think that's actually less likely if they know what those things are and what they mean and learn the context for which they are appropriate.  I mean, they're going to learn those things anyway, and I'd rather it be when I'm around, so that I can explain it to them and educate them on what is and is not appropriate and when.  For example, Lil' S2 now knows that p-word is a bad thing to say and that he'll get in trouble if he says it, and so he hasn't said it again.  That's a good thing.

The things I don't want them watching are the things that could be potentially traumatizing or give them nightmares.  But four-letter words and sexual innuendo aren't that.  In short, as long as they aren't watching pornography, YouTube propaganda videos, or, like, Silence of the Lambs, I'm okay with it.

Alright, I think I have to wrap this one up about.  Have a Happy New Year!  If you want to celebrate the end of this terrible year, by all means, go for it.  Personally, I'm reserving most my good cheer for January 20.  That's the real end to 2020, as far as I'm concerned.

Until next time...

Entry 542: Christmas Vacation

We are headed out of town early tomorrow -- going to visit S's sister in Atlanta.  I'm not super keen on traveling right now -- you know, with this raging pandemic and all -- but we're being quite safe about it.  We all got Covid tested last week; we are driving, so we won't be in a busy airport or anything like that; and we will pretty much only be with S's sister, who is super safe herself, and lives alone.  (And we will mask it up, when necessary, as always.)  From an exposure standpoint, it will be no more risky than just living our usual life here.  In fact, it'll probably be even safer, since the kids won't be in their pod.

But still, traveling just doesn't feel right to me at the moment.  It's like, we're probably almost done with this thing.  I feel like we should just hunker down and hang in there for a few months, until we can get this vaccine thing going in full force.  Traveling 600 miles down the country is the exact opposite of that.  But S really wants to go, and her sister presumably doesn't want to spend Christmas by herself, and the boys really want to go, and under normal circumstances I would really want to go, as well.  So, we're going.  I'm sure once I get there, I'll be able to relax, and it'll be great.  But I'm not there yet, so that's not how I feel now.

Anyway, as I said, we're getting up early tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.

Until next time...

Entry 541: A Song Of Ice And Aggravation

It has not been a great week thus far.

It started out well, the Electoral College voted Biden for president, as expected, but things quickly deteriorated in the G & G household from there.  Our boys are in a pod with a little girl, and Tuesday evening, we got a call from her mother telling us she (the mother) had been around somebody recently, who, unbeknownst at the time, had Covid.  It sounded like a very low-risk situation -- mostly outside, mostly masked -- but, still, we all figured we should play it very safe, so we canceled the pod, including the babysitter, until she could get tested.  And since it's Christmas break next week, anyway, we just canceled it for the rest of this week.  (She got tested and she's negative, if you were wondering.)

Without the babysitter, it's so difficult to do remote schooling.  Lil' S2 isn't old enough to navigate his schedule by himself, so you pretty much have to sit near him the entire day.  Lil' S1 can do everything on his own, but you still have to check in to make sure he's on task.  He's got some slacker in him.  He's a strong reader (a bit of a bookworm), and his math seems to be okay, but he puts such little effort into his other work.  Anything that requires actually writing out answers to questions, he just doesn't want to do.  His handwriting is atrocious and he's a surprisingly poor speller given how much he reads.  It's a lack of practice, and it's difficult to get the reps in when almost all your work is done on online portals and nobody is really holding you accountable, anyway.

I was working with him today, and when I work with him, it almost always leads to a tantrum (from him, to be clear), because I don't let him slide.  He has to do it right when I'm around.  I don't mean he has to get the correct answer every time; I mean he has to put in the right effort.  He has to use complete sentences that start with a capital and end with a period and use lower-case in between (on his own, he just capitalizes and punctuates things willy-nilly); he has to fully erase his mistakes, so that somebody can actually read his work; he has to write along an approximately straight line; so on and so forth.  You need to get those things to become second-nature or else you'll really struggle to progress to the fun stuff.

The other thing he does, which, to be fair, pretty much every kid does (including me when I was that age), is argue tooth-and-nail about doing something he doesn't want to do, instead of just doing it in half the time, at half the effort, it takes to argue it.  As an example, today he was doing a worksheet in which he had to give examples of antonyms for certain words, one of which was BOLD.  The answer he wrote was LISINS.  We then had the following conversation:

Me: What's this?  What's LISINS?

Him: It's "listens."

Me: That's not how you spell it, and that's not an antonym for bold.

Him: Yes, it is.

Me: No, it isn't.

Him: Amma said it is!

Me: No, she didn't.

Him (revving up to tantrum mode): Yes, she did!

Me: Well, it's not right.  Let's try to think of something else.

Him (full on meltdown): Amma said it is!  I don't like it when you help me!  I like it when Amma helps me!  She said it's right!

Me: *Sigh*

The thing is, though, once I get him to actually calm down and put some effort into it (usually by threating to take away his iPad time), he'll just do it.  He won't fight me, and he even seems to enjoy it.  He's like a wild horse that has to be broken or something -- I don't know.

By the way, I found out later that S really did tell him it was okay to put listens as an antonym for bold, which... I don't even know what to say about that.  I mean, it's the wrong part of speech -- listens is a verb and bold is an adjective -- but even aside from that, it still doesn't make any sense.  Being a good listener is not the opposite of being bold.  Those two words don't exist on the same continuum.  It's like saying swims is the opposite of adamant.  I have no idea how the connection was even made.

I tried to ask S about it, but she made it clear I shouldn't.  Normally I wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone -- I'd have to know what the thought process was behind signing off on listens as an antonym for bold -- but this time I didn't push it, because we are both quite stressed right now.  Not only are we both trying to work full-time and tend to our children in the midst of a raging pandemic, but our roof has a leak in it, and few things in life are more aggravating than a roof with a leak in it, especially when a massive storm of wintery mix blows through town.  Hopefully, we can get somebody out to look at it ASAP.  Will keep you posted.

Until next time...