If you HAD to go somewhere - 24+ hour drive away... could be anywhere from next week through middle of June... Would you: 1) fly (shorter distance, less exhausting, fewer random hotels, cleaner restroom options than what would likely be found on the road during this time) or 2) drive (who in their right minds would get on a plane right now?!?) We WILL have to drive back (picking up kid's stuff from college dorm), but will rent a car that I wipe down furiously. We have hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, Clorox wipes, etc. And we will likely reserve an Air BnB for a few days to relax for a bit so we aren't on the road for a straight 6+ days. Whole family would likely go. We will be traveling from a state with relatively few cases, through states with more cases, to a state with a lot of cases. So, that's fun. 😷

Has anyone seen this!? A glitch? 😶 https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/us/ap-exam-glitch-trnd/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2020-05-15T22%3A15%3A09&utm_source=fbCNN&utm_medium=social

I remember that feeling the first time 'round... howevermanyyearsago it was. Now, it has come around for the third time and I'm in equal disbelief! 🥴

How frustrating!! I'm glad it had a happy "A" ending, at least! When I started back to school, I took two literature classes. I'm 100% positive that one of the professors only read my first essay and no others. The first essay, he gave me a video feedback - and the others were left unopened the entire semester (on the platform we used, you could SEE if the prof. had opened a file at any point... he did not). 'twas ridiculous.

YES. Agreed. We want to order her room stuff - but don't want to store it here for the next 6+ months if DD has to stay home. And yet, her school has laid out a pretty specific plan and it seems reasonable to me at this point, so it feels somewhat safe to do so? But all the "what ifs" are killing the joy, that's for sure. DD2 knows 3 people her age who've had (test-positive) COVID... and it wasn't pretty for a single one of them. 😕

Can't even pretend to tell you I know what you should do... but we are in the same boat. One of ds's gyms is already open (he hasn't gone back) and the other is opening soon. One day, their precautions sound reasonable... the next, I'm like, "Heck, no!" So, I dunno. DS spends 6/7 days there with his coaches. While the coaches have done their very best, the Zoom stuff, of course, isn't cutting it. DS is barely maintaining... 😕 DS even travels out of state to yet another gym for specialized lessons, so that's another consideration we have to ponder. We've continued paying gym/team membership dues for these past 2 months to help support the gym, but I'm still not enthused about ds going back. I know he'll be careful, but evenso... so many chances for contamination. *sigh* Who knew it would all suck so bad? 😕

Kind/Thoughtful Productive Creative

In the middle of next week, we're having a graduation party for DD1 with the grandparents over zoom. I'd like to have some sort of game we could all play, but am not having any great ideas. Anyone know of something that could work? My initial thought was some sort of pictionary, maybe? But could zoom handle that many people shouting over one another? 😄

ThaNk you @Barb!!!! For some reason, I'd thought that age had been recently changed to younger. Thank goodness it hasn't been!! We have some breathing room!!! I am SO glad I don't have to deal with that right now.

Dd graduates this month. What happens to her health care coverage? Right now she is insured through DH's job (well, we pay for it, but ykwim). She just finished her undergrad. She is 22 years old. Will not be going back to school anytime soon. No job on the immediate horizon while we wait out COVID. The "plan" was that she'd be employed by fall in a healthy world, so I hadn't given it a second thought. Sure don't want her uninsured during a pandemic, though!!! I don't know where to start to figure this out, so I came here! 😊

We buy a whole year's worth through the optometrist. Mainly bc they will let us bring in any unopened boxes the following year and replace those with the new prescription. So, mixed with glasses-wearing, one "year's" supply lasts each of us 2+ years. We get our glasses elsewhere, though. Just never found what we liked at the optometrist's office.

I've given up - too much stress over will it/won't it happen and DS and I decided he'll just take the first fall test that happens and will test in December.

I'm remembering when my son was signed up for AP Chem and am 🤣🤣🤣 at the thought of the word "easy" going along with any of those weeks. 🤣 We dropped it ASAP because he was, quite literally, spending all of his time doing Chemistry and only Chemistry. We're both still traumatized. 🤪 (mostly kidding...)

Always when I leave the house (not for swimming, though). But I don't wear a lot as a general rule. I'm one of those redheads with totally invisible eyelashes 😫, so mascara is a must or I feel naked. Some light blush (cuz I'm pale) and some lip gloss. Easy and quick. If I'm just at home, but dh is home all day with me, I'll also put on some makeup.

I'd do it and not give it a second thought. I doubt they will even notice or care. IF they question the date change, you have a simple, sensible response. No biggie. 👍 Honestly - for those graduating seniors this year, I don't think colleges are going to have the energy to question all that much. lol Things are crazyville everywhere.

Another kid here who's missed out on so much this semester that I'm being careful how much I load upon his head. His way of coping, however, is to be busier than ever, so he wants to take the AP tests & is preparing with a sort of angry energy that he doesn't usually possess. lol And he wants to sign up for classes over the summer. etc, etc, etc. The competitive middle AND final events of his sport this summer were just canceled this week. He is just... done. Blah. It's hard for driven kids to see a point to working so hard for much of anything when their entire lives seem to be canceled! 😕 So, we'll just keep keeping him busybusybusy! 😄

We were year-round homeschoolers forever and I've often wished we'd have exited the hamster wheel at "calendar-year" schoolers instead of just sort of spreading it out over the entire school year/summer. Your plan looks like a great one! Yes. It's been hard for us to nail anything down - too many moving parts. He had plans for internship & job this summer and that's all out the window. So now he wants to get as much academic stuff knocked out as he possibly can so that when life has started again, he can enjoy it. Ugh. This is so difficult to navigate when it feels like we're standing on quicksand! Jealous!!! Seriously - so envious!!! My kid has a solid list of where he wants to apply, but then I've added two "safeties." Like his sisters before him, we usually toss the safeties out pretty quickly, but I want them there in the beginning just in case. DD2 didn't use the Common App because most of her schools didn't use it. I'm hoping/praying that most of DSs will because it makes the process (especially tracking down LOR-writers) so much easier. I guess they're pretty "lucky" right now, though. They really DO have ALL summer wide open to write those essays!! 🤪 Gotta find a silver lining somewhere... 😷

Seems like a very solid plan. Eliminating travel back-and-forth for Fall Break and T-Giving makes a lot of sense.

Is there one of these already and I just can't find it? 🙂 DS is pretty much finished with everything for junior year. A couple of AP exams coming up and he's prepping for the ACT (whenever that can happen again!). So we're starting to make final decisions together for next year and I was wondering how everyone else is doing planning-wise! With summer effectively canceled, we're looking at this as an opportunity to front-load his senior year. So far... Summer: English Comp I (concurrent, online) College Algebra (concurrent, online) US History (concurrent, online) Fall: English Comp II (concurrent, online) US Gov't (concurrent, online) Public Speaking (concurrent, possibly online) Biology (concurrent) AP Statistics (PAH) That would leave his spring finishing AP Stats and one AP exam to take in May - and we might bump the US Gov't to spring semester. He is involved in approximately eleventy-billion music classes, ensembles, etc and is in a competitive sport at a high performance level... so having the spring more open when he's doing most of his college music auditions and competing in his sport is ideal. I can't believe this is the last time I'll ever have to plan this!!! The baby of our family only has one year left!!! 🥳 Now just hoping this virus doesn't screw up his senior year too! 😕😷

Music Theory with Hannah! FANTASTIC! Ten thumbs up!!

That's not one I'd heard before, but... yeah. It actually makes quite a bit of sense if things aren't looking calmed-down by August. I can emotionally handle almost any suggestion except staying 100% online next semester. It's been 7-8 weeks of quarantine for us, locked down here at home with cooperative but frustrated young adults. I cannot fathom having three young people under my roof, all hunkered-down, for another. solid. 8. months. Just cannot imagine them having an entire YEAR of their life sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. Especially at these ages (my kids are 17-22 years old...).

DD got a similar email from her intended university yesterday or today stating pretty much this same thing. Calmed me right down - seems they're taking it all under consideration and weighing the possibilities. We are cautiously hopeful that classes can be held on campus this fall.

If you've got a needle and thread at home, it's a super easy fix! Cut the elastic band somewhere in the middle. Overlap the ends to achieve a comfortable fit. Then sew around the edges of the overlapped elastic. I'd use a blanket stitch to sew those edges together: https://youtu.be/S9zegUYdPmg I think most mask-makers who are sewing in bulk are making the elastics longer, rather than shorter. It's easy to fix a too-long elastic problem... much more difficult to fix a too-short one. I made a ton of masks that have the elastic that goes around the back of the head. I left them long and unattached and just tied the ends in a knot and added some fray-check to the edges. Whoever received those masks can then adjust as needed. That's a lot harder to do with over-the-ear masks though.

Thank you!!

OK, phew. DS has not liked any test prep done on the computer so we were hoping to get his senior-year ACT done while they're still on paper! 😄