My wife Danielle is also an educator so we joke that there are three school districts operating in our house. Yesterday I got up from the dining room table where the Jericho School District is located and went upstairs to the East Williston School District three times and just stood there, forgetting why I made the trip.  

Such is my state of concentration during this unusual time. I’d like to offer some random thoughts:

Without the distraction of a normal daily routine, food, specifically, dinner, has become the center point of our day. We put in place a rule, you can’t start asking “when’s dinner” until after 11 AM. 

Yesterday:

Danielle: “Do you want pork chops?” 

Me: “I don’t know, I’m not that excited about pork chops. Maybe there’s a recipe.”  

Danielle: “I know you just said something but what I heard was, ‘The kids liked the pork chops too much last week, let me look for a way to make them in some fancy way to make sure that they hate them this time.”

Can anybody tell me how we ended up with so many blueberries? We have almost 3 pounds of blueberries but we’re down to four rolls of toilet paper. That’s not helping anybody. We made some killer scones… but still…

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Another movie that is always on cable, Donnie Brasco. What’s so soothing about Johnny Depp doing a bad Brooklyn accent?  I prefer him with the eyepatch.

Sometimes I compare the way I look after Peloton workouts to the way Danielle looks. Hers seem much harder than mine, she’s more out of breath. She says it’s all about the music, “Don, how sweaty do you expect to get doing a half-hour workout to the soulful tunes of James Taylor?” She’s got a point. You got a friend…

I’m noticing that during a Zoom Chat in gallery view, some people are able to remain so still that you’re not sure if it’s really the person or their thumbnail picture; or if their screen froze. Other people look like that scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair’s head turned completely around on her neck. I’ve learned a new trick in meetings. There’s usually at least one person who is constantly glancing down and appears to be doing something with both hands. That’s the person who is taking notes. I side text them and ask to share the Google Doc with me. 

And I’m certain I won’t be the first educator to comment that I hope we can keep the mute function when we return to face to face school. Imagine how handy that feature is going to be period 9 on a day before vacation (Don looks wistfully off into the distance, contemplating period nine in the school building the day before vacation, remember that?)

Enough randomness.  Go wash your hands!