I Manage with a Vegan Diet, Daily Meditation and Horse Tranquilizers†

 Came across this today in one of my FB groups. It was a response to some asking what people with EDS use to treat pain. People mentioned all types of NSAIDS, gabapentin, opioid - derivatives and such, but this one made me do that laugh/cry thing.

"Healthy diet, light workout (sitting or laying down), no caffeine and (wait for it....) Medical Cannabis."

At first I was about to want to smack this woman for starting up with the whole "Oh, manage your pain naturally with yoga and granola!" mantra. (yes, people say this kind of thing.) Then she just brings it all home with the pot. Now, I'm not dissing cannabis as a legit way to manage pain and honestly if a side effect wasn't extreme munchies I'd be trying it myself. But lady, those first 3 things aren't what's doing it for you. You could have a diet of ding dongs and coffee and the pot would still be helping with your pain. (Not to really disrespect a good diet and exercise, either -- I try to do both but I still hurt all the freaking time.)

Speaking of that, it's nearly October now, which is about 2 months after my last update regarding the whole flare-up thing. 

About a month ago, my hands started to hurt again. Like, I can't turn doorknobs, it's hard to turn the ignition key in the car level kind of hurt. I need to get a different style of braces to help with it, but I hate, I mean really, really hate trying to explain to people why I'm wearing a brace so I don't want to wear them. 

This morning, the 29th, I woke after a decent night's sleep with every joint hurting. I'd stay home from work but the truth is that keeping busy is better, even if I pay for it later. The only good part is that there are no digestive issues this time, and no nearly blacking out when I stand up. But I seriously have no idea what is bringing this on. 

Stress? Aging? Bertold Rays?*

I wish I knew. Eventually I'll get myself on the doctor visit merry go round again. Like Charlie Brown and the football, maybe it'll work this time. 

*Star Trek:TNG reference for the non-nerdy

†just a joke, mom. I don't take anything stronger than ibuprofen

Ain't Nothing Standard About This

A teacher friend of mine posted a story today about a teacher in Texas who is ready to throw in the towel. She's plagued with buggy, untested software, no training, no A/C (in TEXAS?!) no time to plan and no support. Excuse my language, but no shit. Of course she's ready to chuck it. I'd be looking for the nearest exit after the first triple-degree heat day with no air and everyone in masks.*

It doesn't have to be this hard.

This is a failure of administration, and from those who fund, (or don't really) schools. It is an utter failure to plan. My heart goes out to this teacher. While I know my district isn't perfect, I'm immensely grateful that they put together teams of teachers to build an online curriculum over the summer.** They offered lots of PD. Our superintendent vowed that if the A/C went belly up, we'd teach online till it was fixed (and by and large the A/C has been okay. It was bad a couple days here and there in a few classrooms.)

Don't get me wrong. This is hard. We see our students 10 days a month, and some of us see them far less. I see mine 1 time a week, for less than an hour and the rest of the time I do my best to help my overloaded teachers have the support they need to support the gifted kids on their own. We still have demands from all quarters that insist we deliver everything to everyone as though it were a normal year. But like the teacher in the story, a lot of us are planning for tomorrow instead of the next two weeks. When half the class may or may not have done the at-home assignments the previous day, even planning for tomorrow is a crap shoot.

We are, all of us, treading like mad to keep our heads above the water while simultaneously flying by the seat of our pants.†

So maybe, the thing we need to do before we drown or crash, is to let go of is the weight of our own expectations. 

The state is considering canceling state testing. That would be a huge start. This is not a standard situation, and standardized testing would do much more harm than usual.
They are also considering canceling OTES. (The teacher-evaluation system, for the happily uninitiated.) At the very least, they should be instructing administrators to take into account the overwhelming amount of work the teachers are doing, for far less payout. I have no idea if that's happening. I can only hope.

But mostly, every single player involved in this drama needs to change their expectations. The students. The parents. The teachers. The administrators. The taxpayers. The State. Every single person needs to wrap their head around the idea that what we get out of this year will not, in any way, match a "normal" year. It can't.

And that sucks. It especially sucks for the Seniors and kids who need extracurriculars like they need air, and for so many others in so many ways. But asking our teachers to work themselves to the bone, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week will not bring normalcy back for everyone else.

Let go of the weight of your expectations.

Every year, I get at least one kid whose parent comes in and says "Her dad and I are getting a divorce. She found out last night." My goals for that child instantly change. Great leaps do not happen during a year of personal trauma. (Maybe you've got a "but this one great exception!" story of the kid who won the Nobel Prize the year her parents divorced. Fine. Go you. But expecting every child to be that super-resilient 1 out of a million is not a reasonable plan, and we shouldn't bank on it.)

This is the year of great personal trauma.

If we can get through it upright and breathing with a little progress thrown in, we're doing fine††. 

I know that some folks have gotten this far and are aghast that anyone would ever dare to suggest lowering our standards and to them I say this: They are not lowered, they are different. You want to talk about personalizing education? Expecting last year's achievement under this year's restrictions is about the least personalized you could possibly get. It's demanding that the basketball player with the broken leg get up and run sprints because that's what he did last year. 

To all involved I say, let go of "should be" and "normal" and extend some grace. Extend it to everyone around you and if you're a teacher, especially to yourself. 

Let go of the weight of our expectations before they crush us all.




*those inclined to complain that we're all being too soft and weak for not being able to tolerate life in masks with no a/c can go pound sand and write on their own blogs. When CEO's of powerful companies have to work productively in 95 degree heat, I will start listening to claims of weakness. Till then, zip it.

**not to brag or nothing, but it's really good. Like, I'm seriously proud of these people. Sometimes I can see my colleagues' imprint and hear their voice in a lesson and it feels pretty cool to know I work with people this excellent.


†yes, I'm mixing my metaphors. Sue me.


††Serious side note: I do know that for some kids, our neediest kids, we need to do more at every level to keep them from losing ground permanently. I know this. Which is why it is so very, very important to maybe lessen our expectations for everyone else just a little more.

A Little Update for Posterity

It's July 24th now. Nearly a month after the flare up of my earlier post began to taper off. It didn't really taper. It sort of plateaued. I finally went to the Dr and she prescribed prednisone, because from all appearances, it just looks like my immune system is still on high alert and attacking, well, all of me. So maybe the steroid can get it to calm TF down. 

My blood pressure was something like 95/62, which is low even for me.* I still get dizzy when I stand up and I'm also having vertigo because the crystals in one of my ear canals is out of whack. There's a neat trick called the Epley Maneuver to help fix it, but it sometimes takes several repetitions. 

To sum up, then, all the symptoms are very slowly receding, and settling into a "current normal" of constant low-level pain. I hope it lets up. 

In the mean time, it's messed with my sleep schedule and I'm up after midnight blogging.**

I have one more month before school starts again to get better. 

Here's hoping.

*Fun EDS fact: it gives you low blood pressure. This has caused nearly every doctor and other health professional I've ever had to comment on my low blood pressure with absolute surprise because fat people aren't supposed to have low blood pressure. We're supposed to have high blood pressure that they can then use as a reason to tell us to lose weight. Instead, I always get sort of awkwardly praised for my low blood pressure. Never, once, did a single doctor (until the one who diagnosed my EDS) ever think that maybe it was a sign of something more seriously wrong. It was just praiseworthy. This is seriously effed up, and symbolic of how fat people are medically treated in this country.

**I also made another large batch of the Spring Roll filling from the recipe I posted a few posts back. I'm now out of curry powder and nearly out of cayenne. Time to order from Penzeys! (Penzeys is awesome. Highly recommend.)

What's Black and White and Inflamed All Over?†

I've never chronicled a flare up before, and it occurs to me that having a record is a reasonable idea, if for no other reason than the next time this happens I can go back and see when this time happened. I'm really bad at writing things down as they occur.* The other reason this seems worth doing is that I kept looking around online to find other reports of EDS flare ups and didn't uncover a whole lot. So I might as well add to what meager collection of info it out there for others to find.

This flare up started around June 10 with severe stomach pain. Like, I've-been-stabbed-in-the-stomach severity stomach pain. I usually take a low dose of omeprazole when this happens, but at the time I was visiting my parents and didn't have any. I took everything else they had. Rolaids, Tums, even some Zantac my father still had because he missed all the recall notices that flooded the internet a few months ago. Pepto Bismol. Nothing helped. Gasping pain so bad it woke me in the middle of the night and I thought about whether I'd need to go to the hospital this time. Eventually I got to the store and bought omeprazole, ripping the package open and swallowing a pill dry in the parking lot. It helped. I don't know why only this particular med helps, but I've stopped trying to reason with that kind of pain.
For the curious -- yes, I've had it checked out. I've been scoped and CT'd and examined from here to Sunday. There is nothing wrong. Nobody can see anything. They never can. I did, once, have an ulcer that was healed, but beyond that, there is no explanation for my symptoms.** Except, of course, that I have EDS and it does strange things to you.
A day or so later, my hands started to hurt.
Ten years ago, after my daughter was born, I developed "babywrist." The contortions I went through to keep using my hands led to golf and tennis elbow, and eventually a strained left shoulder. None of these ever healed fully, though I did regain use of my hands and they don't bother me often. My elbows and shoulder hurt nearly always. One of the hallmarks of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hypermobility type) is that, once damaged, connective tissue just doesn't heal. So it's important to not get damaged in the first place, which is challenging when you want to have a life.
But now my hands were hurting again. Just a little. I thought it might be attributable to an overabundance of work with the pruning shears when I took out a bush in the back yard. That wasn't it, of course, but by the 20th or so, I was pulling out my old babywrist braces because they helped me remember to not try to do stupid things with my hands like turning doorknobs or unbuttoning my jeans.
By this time, everything hurt. Fingers, hips, knees, neck...everything. The plantar fasciitis in my left foot (it was my 5 year anniversary! Remember that thing about not healing?) was exquisite. The brace I wear for it at night caused numbness followed by wicked pins and needles, which was new. My skin hurt. The skin on my left arm where I wore the arm brace felt like I'd rubbed it with sandpaper and coated it with that feeling you get when you whack your funnybone. Every time I stood up I had to either sit back down, or pause where I stood till the dizziness passed and blackness cleared from my vision***.I started taking high doses of Celebrex to help with the inflammation, and full doses of omeprazole to help with the side effects of the Celebrex.
Even so, I spent every morning waiting for painful cramps to send me running to the bathroom where it felt like everything I'd ever eaten was leaving my body, along with half my insides. Fortunately, the exodus was usually done by noon, and after a rest, it didn't bother me much for the rest of the day. I was, however, hyper-sensitive to all the foods I can usually eat a little bit of without too much trouble. Not now. Even small amounts of dairy, or food-gums caused painful bloating.
By the 27th, I was a wreck. Sleeping hurt. Not sleeping hurt. Moving hurt. Baths helped, but there's only so much time you can spend in a bath tub.
Then, on the 28th, it started to let up.
Today is the 29th and I was able to turn the ignition on my car without using both hands. I'm still wearing braces on my arms, but the pain is receding. I have no idea why. It's still there, but it feels like maybe I'll see the back of this in a week or so.
I don't know what brought it on, or what is causing it to taper off.
I wish I knew.
I'm not looking forward to the next one.

*especially when it comes to putting things in the freezer. Like, every time I think "oh, I'll remember putting this in here. This was some memorable stuff." No, it wasn't. It's never memorable stuff. Three months later I'm looking at some frost- encrusted chunk of something, going "what the hell is this?"
Every. Time.

**If you're considering telling me it's all in my head, or I should change my diet, try yoga, exercise, breathing, gratitude, supplements, etc please feel free to keep your thoughts to yourself. I've heard and tried everything you might care to suggest.

*** My kids are so used to seeing this now they just wait for it, sans comment. They know what it means when I'm "out of spoons." In a way, I hate that this is "normal life" for them to see, but maybe it will end up with them being more aware of and compassionate towards people with disabilities, so it's not all bad.

†People with EDS are often called "zebras" since our issues are not the "horses" doctors are taught to suspect before moving on to more exotic diagnoses. The trouble with this, of course, is that many people with EDS aren't diagnosed till after having symptoms for years or decades, if at all. So the title is just a super funny joke for all those with EDS. You're welcome.

Just a Recipe (without all the fol-der-al first)

I don't think I've ever posted a recipe, but I'm posting this one so I don't forget it. I read several recipes on the internet and didn't find one that a) had all ingredients I could eat and b) had ingredients I had on hand and c) used flavorings I really liked so I put this one together. It turned out fabulous.

Rachel's Not-Really-Thai-Fried-Rice-Paper-Rolls
(low FODMAP recipe)

Ingredients
Rice paper wraps -- The square ones seem easier to use, but use whatever kind you like)
1 lb ground chicken*
Green onion, chopped (just the green bits, about 1/4 cup worth)
2 large carrots, shredded (reserve a small amount for garnish)
2 celery stalks, shredded (I put both into the shredder of the food processor together)
1/2 cup cooked Vermicelli rice noodles
1/2 - 3/4 tsp curry powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 - 1 tsp Thai fish sauce
1/3 c crushed peanuts (reserve a small amount for garnish)
1/4 c fresh cilantro sprigs (reserve a small amount for garnish)
3 - 4 T garlic oil**
1/3 c rice wine/lime juice mixture (sort of a lime vinaigrette - this is to add some needed acidity. You could also use any sort of light vinaigrette you like)

Cook the rice noodles as directed on the package. Drain and set aside. I used a single packet of them and it was more than enough.

Fry the chicken in a large pan. Use a spatula to work the meat into little crumbles. Add in the onion, celery and carrot and fry until all the meat is thoroughly cooked through. Add in curry powder, salt, fish oil and pepper flakes. Stir together on low heat for a couple minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste.

While the meat mixture is cooking, prep the rice paper wraps. I put them one at a time onto a large plate on a wet paper towel, then spread more water over the top of the wrap and let it rest 2 - 3 minutes till it softened. To make things go faster, I had 2 plates going at once. They get very sticky.

In another large frying pan, heat the garlic oil on low heat, about level 3.

On a softened wrap, put about 2 T of the meat mixture in a line about 3 inches long, about an inch from one edge. Adjust according to the size of your wrap, and your filling preference. Lay some of the rice noodles on top of the mixture. My ratio was about 1/4 noodles, 3/4 mixture. Sprinkle with a layer of crushed peanuts and a sprig of cilantro. Roll the paper around the filling, tucking in the ends till you have a tube about 3 - 4 inches long. This takes a little practice.

Put the roll into the hot oil. Keep the heat low. If you cook too fast, the paper will split. Fry for about 5 - 6 minutes on a side, and turn over with tongs. You can add as many rolls to the pan as will fit, but don't let them touch each other as they will stick together.

I've read that you can't deep fry them or they'll just split, but I've never tried it. I've never tried air-frying them, either, but you probably could if you brushed them with oil first.

Once fried, pull from the pan with tongs and put onto a plate with paper towels to soak up extra grease.

Once plated, sprinkle with about 1 T of rice wine vinegar, and garnish with crushed peanuts, cilantro and a few carrot shreds.

Serve with a small cup of vinegar on the side for dipping. You can also use tiny amounts of hoisin sauce for dipping, too.

They don't really re-heat well, so don't make extras to save if you can help it. Re-heating in the oven might work. Microwave doesn't.

*You could probably use ground beef or pork, too. I've also seen recipes that added minced baby shrimp. The meat could entirely be your favorite mushroom, too, or possibly even crumbled tofu.

**Garlic oil - I use this instead of garlic because garlic contains fructans, which I cannot eat. To make garlic oil, heat a small bottle's-worth of oil on the stove in a pot. Add about 2 heaping tablespoons of chopped garlic. Cook till the garlic starts to brown. Strain the garlic out of the oil into a glass container. Allow to cool. Store in a labeled bottle. Never just put raw garlic into oil and use that. You could get food poisoning from it.

Phone-a-Friend in the Covid Era

We had a meeting today where we discussed whether using Zoom with students sufficiently protects student's information and if we'd get in trouble for using it. This is a valid question since I'm not entirely conversant with every aspect of FERPA laws that protect identifying students information from being shared with anyone outside of school.
This law, by the way, is a good idea and I'm happy to have it but, seriously? You want to stop having online meetings with students because then those students might be seen by someone not usually in the school or because....Why? All the people who might see the students are ones who could come into the school and see students at lunchtime, or as a "room mom" (Yes, those still exist and they're still moms, 90% of the time.) We have to be extremely careful about not posting work that could identify the child -- including via their handwriting* -- and these are mostly reasonable rules to have. (It is permissible, however, to have students grade each other's papers and shout out their grades for the whole class to hear, because humiliating a child is perfectly fine so long as the paper hasn't been collected yet.**)
That's not really what this post is about, though.
It's about our strange and rather bizarre desire to "protect" children by keeping them from ever talking to each other electronically.
It's absolutely forbidden for students to use Zoom to contact each other. And talk. Privately. Because they might get hurt! OMG! Someone could be preying on them! Yes, I suppose it's true that an adult could try to surreptitiously Zoom with them on an illicit school account. Trafficking and grooming and all that are a real thing. But preventing kids from ever having electronic access to their friends is not going to protect them from it.***
But my kid, in a video chat with her best friends she hasn't seen in a month aren't in danger. And that's what we're talking, with all seriousness, about trying to eliminate. Keeping kids from having conversations without an adult around.
Really?
You think, in reality, kids never have an unsupervised moment? There's no lunch time, no recess, no chat about anything but school during the school day? Or what about at home? Some kids do actually go outside and play with the neighborhood kids without adult supervision. Kids NEED to talk. They NEED to play games and argue about the rules, and they just freaking need time to be kids away from adults.
Right now we're in a place that nobody living knows. We're physically isolated and most of us adults are finding a lot of solace in the video connections we are making with others. We shouldn't be trying to keep it from our kids, too, in the name of keeping them safe. Few people have a landline phone anymore that enables kids to just pick up the phone and call a friend. We decry giving a kid a cell phone till 8th grade or later (and with some good reason, there) but it leaves them without easy ways to make connections in a time like this.
They need to see each other. They need to talk.
Let them.


*I defy most parents to ID'd their own 6 year old's handwriting, let alone anyone else's 6 year old's.

**I'm not kidding. This is allowed via a SCOTUS decision. Lazy, humiliating, ostracizing teaching practices are perfectly fine. I never want to be a principal, but if I were, this practice would be utterly banned in my school.

***Things like conversations, teaching kids openly about sex, sexual predators, relationships, and having a healthy involvement in their digital consumption is way more useful.

Visiting Backyardia (One Star. Would not recommend.)

I spent some time in the yard today contemplating the horror that is our lawn and the backyard fence that is crooked as a dog's hind leg. This is what passes for a trip out these days. The front lawn. The back lawn. Fence inspection. These are things I need to do, granted, but when they're the high point of the day, well...
And I started thinking about the trip we aren't going to take this summer to celebrate our 15th anniversary. It was going to be a grand, multi-generational thing with my folks and other relatives and I was really looking forward to it, and now I'm almost positive it isn't going to happen, so hey, why not spend the money on a new fence or hiring someone to fix the lawn?
...

We could spend it on a cement trough, too, I suppose. Because that's the practical thing to do. Because there's not a need, really, to go visit a country where they don't talk in English and they don't even want to!* It's much more responsible to save the money, anyway.

I hate this.

I am just guessing here, too, but most, if not all the kids' summer camps will not be running. For the first year, ever, I got them signed up early for different camps and they were both so excited to go. But Dr. Fauci's "weeks," while better than "months" don't inspire confidence that it will be safe for my kids to go off to sleep away camp in June.

I do realize that this is a First World Problem of the grandest degree because there are folks out of work, and who don't know if, at the end of all this, they're going to be evicted because they got laid off and $1200 doesn't go all that far in most places. People don't know if there will even be jobs to go back to. Hospitals are overcrowding and there's not enough equipment. There's so much. So I know this is an irrelevant problem, but knowing that doesn't make me feel any better about it.

And then, of course, there's the real, underlying fear that in two months, I'll come back to read this and think "Oh my God, this is what you were worried about? This? This trivial, nothing thing?! What's wrong with you?" And I will be thinking that because the unimaginable has happened, and I am wanting to go back in time to shake myself for grieving such an unimportant loss as vacation or summer camp.

But that's where I am. Except right this moment DH is online for the first time playing a multiplayer dungeon crawl using Tabletop Simulator with his friends and it's actually working. And he's laughing. Little chuckles and big hearty guffaws that have been such a rare sound that I was startled by the first one. And I'm so grateful his friends insisted on trying this.

So maybe, in this moment, it's okay to grieve the tiny things in the same way we are grateful for the little things and not feel unworthy for any of it.

Be kind to yourself, friends.


*it's a reference to "Our Town." My mother will get it.

Is it Blursday Yet?

Reporting to you from day...something...of the quarantine. It hasn't been that long, really, but I can lose track of the days in a 3 day weekend, so knowing exactly how many days this forever has lasted so far is beyond me.
In some ways, things aren't that much different. I stay inside and putter around instead of going out and doing yard work or going for a walk until the rain hits and then "hey! It's not my fault I can't go out and rake the dead grass out of the lawn, it's raining!" This is a pretty typical non-quarantine thing for me to do. On the other hand, I haven't talked to anyone in person who isn't a family member in...days? Weeks? I think I did have a yell-chat with our neighbor the other day while I was in the car and he was a safe 15 feet away and there's the occasional "hi!" to people we see when we're out walking, but that's really it. I'm not an introvert by nature, and the lack of other human contact is starting to wear. I never would have made it as a homesteader or a pioneer.*
It was "spring break" for me and the kids this week and one thing that is the same is the mounting anxiety that I haven't really prepped enough for the coming weeks and there's a lot to do, so I really should get in to school. Only not only have I not prepped enough, I'm not even really sure what I'm doing since a great part of my job is supporting teachers and none of us are really solid in this online-teaching yet. So there's anxiety on top of anxiety and so far I've managed to do a better-than-average job at avoiding it.** I did manage to make some lists today, which helped. Having this job which is a little tough to nail down to begin with does not help. In the physical world, I had a schedule, lots of time booked with gifted kids, independent projects, extension lessons, co-teaching lessons all filling my time. It took a long while for me to build *that* with my colleagues. Now I'm back to square less-than-one. I'm flooded with roughly eleventy billion fabulous online resources to use, but even that is anxiety provoking, to be honest. I do my best work when I'm bouncing ideas off of people.
I miss my teams of teachers. I miss my students. I miss the tiny day-to-day interactions with colleagues and friends. I miss hugs from the kids. Elementary kids hug you all the time. They're marvelous like that.
I know this won't last forever, and yes, I know this could be much, much worse, but knowing that has never helped anybody. (So do us all a favor and quit posting the memes about how much more awful it was for someone else, 'k?)
This wound up being kinda bleaker than I meant it to, but hey, that's just Blursday for you. Never could get the hang of that day.

Peace.



*Let's be honest here, my total lack of physical skills and general dislike of roughing it of any sort would have been much larger problems than a need for social contact.
**My own DD is stellar at avoidance, and, it seems, she comes by it honestly. I mean, I come by it honestly, too. In my own family, we even have names for specific kinds of procrastination activities.†

†Creative task-avoidance: when you get something productive accomplished instead of not doing another, more important task. Housecleaning, blogging, organizing the game cabinet, exercise and baking all fall into this category.
Crass task-avoidance: when you do nothing of any value whatsoever instead of doing what you need to do. Video games, internet surfing and Facebook are in this category.

It's All in What You're Looking For

A few years ago a blogger/journalist decided to make a name for herself by attending a Mensa gathering (called an RG, for Regional Gathering) and blowing the lid off the whole sordid affair. She found the creepiest of the RG creepers and told the world that this was what Mensa gatherings were about. Creepy people who love showing off how smart they are.* Every time her clicks slope off, she goes back in for another shocking exposé.

Fine. Whatever. In a way, she's not entirely wrong. These people she seeks out are the broken stairs of Mensa, and articles like hers, plus the incessant and brave work of many, many others have gotten the leadership to boot some of the worst offenders out of the club, and put others on notice. It's easy, you see, to have a fair number of socially-inappropriate or even criminal jerks in your club when the only criterion is that you be good at standardized tests.

Mensa is the place where all those smart people who never fit in anywhere else can go. People who spent much of their childhood being bullied for being different, or being socially awkward or just introverted can join Mensa. You have a high enough score and money to pay the entry fee, and you're in. No other questions asked.

In many respects, this is a wonderful thing. I work with gifted kids, and there are so many of them who aren't just square pegs in a round world, they're 7-sided, asymmetrical prismatic stars that are never going to fit anywhere, but that doesn't mean they don't need a place to thrive. Mensa can give them a place to belong. Most Mensans I've met are welcoming, kind and fairly tolerant of the strange-but-harmless. Mensans give them a home, and even a family.

On the other hand, this means that there is a higher percentage of utter weirdos in Mensa than would normally be allowed in a not-specific-to-that-weirdness group. But that doesn't mean everybody is a bundle of social inappropriateness waiting to happen. It doesn't even mean a majority are. It just means more than average, and if you go looking for it, you're going to find it. And just like the bullies of our childhood, if you choose to, you'll find it very easy to mock and disparage.

Or, maybe, you could enter looking for kindness, or open-mindedness, humor, or inventiveness and you'll find people like L, who regularly gives of herself till she drops. Or folks like WA who is incredibly good at problem solving, and brings engineering skills to baking gluten free cookies so good people prefer them to regular ones. BW, whose organizational skills are second to none and who runs a hospitality suite like no one else. QML and V who, if they so desired, could probably take over the world but make you happy to be part of their kingdom when they did.** JW who runs tournaments with supreme efficiency and AB who can (and has) filled auditoriums with his talks on the historical relevance of Marvel Comics. Countless others who like playing boardgames, sharing their hobbies, quietly doing jigsaw puzzles together, devotedly recycling and being happily accepting of other's little quirks. There are so many good people, so many helpers, and you just have to look for them.

And, of course, I met my husband there in a game room. We met at an RG, and 16 months later we were married. We're going on 15 years now, and one of the things we look forward to the most during the year is going to MindGames, or other cities' RGs, or best of all, hosting our own. It's a ton of exhausting work and tremendous fun.

So, yes, there are a fair number of really annoying people in Mensa. Just because we have one attribute in common doesn't mean we will have a single other thing in common. And some of the members are downright icky if not criminal, and yes, we are doing better at ousting them. There's a ways to go on this front, but like all things, it's a work in progress. Some people are just awkward and we're trying our best to gently help them be less so, but such lessons are never easy and don't go down well even with the best of intentions, so it's slow going.

Want to know what an RG is like? It's a really big party. There's tons of food and drink, games, conversation, opportunities to help out, interesting talks, and activities with people who are smart, generally kind, quirky and fairly accepting of those who are pointy and asymmetrical and don't fit in anywhere else. That's what it's like. And like most other human endeavors, what you bring to it, and what you seek will largely determine what you find.

Look for the good. You'll be amazed at what you discover.

Peace.


*Most of the Mensans I know don't tell people they're in Mensa. They actively hide it. Bragging isn't a common trait.

**and you'd be really well fed. And for the record, I don't think they desire to take over the world, but they do throw one helluva party.

We Were Never Really Normal to Begin With

It's the first weekend of the Quarantine and well, things are not great. My friend's son spiked a very high fever that wouldn't come down but they had a hard time getting into the ER. (He's okay. It wasn't Corona.) My mother is sewing hospital masks for where my sister-in-law works because people who don't need the masks are hoarding them. There's a war on between keeping our economy afloat and keeping our hospitals from being overrun, and I'm not sure if there are any winners to be had in this situation. I'm anxious about all of it, and having stress dreams.

But also, things are not that bad, either. I mean, we cleaned out the fridge, and J continued his massive "re-inventory-ing of all the games*" project. My parents have downloaded videoconferencing apps and we'll all get to talk to them tomorrow, and our usually very blasé teenager-y kids are really excited about it. I'm still working on blogging more and getting in some exercise every day. Today's exercise was going out for a walk in the 40 degree weather. Yesterday it was 72 at noon, and we walked around Prairie Oaks at 6, when it had dropped into a chilly, windy 50s. Still, as we headed back to the car, the whole park was filled with the sound of peepers, who I guess had been fooled by the 72 degrees into thinking that spring had arrived. The kids had never heard anything like it, I think. DD described it as the "same sound that little wooden frog the music teacher has makes when you rub the stick over the bumps." So hey, score one for accuracy for the woodcrafters.

While we were walking around both days, it was clear that little bits of spring are poking up. Our neighbors had fully blooming daffodils! We have some struggling crocuses that keep trying and then getting sucker punched by 30 degree drops in temperature from day to day. There are sprouts at the base of our perennials, too, which reminded me that I need to find our clippers since I never cleared away last year's twiggy bits from them as part of fall cleanup. Nature just keeps going.

 China's air quality is the best it's been in 30 years. Pollution levels will probably drop everywhere that factories are shutting down. It's not all beer and skittles, though, because there are monkey gangs in Thailand fighting over food since there are no tourists to drop any. We impact the earth in ways we don't even realize. I wonder what is going on with pigeon populations and other urban food webs that are suddenly without people. The urban-animal scientists must be going nuts over this.

We're all trying to find the new normal here, and it's slow going. I think about Little House in the Big Woods and how the Ingalls were practicing social isolation and didn't even know it. I've been planning to do a read-aloud for my students, and maybe I'll choose that, just because it *is* about spending pretty much all your waking time with just your family, but there's no wi-fi, indoor plumbing or central heating.†

J mentioned that some of his colleagues are still fairly fresh out of college, and living with roommates and not loved ones. And some folks are having to weather this truly alone. As much as we can aggravate each other, I'm glad to be surrounded by my family. I mean, four really is a good number for boardgaming.

So no, things are not so bad. We've got each other and the rest we can figure out as it goes.

Peace.



*If you've ever seen our game collection, you know this is no small task.
† See kids! Things *could* be worse!

TIL

Tomorrow our district is rolling out online classrooms for every student. It is simultaneously too much and not enough, and I'm reeling a bit from all the new info to assimilate.

Today I Learned:
The very basics of how to use Zoom for a virtual classroom experience.
How to create a bitmoji of myself.
Why the bitmoji app > the bitmoji Chrome extension in every possible respect.
Why browsers without installed scrollbars are crap, especially when you do not have the access to add them as an extension. (this was a re-learning moment, tbh. I already knew it, but it's even more frustrating when you're learning more new tech and it won't work because you can't scroll.)
How to share an assignment and a page in Canvas. (only one of those works, though.)
There is so much more to learn about using Canvas fluidly that maybe it's a good thing we'll be doing this for a long time.
How to create and share a Kidblog page.
That iPads can just share PDFs into Notability or other Apps directly, no down and uploading required.
That the recipe I found for gluten free pie crust is a good one actually worth eating.
That every teacher I work with is willing to step up and change everything with little notice, without any real griping about it when the need arises.
I really, really miss my students already.

I also learned from a friend's blog late last night that I have to get over obsessing about when all this will be over, and when will we return to normal, and move, as gracefully as I can, into How. How will I adapt, how can I help my family, how can I help everyone get through this for as long as it is. How is answerable and useful where When is not. I'm still mourning all the losses and the ones to come, but as best I can, I'm moving into How.

That's what I learned today.

Just imagine what I will learn tomorrow.

Report Card Day-ish?

If you're of a certain age, you can remember that fateful day every 6 - 12 weeks when the teacher would hand you that yellow envelope, sealed, with your name on it. You'd either rip it open, or solemnly stick it into your backpack, and the march home was either one of glory and triumph, or trying to figure out how you'd change a grade without mom noticing.* It was Report Card Day.

In k - 2 we never got grades, just I for improving or S for Satisfactory or the glorious O, for Outstanding. We were graded for things like "Math" and "Handwriting" and "Spelling." It was something even my 2nd grade brain could wrap itself around. By upper elementary we were getting grades. 93% and up was an A, 85% eked out a B. We had "Social Studies" and "Science" and every quarter there would be a handwritten note from the teacher in loopy hieroglyphs that were indecipherable till after grade 3. We would take our report cards around to Pizza Hut and Friendly's to get our free Personal Pan Pizza or Sundae with hot fudge and it was officially a BIG DEAL.

Nowadays, it isn't. Progress Reports are digital, and filled with statements like "Accurately quotes from fiction/nonfiction text when explaining what the text says explicitly, and when drawing inferences from the text." And there is a number, but no number is really bad, they all just indicate "levels of readiness for independent work" or something like that and frankly as a parent I can't quite suss it out, even though I'm a teacher. My kids only know that Progress Reports have come out because I tell them they have, there's no going out for pizza or ice cream and it's just not much of....anything. 

We are told to "let our children fail" so that they will learn grit and to get back up again, and to not nag and helicopter parent or push our kids to "just turn your homework in, dammit!" so they may learn it on their own, but....that means there has to be a consequence for failing, doesn't it? No pizza or ice cream, or something other than a "2" on the grade card under "shows personal responsibility." This long, cumbersome report with no fewer than 25 separate little numbers just isn't meaningful to my kid, or to me, really. So we wind up not letting them fail by default till high school, when we're back to a grade for Math and a grade for Science and there are As and Bs and Ds and Fs and they have lasting consequences. I have tremendous fear of watching my child fail then, and not really knowing how to help any more than I do now.** 

Despite all our connectivity, there is a deep disconnect between what is happening at school and what is happening at home, and I feel it on both sides. We developed this system to be a more nuanced and detailed way for families to hold teachers accountable for all aspects of learning, but it didn't quite work the way it was intended. There's an overload of information, so much that it is all just becoming noise. 

Digital learning is saving us right now, and it's clearly leading the way into the future, but there is still something to be said for getting that little yellow envelope with the signature lines that is so heavy with promise of either joy or dread. There is something weighty and meaningful about the henscratch or loopy handwriting that says "I know your child" in a way that "Comments 6 and 14" do not. There is a solemnity to the ritual of handing over the report card at dinnertime, and seeing your mother's face as she reads it. 

There is something to it, and I wish we had it back.



*note to Mom: I never did this. 
**how to instill motivation into an unmotivated person was not in the Parenting Manual. Or the Teaching Manual. If anyone ever finds a foolproof method, they could make a fortune.

DIY Nanofictionary -- Online version

This is a lesson I started a long time ago and (obviously) never finished. It's all about using a crazy storytelling card game to spur more original and flexible thinking in your students, and to encourage reluctant writers by giving them a place to start. I mothballed it, but now that we are embarking on a new era of online learning for students across the nation, I thought maybe it might be a decent idea to throw this out there, adapted for online. Since this is a DIY version, you don't actually need to buy the game, though I wholeheartedly endorse buying several sets to play with your class when all this is over. 

Nanofictionary is a game from the marvelous Looney Labs.*  They came out with a reboot of it a few years ago. I loved the wildness of the old game, but I think the new version has its advantages. If nothing else, it prevents the frustration of playing the entire darn game and never finding a setting. The essence of the game is storytelling. You do, sort of, play for points, but really you play to create marvelous miniature stories through your own imagination and forced association.

During the game, players collect one card each for a Setting, a Problem, and a Resolution. For extra points (and fun) they may collect as many Characters as they like. For a list of all of them, check here. My favorites are "The dangerous objects factory," "The superhero with unhelpful powers**" "A terrible accident involving food," and, of course "Duct tape saved the day again!"

Using just those four you have all the basic elements of a story. And this is where the lesson comes in. We can't really play this game with our students right now. But we can use it to teach writing!
To use my favorite cards as an example: Strange superhero George decided one day to take a tour of the dangerous objects factory when suddenly a component of one of the machines began to malfunction. In a misguided attempt to help, George sprang into action, using his power of shooting pasta out of his fingertips.  "Pasta Power!" he cried, and began covering the malfunctioning machine with strands of fettuccine, which were conveyed down the line, gumming up all the works, and jamming the POWER switch. Thinking quickly, a repair tech whipped out a roll of silver tape, used it to scrape off the sticky strands and tape the switch into the OFF position, shutting down the line. Duct tape saved the day again!

Now, I'll grant you it's not the best of stories, and it definitely needs more elaboration and the addition of details, extra characters and some plot development. Storytellers *should* add these things in, but keep the four cards as the primary, and most important elements. 

It's a terrific tool for encouraging kids who say "there's nothing to write about." In the past, I've used these in the classroom for kids to perform short, impromptu skits. They were hilarious. But you could just as easily convert them into goofy short stories. The forced association, ironically, requires kids to be more flexible and imaginative in their thinking, to get ideas that wouldn't normally belong together to belong together. 

Actually conducting this lesson I would do AFTER teaching about the structure of stories. Students need to have a solid understanding of how exposition, rising action, climax and resolution work in a story. I'd also set a variety of parameters, depending on the age of your students. I've taught this with 4th and 5th graders, but it could work for multiple grade levels. And I would provide the kids with a few story samples, preferably using randomly chosen elements that are not available to the students, to reduce copying. 

So here's the lesson:
Step One
Brainstorm Settings, Characters, Problems and Resolutions with students. They can submit them via a Google form or a shared document, a Canvas Conversation or whatever tool you'd like. You can also choose to use the list direct from Looney Labs. It's a good list. (And definitely do not use "spaz." I have no idea what they were thinking.)

Step Two
Randomly assign one of each category to your students, but if you want, you can allow them to also choose extra characters or another setting to go along with it. The more they have to associate, the more challenging it becomes. I've always allowed students to add in other minor characters and places if need be.

Step Three
Write! Students should craft and submit their stories. You or they choose the platform. I love the idea of graphic nanofictionary novels, epic poems, or radio plays. They don't have to be just a written story. 

Step Four
Share! I don't know yet what tools will exist for sharing. But the more public a forum, the better. Got Kidblog? Put them there! Got a class webpage? Share there! What ideas do you have?

We're all in this together, folks. I hope someone tries this and tells me what happened! (or better yet, share with me the link to the stories!)

Peace.


*If you've never played games from Looney Labs, they're worth your time. Fluxx is a bit too random for me, but Chrononauts is fun and could be an interesting way to come up with story ideas, too. Plus there's the added bonus of maybe learning some history while you play.

**BBC made an entire series out of this concept, called "Misfits." It's not suitable for children, but it is quite interesting and worth watching.

Should I Pack 2 Ballgowns, or 3?

Most of us have seen this meme, or variants:

The Twitter thread that follows it is rather hilarious, and I highly recommend it in these trying times*.
Speaking of trying times, that's why I've decided to start blogging again. 3 weeks of enforced isolation at home is rapidly going to devolve into everyone in this house sitting around in dirty pjs playing video games while watching old episodes of The British Baking Show and eating peanut butter straight out of the jar unless there's some pre-intervention. So I mandated that every family member must embark on a personal-improvement and a home-improvement project, plus at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. With luck, we'll get at least one of those per person, so fingers crossed.
My self-improvement? Going back to blogging. I like it, it's good for reducing anxiety, and having some structured "you must sit down and write" time is good for me. And hey, everyone else is stuck at home, too, scrolling the interwebs, so why not add more content?
This whole post began in my head after reading yet another "Why the hell is everyone buying ALL THE THINGS?" posts on Facebook. They're doing it, partially, for the same reason that I pack 6 extra pairs of underwear for a 3 day trip. It's just the uncertainty of it. Especially for folks who hadn't been plugged into social media or the news for the last week or so, things were chugging along fine, with a few shutdowns, some "take precautions" and then suddenly: SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED FOR THREE WEEKS. EVERYONE WORK FROM HOME. DON'T TOUCH OTHER HUMANS AND KEEP 1 METER AWAY FROM THEM AT ALL TIMES.
Holy *%&! What?
The unprecedented in our lifetimes has happened, and we don't know how bad it will get, how long it will last or what other sudden-seeming impositions will spring up. Will we lose safe water? Electricity? Utilities? Will there be a total curfew? Will all stores close? What's the worst case scenario here?
And the answer is: nobody really knows.
Most predictions are that all utilities will be fine, stores will stay open, we can still move about as needed and the shutdowns will flatten the infection curve enough to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.
But we don't know. Not for sure. And that brings on the anxiety. And nobody knows for sure how long we will be semi-quarantined at home with our kids or family, or without kids and family and nobody at all and that brings on the anxiety, too.
All this extra shopping? It's the Coronavirus equivalent of packing the extra underwear. And as more people do it, and more goods disappear off the shelves, the more folks want to stock up. Just in case.
So cut those folks a little bit of a break. We all get a little crazy when we try to predict the future and have all possibilities from "It'll all be fine in 3 weeks" to "Zombie Apocalypse Imminent!"
So cut yourself, and everyone else a little slack, give the stores time to re-stock, and be sure to have clean spoons handy for the peanut butter.
Peace.


*I highly recommend trying to read the funniest ones out loud to loved ones in the vicinity. I laughed so hard I cried, and couldn't read coherently.