homemade

Day of coffee first, good morning pushing and shoving sisters, sunny side up eggs and two rounds of toast, Google classroom, glitter jars, math work, reading on iPads, the start of the John Updike story he suggested I read, reading more on the iPads, pulling reading reflections out like teeth — just to get them to write one sentence about Mexico (I want to visit Mexico because the food is yummy.), two Go Noodle videos, me on my phone, too much on my phone!, him deep in the process of making homemade masks, me preparing myself for the eventual meltdown when the bobbin runs out of thread/the needle breaks/the needle gets stuck/etc….

I go to pick up school lunch at a nearby building, trying for normal. Two plastic baggies for the girls, two for our neighborfriends. Hummus, again. They won’t be pleased. It was the same lunch yesterday. I like the hummus, but they, pretending to be princesses who will take their “middle of the night meal” in their room due to the sewing machine having taken over the whole kitchen table, are disappointed to say the least. I make them cream cheese and jelly sandwiches and peel a mandarin orange, splitting it in two, and delivering the plates to the princesses’ chamber. They laugh and laugh, and then pinch each other after one calls the other one stupid. We take a break to eat our lunch salads and watch Steven Colbert and I cry a little, just seeing him in his suit, trying for normal. I feel the normal that used to be and I cry into the headphones just a little.

We watch the science video about polar bears. We do a little animal research (pygmy owl/desert rain frog). We read a poem from the week’s lesson plan and the princesses improvise it into a song, each one taking her turn, each one playing with slightly different notes. It is beautiful. Later, at bedtime, they recite the poem from memory, not feeling up to putting it to music. I get it.