Student Teacher

Captain's bLog: 26 weeks.

Lesson planning is a lot like meal planning.

I should clarify that this is in relation to the "home cook" only; I recognize that my experience with a single, fairly unfussy "diner" is a far cry from more industrial-sized applications. But at the scale of the home cook/teacher, I find there are a lot of parallels:

Specialization. I used to have this friend who managed to singe her eyebrows off every time she lit the barbeque, in memory of which I have assigned all grilling of things to DH. He also likes to roast things, puree things, and do my sous cheffery for me. My specialties include baking, soup wizardry, freezer management, and a savant-level ability to sense the right size of container to use for leftovers. From a homeschooling perspective, ELA, art, French, and basically anything requiring patience or enthusiasm (real or manufactured) fall to me.

Balance. I would happily have pastries/art class for breakfast, burgers/creative writing for lunch and perogies/biology for dinner every single day, buuuuut it's my job to be a responsible grown-up and make sure we get all our nutrients/subjects in, and that everyone's favourites are cycled through.

Leftovers. I'm definitely counting on having leftovers, even as I nag Small Fry to focus on finishing his schoolwork/dinner. Sweet, that'll get us through lunchtime tomorrow!

Enthusiasm. Bursts of utter planning genius. May be accompanied by delusions of viable alternate career paths.

Planning fatigue. Like, I have to do this every day? 

Repetition 1. I wonder how many times I can rework this idea without anyone noticing... 

Repetition 2. They've definitely noticed. I wonder how many times I can rework this idea without absolute mutiny?

Repetition 3. MUTINEERS WILL BE CRUSHED.

Marital conflict. Yes.

Lack of appreciation. Oh, all my care and planning and hard work wasn't to your liking today, Highness? It's not up to your refined tastes or something? Well, feel free to make your own goddamn...

Attitude adjustment. ...Yeah, sometimes the problem is me.

So, yeah. That's about it. When I started writing this I thought I might have something useful to offer the newly (abruptly) homeschooling families I know, but I've been meal planning for fifteen years or so and homeschooling for seven months, and looking at this post it seems all I can tell you for sure is that I cycle through a lot of very comparable mixed feelings about both things. I'd call it a love/hate thing, but it's more like love/fatigue - turns out I really enjoy homeschooling, I'm just a lazy slug who can't be arsed half the time. Or maybe I can only be whole-arsed, half the time...?

Anyway, it's nearly dinnertime here so I'm off to rustle up some nutritional balance after a hard day of fostering Small Fry's educational balance. It feels like a mostly-whole-arse kind of day so I'll throw in some extra veggies as insurance against my lesser self, whenever she turns up.
 

Drums, Drums in the Deep

Captain's bLog: 25 weeks.

About a week ago the government of Canada issued a statement asking - politely - for Canadians abroad to come home due to the Covid pandemic. On the same day, the travelling contingent of our family came down with a bad case of either food poisoning or 'stomach flu' - we have no formal diagnosis so I'm just going to call it IDP, shorthand for intestinal demonic possession, which I hope tells you everything you need to know about our symptoms. We are now seven days into our collective bout of IDP and while the demon ranks seem to have thinned, they have not been driven out entirely.

Oh yes, and Small Fry developed a persistent (probably unrelated to intestinal demons) dry cough around Day 3 of the siege.

So what I'm saying is, we aren't going anywhere anytime soon. We have made what we feel to be the most socially responsible decision possible under the circumstances, and elected to self-quarantine in place in Portugal rather than trying to travel back to Canada. We've rented an absolutely stunning home near the ocean, with a private rooftop terrace and solar-heated pool, a Nintendo classic to help while away the long hours of quarantine, and three beautiful bathrooms so we can all violently expunge our demons simultaneously - no lineups! All for the exclusive pandemic price of €60 per night.

In case you're now worried about our health due to IDP rather than Covid, please note that I really do think we're on the mend. We're off of the rice cakes and chicken broth and back to eating "real" food - which the demons are still battling, mind you, although not quite so vigorously as a few days ago - and while we are still weak and tired, we're feeling cheerier and moving around a bit more. DH even made a joke this morning, which I actually had the energy to laugh at, which nearly caused me to shit my pants, but which I didn't do because I was right beside one of our three, blissfully unoccupied bathrooms at the time - win! (See what I mean? Three people who should definitely not be on an airplane right now.)

Basically, all the pieces are in place for us to have the best quarantine ever. We have the time, we have the means, and we have this sweet, sweet vacation staycation quaran-cation rental to do it all in style. We even have quarantine friends now: our French neighbours the next terrace over! We just met them this morning. Actually only one of them - the husband stuck his head over the terrace wall to say bonjour. (Yes, I realise my standards for declaring friendship have lowered substantially after six months of hardly interacting with other people, but trust me - this time it's for real.) They are also travellers who are self-quarantining in place, and they want to get together sometime, which seems like an endearingly French thing to want to do while in quarantine.

I wonder if it's considered good etiquette to bring your own wine glass to a quarantine date...? This seems like just the type of question the French would know the answer to, so I will be sure to let you all know as soon as we find out.

Be well.

The Traveller's Prayer

Captain's bLog: 24 weeks.

When I was 19 or so, two of my friends went travelling around Europe together. They came back with many stories, but what I remember most vividly is that they joked about experiencing terrible constipation in France "from all the cheese." Despite being a bit of a cheese fiend myself (okay, mostly just cheddar - at least at that point) I had never heard of cheese-induced constipation before, and it seemed pretty bananas to me. Like, just how much cheese does one need to eat to suffer weeks of constipation? What are you even doing with all that cheese?

I've long since lost touch with those gals, but I was thinking of them a lot as we planned our trip. Mostly to the tune of, 'I can't believe I am getting to do this thing that was practically unimaginable to me back then,' but when we got to France the ease with which one might overindulge on cheese truly hit me. I remembered my friends' story, and suddenly everything clicked: cheese is everywhere, and practising moderation while travelling is, like, really hard and sucky. Traveller's cheestipation is basically a foregone conclusion.

Constantly exercising restraint has been one of the hardest things about this trip. We want to immerse ourselves in our temporary homes, and a huge part of that is food! New foods, iconic foods, culturally significant foods, foods you think you already know but then you take one bite of a homemade lasagna in a little Tuscan hilltop town and realise your entire life has been a lie (I swear I heard someone welcome me to the matrix when I bit into that lasagna). All the foods! But several months of travelling is not the same beast as a ten-day jaunt, so we've really had to pace our culinary immersion... and then check our waistbands and pace anew. To be honest we started out doing a pretty shit job of restraining and were swiftly punished by having to buy Small Fry an entirely new wardrobe. (If I could offer one piece of travel advice, it would be to avoid at all costs the need to acquire "husky" kids' clothing in France. I shudder at the memory.)

Our current pacing seems to be working well, though. DH has even had to tighten his belt a notch, which is frankly one of his more irritating habits but I'm trying to let it slide. The only thing is, with all the pandemic madness going on, I'd just like to know all my admirable restraint isn't going to waste, y'know? I feel this particularly keenly in the mornings as I gaze out over the Tagus estuary with my daily pastel de nata and coffee, aka the world's second-most perfect breakfast; the MOST-most perfect breakfast being eating those fuckers 'til I pop. Estuary optional.

So I offer this small prayer each day to the gods of coffee-and-pastry-for-breakfast (if anything deserves its own department it's that, right?):

Dear divine spirits, if I am going to die of the Covid please let me know well in advance so I can eat truly unreasonable quantities of these tarts without having to worry about buying husky ladies' clothing in France.

Amen.

The Best Medicine

Captain's bLog: 23 weeks.

Beneath Small Fry's typically tweenaged exterior lies the heart of a raging hypochondriac. Probably slightly arrhythmic, or at least that's what he would have you believe.

I say this as he weeps on the couch with fear of going to bed and never waking up again, due to secondary drowning. Never mind his distinct lack of primary drowning lately; it's the secondary drowning that he's concerned about. I am tough - oh, so tough - but I burst out laughing when he told me why he was upset, which only added insult to injury and now he probably hopes to secondary-drown on his own tears just to get back at me.

But oh my gawd, this kid. How could I not laugh? It reminds me of when he learned about Terry Fox in Grade One and came down with all manner of toe, foot and leg cancers for months afterward. I don't even know where the secondary drowning came from - maybe he overheard me say something in passing to DH? Normally we're quite careful about mentioning any illness or disease around Small Fry; y'know, after his big cancer scare and all.

Oh yes, he also makes me check his hair for lice all the time. (Honestly, probably not the worst idea, but still.)

As you can surely imagine, he is quite distraught over Covid-19 these days. I was showing him a neat chart about the kinds of pathogens alcohol-based hand sanitizer is effective against (in an attempt to assuage his fears about not always having access to soap and water) when he noticed poliovirus on the chart and I had to interrupt myself with an emergency broadcast: BE ADVISED THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE POLIO. I REPEAT, PLEASE DO NOT WORRY ABOUT POLIO, I WILL DEFINITELY LAUGH AT YOU IF YOU DO. Since the Covid has become A Whole Damn Thing we've talked at length about immune systems, hygiene measures, relative vs. absolute risk, vaccine development, media reporting of science, and so on and so forth. Mostly while I'm checking his hair for lice.

Pro: potential epidemiologist in the family! Con: OCD is more common than epidemiologists.
Pro: the child has never had a cavity. Con: he's very young to be so... weirdly old.
Pro: he lacks the means to stockpile toilet paper (WHY oh why are we stockpiling toilet paper, people?). Con: he probably would if he could.

I guess I'll end this by wishing everyone safety, and sanity, and all the toilet paper your heart (?) desires, in these trying times. May your apples keep the doctors away, and may the odds be ever in your favour.

Travel Memoir

Captain's bLog: 22 weeks.

Please enjoy the following guest post, written by Small Fry as a homeschooling assignment.  

Memoir about my travels

I was always very close to my family. We laughed together, ate together, and did everything together. But now, I'm away from my sister on a trip, and alone with my mom and dad. In four and a bit months of travelling, me, my dad, and my mom have made an even bigger connection.  I feel we got our connection from being forced to be together 24/7 without other family or our friends. We have better communication, and that includes the adults in our house. We no longer fight as much, or snap as much. It is more comfortable to be around each other with all the non-fighting extra-peace going on. I feel we understand each other better and know when we are sad, angry, or uncomfortable. We agreed to do things everyone enjoyed because we recognized when we had left someone's ideas out for too long and realized they were getting upset. For instance, we were going to a lot of museums and churches and not doing things I enjoyed that much like visiting parks. Then mom came up to me and said we should do things I liked more often. We then began doing more park visits and other things I liked.

We began taking better control of our actions to preserve peace. If one of us got mad, we tried to help. We began more snuggles, love, and less conflict. We watch movies together and do not sit far from each other. We spend quality family time together. During the day we are always not far apart and we do lots like seeing sights. When it's later in the day we snuggle up and it’s slow, relaxed, and peaceful. It’s then we are close and comfortable. We spend our time together best in the evening.

I like knowing there is love between us. We were going to the Salvidor Dali museum and instead of whining and complaining, I tried to get something good out of it, something I enjoyed. I got, in return for trying to find something good in the art, impressive abstract art which was interesting. He had an interesting take on art.

This will change me forever. It will make me aware of the way I act. I feel it will help me know when to help my family. I want to be careful of what I do or say from now on. When we get home, I hope to make the connection with my sister. I also hope to retain that connection with my family forever.