Wednesday Quietly

I'm posting a picture from a year ago just to remind myself how different things were then. The picture is me taking the Metro home with my scooter. June 3, 2019. I think I was in the middle of training people on Sharepoint and OneDrive at work, also probably focused on PP&Es. No, not the acronym for protective gear that we are now all familiar with in the time of coronavirus. No, this was Performance Evaluations for my staff. I remember that I hated doing this and I was perfectly happy that my manager Justin was doing most of it for me. I only mention that because we were told today that it is Evaluations time yet again. Yay. in any case it is simply that different from the routine of today. Once again we wake up early to get breakfast at McDonald's Johnnie and I. Like last week no more drop-off at Lisa's. And after the fiasco of dinner at her house a week ago, I was going to politely turn down a similar invite for this evening. Luckily, no phone call from Lisa so it was all good. Like yesterday I doubled up Johnnie's homework load simply because he simply just zips through his math and reading. Not only does he do the math quickly, I have to tell him to color the pictures he makes with different colors... just so I get more time. Today there really wasn't much need because all I had was the meeting with my Team first thing in the morning. And then there was the All-Staff meeting in the afternoon. It was cut short because of the curfew situation. We thought the curfew was going to start at 5 PM again. Until we all got that emergency alert on our cellphones from the City. I have 2 cellphones so I got it twice. Curfew tonight is not until 9 PM. Drat. That was going to be my excuse not to have to spend dinner with Lisa. But then again, a phone call from her never came so I'm all good. The All-Staff Meeting itself was very strange. It took all of 15 minutes for one thing. Didn't our Leadership have more to say than that? It all seemed so pointless to me. Yes we all know what's going on in the world. How can you send out a lets-stick-together kind of a message? Barbara did address the riots but in a very distilled kind of way.But hey, we're just a faith-based non-profit aren't we?

And so with the All-Staff Meeting finishing way earlier than I expected, and without having to think about Lisa and whatever it is we need to do in order to help her ease her being alone on a Wednesday night, Johnnie and I did NOT have Panda Express night. That's because we had it for lunch instead. He asked for it and I was happy to oblige. Tonight for dinner, I made him some udon and got him chicken strips. And then I let him watch Tumble Leaf for the rest of the evening. I know I'm not supposed to be letting him watch videos for more than an hour every day and that's already over and above what he has to watch for his schoolwork, but then again therein lies the difference doesn't it? Even he himself says, I need to watch a video so that I can learn. And so from Blippi in the morning, to Numberblocks and Numberjacks, every video he does watch has a learning component to it. Even Llama llama videos have content that deal with social issues... such as having a new kid in school who has a disability. Or Pete the Cat which gave us all the Three Bite Rule. So I most definitely do not regret showing him the videos he does get to see. And besides, he gets to watch them next to me most of the time. Look at the pic. He's intently watching, I'm intently watching him. Isn't that a good thing? The other thing is that I usually spend a lot of time doing the things he thinks that are fun. That would be any art class of any kind. Even when I couldn't find anything from Mar Vista TK (the art classes ended last week), I went right on YouTube and found an art class about drawing Disney characters. Something he's going to get to do tomorrow anyway with his own class. That and he loves Mystery Science. Yesterday I made him a makeshift sundial, consisting of a movable arm that lets you follow the sun. At least now he knows directions and that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Hopefully it will help him with directions one day should he ever get lost. The rest of the evening went pretty routinely and quietly. I quietly did my 11,100+ steps, making sure I'm over whatever it was that had my legs sore 2 weeks ago. Now if I can only get over the facial numbness thing...