Double Lives

So. On Monday we were informed that "real school" - the germy, unsanitary kind where kids puke in the hallways - is definitely not happening this month.

This wasn't really a surprise to me, considering the amount of emails I'd gotten explaining how to log on to Google classroom and where to go to download three more weeks of math worksheets the week before.

Virtual school it is. 

Since last week was spring break, and next week the kids have to report to their Google classroom at regular intervals and watch pre-recorded lessons taught by their teachers, this week was a weird in-between zone.

They didn't have enough schoolwork to fill regular school hours but I had a feeling that every minute that they spent looking at screens or throwing stuff at each other outside they were backsliding on all of the academic progress they had made thus far. 

I also had the nagging feeling that my reluctance to put them on a schedule was somehow reflecting badly on me as a parent. What kind of mother was I if I wasn't setting aside blocks of time for practicing an instrument and learning a new language?  Not a good one.

So I decided that this week would be different.

Five days later, here's what our schedule looks like:

7:15 am: Wake up.

I hear my husband return from Dunkin' Donuts with his coffee. He has made a personal decision to socially distance himself from everyone other than me, the kids and the lady who works at Dunkin' Donuts.

I do not know who this donut woman is and I suppose I could question his commitment to her... But instead I just appreciate the fact that he gets the kids donuts while he's there, thus relieving me of breakfast duty, so I pray that she washes her hands and wears a mask.

In this weird new world I guess coffee shops are the new seedy motel and PPE's are the new condom. Go outside your marriage to get your coffee, just make sure to wrap it up.

7:30 am: Phone Time

I start to feel guilty about still being in bed while my husband is downstairs working away but not quite guilty enough to get out of it.

I could be depressed or I could be hungover from self-medicating said depression the night before, who's to say? I grab my phone to check and see if the world ended yet and, seeing that the President is still tweeting, figure that for better or worse nothing has changed and decide to check Instagram for some good celebrity tea instead. 

There really isn't any celebrity gossip to catch up on now that all of the good clubs are closed and TMZ reporters have to stay six feet away but there are plenty of selfie videos of celebrities with minimal makeup talking about how much it sucks to be stuck in their NYC penthouse or Malibu beach house with their super hot significant others.

Sometimes the celebrity's kids make an appearance and do something adorable, but I'm guessing the nanny and housekeeper are hiding somewhere in the background because their homes don't look nearly as messy as mine and there's no swearing going on off-camera by that super hot significant other.  Even if I could sing Broadway show tunes in my bathrobe or bake cookies in my spotless white kitchen, there's no way in hell my kids would be able to resist running into the room and mooning the camera while my husband yelled at us to keep it down in the background.

7:45: GTFO (of bed)

The dog starts sighing, loudly, to remind me that time may have stopped for the rest of us but he still needs to be fed and walked and so I make my way downstairs. The kids have been sleeping in the family room every night since never-ending-spring-break started. The downside to this is that my family room looks like a dorm room with blankets, sleeping bags, pillows (some with pillowcases, some without because does anything even matter anymore?), discarded dirty socks and yesterday's tee shirts everywhere.

The upside is that there is no longer a bedtime routine. Gone is the nagging to brush teeth (I assume that brushing happens, but with April's dentist appointment cancelled there's really no way to tell) There are no longer multiple asks for water to ensure that my I meet my 10,000 steps by literally going up and down 10,000 steps a day since the kitchen is right there next to the family room. And since I'm with them all day every day, there is no need to tell me every detail of their day up until that moment before turning out the light.

Another added benefit of this situation is that I have no idea what time they wake up.  My kids have always been morning people and by the time I pour water into the French Press they have been awake for at least an hour. I also don't know exactly what time they go to bed but I assume they sleep at some point because there's still some food in the pantry and their energy levels do not seem at all depleted during the day.

8:00-9:00: Calisthenics 

I mentioned a few weeks ago that this was supposed to be my "tone up for summer" time, and also maybe the chance to learn some new dance moves. Since summer 2020 has been pushed back to like, November, I have some time, and yet I also have nothing but time, so I've been strapping on some ankle weights and walking the dog every morning before coming home for some Hip Hop Abs. So, you know, if the world doesn't end next week I guess I can always audition for MTV Jams.

Does that show even still exist? How old am I?

While I do this, the kids are left to get dressed, brush their teeth, and turn the family room back into a room that the rest of the family (mainly me) might want to spend time in. If nothing else, my kids will emerge from this experience with the ability to fold blankets, a skill I up until last week didn't know actually needed to be taught. 

9:00: Morning Game Time

When I emerge from my bedroom turned home gym (because the family room isn't the only room in the house living a double life), I find the kids in the dining room playing Monopoly. My parents taught them how to play over President's Day weekend and I swear they haven't put the board away in six weeks. I'm afraid that next week it might have to double as a seder plate so we can remember that time our ancestors cried salty tears because they went bankrupt after their brother built a hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. I'm guessing this is what Passover is like at the Kushner home.

I loathe Monopoly with a passion usually reserved for real estate developers who become President, and when I do get sucked into joining one of their games my strategy is to go bankrupt ASAP so I can get out of the game. This was my reason for trading two properties for a utility last week, sending my six year old into a tantrum that ended with him spending the rest of the day in his bedroom muttering about "bad deals" and "unfair monopolies."

That also probably happens a lot at the Kushner's.

10:00: School begins

As I might have mentioned before, I am not a Homeschool Mom. But let's be honest, not many of us are. The term Homeschool Mom applies to a small minority of the population that not only are equipped with the skills to educate their offspring but actually want to do it. In fact, educating children has never really been a primary parental duty if you really think about it.

That's why we have Sesame Street.

Before there were multi-grade public schools with standardized tests and parent-teacher associations there were one room schoolhouses where 22 year old spinsters were plucked out of obscurity to educate the town's youth and eventually be swept away by the rugged native who would teach her life lessons about buffalo and living off the land (or was that Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman?). 

Before that, well, kids just didn't learn algebra I guess. They took care of the homestead or learned a trade and hoped that whatever big box store before Wal-Mart didn't put the family general store out of business.

Which isn't to say that educating my kids isn't a priority. In fact, it's probably my number one priority, right after making sure that they don't get weird haircuts or embarrass me in public. I'm all for giving my kids the best education possible. We live in a great school district, I make sure their homework is done no matter how many after school activities we have going on, and I check in with the teachers regularly to make sure they are not letting my kids slack off, as they are prone to do.

I just know, as sure as I know that I will never actually have hip hop abs, that I am not a teacher.

For one thing,  I cannot do math. This is not an exaggeration.  My sixth grader and I were both in tears on Monday over his homework, which consisted of figuring out interest rates on three year loans when given the principal amount and the total amount paid at the end of the term. Do I look like a loan officer? My third grader had a story problem involving the cost of apples at a farmer's market and it was all I could do not to explain to him that if he ever finds himself spending his Saturday at a farmer's market he will most likely also be in possession of an iphone with a calculator app and enough money where it doesn't really matter.

Thank G-d my husband is a CPA and was able to take a break from his work to help the kids with their math homework and make the suggestion that I adjust the school day so that math takes place at 7 pm when he can help from now on. Those three years of nonstop studying while I was juggling three young kids has finally paid off. 

I suggest that any couple considering getting married and having kids one day discusses the teaching skills they bring to the relationship. If you do not feel that between the two of them they can adequately teach children ages 6, 9, and 11 during a months-long pandemic, you should give up now and go your separate ways. It also might be helpful to practice eating in front of each other to see if either of you has weird issues about noisy chewing and swallowing but that's a topic for another blog post. 

Another reason I cannot be a teacher is that I think that most kids are annoying.  I witnessed my son's first grade teacher attempt to end a Google Meet this morning and every time she started to say "good-bye" some kid had a non-sequitor like "I have two cats at home" or "I lost a tooth three days ago."  I cannot imagine dealing with a room full of these people. It's hard enough with three.

And, I always assumed that my kids drive me crazy at home but that at school they are perfect angels. Spending a week emulating a classroom situation in my kitchen has taught me otherwise.

My kids are annoying at school in a different way that they are annoying at home. My 9 year-old left his Google Meet with his teacher two minutes in because he had to go to the bathroom, so I guess he's that kid.

My eleven year-old feels the need to narrate everything that he's doing as he does it.  And if he's not narrating, he's whistling.

My six year old just eats a lot. I know they get snack time and have an early lunch in first grade but when he made himself instant mac and cheese at 10:30 Thursday morning I kind of lost it.

1 pm: Walk outside onto the deck and scream into the wind

I added this to the schedule on Tuesday when I had already cleaned up the kitchen three times and then my nine year old spilled his mac and cheese and my eleven year old asked what was for lunch.

--Wait, didn't I just feed you?
--Oh, it was your brother?
--HOW MANY LUNCHES HAS THAT KID HAD TODAY?

Screaming doesn't usually solve anything but it did scare my kids away for a whole ten minutes that day and then they were back asking if I would play a game with them.

1:15 pm: Game Time, Part 2

This week we learned how to play Clue. I never thought of Clue as being particularly educational but my kids now know what a "conservatory" is and that "Colonel" is a weird way to spell a word that sounds like "Kernel." My nine year old also knows what a wrench is now which puts him way ahead of most of the other Jewish guys I know.

Maybe I should teach my kids how to play the game Operation...I heard that veterinarians are being called on to help out in hospitals that are overwhelmed by Coronavirus so I'm thinking that as a society our standards for doctors are getting a lot lower.
 
2:00 pm: Wine with Dewine

I actually don't drink during Mike Dewine's press conferences, mainly because it makes me tired and I haven't figured out how to work nap time into our schedule so I should probably call this time Whine with DeWine.  As in, I listen to him tell us that this could go on for weeks, or months, and I start moaning "WHYYYYYY......NOOOOOOO.....HELP ME"

While I  appreciate his heavy handed approach to flattening the curve, I'm really concerned that the only skills my kids will come out of this with are how to negotiate real estate deals or become high-priced assassins who hang out in libraries waiting to prey on the 1%.

3:00 pm: Eat chocolate chips straight out of the bag by the fistful

Hopefully my morning walk burned the 900 calories I just choked down and chased with this morning's cold coffee.

4:00 pm: Silent reading time

The kids have now spent the past two hours while I was catching up on the news and stress-eating throwing balls at each other in the driveway and digging in the dirt. It isn't until I am laying on my bed googling online therapists and I see one of them scaling the tree in front of my second story bedroom window that I decide that recess is over. I refuse to drive to the ER when someone breaks a leg.  If Covid-19 isn't scary enough, the thought of being charged $10,000 for a horse doctor to set my son's leg is.

I call the kids inside to do their reading. 

Do you know how much I wish someone would order me to pick up a book of my choosing and read it for thirty minutes? Like, that's up there with the fantasy of someone else folding all the laundry that's accumulated over the past three weeks or of the kids going back to school May 1. But for whatever reason my kids act like they are being tortured when I make them take a break from chasing the dog around the back yard with sticks to sit down and read a book.

My intention for this time, besides improving their literacy skills and giving the dog a break, is to actually read my book at the same time. However I end up spending twenty minutes of reading time cleaning the kitchen AGAIN and the remaining ten minutes yelling at the kids to stop

a. touching each other
b. reading out loud in weird voices to distract each other and
c. making each other laugh.

I know what you are thinking, why not separate them?

The thing is, b. and c. can happen from separate rooms - separate floors even, because if there's one thing my kids have, it's a total lack of volume control.

4:30 pm: Curl up in the fetal position on my bed...

...and wonder if my kids are going to have to repeat their current grades and if so does that mean I have to go to sixth grade fun night again because there's really nothing fun about a bunch of sweaty 11 year olds running around a middle school on a Friday night.  It also seems like the perfect place to launch a brand new pandemic. 

5:00 pm: Start dinner

My kids, who have never in the past expressed an interest in cooking, suddenly want to help me make dinner every night. There are two explanations for this -- either they are either bored enough to want to learn a new skill or they have realized that if they don't get into college because their mom doesn't know middle school math a career flipping burgers might be a good alternative.

A good Homeschool Mom would turn this into a learning experience for her kids and teach them about following directions and measuring and nutrition and maybe even plant a vegetable garden so dinner can be a whole farm-to-table experience.

But I've already explained that I am not that mother.

I am a mother who is trying to get through the day and if that means banishing everyone from the kitchen so that I can peace out and watch Schitt's Creek while making a salad that came from a bag then that is what I'm going to do.

6:00 pm: I'm done 

My kids have now completed all of the work they were assigned.  They ate about 12 meals collectively and got a lot of exercise wrestling with each other and throwing balls at stuff.  They asked 10,000 questions and I only responded with "Google it" or "ask Alexa" to 5,000 of them.  It is time for my husband to take over which means he will be introducing them to a classic like The Karate Kid or Major League or Game 7 of the 2016 NBA finals while  I retreat into the office to do my freelance work. It feels like a vacation doing something I was actually trained for and not something I was thrown into because someone ate a bad bowl of bat soup in China.

So. Now you have the daily schedule that the kids and I have adhered to for the past week. There were no blocks set aside for music practice or writing letters to friends or making a Coronavirus scrapbook -- all of the things I see other homeschool moms doing on social media.

There were tears - mostly by me - and there were laughs, like when my 11 year old asked what a missionary is and my husband (from the other room) thought I was teaching him sex-ed.

Next week the curriculum is going to get a little more intense, based on the number of requests for Google Meets I've received from everyone from the reading specialist to the gym teacher. I am now sharing a google calendar with three kids, a home office with my husband and a kitchen table with three chromebooks and a trombone.

But then again, we are all living double lives these days, aren't we?