Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 33
Hope was lost on Day 4. Now all that we have is the endless grind.
Today is our last day of what the school district laughingly
referred to as “spring break.” In the before-time, spring break was scheduled
to be only one week. We had dreams of travel and adventure. Those dreams are
now but a distant and crushed memory of what once was. Just darkness ahead now.
The darkness of remote learning.
After my exceedingly polite letter to them asking for the
elimination of spring break this year due to the extenuating circumstances, the
school district actually extended our new worthless, trapped,
virus-ridden “spring break” an extra three days. A cruel, possibly vindictive
joke that only forced us to come up with three more days of spring break home
school courses until the distance learning begins again tomorrow.
We covered lawn maintenance, car maintenance, pool maintenance,
irrigation system maintenance, bicycle maintenance, vacuum cleaner maintenance,
coffee maker maintenance, electric wine opener maintenance, garage paint can
collection maintenance, shower drain maintenance, and today, toenail
maintenance.
The curriculum for my Appreciation for the Cinematic Arts of
the ‘80s & ‘90s class was derailed by an academic mutiny, led mostly by my
wife. I think I lost her trust at Uncle Buck and, amazingly, failed to
regain it with Crocodile Dundee I and II. Whatever. It’s not like
anything matters anymore.
The mutineers have decided that we will instead watch every
single Marvel Avengers movie (approximately three hundred of them) in timeline
order. We are halfway through and, consequently, our couch has developed an
impenetrable layer of popcorn residue that is either serving as a protective barrier
against wear and tear, or slowly destroying the cushions underneath us. Time
will tell.
Meals have devolved into a standard routine of serve-yourself
brunch, snack at random, and usually cereal for dinner, with dessert popcorn
during the nightly Marvel movies. At first, we were ashamed of what we’ve
become. Now we embrace it.
If the boys start to annoy us too much now, we’ve taken to
keeping them in the game room by getting “high COVID readings” on my new “COVID
meter” (one of our old Blackberry phones). We tell them there’s a viral outbreak
in the kitchen or the family room, or wherever, and I put on my welding helmet
and Latex dish gloves, hold a can of Lysol, and tell them to shelter in place
until I have disinfected the stricken room. Then my wife and I have a few drinks
on the patio before we give them the all-clear.
In an effort to limit our store trips, we have been
attempting to eat as much as possible from our pantry and our freezers. We have
a large chest freezer in the garage that slowly filled up to the top with
frozen delicacies over the years. We are more than halfway down into the frozen
cavern now, and ice axes have been deployed. Any attempt to retrieve food at
this point looks like an arctic expedition.
Tonight, we are having a Stouffer’s Party Size Macaroni
& Cheese that no one can remember purchasing, paired with some Van de Kamp’s
Crunchy Fish Sticks that would have expired in 2009 had they not been
completely encased in ice all these years.
Or cereal.
Stay strong, people!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen
