Essential

I learned within the last few days that I am an essential employee. Essential feels like a fully loaded word. Like something that the world just cannot do without and it seems during this time of the Rona that teachers have been deemed essential. Not in the sense that they must go in and do their jobs that they were hired for, but essential in that they must organize learning for students off site.

I have felt less than essential as of late. I’m talkin sweat pant wearin, Dorito munchin, remote clickin useless. As of late, my ego feels like one of those jack-o-lanterns that is a few weeks out, where the nicely carved teeth are starting to slide and the triangle nose is needing some botox. Of course in the realistic sense I am useful. I have been teach screamin’ at my two kids all day. Really forcing the education into their bones, but on the other hand I have done so much time on the couch, I’m curious as to if my muscle mass is disintegrating and the couch will swallow me up whole. Sometimes I look around while I am withering away and pinch my thighs just to make sure I am still there. Yup, jiggly thighs and all.

But, as I scroll through the internet I see opposing views on what teachers should be doing during this crisis. Were in sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Either we create the work for the kiddos, or parents will lament that we did not at all, but then when do create work, parents say that Susie wants to cook muffins with Mommy and that is doing fractions. You guys, YOU GUYS, I too said this to my house at large, that cooking was fractions, but in reality I measured out the flour and then I measured the cookies right into my mouth. So you Mom the way that you want too and I’ll Mom the way that I need too. But either way, I have spent the better part of two weeks researching what should go into these packets. Because I’m essential right? These packets are essential? I message back and forth with my team on what to put in and is it too hard, or not hard enough and did we include enough fun? By the time that I finally figured it out, it was 11 pm last night and I was entering it all into a document trying to organize parents and kids.

Is this helpful? I don’t know? I know it was helpful for me, to feel essential for a minute, to feel useful, to feel purposeful to my 20, so in that sense even if parents take that whole packet and run over it in the driveway or use it for some kind of recycled kitty litter, I have made my bed with it already. I worked as hard as I could on it, and we are all just really doing the best we can.

I keep reading things that say find your new normal. NO LINDA. Aint none of this normal. It is not normal for 7-year-olds to learn from a packet of paper and a 34 year old woman saying “you there you there” on zoom video feed. It is not normal for me to yell at my kids, no more opening the pantry and then secretly hiding food away, like I am Laura god damn Ingalls and Pa can’t go hunting for two months. It is not normal for a husband to say out loud at dinner, “did someone shit” and me to look at him and say “yes dear, I thought I would alleviate the tp situation and so I just sat right here and shat myself in the kitchen” “but damn don’t these sweat pants look cute”. So readers, find your new normal if you want too, I will not. I am still resisting this whole thing, this whole pandemic bad dream and I am living a temporary routined lifestyle for anxiety sufferers. This consists of me waking up before 7, looking out onto the lawn at the dumpster fire of a world that we now exist in, having three cups of coffee, doing one Joel Freeman workout, folding half a pile of laundry, flipping the other half off and sometimes writing on here for my sanity. I then follow that up with a semi decent breakfast where I blow kisses into the wind to the Starbucks Travel Plaza that I miss so much and then I bang the gong for the kids to get up and start work. I call it work , because school is happier, friendlier place than this abode. After an hour and maybe 15 minutes (yup now we need a break). We all exit the house to take the dog for a walk and reflect on how bad Mainers dress (I didn’t think we could get any worse). We then follow it up with reading for thirty minutes (sometimes I read with them, sometimes I motivate on classroom dojo and then I have to tune into the hunkiest medicine man, Dr, Shah. I won’t go into it now, but he REALLY helps me to get through to the afternoon. My love for him knows no bounds. We then go onto do more school work and I fight with my daughter over whatever kind of math that she has been assigned while the three of us look at the dishwasher and argue over who will fill it next. Throughout the day I have been drinking about 45 cups of coffee/tea. This is not healthy I know, but it is one of my “new normals” that really seems to take the edge off. I’d really hate to light up a cig now with my asthma and the current conditions. How are all of you making out in your essentialness? and normalness? I am sure much better than me . Please keep keeping on Rona survivors. We are all in this together!