Bread

I am teaching the kids to make bread. This is a yeasted semi-whole-wheat sandwich bread, the stuff Dale grew up on; I got the recipe from Dale’s cousin. It’s very easy (the kids are astonished at how easy it is), and when you’re home all day, it’s hardly any trouble. Also of course it’s extremely delicious.

If I were not working right now, I’d adopt a sourdough starter and learn that whole process. Maybe in a few weeks.

PE class

The kids need physical activity, ideally a whole lot of it: Jordan's at his best when he plays ultimate frisbee (e.g., runs like a dog) for 8-10 hours a week. Jordan knows this about himself and is very happy to have both physical games to play and physical tasks to do. He and Aaron are regularly outside for badminton. 

(Once I told someone about them playing badminton in the backyard, and the person looked at me like I was saying we lived on a country estate; but as you can see in the photo, we’ve just strung a rope strung from the deck to a garden pole.) We also have been known to go to public tennis courts for some socially distant pickleball.

In the physical tasks department, Dale had the brilliant idea of ordering a truckload of good dirt and a new wheelbarrow. Jordan helped build the wheelbarrow, and the boys spend multiple sessions of every day hauling dirt from the dirt-pile into our various garden beds. This is serious work and they just love it.

Daily plan

I was feeling very anxious about what the kids will do for the next six weeks or more (probably more), especially Jordan, who has zero school. We had a very good family meeting and agreed on this plan for now:

• Jordan wakes up at 8:30ish on weekdays, and engages in daily creative/learning activities including learning a programming language, drumming, and creating electronic music.
• He and Aaron get outside for “PE class” together at least half an hour a day.
• Parents can assign chores, like cleaning up the kitchen or folding the laundry, whatever needs doing that day.
• One or both kids will make dinner a couple times a week.
• Recreational screen time has some limitations – always a work in progress.
• We will have regular family meetings (every other day?) to continually check in and make adjustments.

I feel good about this. The best part was that it was a consensus process; we parents asked questions and gave the kids an enormous amount of agency, and they made good choices. It felt good to say yes to things, and know that we had their buy-in because it had been their suggestion in the first place. It also feels great to me that we will have regular family meetings to evolve the system as needed. Those family meetings, wow, what a great investment that turns out to have been.

Aaron at school

Aaron started online school this week. The first day was a little chaotic, getting all the tech figured out and learning what’s expected. But even just on Day Two, Aaron plunked down on the couch with me mid-morning and said, "This online school thing is growing on me." I said something like, "Oh yeah? It's going okay?" and he said, "That one day that the teachers took off to prepare for us to have school online? They must have worked very hard that day. Because things seem very well planned. I think this is really pretty good." I made sure to tell his teachers… who I am sure are working around the clock, not just that one day. Here he is at his desk having a Google Meet.

Nachos en Fuego

The first day the kids were home from school, I had five hours of back-to-back Zoom meetings. For lunch, they made nachos for themselves…but there was a miscommunication, and the nachos were in the broiler too long and caught fire. I came out of my meeting, removed the Nachos en Fuego from the oven, placed the pan out in the yard on the grass in the rain, and instructed the kids to pour water on it until the flames were completely out.

I remember fondly the days hen I used to tell the kids they could only interrupt me for one of the “four B’s”: bleeding, burning, broken, or barf. This might be the first time we actually invoked one of the B’s!

Inventory

We have a lot of food in the house, but we didn’t feel clear on what we had, so we did an inventory. Aaron assisted and also played the bass. We learned that we had a dozen jars of pasta sauce but very little pasta, that kind of thing. We also found some treasures, such as a bag of homemade frozen cherry-almond hamentaschen waiting to be baked for a slightly late Purim feast. Now the freezer and the shelves are well-organized. Not all the gaps are easy to fill; for example, there are no dried beans in the grocery store these days, not so much as a lentil. But we’re fine.

It does affect my cooking. Normally I can let my food imagination roam very freely: Which world cuisine shall we sample today? Which health ideals shall we embody? Now I need to cook with what we’ve got – which is plenty, but no lentils.

Restaurants and cafes are all closed by state order, but are open for takeout, and we are strongly encouraged to patronize them to help them stay afloat. Our county executive said, “If this pandemic is symbolized by the medical mask, then perhaps our resilience is going to be represented by the take-out box.” We’ll try to do our part.

School at home

On Monday, March 9 (the same day that I taught my first online class), Billings closed for just one

day to give the teachers time to prepare for possible distance learning. Aaron was back in school for two days, and then on Wednesday, March 11, all the schools announced at least two weeks of closure starting that day, public and private. A few days later this was updated to six weeks, through April 24. I expect it to be longer.

Billings has a comprehensive educational plan for the students: Aaron will have a full school day at home, with an 8:30am Google meet to start every day, and one or two more synchronous meetings each day, so that each class meets live a couple times a week. There is a regular schedule of independent work in between, with work assigned for each class every day. Aaron is currently extremely irritated at this, but I am thrilled. He will continue to be educated, and I don’t have to be the one to make it happen.

Jordan, meanwhile, has literally nothing. The Seattle public school system cannot provide equitable access to distance learning, so although the teachers might send home some options, they are strictly optional. I am fairly stressed about this. I am afraid Jordan will spend every day sleeping til noon and consuming nothing but screen garbage and tortilla chips. We need to create a plan, and an accountability system, and I already have a job. (Which just got a lot harder, by the way.)

Here are some of my current ideas for the school-less time:

• Daily obligations such as 30 min of reading, 30 min outdoor exercise, 30 min music practice, etc.
• A project that takes a week or more, with a deliverable. Examples: writing and performing and producing a piece of electronic music; coding a program with a demonstrable result; baking a different quick bread every day to master the form.
• Regularly making dinner for the family, maybe 3x/week.
• A big yard project, like if we had a giant pile of dirt delivered the boys could move it from the driveway into the garden.
• Household chores assigned each day: kitchen, laundry, disinfect surfaces, etc.