witchkitten

I think they copped a plea now because they know they probably won’t do any time due to COVID-19.

@fykeylicious So your family turned out to be positive? I’m glad you have all recovered. I would have loved quarantine if I didn’t have kids but I’ve found it to be one of the most challenging experiences of my life because of them. I was not cut out to be a teacher (remind me why teachers don’t make a million dollars a year) and while I love my children dearly I need space for my own sanity. I wish I were wealthy enough to have the income and space to have a live in nanny. I’m dreading the summer and I’m so anxious about the district possibly not reopening schools in the fall. I’d rather they open the schools and then have temporary closures throughout the year as needed when there are surges with plans for distance learning during those times. It would be better than just staying home the entire year.

I loved Xena Warrior Princess back in the day. I have very fond memories of watching it. I hate all sports. I'm weird like that. But I would love to see the Michael Jordan documentary because I do like a lot of documentaries. The OJ Simpson one ESPN did was one of the best documentaries I've seem. I'll have to wait until it comes to a streaming service because we cut the cord and no longer have to pay for ESPN as part of our cable package.

Our main issue (among many) when it comes to choosing our president is the stupid electoral college system, which disenfranchises more people than all the voter suppression tactics combined. Seriously, there is no such thing as the “popular vote” anywhere else. It’s just called the vote. The electoral college system was created to protect slave states, who had the biggest populations and the most wealth at the time but had very small voting populations since they didn’t allow slaves to vote. They awarded electoral college delegates based on the total population (including slaves though they were only counted as 3/5ths of a human being) but then only allowed the non-slave population to vote. Now it weighs the votes of people from less populated states much higher than more populated larger states. It’s even worse now but in the mid aughts a person in Wisconsin’s vote was worth 33 times as much as a person from California. Since the more populated states are more diverse it overall weighs white votes more than votes from people of color so even if every person of color had the same opportunity to vote as white people in all states their vote would still be worth less as a group. Also, the winner take all allocation means that states where the margin between the winner and loser are smaller become more important than the more ideologically homogenous states. It just seems blatantly obvious that everyone should be worth the same but here you are worth more or less depending on where you live. Trump didn’t really win. Neither did Bush Jr. in 2000 even without the cheating that went on in Florida. What we have in the U.S. is minority rule and until something drastic happens that’s how it’s going to be and it sucks.

They have to ignore Trump because he says it's the state's decision when people question why he waited so long to recommend shutting down the economy, and he says the states are on their own when they question why he is not doing more to treat the people who already have coronavirus and stop it from spreading to those that don't. Then when the states do start making their own decisions because of his lack of action and direction, he says the decision is up to him. He's an incompetent buffoon.

That cannot happen here. Seriously, my kids need to go to school in the late summer or fall or I will need to be institutionalized. On a more serious note, I also worry about the rates of child abuse during this time, and all the kids who are being abused already who no longer have people outside the family with eyes on them. The number of children abused is probably going to go up while the number of reports will probably go down. I’m a former social worker so I can’t help but worry about these things.

I'm glad you're feeling better and I'm glad they're testing him. I would have killed for a test when my two kids and I were sick. The lack of testing is one of our biggest issues in getting a handle on this thing. Please keep us updated.

😂

Hoya, that sounds heavenly. I have never been more envious of people who don’t have kids or whose kids are adults. I’m at least lucky I don’t have an infant anymore. I had to formula feed and I couldn’t imagine having to worry about being able to feed my baby because people are panic buying formula causing artificial shortages. Also, at 3 and 5 my girls will play together for some period of time without trying to murder each other whereas they couldn’t play together at all when they were younger. Fykie, we do have ABC Mouse. My older daughter loves it but it was quite buggy the last time we tried using it. I think the servers were overloaded because of all the new users. I’m running a very play based homeschool. I feel guilty about the lack of academics but I try to remind myself that nearly all the research says school should be play based until second grade and in Scandinavian countries schools are play based until second grade and they score way ahead of American children on most academic measures and their children are emotionally better off. That’s what I tell myself anyways.

Oh no. I hope you feel better soon. I hate distance learning. I have a three and five year old. My three year old’s preschool is trying to do Zoom lessons and thus far they have been a total disaster. She whines and cries the entire time. My older daughter sometimes does her work and other times she fights me. I could totally do this social distancing with no issue without kids. There were a couple years there where I didn’t have school, a job, or kids where I voluntarily sheltered in place with no pandemic. But shut in my very small house with two kids while trying to do distance learning is my worst nightmare. I love my kids, I really do, but I have never wanted to homeschool them or be a teacher for young kids, my own included. When people talk about social distancing like this for 12 to 18 months I burst into tears, sometimes quite literally. If they don’t start school in the late summer/fall I don’t know what I’ll do. They sure aren’t going to be at grade level when they go back and I’ll have to be committed to a mental institution. 😭

Eh, I don’t think this is a big deal. They have a lot of followers and they’re being forced to change their name due to unusual circumstances. I don’t know why Instagram can’t just change the name instead of moving all of their followers over. Blind Gossip is super anti Meghan (and Harry by association). Honestly, this isn’t an issue where I would blame Instagram for giving celebrities preferential treatment, any celebrities, or anyone who has a certain number of followers (I guess they’re known as influencers). There are times when the preferential treatment does upset me (e.g. getting COVID-19 tests ahead of others) but this isn’t one of those times.

@fykeylicious I felt the same way. When I thought it was COVID-19 I was relieved that it had apparently gone through my family and we didn’t get it very bad. It’s a good thing I found out because I don’t think I would have been as vigilant with my social distancing after I was no longer contagious. This is one of the reasons why testing is so important. There are probably a bunch of people out there who have had it and don’t know it and are stressing needlessly about getting it, and some who are spreading it without knowing it too. Then there are a bunch of people who don’t have it but think we do who might have let our guard down when we shouldn’t. Without a positive test we just need to assume we don’t/didn’t have it.

Fykey, you might not have it. There is apparently another virus that’s spreading around the country that is very similar to COVID-19 and is not the flu and not COVID-19. My older daughter came down with a bad cough (the worst she’s ever had and she had a terrible cough with Flu A last month) and a runny nose the week before school closed (I kept her home, of course). Her younger sister got it the following week and I got it a few days after my younger daughter. Not only did I have a bad cough but I had a sore throat, mild nasal symptoms, shortness of breath and lot of pressure in my chest. My younger daughter had a fever for two days but neither my older daughter nor I developed one. I was still sure it was COVID-19. I tried to get my younger daughter tested and I believe in other states she would have qualified but California is, for some reason, experiencing a worse test shortage than other states with a lot of cases and resources. I was 90% sure it was COVID-19 until I talked to a parent from my older daughter’s class yesterday who said her daughter had the same cough and it had been going around my daughter’s class. Like our family, it had spread to her classmate’s entire family as well. The mother was by some miracle able to be tested (after failing to get her children and husband tested) and she was negative for both flu and COVID-19. I’m now 99% sure we don’t/didn’t have it either, which is surprising because our symptoms were like many other people who did test positive for coronavirus. I was also listening to The Argument, a podcast from the NYT, and one of the hosts describes having had a virus that sounds exactly like the one we had, and it spread to his entire family as well. He was tested for COVID-19 and the test was negative as well. He believes the test was wrong (and wrong for his neighbor who also tested negative and had a lot of the symptoms) but I believe he had whatever virus we have so it’s apparently on both coasts. If there is another similar virus going around it’s really going to make tracking this thing even harder without widespread testing.

I had to go out today because I had to pick up a prescription and will have to do so again next week because the government won’t let me fill that one until then (it’s a controlled substance). There were so many people out and about. Most were standing apart (I don’t know that they all achieved six feet but I think they were trying) but there was a baseball game at the baseball field and a bunch of kids playing at the park. When coronavirus hits my community it’s going to spread fast. ETA: Right after I posted this our mayor sent out an email asking people to only leave the house for essential needs. Our county has been ordered to shelter in place and so many people are not observing it.

My county is one of the ones in California that everyone has been ordered to shelter in place for three weeks, which is one step below a Lockdown. We are not supposed to leave the house except when necessary (medical appointments, pharmacy, groceries, work, etc.).