A Day In The Life Of An Author Helping Her Children Through Virtual Schooling

To all my readers who are assisting your children or the children of others through virtual school, you have my condolences. I'm learning how to navigate the several painstaking apps used for my children's' educations. Juggling my writing with my kids' studies and homework is proving to be challenging, but I assure you, I'm deep into writing book three. But for humor relief, I decided to give you a glimpse into how Virtual schooling has been going.

Captains log: Week 2 of virtual homeschooling.

Started the week with Reid jumping off the couch and hitting his head. (Kid is the most accident child known to mankind). A trip to the ER and CT scan later, we were sent home. Monitored for a concussion for the next 24 hours.

Tuesday during school, Reid was having a meltdown by the end of lessons—his head was hurting him from staring at the monitor. Went into total meltdown when he was done with classes but his brother, Eddie, was not. Didn’t calm down ‘till he passed out for a much-needed nap. (Thank God!) Eddie spent a good hour trying to make sense of the stupid BlackBoard app before begging me for help. After some creative cursing on my part in front of all my kids, I figured it out. But we got it done.

Wednesday during Reid’s virtual lessons, the teacher asked kids to turn off their cameras so they could learn how to navigate that feature on their iPads. One child proceeded to make farting noises for a solid five minutes. The teacher couldn’t figure out who it was since all the cameras were off. I nearly peed myself laughing about it while Reid looked on in horror. “Mom, they can’t do that!” Well, they did, and if was flippin’ hilarious.

Meanwhile, Eddie decided to dump his glitter tube in water and then spill it all over his bedroom while lessons were going on. He desperately tried to clean it up with my nice bathroom towels (sigh) before realizing it was hopeless and to come find me. I walk in and it was like a damn glitter snow globe in there. Sent him out of the room to do his lessons in my room while I spent the next hour trying to clean up wet, sticky glitter. I walked out of there looking like I got into a fight with a stripper—I had glitter embedded everywhere. And when I mean everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.

Billy was also packing up all his stuff for college. Since I couldn’t help because of virtual school, my parents came to load up everything in two cars. Doors were open letting all the cold air in so I overheard my parents bickering about the proper way to pack a vehicle—my poor dad. According to mom, he’s ‘the world's worst packer.’ Bawled my eyes out saying goodbye to my son heading out for his Junior year at Lawrence University.

Thursday...Reid had a project involving scissors and glue-sticks...need I say more. I was busy listening to his teacher explain how to navigate another new learning app, but her camera wasn’t working so it was like taking notes from a podcast—my attention was elsewhere. Since Reid finished his art project early, he proceeded to create confetti! And then glue it to my dining room table with the blasted glue-stick. You guys, he was sitting right next to me—how the hell did I not see what he was doing?! Eddie’s BlackBoard app wasn’t working—again! (I hate you BlackBoard!) Had to tangle with that beast until we were able to make it work. Asked Eddie if he was done with all his work a million times and every time I asked, oh, would you look at that, there was something he missed because things are spread across too many apps!

Tomorrow is Friday...I’m scared. Send bourbon.