Category: the parenting bunny

Day 173 – Back to it

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The boy starts Dodgeball Academy training again this evening for the first time in 6+ months.

We’ve already noted that for kids – despite our best plans and their best adaptability – returning to things that were routine and normal before isn’t always straightforward in this con-Covid world.

Going back to something you did before after a long period of time away is always a bit weird. But when you underpin your foundations for dealing with that weirdness on your experiences BTV and everything is now suddenly completely different – well, it takes some getting used to.

Add to that, the fact that it will affect everyone in different ways and everyone will have different ways of dealing with it, and there’s no simple answer, limited preparation you can offer as a parent (save to say that you know it’s going to be a bit odd) and no “one size fits all” solution.

I’m hoping that things do go well this evening, that parents and students support one another and that the group leader treats them all with kid gloves on this first time back. A bit of empathy and understanding goes a long way to making these things so much easier.

Day 168 – Pandemic ends as parent is “so over it already”

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Great news.

A parent on a local Whatsapp group has single-handedly ended the Coronavirus/Covid-19 world pandemic.

During a discussion around the need for safety protocols including sanitising your hands and wearing a mask* at an indoor venue, the parent happened to remark:

But really now I am so over this already

And added a facepalm emoji for extra gravitas (please note that touching one’s face is not recommended).

Anyway, it seems that someone important was reading the aforementioned Whatsapp group, as a statement from the SARS-CoV-2 virus was issued very shortly afterwards. It’s fairly lengthy, so I’m not going to share the whole thing, but here’s some of what the spokesperson had to say.

As the officially recognised causal agent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the SARS-Cov-2 virus was both disappointed and alarmed to learn that one of the parents in the [redacted] Whatsapp group was “so over this already”. It was believed that the human population of the planet were at least content with the situation as it currently stands. We had no idea that people were unhappy with how things were going.
Someone should have said something.

While it was always our intention to kill as many people as possible – a goal assisted by individuals being “so over” wearing masks, washing their hands and socially distancing – we’d like to keep our relationship with mankind as amicable as possible, and so we will be ending the global pandemic with immediate effect.

We would have done this much sooner if we had known that really now people were so over this already.

So there you have it.

If only someone had made the point that really now they were so over this already previously.
We could have avoided an awful lot of fuss.

Personally, really now I’m so over people ignoring Covid-19 regulations because really now they are so over this already.

Want more regulations? Then just keep choosing to ignore the ones we have now.

Very straightforward stuff.

 

* clutches pearls, fans face, faints dramatically

Day 167 – Can’t stop now

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Properly busy day. I are exhausted.

Done loads: helped with drama homework, history homework (x2), english homework, washing, cleaned the house, helped the gardener, found some videos, booked a drone repair, failed to download Adobe Illustrator, fed the family.
Still loads to do.
I’m sneaking a 10 minute blogging break while dinner is cooking and then it’s back to it.

Tomorrow includes a trip all the way into Cape Town. I’ll make sure I have mask, passport and map with me. I may take touristy photos (I may not): it’s been a while.

Hopefully, I’ll have a bit more time and energy to write a bit more tomorrow evening.

Thanks for popping by.

Day 158 – Imminent return

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Since the schools were closed on Wednesday 18th March 2020, with this rather optimistic line in the official letter…

Oh, how we laugh now. In a hollow, washed-out, distressed kind of way.

…our kids have been learning from home. School has slowly been getting back to some sort of normality, although the classes are still running on a rotational 1-day-in-1-day-out basis, but there has always been the option to continue schooling from home and we’ve chosen to take it.

However, it has been decided that* one of them should head back to the classroom.

So, after a break of 169 days, one of them is heading back to the classroom tomorrow.

It’s a mix of excitement, nervous anticipation and a flurry of organisation here. She’s been at the school for almost 9 years now, but this will be different to anything she’s experienced there before. That said, the school has been amazing with online lessons, communication and even support with videos and letters about what to expect upon returning, so I have high hopes that she will be just fine.

And so we cross fingers, hold thumbs and pray to the great flappy-eared beagle in the sky that it all goes well.

 

 

* he typed, diplomatically

Day 155 – Multi-talented

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I helped out with a French lesson this morning. And then I fixed a dishwasher. I think we are all going to have to agree that I am clearly rather multi-talented. To be able to skip between past participles in some foreign tongue and removing a foreign object from the pump impeller of a German (but actually Turkish-made) domestic appliance must surely take some sort of weird skill.

An impeller is a rotating component of a centrifugal pump which transfers energy from the motor that drives the pump to the fluid being pumped by accelerating the fluid outwards from the center of rotation. The velocity achieved by the impeller transfers into pressure when the outward movement of the fluid is confined by the pump casing.

Of course it is. Of course it does.

I’ve done French before, albeit a long time ago. But this was my first ever dishwasher fix. It might not seem like a big deal to you (especially if you are actually a dishwasher repair person), but I was quite chuffed with it. And, as a further positive, I’ve saved us a bit of money: no-one has to come and fix the dishwasher anymore and (for the moment, at least) we don’t have to shell out for French tuition.

Le lave-vaisselle est réparé. C’est bien.

Or… something.