Good morning. Hello. How are you? #997
Trump (just a little), call for ideas for impending issue #1,000, parental kindergarten anxieties unleashed, the end of no-meeting week
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Happy Friday. Last day of no meetings week. I feel very sad about this. I will try and make the best of it. Which means… Walmart and recycling center trip, I guess. Woo hoo! That was not sarcasm.
Trump headshot, all very exciting. People are all like “this is just gonna rally the base and this is the most famous presidential photo ever” and blah blah blah boy people sure love to think they can predict the future and so many people have just worn a mantle of cynicism when it comes to Trump because they don’t want to be disappointed once again but I’m gonna say nothing is written in stone. I don’t think in any way any of this is good for Trump. Not to say that he can’t overcome it all, but I don’t think that any of this is making his journey to return to the White House any easier. I have hope. Dude is calling for a civil war every day or so now, telling people to show up and protest every time he gets indicted and it’s not happened once.
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have but I have it.
Issue number #1,000 (should there be a comma in there?) will be… Wednesday. Woah. Jane’s first day of school. That is… symbolic. Honestly, makes me feel like I should just stop. Hahaha yeah who am I kidding I cannot stop, it is a compulsion. Everyone needs two daily journals, one public, one private. Perfectly normal and healthy. Idk I am being honest, I’m quite proud of the achievement. It really is something. I’m happy that I eventually found a way to make my journaling something more public, and a more integrated part of my life. I wonder what Anaïs would have done in the internet age. Lol Anaïs would not have been able to survive the internet age, who are we kidding, she thought the 1930s were too modern. I wonder how many of these entries are actually good in their own right. I wonder whether the first book was actually good, in edited form. I wonder if a second book would be any good. I liked the first book, I feel like I captured something.
Anyway, thank you dear audience. There are just enough of you to make it feel like this is an actual artistic and intellectual exchange and not a solo journey. That means a lot. You guys keep me sane and happy and I am deeply grateful for you.
Ha I should save all that for issue 1,000 but I am terrible with anniversaries and birthdays and milestones and whatnot so I will probably do nothing for issue 1,000, except say “wow.” Unless you guys have some brilliant idea for it, reasonably easily executed in the middle of a busy week. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
The gate repair people came yesterday and my gate works again and the deer are now banished once again. It was weird, though, they were like “you cannot have it so the gate opens automatically sometimes and also allows you to lock it and then use the keypad.” And I’m like… whaaa? That is exactly how it worked before, and how the sales guy said I could have it, and I am paying an arm and a leg for this thing, and blah blah blah. He tried to call his “expert” and the guy didn’t answer. So I had him just set it up where it doesn’t use the automatic sensor to open on entrance. Maybe it’s fine? Or maybe I’ll have to call them back. I have a terrible habit of accepting things from contractors that I don’t want, and I was trying really hard while it was happening to not find myself in that situation. But I had no idea how to make it work. He just didn’t think it was a good idea. It was really weird.
So now I gotta figure all that out. Awesome.
We went to Jane’s school yesterday and met her teacher. Well, it turns out Emma and Jane had already met her, since she was the one who performed Jane’s evaluation a few weeks ago and called Jane’s vocabulary “splendid” or “remarkable” or something. She is insanely enthusiastic and my god I don’t know how someone can keep up all that energy it really is something. She’s had kids of her own and now has grandkids, so we are going the experienced route here instead of eager young idealist. I mean, I guess this is all fine. I just feel a little sad. And I feel sad for three reasons:
One, I feel like we didn’t get anything we wanted here. First we wanted the amazing public charter school, did not get in. Then we wanted the really good public Montessori school. Did not get in. Then we resigned ourselves to the school to which she was assigned, immediately fell in love with a specific kindergarten teacher, asked for her by name, and did not get her. I think if none of that had happened, this teacher would be just fine but I can’t shake this feeling this is setting the pattern for Jane’s schooling forever and she’ll never get what she needs.
Secondly, every time I walk into that building my antiestablishmentarianism kicks into high, uncontrollable gear and I absolutely cannot even function. This is so crazy. I mean, I grew up in schools — I mean, not just like everyone did but I spent all my free time in them, had free reign, all my mom’s friends were teachers, I knew every nook and cranny of the buildings, I liked it all just fine. I had perfect attendance and perfect grades and my school treated me perfectly well. My school did such a good job I got three free semesters at literally the most expensive university in America: a $45,000 value. For free.
So why do I so violently dislike schools?
The teachers use MacBooks and the students have to use Chromebooks and that seems really unfair to me. Yeah. That’s it. The students have to bring their own headphones and I was shut down — I won’t say by whom — for suggesting Jane could bring my spare set of AIAIAI TMA-1s Ghostly edition, sold out. I guess someone doesn’t want to be the cool girl in class.
Plus, I mean, my school district was really well funded and really good and there’s no way a modern school district could even hope to have equivalent amounts of money per student, but this district is really good! It’s well-funded and run by idealistic, progressive, enthusiastic educators.
But my god. I walk in and all I think is “don’t trust the man they are trying to brainwash her!”
And of course I have to recognize the irony that this is at least 50% because Republicans have spent billions of dollars over decades trying to make it so we all think that way.
And I have to recognize it’s also probably ego that my kid is too good for this. It’s just fine for other kids.
And I try to compensate for all of that. I am not claiming this is rational. It feels like PTSD, though of course it’s — oh, right it absolutely is and it’s nothing to do with the establishment.
It was the bullying.
Awww crap.
Well, hey. Moving on. Don’t feel like talking about that today. Thank you for helping me figure that out.
Anyway, Jane seemed to love it, she sat right down and did the “assignment” that the teacher had placed at each desk. God, her desk is so cute. She found each item in the classroom and colored it. Perfectly, in the lines.
The teacher is mayhaps starting to figure out a bit that Jane is “gifted” or whatever, but I don’t think she has any real idea. She’s very impressed by things Jane’s been able to do for two years. I suppose it doesn’t matter, I don’t get the sense this is the kind of school or district or era where they realize kids are smart and unleash them. I don’t actually know what the situation is these days but it’s my understanding that G/T and the like are outré? Gah. Maybe that’s fine. I read in some article someone blithely saying “and in any case, most intelligence levels in elementary school normalize over time” and it said it confidently like that was a circumstance of humanity and not “the system” and I thought that sure seemed hubristic.
But, then, what did my intellect ever get me anyway, except a severe case of overthinking everything. Second-guessing literally every single prediction anyone makes ever, bouts of paralyzing depression and an inability to “fulfill my potential” because of a lot of mental mumbo jumbo ranging from constantly battling my own nature to constantly rejecting the world around me. Sinead: it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society etc etc.
But then the answer is my intellect got me everything: my wife, and thus my beautiful child, this home we have, every good friend I have, the ones who knew I wasn’t always drunk or ridiculous.
Boy I sure am rambling.
ANYWAY.
She had a great time. She is excited. So long as those two things remain true, we continue.
One other thing I can’t figure out is the lunch system. I sure can see how it pisses republicans off. It seems positively socialist and I am here for it. Breakfast is free for everyone. Lunch is not, you gotta pay for it — apparently we are supposed to log into some system and add money to it, and then Jane just gives them a number during lunch and they give her whatever she wants. But there is no real connection between these two systems: she gets the food whether or not there is money in her account, they can’t and don’t turn anyone away, and I pay… when I feel like it? And it is unclear what happens at the end of the year if I do not pay. Who does? Where is this deficit made up in the accounting?
Emma reminded me that we’ve seen Tweets from progressives occasionally that say something like “you can pay off people’s school lunch balances” and that sounds kinda fun but looking at the forms it does seem pretty easy to just… apply for and get honest free lunches? So why would this even be a thing? At least here. I’m really confused about how this works. I may eventually just call the school and ask a million questions about their accounting in this regard. Except I do not want to be that person. Except it does seem like a way I could “help” even with my “career.”
Any insight is appreciated.
Oh another thing - no one masks, not kids, not parents, we were the only two masked, no wait that’s a lie we saw one other couple. Which, I mean, fine. Emma had her O2 meter, the place peaked in the 800’s in the crowded hallways, but… yeah, I feel a real sense of inevitability given the current numbers in this state. It’s so freakin crazy how nothing changed. Nothing. I mean, I guess the place is well-ventilated, but. We took this opportunity to not just mitigate covid but rethink all the other diseases that we pass to one another for literally no good reason and just shrugged. America!
After visiting the school we went and got a burger at the nearby burger restaurant and we met another family that we recognized from the classroom, their son was a classmate of Jane’s. We got to talking. For years “meeting parents’ has filled me with dread because they were all gonna be so normie and these two were pretty normal but for some reason I enjoyed the whole thing. It seemed like exactly the sort of parental interaction I’ve been dreading this whole time, but for some reason, afterward, I felt a lot better and my school dread lifted.
So go figure.
So there was some meme yesterday about making a playlist of 20 songs that immediately bring you joy, no more than one song per band. I spent way too long on it, and I defined “joy” loosely, here it is for you. Lot longer than my usual one-hour playlist, and not exactly what I’d call uplifting. Real emotional journey here. Also it is 21 songs. I couldn’t cut another one. “Enjoy.”
All right well I guess that’s it for today. I will return Monday and regale you with exciting tales about weekend chores and Walmart. And meetings, I guess.