The Five (#8)

1. One of my friends from high school also has teenagers who play volleyball. They were playing, and she was coaching, at the tournament we went to in Indianapolis last weekend. So, very briefly, I got to say hello to her on Sunday morning at the gym. It has been several years since we'd seen each other, despite the fact that she lives less than 10 minutes from my parents' house in Wisconsin. I was so happy to see her in person that I actually found it difficult to have a coherent conversation. I have known her since we were in first grade and there's something so special about being with a person who has known you nearly your whole life. I hope she knows my ability to converse was inversely proportional to the joy I felt at seeing her in person. 

2. Our city happens to be in the path of totality for the solar eclipse happening in April this year. Our school finally followed what most schools in the area had already done and decided to call is a calamity day so we will have off that day. We had a view of a partial solar eclipse back in August of 2017 and it was pretty cool. Prior to that event I had read the book Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass. I have borrowed it from the public library to read again, leading up to the April event. This is likely the only time in my life I will have an opportunity to witness totality and I'm trying not to think too hard about the fact that we live in a very cloudy region and weather could cause us to miss this spectacular event. 

3. Michael spent the last week choosing his classes for next school year, which will make him a JUNIOR. That is really difficult to believe, but here we are. We are so lucky to be in a school system where the problem students have is that there are too many classes they want to take. He is unlikely to be able to fit in every elective he would like to try before he graduates in a couple of years. I think the most challenging thing is finding a balance of classes that will prepare him for college without being too overwhelming/taxing. Harper took extra science and math her junior and senior years, but she had a little more flexibility in her schedule because of the Latin program being discontinued and never picking up another language. Michael will be in his forth year of German next school year. Hopefully we got it right and his schedule will be challenging but not make him crazy. I'm curious what kind of electives other people remember taking in high school. I think our language classes fulfilled the "arts" requirement because I never took a visual art or music class in high school I also went to a Catholic school and we had to fit religion classes into our schedule with the other core subjects. My favorite high school electives were psychology and Shakespeare.

4. We were impacted by the large AT&T cell phone outage that occurred this past Thursday. I purposefully do not connect my cell phone to the wifi network at school so I had no service at all for most of the work day. An additional wrinkle to this was that I use my phone for two-factor authentication for several apps. So not only could I not make/receive calls or texts, I also couldn't log in to things like my personal email account. Of course it was hardly a big deal to be without those things for a few hours on a random weekday, but it did make me think a little bit about how much I have come to rely on those methods of communication and several apps that I use daily. For example, because I forgot to do it later in the day vs first thing in the morning, the AT&T outage made me lose my Wordle streak. I sent emails to both of the children's school emails from my school email letting them know that that would be the best way to contact me if they needed something during the day. Who remembers back when we just couldn't get ahold of people much of the time?

5. Michael made the JV volleyball team at his high school and has been chosen as co-captain for this year. So my time on the bleachers has not, in fact, come to an end. Fortunately most games are within a 20 minute radius of our house (or closer) and even the further ones will not require entire weekends or overnight hotel stays - yay!

The Five (#7)

1. I am sitting on some bleachers at the last club volleyball tournament of Michael's season. He plays today and tomorrow and then club is over and high school tryouts begin Monday. Hopefully my time on the bleachers isn't coming to an end any time soon. Although, I'm not going to lie, I always find it difficult to be gone for the entire weekend and missing the opportunity to catch up on everything I didn't get to during the week. Please don't misunderstand, I AM glad to have these weekends with Michael and, as a bonus, he's gotten to practice quite a bit of highway driving as we journey back and forth across Indiana and Ohio.

2. Do other adults have trouble responding to text and/or email? I'm typically not bad at responding when a quick answer will do, but, with anything of substance, I'm completely guilty about waiting until I have time to craft a proper response, which often leads to the text/email getting buried under newer messages and I end up never replying to things I meant to take the most care with. Just me?

3. I was in a meeting recently where we spent a good deal of time discussing how to manage AI in a school setting. I'm thinking this has to be a little what it felt like when the internet itself was new and the adults and children were figuring it out at the same time (adults often more slowly than children). AI is so intriguing as a tool that could support all kinds of learning, and yet feels like such a disaster for cheating/shortcuts that are going to mean students are short-changing their own learning. I know this has ramifications far beyond school, but obviously school is the place I'm going to see/notice it the most. We haven't seen too much concern over AI us in the middle school where I work, but it does feel like just a matter of time.

4. It's been an interesting emotional week for the kids. On the down side, Michael wasn't feeling recovered from having COVID until Wednesday and is still digging out a little from the school he missed. Harper started feeling crummy early in the week (yes, again) and was diagnosed with strep. While I'm sorry she was sick again, I was seriously thrilled to learn it was strep which is treatable with a remedy that helps quickly. On the upside, Michael got into his school's marketing program for junior and senior year, and Harper found out she got an RA position for next year. I'll be interested to see how both things play out, and I'm happy they're happy. 

5. For people who recognize it, this past Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent. Whenever Ash Wednesday rolls around I think of Christine Kane's magnificent song, "Mary Catherine's Ash Wednesday Journal Entry." For anyone who grew up in or adjacent to a Catholic household, I think you'd get a kick out of giving this a listen.

The Five (#6)

1. So if two-thirds of the time I haven't remembered to post on Friday night, I'm changing it from, "The Friday Five" to just, "The Five." I will still aim for Friday but then I won't need any kind of disclaimer when I miss... This is really just for my own mental housekeeping, but welcome to my brain. I'm a little out of sorts because Michael tested positive for COVID mid-week and I stayed home from work Friday because I wasn't feeling well. He is feeling crummy but he'll survive; we're still waiting to see if the other shoe drops. 

2. Illness is absolutely everywhere - so many students are out sick with strep, flu, COVID, and other nondescript ailments. But we're pretty sure Michael got it through his volleyball team, several members had tested positive ahead of their tournament last weekend, those players didn't attend, of course, but the whole team had been exposed. And if he didn't get it from his specific team, it's more than likely that we were exposed in Cleveland:

There were 30-ish volleyball courts in the convention center so, um, a LOT of people. I know COVID is just something we live with now, but it doesn't mean I want to get it. 

3. At that same tournament I took a volleyball straight to my nose/glasses during the team's warm up on Sunday. I may have been looking down at my phone and not paying the amount of attention I should have been, given my court-side seat. Lesson learned. I got some ice from the lovely trainers and strict instructions to come back to see them if I started to feel dizzy, which, thankfully, I did not. But my nose is still sore to the touch on one side. Sadly it was hard to tell whether I had a bit of a black eye or if my eye bags just always look that dark.

4. I have a chicken recipe I make with relative frequency that involves shaking some chicken breasts in a bag of seasoned flour. I'm not a person who is necessarily fussy about name brand vs store brand items, but I do feel like the store brand "Ziploc" style bags are of far inferior quality. Last week one of the bags split open, not at the "zipper," when I was prepping the chicken. Here is the photo I sent Matt with the message, "No more store brand bags:"

There was flour everywhere! I had to vacuum the counter before wiping it down and disinfecting everything. Fortunately the actual chicken did not go flying from the bag so dinner was salvageable after a thorough kitchen clean up.

5. On the way home from a high school volleyball open gym a couple of weeks ago Michael and I got pulled over. I was driving and I was so confused because I knew I wasn't speeding, my lights were on, I had used my turn signal before the turn I'd just made...So when the officer asked if I knew why he'd pulled me over I honestly said I had no idea. Well it turns out my registration was expired, by OVER A YEAR! Whoops! The sticker on my license plate had, in fact, expired in November of 2022. And, since we apparently failed to renew it in 2022, we never got a reminder to renew in 2023, so I've bene driving an unregistered car around for quite some time. I cannot fathom how I hadn't been pulled over for that before now. I ended up having to take the title to BMV and basically get a brand new registration since my car was no longer in the system. The officer kindly gave me a warning, instead of a ticket, and suggested I take care of it sooner than later. I was really, really, tempted to call the police department and try to leave him a message that I had, in fact, had it taken care of the very next day, proving that I am an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, but even I know that would have been a little over the top. So let this be an PSA to you to check that you've updated your sticker and/or your actual registration!

The Friday Five (5)

1. After a rough weekend during which her temperature went up to 103.5, Harper finally started to feel better on Sunday night/Monday. And then she got a concussion Monday night! She wasn't able to be evaluated by the health center until Wednesday morning, when her concussion was officially diagnosed. (Unfortunately, it's not her first, so she pretty much already knew that's what was happening.) The doctor who diagnosed her concussion immediately sent her over to the office that handles accommodations and she was given a note for three weeks of relaxed attendance policies, extra time for assignments, and extra time for tests/quizzes. Knowing Harper she's unlikely to take full advantage of that, but it's good to know she can take care of herself without fearing she's going to end up completely in the weeds with her classes. By that afternoon her professors had already been notified. The university hasn't handled everything perfectly (the food situation is wild!) but I was pleased that they don't seem to mess around with head injuries. Also, I would like to petition the universe to give the girl a break, thank you very much.

2. Valentine's Day is coming up and I typically send my young nieces and nephews cards for that kind of holiday. Historically I include a note and a sheet or two of stickers. The problem is that I'm not sure all the nieces and nephews are equally enthralled by the stickers, especially as they are getting a little older. My oldest nephew is in 2nd grade. So I'm toying with the idea of just putting a little cash in the cards, or maybe cash and stickers. Maybe just cash for the boys and cash and stickers for the girls - which sounds sexist, but my sister would probably confirm that her sons do not actually care about the stickers and my brother would confirm that my nieces do, in fact, enjoy them. Same for my niece on Matt's side of the family. This is the kind of long distance bribery I engage in to try to make sure they know I love them.

3. Speaking of long distance and mail...I don't think I've written here about the mail situation at Harper's college. I imagine it's not that different from the mail situation at many colleges. At her school they do not have mailboxes in each of the dorms. There is ONE central mail room for the entire campus. So if you get a package, or even just a letter, you get an email (or maybe it's through an app) notification and you can make an appointment to pick it up. Most of the time this is fine, but when she was sick I was thinking what a shame it was that I couldn't send something via Amazon (or whatever online retailer) and have it land in her building. No matter what, she'd have to retrieve it from a building that's a 10 minute walk away, which is not ideal when you're not feeling well. I always imagined I'd send her a lot more mail than I actually have because it seems silly to send a card/letter/postcard with just words on it when I text with her and talk to her nearly every day. She already knows I'm thinking of her. I don't know if the effort of a hand written something is as meaningful to her generation as it is to mine, or at least to me.

4. I'm officially old enough that I have no idea, for the most part, who the popular music artists are these days. I mean, I know Taylor Swift, and have been a fan since I heard her sing "Our Song" when she was on daytime talk shows and I was in my Stay-at-Home-Mom Era. But beyond Taylor I have very little knowledge of popular music (says the woman who still purchases CDs) and when I do recognize recent music it's most likely because it was in a Reel. This is one of the many things I'm noticing that makes me feel old, but not in a way that I mind, exactly. 

5. This, being the fifth week of the new year, should be the week we visited the number one restaurant from last year's experiment. Alas, schedules have conspired against us and we've only made it to numbers 5-3 so far. No problem, it's kind of nice to extend it into February and still be looking forward to the top two finishers.