DIARY

DIARY

So…How’s That Homeschooling Going?

My thoughts on distance learning precisely.

About two weeks into our public school's new distance learning program - approximately on the date when the above photo was taken - I lost it.

My daughter, who's in a learning pod with a classmate and bounces between our house and theirs, seems to sort of enjoy distance learning, or at least tolerate it. Not that she's actually *learning* much - holy god, the muting and un-muting and kids with their microphones turned up to 10,000% and tl;dr teachers are superheroes and I don't know how any of them are holding onto even a tiny shred of patience or sanity - but she's basically fine. (Not that distance learning is in any way, shape or form fine for me, or for any working parent - just saying, she seems fine.)

DIARY

I Don’t Owe You Anything

me. 2009.

That's the general consensus on bloggers who share about their personal lives, right? We don't "owe" our readers anything? It's what I've heard countless times over the years, anyway: Whenever a reader asks me about a topic I don't feel comfortable touching - the specifics of my finances, for example, or the precise reasons behind my divorce - other readers will jump in, reminding me that what I choose to share (and not share) is...well, my choice. I don't owe anyone my story.

Except that's never how I've really felt. I do owe you. So very much. And so what I owe you, right now, is an explanation.

DIARY

Two Weeks

This. Is. Not. Okay.

We're two weeks into our personal experience of the grand national experiment that is Distance Learning, and spoiler: Nothing about it is even close to workable.

My kids and I are enormously privileged. We have WiFi (when it feels like working, which is about 60% of the time). Computers. One work-from-home parent and two who are deeply invested in their education. A school with resources and incredible teachers. Plenty of outdoor space.

DIARY

Teenage Boys Are The Worst: A Refresher Course

This whole post is basically an ad for my next book

Ohhhhkay, so today? Was one big reminder why I am so super glad I am not a teenage girl anymore. Because teenage boys are the fucking worst. And they're so adorably charming-when-they-want-to-be that you forget! But then you remember. Because they do something that's the fucking worst, and they could have really just HAD A LITTLE FORESIGHT or DISPLAYED A MODICUM OF RESPONSIBILITY, but NOPE.

I have this couch. Or rather my landlord has this couch, and when I moved in he asked if he could leave it in the family room because it was apparently a twelve thousand dollar couch when it was new (!!) and one day he might want to recover it. And I said sure, fine, because a) it wasn't terrible, and b) I'm not in the business of buying anything that I don't absolutely need to buy these days. I had it steam-cleaned when I moved in, and I tried to be okay with it, I swear...but what it came down to was that perhaps it was worth 12 thousand dollars in, oh, I dunno, 1981, but it is now the same age as me and neither of us are quite as sprightly as we were back in the day.

Anxiety

Blinded

On Thursday evening - four days ago - I got in a car crash. It was bad. It was also my fault.

I was driving through the middle of nowhere, headed North along the coast, on my way to be with a friend in crisis. The sun was at that point just above the horizon when it's blazing directly into your eyes, and you have to flick the visor from side to side to side with one hand while you steer with the other just to see the pavement ahead of you.

I didn't expect a stop sign anywhere along that particular stretch of road, empty as it seemed. I wasn't looking out for one, but even if I had been I was blinded, and I wouldn't have spotted it. So when one suddenly appeared, I drove straight through it at 40 miles per hour. A man turning from the opposite lane hit me directly on the driver's side door (it's called a "T-bone"; I know terms like this now) and my car and I went flying off the road into a field, where we crashed through wheat and dirt and narrowly missed telephone poles, and finally came to a stop.


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