Boring stuff

We currently don't have COVID, as far as we know, but we've been quarantining and isolating like it's nobody's business. 

The girls dutifully fulfilled their post-trip isolation period with grace. Zoë, however, got sick with something that wasn't COVID but which had her laid up in bed for several days. We thought that with how well (but gently) we isolated her that the rest of us would be spared. Unfortunately, Benjamin got sick on Monday and has been in gentle isolation since Monday. 

Phoebe slept in our bed until Zoë was better (she usually joins us in bed, but it's nice to have her start out the night in her own bed so I can get some work accomplished). Now Alexander is sleeping on the floor in the girls' room so Benjamin can have his room to himself all night. 

We went a little crazy with air purifiers, but they seem to work. Andrew's been monitoring the AQI in his office and without the air purifier on, the AQI was above 150, but with the air purifier on it's been lingering around 50. So clearly it helps. 

We've been masking when we "visit" the sick kids (or when we allow them to come down to fill their dinner plates...to eat in another room). 

We thought all our efforts to prevent spread would, like, prevent spread. But Benjamin's been sick, anyway. His COVID tests, however, remain negative, so that's good. And he's starting to feel better. I wasn't sure he'd ever want to come out of his room (I think he watched approximately 72 hours of Minecraft tutorials) but he was starting to feel antsy this afternoon, which is a sign of good health.

Rachel, on the other hand, has been quarantining in the basement. She's not sick, but she babysat for our neighbours on Sunday evening...and then on Monday afternoon my neighbour texted me to say that the child Rachel had been tending complained of a headache, so her mom felt her forehead and it was hot, so she gave her a test and, lo, it was positive for COVID. She was really sorry about it, but I honestly just appreciate that she told us as soon as she found out so that we could, you know, take action.

The minute we found out we moved Miriam into the TV room and Rachel has been in the basement ever since. We tested her for COVID this morning and she was negative. We'll test her again tomorrow and if she's still negative and still has no symptoms we might let her fraternize upstairs every now and again (masks on) until we're positive she's not positive.

So that's made this week...and last week...fun.

We're still looking forward to getting back to the pool someday. *sigh*

At least public schools are almost back in session! They go back August 4, which seems wildly early to me! Growing up in Canada, my school years always went through June, with summer vacation kicking off with Canada Day celebrations. July and August were both sacrosanct summer months. I could hardly dream of starting school in August; September is the month for that!

So, for example, the Foothills School District got out of school on June 28th this year. They don't go back until September 6th. And that feels so logical to me. Fall is when the new school year begins, not the middle of summer.

(I will take a minute to note that my feelings about this changed when I was introduced to the year-round schedule, which I loved, and which we mirror more closely in our homeschool schedule than the traditional calendar, so I'm not entirely inflexible in my opinions.)

Gwinnett Public Schools got out May 25 and are heading back August 4. Alpine School District got out May 26 and goes back August 16. I realize that on paper that's about the same amount of summer break our Canadian friends are getting (which is strange because I remember feeling like my American counterparts always had three months of summer break, but evidently calendar creep is real and August has become a school month).

My own children, of course, have been in school for most of the summer. We only really took May off (though we also had a forced break in June when we were all too sick to get much accomplished). Right now Rachel and Miriam are taking a somewhat intensive data science course using R, a programming language Andrew happens to be certified in. Miriam has been loving it. Yesterday she played around in RStudio pretty much the entire day (something like 9 hours) and spent most of the day tinkering around again today (though I did have organ lessons in the morning and I made her do math and writing). She's super excited about everything she's learning and hopes to be a "teaching fellow" for a later session. 

Rachel has also been participating.

I don't know if she's taken to it quite as fervently as Miriam, but she's keeping up. 

*****

We had an appliance repair technician come yesterday morning. He tested a few things—including the heating elements—and concluded that the problem wasn't any of those easily accessible parts. However, there's still another part on the backside that it could be, but since it's a wall unit he needs a companion to help pull it out. So he's going to come back with another technician next week. And then, perhaps, we'll know what the problem is and whether or not it's fixable.

*****

And those are the boring updates for this week.