Emily started back to school on Monday....and she's already home sick today. Because of Covid restrictions, they gave us a whole list of symptoms and if we say yes to even one, we have to keep them home....she didn't have any on the list except for runny nose/congestion. I do understand the caution, but at the same time, kids get colds and sniffles all the time. According to my FB memories, she had something very similar by the 2nd or 3rd day of school last year too.
Plus, I feel like we've magnified the normal petri dish that is school since we've all basically been home and/or wearing masks for the last 5 months. So of course the moment she goes back to school, bam...germs and sickness. It's not an entirely awful thing to have kept her home today. She is clearly not feeling well, and she's been on the couch with a blanket and pillow for hours since she woke up. She's normally bouncing off the walls, so I know she feels blah.
But it just makes me wonder about the rest of the year. I am sure everyone is on high alert right now being the first week, but do we seriously have to keep them home every single time they have the sniffles? I mean, what if it's just allergies? They have to miss school after already missing so much, because of allergies? Like I said, maybe in a few weeks or months, things will relax and they won't pull out the pitchforks for sending them to school with a runny nose (she doesn't have a fever) but it makes me nervous.
How do you even qualify when the kid is well enough to go back? The checklist says they have to be fever-free for 48 hours with no meds before returning. Wellll, she doesn't have a fever, and it says if you can say yes to even one of the symptoms listed, they have to stay home. Most common colds run at least a few days. It's fine right now since she's got tomorrow and Monday off for Labor Day anyway, but what if it was a normal week? Is she seriously supposed to miss 3+ days of school for a cold???
I guess we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. Regardless, I am very thankful she can go in-person and our governor didn't take us back a phase so she'd have to go online (knock on wood). She did great on her first day, her dad and I took her to school together. Due to social distancing, they cannot go in the same door they used to...each class goes in and out their own classroom fire door, but first graders actually go in the double glass doors, and then they are dismissed out of the second grade fire door. So that was a little confusing, but we've got it down now. She only has to wear a mask going in and out of school, and in common areas. She gets to go outside for recess and they don't have to wear masks for that, and she has two friends in her class that she went to preschool with, and one friend from her public school. So I'm so happy she has some familiar faces and friends.
As sad as I am that she can't go to her regular school, I am actually very glad we decided to go this route so she could go in person. Remote learning is very different from how it was in the spring. Back then, she had videos to watch whenever we had the time and worksheets to work on. But now, the day is structured and starts at 9 and ends at 4 and they have to be on zoom most of that day, learning in real-time along with their teacher. So it's a lot more like in-class school, just online.
While I think that is better for the students, it would have been impossible for me to do and work at the same time. Six years old is too young to expect her to be able to be on zoom for 7 hours a day and focus on what the teacher is saying and doing. I would have been interrupted constantly if she needed help, or to get her to focus and pay attention, and just all of that going on would have made it hard for me to focus on my work. I don't know if they would have had homework in addition to being online all day, but with that set up it would have been almost impossible for her dad to have helped at all since he works days as well. So it all would have fallen on me. Yeah, that would not have worked.
And today the district posted on FB some suggestions of where people can go for wifi if they don't have internet at home...the district gave out Chromebooks for every student but is not providing internet for those that don't have it. Um, you expect kids of all ages to go sit and McDonalds or something all day to do remote learning? And it's not safe to go to school, but they can go sit in a fast-food restaurant to get wifi? Ummmm, ok.
So for my last weekend with her for the summer, we went up north with my stepmom, and my dad was already up there. I worked extra all the other days so I could just work a couple hours that Friday and then we hit the road around 2 and then I took Monday off. We didn't get there till about 5:30, so we ate dinner and just hung out that night. The next day we went to the beach. It was a beautiful day, not too crazy hot, and while the water was freezing at first, once you got used to it it was like bathwater. Lake Michigan can get quite cold, so you just never know if it will be warm enough to swim. There have been days where it's so cold you just cannot get used to it and your body aches from the cold.
I also successfully used my beach umbrella for the first time. For some reason, for the last few years, I do nothing but burn. I used to tan...like a lot. As a teenager working at a city pool, I would get so dark in the summer my brother teased me that I looked dirty, lol. And I'm blonde, so it's kind of uncommon for a blonde with fair skin to tan so well. But now, even when I put on sunblock I still burn, and twice in the last couple years I've gotten really bad burns. So I bought the umbrella to help avoid that since obviously subblock alone wasn't enough. But last year I couldn't get it to work....I set it up and screwed it into the sand and within a minute the wind yanked it out. I had to go running after it which is super embarrassing, and I was so worried it would hit someone or stab someone, lol.
Thankfully this guy saw it flying and he jumped up and grabbed it for me. If that were TV, I could have said thanks....you wanna get a drink later? Haha, I could never do that in real life, unless maybe I was drunk. But this year I got it screwed in enough that it stayed put, yay! The waves were pretty big that day so Em had a blast jumping the waves. Next summer I'll have to take her in the evening sometime and we can jump the big big waves. That's when my dad always took us because he wanted to get whatever work he was doing for the day done first. So it wasn't as hot anymore, but at least it was less crowded and the huge waves were so much fun. I don't think most people realize just how much like the ocean the Great Lakes can be. And shark-free, so even better! And you don't get a mouthful of saltwater with every crashing wave.
After the beach, we got ice cream and then headed back for dinner. The next day, Sunday the four of us went to this petting farm nearby. It was really cool....I'd seen advertisements for it for a while, and finally made plans to go. It was rather big, they had a lot of cool animals and some interactive stuff like a steel "horse" with a saddle you could sit on and try roping a steel calf, and they had some play equipment, and one of those carnival games where you hit the target with a sledgehammer and try getting the weight up to the bell. I failed miserably. My dad was disappointed he couldn't ring the bell like he used to. Um dad, you are almost 71....the fact that you can still swing the sledgehammer is pretty damn good I think.
It was all outside except for the gift shop, so most of the time we didn't have to wear masks. It felt like a nice, normal day. They had a tiny carousel that Em and I went on, and then there was this little train where each car was like a barrel. My dad tried to go on it with Em, but he couldn't get his legs into it and she was already in and agreed to go alone. I was amazed that she did it. She's my little shadow and doesn't like to do things like that alone, especially in this case where the train totally left the area and was out of our sight for a few minutes. I think it helped that she was already committed when my dad realized he couldn't go.
My dad brought mine and Emily's bike up for us since he had room to bring it, and my car does not have a hitch for my bike carrier (my old lease did, I miss it). There is a nice bike/walking trail that goes through a wooded area that I wanted to take Em to. It turned out not to be the best-laid plan....we didn't have time to ride until Monday before we left to go home, and I would still have to jam my bike into the cargo area of my car to get to the trail. It can be done, but it's not easy. Especially given how short of a distance and how slow Emily can ride, I decided it wasn't really worth it fighting to get my bike in and out, and then again to leave the trail. Plus, we were tight on time, and as it was we barely had enough time to go into town after breakfast and shop for a birthday present for her dad before coming back, packing, and getting on the road.
We checked several stores before I finally found a few funny things to get him, and I also picked him up some sausage from the grocery store there. He loved the sausage from the other store in town, but they closed last year for good, so I got some from the one that's still open. No word yet if it's similar to the stuff he loved. I thought when I got divorced, I wouldn't have to keep buying gifts for him, but of course, I've got to help Emily shop for a gift from her.
But a big reason I didn't attempt to ride bikes was, the night before my dad and I watched this show called I'm Alive, where people are in life or death situations and they survive. Given the title, I thought it would be a happy ending. So this woman and her two kids went someplace to visit her brother I think, and before they left, the 3 of them hiked through the woods to this waterfall that was a tourist attraction. There was another family there too, and suddenly the woman looked over and there was a black bear, and it had her 3-year-old son in its grasp, attacking him. Her daughter was off playing in the water, and she ran over to save her son.
Long story short, she got the boy away from the bear, but then the bear began attacking her. She yelled to the other family to save her children while she tried fending off the bear. They ran off, and she pretty much accepted that she was going to die there, but at least her children were safe. So the other family found a ranger and they went out to find the woman. They found her, she was still alive, barely, and the bear was gone. But then they said....the daughter was still out there somewhere and they didn't know where she was.
Fuck, I thought for sure that that other family managed to escape with both kids and they were safe. So they got the woman in an ambulance and headed to the hospital and then they went out to search for the little girl. They came across the bear....and the little girl, she was dead. Omg, I was not ready for that. And come to find out, she was 6 like Emmy! I thought she was older because the girl playing her in the reenactment looked older. Still heartbreaking of course, but I cannot stand to hear of anything tragic happening to kids Em's age. It tears me up.
So, the girl was already dead. Ugh, what an awful show. I had no idea it was going to have such an awful ending. So....yeah, that's kind of the main reason I didn't want to go ride bikes through the woods the next day. I know it's kind of ridiculous, most of Michigan's bears are in the UP, and even the ones we do have in the lower peninsula are surely much further north than we were. But after watching that, I just couldn't happily take my 6 year old on a bike ride through the woods, lol. Besides, it wouldn't have worked out well for the other reasons anyway.
I think next time I want to bike, we'll bring my dad's Mountaineer since it has a hitch. Then I can transport them there myself, and easily take them to a from the trail as well. Maybe next year I can get a hitch added to my new lease. I know I cannot afford the trim level that has one, and I am not paying $600 for the tow package for a vehicle I don't even own. Uhaul will put a hitch on for $100, which I think is worth it even though I'll only have it for 3 years...$35ish per year isn't bad. But I am not sure if I'm allowed to modify a lease like that. We'll see.
I'm off to check on my little patient.
No comments:
Post a Comment