Day 17 - LA County Dept. of Public Health mandates indoor masking and OUTDOOR masking at large events

First day of class for my highschoolers…they still don’t have access to Canvas.

9/1/21. Wednesday

6:00- Today is L.’s long day at Otis. She left at 6:00 a.m.

7:30 – 8:00 - I’m up.  It’s the first day of school for my high school class.  As I’ve said in previous posts, they still don’t have access to Canvas so course content has to be delivered via email which is very cumbersome and time consuming.

I go downstairs and the dog is in the middle of vomiting and there is already vomit on the couch. I’m not sympathetic and scream at her to go outside, but she vomits in two more places on the floor. I hate vomit worse than dog s—t.  I clean up everything and we go outside so she can go potty. Return inside and gross pieces of turkey burger for her; coffee for me. This is how my morning starts.

8:00 – 10:00 – I email the Discussion Board prompt to the students and their email responses start pouring in since this is how I take attendance. If this were Canvas, they would simply post to the Discussion Board and I wouldn’t bother responding because their post serves as a record of the time they logged in, which is reassuring to most students.  Unfortunately, there is ALWAYS a 2-week lag time at College No. 2 for the Dual Enrollment program and the highschoolers NEVER have access to Canvas or the Discussion Board the first week of school. It’s the same issue EVERY semester and nobody bothers to fix it.

As a result, I respond to every student, individually, via email, for a total of 25 students.  It’s a complete waste of my time.

At 8:45, I email everyone the AUDIO Syllabus and the Syllabus word doc, while I’m in the midst of still responding to their emails. Two of the students can’t open the AUDIO Syllabus, but that’s fine…just read it.

9:30-10:00- I email AUDIO lecture – Chapter 1 to the students and continue responding to their emails. The last 10 minutes of class, I email them the link to the 10-minute video that I want them to watch.

10:00-11:00 – Class is over.  I update Attendance, based on the emails I received, then email those students who didn’t respond this morning, informing them that they will be marked absent for the first day of school.  A female student responds immediately, saying she was present the entire time and that I can ask Mrs. B. if I don’t believe her because Mrs. B. was there, too.

It is then that I realize that the students are together, sitting in a high school classroom, while they report to MY class…and there’s an Administrator circulating the entire time. I. don’t. like. this.  To put it in context, what if, every work day, when you’re busy working at your cubicle, your supervisor stands behind you, monitoring you, for a 2-hour block of time?  Would you like that?  I doubt it.

I liked it better when the students were taking my class at home.

11:00-12:00 – I switch to my Asynchronous class at College No. 2, take Attendance, then email the students who failed to sign in on Sunday’s Discussion Board, informing them that they will be dropped from the class if I don’t hear from them within 24 hours. Apology emails start coming in immediately and I continue to update the Attendance. I’ll check the Discussion Board for this class later.

12:00-1:00 – I dust and sweep downstairs.

1:00 – 2:00- I have two of the gourmet cinnamon-iced cookies from the bag L. purchased for me and read Work Won’t Love You Back.

2:00 – 2:30 – I get dressed in my Covid-19 uniform, wash my face, brush my teeth, and put in my contacts. I listen to The Daily.

2:30-3:30 – I drive to Trident Auto and ask them to void the check and re-issue it to me [recall that’s it’s made out to Enterprise] since I already paid Enterprise. They agree, BUT they make me wait for it – I sit in the lobby for 20 minutes.  One of the mechanics asks politely, “Is L. working today?” When I say she’s at college, he responds, “Oh yes…that’s right.”

L. and I are here so often we’re actually on a first-name basis with these people.

3:30 -4:15 – I deposit the check and drive to Recycling so I can drop off my plastics. While en route, I use my new Iphone to call Waste Management and schedule a pickup for L.’s TV.  I’m actually able to make the phone call! I’m not forced to find a parking lot with a signal.  Technology!

4:15 – 5:00 – I’m close to a Goodwill so I pop in to see if they’re taking “Hard” goods and they are. After weeks of trying, I’m finally able to drop off the books. that sit perpetually in my trunk. It’s a miracle! I listen to Dr. Death - Season 3 - Miracle Man.

5:00-6:15 – I drive home and take the dog for a walk. I listen to Organize 365.

6:15-7:00 – I eat a piece of lasagna that I made and froze several months ago. It still holds up. I read a Money Diary.

7:00-10:00 – I’m a little behind on my personal accounting so I take the next three hours to log my receipts for July and August and then post the totals for my monthly expenditure categories to my spreadsheet. I’m still a behind on the Category Totals, but I make significant progress. I listen to True Crime Garage.

I spend 30 to 40 minutes of this time trying to log on to L.’s college account to request a disbursement check. so she can make a tuition payment. Since I’m trying to log on to the Vanguard website from my new computer, the software on the Vanguard account doesn’t recognize me. They send a text with a secret code to my old cell phone, that I’m supposed to post to my Vanguard account.  The problem is the text with the secret code lasts for a mere 5 minutes, but it doesn’t hit my old, janky phone for 20 minutes. I keep asking for a new text until I’m finally locked out.  Frustrating. I have to call them tomorrow. Great.

In the midst of all this, L. returns home and we talk about her day. For the next 16 weeks, she will be at Otis from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m every Wednesday. This means L. needs to leave around 6:00 a.m. to get there on time – Otis is right next to LAX and traffic is bad.

On Wednesdays, L’s morning class is photography and runs from 8:00-3:00, with a 1-hour break for lunch. By photography, I mean “real” photography. L. must buy a 35mm camera and she will begin developing her own pictures in the Otis darkroom, under the supervision of the darkroom manager AND her teacher – who is cool and “hot” and knows his craft. L. has never dabbled in photography before, but she’s excited about it.  Most of today’s class involved going over the camera components and the stations within a darkroom.

L.’s Wednesday afternoon class is called Sophomore Seminar and mandatory, per the Otis curriculum. This class runs from 3:30-6:30 and discusses theology, philosophy, and…other things??? This is not a hands-on, tactile class, by any means, and sounds boring. F., the hot student from Monday, is also in this class and L. was able to talk to him at break and he also walked L. to her car again when class was over. Unfortunately, there’s also a creepy guy in the class who, oddly, doesn’t blink, talks to L. every chance he gets, and stares at her from across the room.

At any given time, L. is equipped with a variety of weapons: pepper spray, a small pocket knife, and a box cutter [which every artist needs, but L. only carries for defense], but still…the non-blinker guy sounds weird.

-After L.’s second class, she drove to Venice to meet her cousin, K., at an Asian infusion restaurant, where she presented him with two vinyls for his birthday.  Although it’s Venice, L. said she felt safe because K. is Black, tall, and he walked L. to her car. They had a nice time and L. brought back leftovers.

10:00-10:30 – L. wants to cover one of the garage walls in fake ivy and the swatch that I ordered came today.  I arranged it on the garage floor so I could show it to L. when she got home from college. We go out to the garage and L. approves so I’ll order the rest of the ivy cover and install it once it arrives.

11:00-12:00 – I finish logging my personal receipts for July and August. Then, I check my accounts. I listen to What Next.

12:30-1:00 – I read a Money Diary; when I’m done

1:00-2:00 – I do a 15-minute Kathy Smith Abs workout and the first 30 minutes of Insanity – Recovery.

2:00-4:30 – I start reading Testament and accidentally fall asleep. I hate when I do that!

4:30-5:30 – I go downstairs to take the dog out since I didn’t earlier because I fell asleep around 2:00 a.m., then decide to tidy the kitchen while I’m downstairs.

5:30-6:30 – Nighttime routine. Bed.