Dick's Dank Yank Wank Tank

My wife and I have a Starry Night design on our nuptial bands.

 

Factual take on realities stupidity.......is my stab at it.

 

You were only supposed to look at it for 30 seconds.

 

Dude

 

I resemble that.

 

Spoiler: Daddy facebook babbling TL;DR + too sappy.

Very surreal morning. Son started in-class kindergarten today after we've been remote teaching him for 3 weeks. While we both work from home. After about 2 months shut indoors almost continually with smoke, ash, and unhealthy air quality during weeks of ~100 temps. The HVAC system was beyond its design life when we moved in about a year ago, but it checked out within parameters during inspection. The water heater is in similar condition. I figured if they were going to shit the bed, the Fates of 2020 would have chosen that window of time. At times would run just the circulation fan to give the compressor a rest. One day I went to switch it on an nothing happened. My blood went cold. Not the thermostat, not the breakers. After digging around the maze of insulated ducts concealing the line in to the blower unit, I finally found a screw-in 15A fuse that was virtually seized in it socket. Luckily, that was it. Dodged a big fat bullet.

He's been home with us since early March when his preschool shut down. We had arranged partial-day coverage with a couple of sitters for most of that time, and attempted to secure 7 or 8 nannies (I lost count). About the third was an awesome fit, and had been with Ben for a familiarization visit before starting full time. The next morning, her college announced cancellation of in-class instruction. Short version, she had to bail from her shared apartment and return to her home, about 45 minutes away. Close but no cigar. DOA. After that, a parade of flakes and no-shows. And frankly, tons of wasted effort and time attempting to manage same with shifting sitter schedules and crazy work schedules.

Since March, he has matured amazingly, turned 5 in August, his manners came back, he generally does as he's told without much fuss or delay. He helps us whenever we ask him to. But it was a tough adjustment to remote teach, and he started saying "school is the worst thing ever." He did not want to engage and participate on the zoom calls (which were barely managed chaos). So, I pulled out the reward card, in the form of an extra one of my 45 year old diecast cars. I had been giving him one a week each Monday to prime the pump for zoom calls. When I offered an extra one, my favorite antigue matchbox, if he started participating, his hand shot up in the air to have a turn participating for every single activity on the zoom call. It was magic. It broke the code, and he was in it from that point on.

The bait:



The bite:




Then the county finally granted his school the waiver needed for in-class instruction, which filled us with relief and terror simultaneously. We finally managed to bring him around a bit with lots of socializing, and lots of new school supplies that we involved him in choosing. One kid in his class was a friend from preschool, so we managed to hook them up at a park picnic so they could do some bonding and he would at least have one known friend in this strange new place; our son had never seen or set foot in this school! We managed to get a private tour with the principal last week, when she was at her busiest ramping up everything for in-class instruction. At first he was shy of course, but when he saw his desk with his name on it, and saw Lego in the classroom, he started smiling. We went over to the veggie garden, and there were lots of lizards to find and chase. As we were about to leave, he asked me to have a running race with him. I declined, but the principal, in work clothes, immediately said "I'll race you!" and they both took off sprinting across the quad. Amazing.

Mom has been nervous as hell about this. Worry worry worry worry. But its 2020, right? Legit. Who the fuck knows what the fuck is ever going to happen every damn day.

We both took him to drop off today after doing the online health screening from home and taking his temperature.

I played our traditional routine morning song from when I drove him to preschool before the pandemic. He had actually been learning the lyrics back then. BTW, this are the only Russians I listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kQ1llzPiB4

We arrived, he was excited to get out, and the principal greeting him wearing a rainbow robot mask to take his temp.



Mom as we drove away: I'm going to cry, holding back tears [relief, fear, joy disbelief....]

Me: Maybe we'll all get through this OK.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rmOg4_8wD0

 

If he doesn't come home in tears, I think we are pulling this out tonight.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8de2W3rtZsA

 

And this may be the perfect 2020 gif

 

Ludes have a similar effect.