first he was my moneygrip then he stole my honeydip
YOU’VE BEEN HIT BY YOU’VE BEEN STRUCK BY
Hi and welcome to Ridiculous World! It is a dumb place and no one is okay. We are starting week 3 of school in Chicago and it is 100% online; somehow it seems like even more than 100%. The people in charge lost their minds and decided to replicate the entire in-person school day online. Stupid-early start time, full-length class periods, etc.
Chicago Public Schools is very sensitive to criticism of not providing enough instruction; we have a post-Labor Day start, historically low graduation rate, and a teacher strike every few years. It is like the administration saw a pandemic-provided opportunity to maybe get a little creative and said OH HELL NO; BUSINESS AS USUAL (except in front of a screen).
Little kids are probably especially miserable but I am here to tell you that high school seniors are not too happy either. It is a long, lonely, sedentary day: no randomness, no developing friendships or even nodding acquaintances with people you don’t already know, no fire drills, no rumors, no lunch conversations, no inside jokes, no talking with your friends about how the math teacher’s eye makeup is certainly A Choice. I am downstairs on my own stupid screen all day but on my breaks I bring him food, or after “school” I will flop around and read on his beanbag chair while he does homework, just to provide companionship. And in the evenings I stay up later than I prefer for our quality time, which lately has taken the strange form of clicking around the cable TV channels and watching music videos in real time. Nickelodeon’s music channel is the absolute worst, and I can become stridently angry that they have a “show” called “Bumpin’ Beats” which tends to play low-effort bunch-of-nothing pop that is neither “bumpin” nor has “beats.” NOT WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN.
However, we have become quite fond of MTV’s throwback shows like 90s Nation and Metal Mayhem. May I recommend this extremely blurry and extremely strange video for Krokus’ “Eat the Rich”?
And if you have all the time to waste, here is a list of every video that’s ever been on 120 Minutes.
Those are small bright spots I suppose but they are nearly obscured by the tedium and the anxiety. I literally cannot believe that my kid needs to have college apps more or less done next month. He is unsure of where to go, what to study, how to navigate, which I constantly say is normal but that does not make it easier. He was of course unable to do any campus visits last spring which makes everything abstract and fuzzy. He seems maybe less eager and ready to live on his own than I was at his age*—-I know he will rise to the occasion but it does not help that no one knows what the occasion will look like. Will kids be living in dorms and going to classes in the fall of 2021? Or will it just be a worse and lonelier version of this high school semester?
*I was eager, but was I ready? Scenes from my freshman year at college would prove otherwise. Looking back, we all have a tendency to overestimate our own maturity: I had a job! I spent evenings out and about! Kids these days have it too easy! But I also had a woefully under nuanced view of the world, an over inflated opinion of myself, and a much narrower scope of knowledge than Aaron does. See, the internet is good for some things.
INTO THE WOODS
Before school started we did manage to spend a few days at an extremely remote (like, Unabomber remote) cabin on a small lake. Rustic, but a normal small house with normal things like electricity and indoor bathrooms. We brought all our own food and saw absolutely no one (well, LT occasionally masked up and drove 30 minutes to buy bait and beer at the nearest gas station). Fishing off the dock, fires every night (or in the middle of the day, as needed, because Aaron is always ready to burn SOMETHING and who am I to say no), and my favorite, the house came with a canoe! The kid and I canoed around the whole lake and it was my first time in a canoe and now I want to be in a canoe all the time. I’M A CANOE LADY NOW.
(Lots and lots of Trump flags along the way to our remote destination. Sad-ass rural houses featuring burnt truck frames and falling-down sheds and big old TRUMP 2020 flags. Actual flags! Not just yard signs! When you are struggling paycheck to paycheck with no health care in America’s Heartland, be sure to vote for the New York fatcat whose photo is in the dictionary under “kleptocrat.”)
(Does it count as a vacation if you have to cook and clean up? The canoe and the not-working-at-all mostly offset the chores, so I think yes. In the Before Times, we usually flew to vacation spots so I am still weirded out/delighted by road trips and packing the car—we can bring ALL OF THIS???? Amazing.)
THE WOODS CAME TO US
Back home, Aaron took out the recycling and came back with a sick (poisoned?) chipmunk. It was lying on its side in our alley, alive but definitely not well, and being rained on. I allowed my kid to at least move it (with gloves) under our porch stairs for a dry death, and was convinced we would be tossing a corpse in the trash by morning. But no! The next day chipmunk condition was stable and yet not improved—curled up, breathing, and moving its limbs but not alert or able to stand. So now somehow this whole chipmunk hospice situation became our responsibility and although I was not super happy I did consent to Operation Chipmunk Good Death moving into our basement, with a box and a shop towel and a sock with heated rice to keep it warm and sugar water in an eyedropper, oh lord. Three days later the chipmunk died (but did not rise again), never having regained its chipmunk consciousness, and because Aaron now has the skills to pay the bills when it comes to taxidermy, there is this package in my downstairs freezer:
Did not feel the need to add DO NOT EAT as in Arrested Development. But don’t eat, please. We’re saving it. I will fix you something else.
—mimi smartypants doesn’t know what she expected.