Here at the Niekro Academy (Motto: Dedicated to Okayness Since 2020), the first 60 minutes of the 2020-21 school year were bad. Very bad. Technology crashed. Zoom wouldn’t let us in no matter how many times we typed in the mother-loving password.
It’s possible, actually very probable, that voices were raised in frustration. I think someone may have been crying. And someone was definitely laying on the floor, declaring the day a disaster.
Amazingly, that person was not me.
But then, just like that, people were logged in. It got quiet. Only for about 30 minutes, and then new problems presented themselves, but we got those solved too. Every class and every day has been a little bit better, a little bit easier.
Of course, there are still those weird peccadilloes being at home with three kids doing remote school. Mallory came down looking awfully serious, took my work notebook, scrawled what seemed like an important note and slide it back to me, all during a rather intense Zoom call. It read: What should I have 4 lunch?
Casey sometimes plays basketball in his room in between classes, making for awesome background noise. And Ally comes flying down the stairs and into the kitchen like a tornado during her five-minute Brain Breaks to grab snacks before furiously returning to her closet-turned-office.
But even with those interruptions, I think it’s possible that we might actually survive this. We might not thrive in this setup exactly (see our motto, after all), but surviving is enough, right? And when in doubt, I just rely on these two signs that stare at me all day from the kitchen table:
And in case I’m wrong and we are barreling toward disaster, I can rest easy in knowing there are only 282 days until summer vacation.