Jan 3, 2020, 6:14 AM
Best wishes. I don’t often reveal that I pray, but I will always pray for puppers.
RL Sads
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Best wishes. I don’t often reveal that I pray, but I will always pray for puppers.
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@nyctophiliac I am so sorry xxx
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Thank you everyone.
This morning I had to take her to have her put to sleep. She wasn't interested in food or water and the tumor was worse. I'll spare details but... I was there with her til the end. She would have been there for me.
I'm going to take a little internet break for a few days.
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
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@nyctophiliac I am so so sorry for your loss. We had that with our bitch a couple of years ago and it broke my heart. They may be furry but they are family... xx
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Alright, thread necromancy.
This morning I was able to go in and grab "essentials" from my classroom. I had heard they were packing up stuff, but I wasn't prepared for what I walked into. They are literally ripping it apart and packing it up to be able to deep clean. (Imagine how you would feel if someone came into your house and moved everything you own, that is how hard seeing my classroom torn apart felt.) There were bits and pieces of student work littering the floor. My books were stacked willy nilly. I take two + weeks of unpaid time yearly to set up my room every year, and seeing it destroyed made me realize that... we weren't going back. This face to face year was over. Even if we did end up back and may for the final weeks it wouldn't be instruction time, it would be an attempt to heal time.
Then a few hours later I got the phone call I knew was coming but... hoped wouldn't. Schools are closed for the rest of the academic year. We will continue to teach using distance methods but for the most part this year is just... done.
And I'm not ready to be done. I've been closer to this class than any I have taught in my ten years. (Actually, this year is my ten year mark.) They are weird quirky kids full of problems. I have a bunch of kids who came to me lacking social skills, and who had very negative experiences with school. Somehow the way I run my classroom clicked with them though, and they have been happy. Their academic growth is THROUGH THE ROOF. More than anything though, they have friends.
And all of that is done now. I can't hug them any more. When they get frustrated with work I can't immediately be there to catch them and reassure them. For some this will be fine. They have AMAZING parents who are able to be there. For others though, they are with an aunt, or being bounced between families. The only stable place they had - school - is GONE. The hug they knew they could get daily from me is GONE.
So I'm sad. I'm beyond sad. I feel like my heart has been ripped to pieces, and there isn't anything to fix it.
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Upvote. Not because I like your sad, but because it's the only way to virtual hug.
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I'm going to be making a difficult decision in regard to my gray muzzle pup soon. I hate that.
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@moth I can't upvote this, but I feel for you.
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@moth I understand. I had to do this about a
month ago. It sucks, and I am sorry. -
@moth This is so hard. I'm so sorry. I keep using the elf analogue to help me with my dog family losses.
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Today is the last day of online learning.
Usually the last day of school follows a pretty predictable format. We have about 1.5 hours in the morning. We watch a movie (Magic School Bus or such), then at 10:00 we have an awards ceremony were lots of kids get some kind of recognition. Then parents mob us to check their kids out early and take them home. There are lots of hugs and goodbyes. There are drawings given out, and yearbooks to sign. At least one kid has a sharpe and runs around getting people to sign their shirt after assuring me their parent said it was okay (followed by the inevitable appearance of a parent asking "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!)
We go out for a loonnnggg recess (45 minutes) with the last 5-7 kids still lingering in each class. We play tag, 4-square, basketball. Then it is lunch. There aren't enough kids to justify eating in the lunch room, so we grab the food and go back to the classroom. A silly movie gets played (I am a big fan of Pixar shorts) and they ignore it as they eat and talk.
I get to work tearing apart my classroom. We have to pack everything up and get it ready for moving because we don't have any permanent shelving so it all has to get moved for carpet cleaning. My mode is to throw everything in a huge pile in the middle of the room. The kids are done eating so they help me pick through the pile and organize it into boxes. They do a lot of, "Can I have this?" To which I usually shrug and say sure, except to my plastic sword they all want but I keep for dress up days. A bunch of odds and ends end up in their backpacks. In the middle of this there is always someone who pokes their head in with left over ice cream or popsicles from a party, and we break to snack.
Slowly the last few trickle out till we only have maybe 3-4 kids in the entire building. We send them to call parents and get an ETA. Often we set them free in the hallways to help whatever teacher needs it, as long as they tell us where they are going. Our art teacher always manages to convince a few that staying is the BEST THING EVER and so we make her come over and admit all we are doing is cleaning. At least one kid is just hanging out because school is their safe spot and they don't want to go home and know that is where they will be for the next two months.
It is always a sweet day with a touch of bitterness. There is so much hope for the next year though.
This year is so different. The sweetness isn't there, just the bitterness and it feels so hopeless because no one knows if we WILL see one another again next year. I'm doing a lot of crying, and so are my kids.
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Had to take my cat to the emergency vet today. Ruptured anal gland. Hopefully a one time thing and not cancerous.
I know these things happen. I know the vet will take care of her. I thankfully can afford it (provided things don't worsen).
But oh god I've been sick with worry because she's my baby.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@Auspice I've had two (might be three) that have had this happen, one as recently as a few months ago. They heal really, really well and are usually okay after a shot of antibiotics. You'll just have to keep bringing kitty in to get them checked so that it doesn't happen again. One cat, we caught it early and had it handled surgically. Second time (same cat) it ruptured on its own. Cats are very good at not letting you know what's happening with them, so it's easy to miss when it happens.
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@silverfox I honestly don't think teachers got nearly as much credit as they deserved. I know so many teachers that genuinely cared for their students and did everything they could . My son's teachers were and have been absolutely amazing with us. They've kept in contact the best way they could. So to you, thank you so so much for everything you done! I certainly hope everything is better for you next year!
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To The Man with the Crooked Smile
The man with the Pearlescent smile strides gracefully over shiny floors that smell like chemicals. Standing out among those in scrubs and faded old threads, he is adorned in a finely tailored suit. He smiles, his pearlescent smile as shiny and sterilized as the floors, the big man. He is a treasure here and he knows it. Nurses blush, elderly in wheelchairs perk up under the glow of his attention and even busy overworked doctors stop to say hello. He makes his way past a withered small woman in a wheelchair asking for help, speeding up. He makes his way past a confused elderly man asking for his mom, waving him away. He makes his way past the woman with down syndrome, trying to show him her new stuffed rabbit, shushing her. He escapes to his large office with the big windows and then his smile fades as he drops down into his comfy desk chair, newly ordered and more expensive than the many wheelchairs in this gloomy haven. He calls his mom, to tell her how things went on his first day as the new director, a job his uncle got him. He whines about the smell and she assures him, you will only have to be on site for a little while before working at corporate headquarters and never having to see a patient again.
The man with the crooked smile makes his way over the shiny floors, loud in his old big boots, adorned in a pair of old blue scrubs, a slight limp to his step, a heaviness. He is not a nurse though. He never finished high school. He has a troubled past. As a kid there was never money to fix his teeth and it never came as an adult. He got a job as a server, at this place of despair and of death, haven of the abandoned, hideaway for the untouchables, because it was a job he could get. He never intended to be a caregiver, but he became one. He smiles his crooked smile to the nurses who smile warmly back, warm because he sometimes helps them. No blushes though, no those are for the pearlescent. He smiles and stops to help the elderly woman in her wheelchair. He stops to guide the confused man looking for his mom to breakfast and talks him down from fear. He stops to admire the stuffed rabbit that is shown to him. He goes into the dinning room and gets busy, bustling all day to try and do enough to make a small difference, even if only for today and for this moment. He doesn’t have time to think much or whine. He is used to the smell. He knows he will never move on from this place and he never did.
The man with the pearlescent smile, gathers everyone up to hold a meeting. We need to save money, he says and smiles and smiles until his face seems about to crystallize into something non living. It is a smile of pain. Yes, even he can feel pain. No nurses are blushing now, all their heat toward him iced into hard stares or surrendered into resigned bitter sighs. Use less gloves. We are deducting breaks from your checks even if you don’t have time to take them. Spend less money on food for the patients. We are cutting staff on the floor. No staying over no matter what is happening. He says and smiles and smiles and smiles. He speaks of good. He speaks of ideals. He praises us all for caring. He says we need to use less food, less masks, less medications. But you care and god is with you. Less wound supplies. We are doing good, good, good.
As he listens there is no longer a man with a crooked smile, not right now, not in this moment, only a man with crooked teeth and sad plain brown eyes. I thought he was handsome when he smiled, crooked teeth and all. Do the nurses sometimes now blush when he walks by and smiles his crooked smile?
I follow the gleam into his office. He just sat down to his gluten free, paleo, grass feed, dairy free meal, perched in his plush seat, looking very handsome in his tailored suit, a picture of his beautiful wife and son, the small boy already smiling a false pearlescent smile, upon his desk. I ask him, how can we use less gloves we already don’t have enough? What food is there extra to cut back on? He stabs his organic sweet potato smothered in coconut oil with a fork and says. “Figure it out sweetie, you can and you will, I know you are smart.” I look down at the budget cut paperwork on his desk and think about the bonus he is getting, paid for taking sliced bananas from the elderly and the sick. He takes a bite, a big greedy bite.
And the man with the crooked smile, gets his smile back despite it all. He brings in peaches from mom’s garden. He goes to Good Will to bargain for bags of clothing to bring back to those without. He shows up, day after day, still admiring rabbits, still smiling his crooked smile and still guiding whenever he can. His is a persistent joy and I used to think a naive joy. I don’t think that anymore. Isn’t he mad? Isn’t he mad he doesn’t make more than minimum wage? Isn’t he mad that those we care for don’t have more and he smiles and smiles, his sincere and gentle smile. He doesn’t seem mad.
When Covid hits, it comes to them, cut back on gloves, or course it comes to them. It comes to others like them, there are many like them. I have left long before Covid, moving as many girls like me do, overwhelmed with sorrow, with despair, lured by better options, we never stay. But the man with the crooked smile remains.
In another state, they send out a gleamer who smiles his pearlescent smile at the camera, going this is unprecedented. He looks nervous. Are the pearlescents frightened? Paramedics on the news express shock at how few staff there were and now limited the supplies. And a pearlescent boy, much like the pearlescent boy I know, keeps saying unprecedented. But I was there and late at night when nobody can see is a good time to save money, smile, smile that pearlescent smile, a face that becomes marble doesn’t break, a soul vanishes.
The man with the crooked smile goes to work. He is not young. He is not healthy. He smiles his crooked smile to those more isolated than ever. He shows no fear so that others will not fear. The health aids are there. The dishwashers are there. The housekeepers are here. The cooks are there. The servers are there. The nurses are there. The man with the pearlescent smile is gone. The man with the crooked smile was there. The man with the crooked smile is now gone
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I lost my mom right before COVID and have been stuck living in her home, because I was fired from my job when I took time off to care for her. Fortunate, really, or I'd be unemployed in NYC.
We sold her house. I'm living in her sold house now. We have to sell all her stuff next week.
Last week, my brother asked me to take her coffee maker to the storage unit he's rented, but please make sure to rinse it out with vinegar first. He took her car home with him when he left. He wanted to put her ashes into storage, but I begged him and now I can carry her ashes with me when I go live in the camper that I'm borrowing until I can find my footing again. It's not his fault. He's fighting his own battles, and he's doing the best he can. He feels guilty that he hasn't done more.
Yesterday, a cohort of sweet old women that I hired came to her house and started bagging up all the things that can't be sold. I had to run out of the house before I hyperventilated. I've only had panic attacks, before now, while working for the job that fired me last December.
I'm not mad at anyone. I'm just really really sad. In a few weeks, I'll be somewhere else doing better things, but for now it's just one continual stream of sad. I rely too heavily on the woman I'm involved with and the friends I game with, and I try my hardest to not make my grief their burdens, but I don't always succeed and I feel really guilty about that.
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@Janarc
It's been such a rough go. I'm so sorry about your mom and everything else. Hang in there, it sounds like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Hugs! -
@SuperiorHuron You're very kind. Thank you.
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That was a lot to read but I'm glad I did.
I'm sorry that you lost a friend and coworker during all this, and I hope these places will find a way to make their budgets work for their patients and not themselves.
Thank you for sharing.
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Before the lockdown started, my grandmother (who lived in Great Neck - not technically one of the NYC Boroughs, but dealing with all that shit) was going through... uh... one form of chemotherapy or another. Everything closing definitely wasn't helpful to her health - she had phone conference calls with doctors, but no way to have scans or bloodwork or anything. The slow re-opening happening, last friday, she went to see her doctor for the first time in two months. And he immediately sent her to the emergency room.
Clots in her legs, some other stuff... most of it was taken care of. Except for that whole 'your breast cancer is now stage 4' bit. They sent her to a rehab hospital yesterday... ish. The 29th? With plans to go to a nursing home when she recovered enough to do so.
Except she didn't recover enough. I literally just got off the phone with my siblings and parents, and no one knows what's going to happen. Catholics have pretty strict timelines for funerals, but fuck knows when travel bans will be lifted, or when gatherings will be allowed, or how long it will take to get through any possible other backlog that's happened.
Fuck Covid. Fuck Cancer.