The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie

I returned to work today after missing 3 days between last week and yesterday. On Tuesday, Odie was unceremoniously sent home from work with a fever. We all know what that means in these plague times. As sure as the day follows the night, a Covid test turned positive.

I caught Covid in late May during the Omicron surge. I spent 2 weeks sweating and aching in my dad’s spare room, and my husband and children never caught it. This time, both of my daughters caught it from their dad — Pringles on 10/13 and Viva on 10/15. We tried to mask and isolate from each other, but in our 1,025 square foot house that rents for a million dollars a month (or feels like it here in SoCal), there isn’t any realistic way to “isolate.” Me on the couch, Viva on the other couch, Pringles in her room, Odie in our room. Yet every other day, like clockwork, a positive test.

Except me. I guess my numerous boosters and recent infection protected me. Or just dumb luck. There’s really no way to know. For once, my grizzled, “Ach, everybody leave me alone!” paid off in a tangible way.

Returning to work after having a substitute is its own special kind of Hell. There’s the feigned innocence of the slackers: “Oh! I didn’t realize I was supposed to DO that detailed assignment you left. Can I turn it in tomorrow?” There’s also the brazen indifference of the insolent: “Yeah, I didn’t do it,” as well as the mendacity of the malcontents “The sub didn’t give me the assignment.”

That’s enough purple prose for one post.

I’m going to bitch for a moment. My union negotiated 10 days of Covid sick leave, but it doesn’t reset for the new school year. I had to take several days off to care for my kids and my husband while they were all in the first few miserable days of sniffling, coughing, and sweating, but I only got the 3 paid days that I didn’t take last year when I myself was sick. That’s some bullshit. I believe that as a public high school teacher, I should be afforded so much more consideration and compensation than I get. Yes, there are some crappy teachers out there (I know a few), but I’m not one of them. I’ve been in this business for 23 years, and it’s in a steep decline right now. Too many of my colleagues have stopped doing their best. Why pour in extra hours and extra effort when no amount of extra work earns us extra money? I fondly remember the early days of the pandemic when John Krazinski quipped on “Some Good News” that teachers should make a million dollars a year. I also remember a few months later when we were demonized for not wanting schools to reopen before a vaccine was available with no safety measures in place, followed closely by accusations that we were all pedophile groomers.

I was a star during distance learning. I pulled out my wigs and hats and costumes to make my lessons fun (I wore a Puritan cap for my entire unit on The Crucible). I offered grace and extensions to students suffering tech issues, anxiety attacks, and sick family members. In many ways, I bonded closer to those black Zoom boxes than I ever had to students before. We were trauma bonded. I took my computer out to my garden and showed them my tomatoes, peppers, and a hummingbird nest. They loved my impromptu lesson on vermicompost and squealed with disgusted delight as I showed them a handful of compost wriggling with worms.

I’m used to being called a “lazy” “Part-time” worker. However, trying to indoctrinate students to be communists is a full-time job that takes lots of energy. Something the screaming jerks at our school board meetings will never understand.

I kid.

I had a post in the works about something else, but then life in the form of an infectious disease came crashing down on my (rented) house, so this is the post that pushed its way to the forefront. Just when my analyst is on vacation in Spain, damn it.

Odie is feeling well enough to care for the kids, and when I got home today from a hard day of work, my tween and teen greeted me with a sour and hearty, “Oh, man! Now we have to wear masks!” Welcome home, indeed.

In Bossypants, Tina Fey writes that after she turned 40, she had to take her pants off as soon as she got home from work, but before 40, she didn’t have to do that. It’s a fun anecdote that represents her humor well.

And it’s so true! I’m older than 40, by a decade, but I relate to this absolutely. I can’t get out of my work slacks and into my cozy yoga pants fast enough. I never do yoga, but what’s your point? Add to it the four Advil I have to take for my aching back, and the Starburst Reds I have to eat just to keep my energy up until dinner time, and I feel fully middle aged.

Our division of labor in the Odie household is simple: As “Mom,” I do the typical mom stuff. The kids’ social calendars, doctor and dentist appointments, and clothes shopping. The last one is my personal albatross. I hate shopping and have never been into fashion. But I do know what sizes girls and young women wear, and hubby wouldn’t have a clue. He probably thinks I’m a size 8, God bless him.

I manage the clothes, he washes them. We share the folding with the kids. I meal plan and cook dinner, he grocery shops and washes dishes. He drives the kids to school, I pick them up. I have therapy on Mondays, he has it on Tuesdays. The cats make sure we both feed them. He kills the ants that invade the house, I track them down outside and set traps. During distance learning, I grew a vegetable garden, but it’s been too hot and dry this summer to try to grow anything.

I joke with my students at the end of the day that I have to get home to my OTHER full-time job. But it isn’t really a joke. I think that parenting gets easier once the kids are in the lower elementary school grades, then gets harder again when they’re in middle school. Babies and toddlers need constant supervision and care, but they get independent around second grade: dress themselves, brush their teeth, bathe, put themselves to bed. Middle school comes along and suddenly they need showers far more often and they seem to be the only ones who can’t smell the adolescence. So I’m back to harassing them into the shower, even though I no longer have to wash hair or wipe butts.

And the second I get home, I take off my pants.