Re: Attendance policies at schools These are mostly determined by the state. In Texas, makeup hours are required after missing 10% of classes, even with confirmed illness. For instance, one of my students had surgery and a long recovery in the hospital. The state still said that after 10% of classes were missed for that semester, the student had to do makeup hours for the hours that were missed. Re: staggered start times Staggering start times would be a nightmare logistically. You would need twice as many teachers to manage this and schools don't have budget for that or enough teachers availale for it. You would still need to cut all class sizes in half in order to manage social distancing. The only way I can see this working is if we split the kids in half and do alternate days. Your kid is either M/Th or Tu/F or some other pair of days. I can see elementary going to half-days while middle school and high school go to alternating days. Bear in mind that the average age of teachers is not low. 30% of teachers in Texas are 50+. 18% are 55+. We are going to be in a confined space with a lot of kids who may be asymptomatic. Teachers will definitely be hit hard if we don't put policies in place to protect them.

I teach public high school. We are definitely limited in what we can do. We have permission to use zoom with students but with all kinds of threats about losing our license. I'm recording videos of my desktop using screencastomatic and posting that for my students. Once I have had several students with the same question, I post a new video explaining that. I'm available by email and I have a google voice number that parents can call or text me on (provided by the school). We are required to touch base with every family where the student has not turned in an assignment the week before. We don't start grading until this week, but we haven't been given grading guidelines yet. The board meeting was a few hours ago and they should be sending us grading guidelines in the morning. There is no way to socially distance at all in schools right now. We'd have to cut the school population in half either by having a morning shift and an afternoon shift or by having alternating days. We have an idiot governor. I'm afraid he's going to say that schools go back May 4th, despite the fact that we are still going up and our peak is several weeks away. While the Travis county judge is good. Our judge is not. He was mostly following along with the Travis county judge, but two weeks ago he "borrowed" fire fighter equipment and drove it out to his grandson's house to go to his birthday party while we were all under his "stay at home" order. He's hiding now.

I'm in the same boat. I have been at my current district for four years. There are only two teachers who have been there less time than me. I applied in the district where I live because I'm spending $120/month just on tolls to get to the school district where I teach. But I don't want to be the last hired/first fired either. I had no qualms about it before COVID.

Central Texas, HEB at 11am on 4/10 Produce was fully stocked, including cut fruits and bagged salads. The meat department was well-stocked, but the ground turkey was almost entirely 99% lean. One of the meat guys told me that he knew they had 80% or 85% ground turkey somewhere and he found where it was frozen, so that's what I got. Dairy and eggs were fully stocked. Whole wheat hamburger buns have been hard to find, but I was able to get them. The pasta aisle was wiped out. There were some bags of various kinds of rice, but no basmati. I still have 2 pounds, so I'm going to wait. We go through a lot of rice. There were plenty of paper towels, but the only toilet paper available was 4-packs of Vogue, which I'd never heard of. The limit was 1. No swiffer wet jet solution (but Target had it when I stopped there on my way home to pick up a prescription). The only cleaning item they had was Windex, which is what I have at home. Nothing with bleach at all. Frozen vegetables section was about half empty, but everything else in the freezers seemed well-stocked. About 1/3 of customers were wearing masks. About 1/2 of employees were wearing masks. HEB provided all employees with 4 disposable masks to rotate through, but they weren't great masks. They started cutting into my dd's ears. She is wearing a mask, but not theirs.

I'm saving money on gas (usually about $40/week between the three of us at home now) and toll costs (usually about $150/month). One of my kids is an essential worker (grocery store) and is working full time, but she doesn't spend much on gas. Her grocery store is giving them an extra $2/hour hazard pay and issued every employee gloves and masks. Aside from that, not really spending less but not spending more either. I only ate out maybe 1-2x/month and then we all got pizza or Donkey Moe's 1x/month before COVID. I'm still ordering out maybe 1x/month to try to help local businesses stay afloat, but that's all I can do. It's expensive. My 27yo is spending less because she was going to Five Below for snacks while she was at work all the time, but she is furloughed now, so she doesn't have any money coming in either. At least she was able to get subsidized health insurance back in November. That has been a huge help. It is far better insurance than what my school district is providing and is at a much lower cost. Of course, she is only able to get the subsidized insurance because her income was so low. I worry that next year she won't qualify because her income won't be high enough (because Texas didn't do the Medicaid expansion, there is a huge gap between where Medicaid ends and where subsidies begin). My 24yo is the one who is a grocery store worker. She never has been a spender. She knows that she has a really hard time getting rid of anything once she has it so she rarely buys anything. She is working full time and sometimes has to leave early on her 5th day for the week to avoid overtime. My 21yo is still going to school online. They had their advising yesterday and their advisor warned them that fall semester will liklely be online also. They are part of my gas and toll reduction. I'm a high school science teacher. I'm still working, but from home. Teaching has gone down from 70 hours/week to about 45 hours/week now. Today was supposed to be a school holiday, but I've spent about 5 hours working on school stuff today. The amount of documentation we have to produce to prove that we are workign with our kids is phenomenal, and I'm just teaching gen ed. My coteacher has FAR more paperwork to deal with for SpEd. All three of the kids live at home with me and I'm very glad about that. I couldn't afford to keep the house without contributions from the two older kids and what my ex-h is paying for the next 4.5 years. That's all I have left though. Our divorce was finalized at the end of August.

I can't see school happening as normal in the fall. I'm sure some communities will try it and the death toll will be enormous. Remember that the 1918 flu had a massive resurgence when school started up again in the fall. I can see partial schooling happening. By this I mean that elementary schools may start up mostly as normal, but with the requirement to eat in their classroom. I think teachers will travel rather than students for specials. I think middle school and high schools will go to A/B system. Half of the students on campus on M/W and half ot them there on TuTh and none on Frday. This will reduce the amount of spread because of less crowding. I also think mask wearing (or some type of face shield) being more of a thing. My 21yo has already been warned that their university expects to at least start the year online.

it's available in stores here for the first 2-3 hours they are open. If you wait longer than that, then you won't have any.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order.html North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas

I am wearing a fabric mask when I go to the store and I'm limiting that as much as possible. I still need to go 1x/week and sometimes I have to go to two different stores to get what I need. One of my kids is an essential worker. When she gets home, she has to take off and put away her shoes immediately and then set her phone down and wash her hands. While she is taking a shower, I wipe everything down (her car, her phone, and everything she might have touched). After her shower, all of her clothes are wrapped up in the towel she dried off with and dumped into the washing machine.

WHO offered tests back in January and they were turned down. The CDC developed it's own tests from scratch and they didn't work. So then they developed new tests from scratch and those worked, but production has been very slow because some of the materials needed are in short supply. The other issue is the level of PPE needed for healthcare workers doing the testing. We don't have enough PPE. And again supply chains are not helping. We could have ramped up production back in January, but didn't. We could have ramped up production in February, but didn't. We could have ramped up production at the beginning of March, but didn't. We have finally started ramping up production. It could have been a federal mandate back when the writing on the wall was very obvious back at the beginning of March, but of course there wasn't.

I had the oil changed in my car a few weeks ago and the mechanic said there was an unholy number of acorns in my engine. I asked him if there was anything I could do to discourage the squirrels from getting in my engine and his only recommendation was to trap them. I never had anything get into my grill, but in the past two years rats have torn off the siding on my chimney twice to get into the attic. It has been at least 5 years since I had a grill.

Absolutely all of this. I am desperate to get out of teaching and into another career field. This is not what I signed up for. If I could actually just teach, I would love to continue to do that. But that isn't what the job is. I got my alternative teacher certification when my youngest started dual credit. I should have done some other type of program for re-entering the workforce. I would love to teach at the community college, but full-time positions rarely open up. Classes at cc don't have the behavior problems that you see in high schools.

Things are messy here since my divorce was finalized in August. I am having an accountant do it. I've used an accountant for our taxes for a long time. He was a huge help with going through the financial agreement for the divorce.

I used to buy Oster but those died on meabout every two years. I switched to Ninja and those last me 6-8 years.

All three of my kids are at home and likely to remain living with me up until they find relationship partners. My 26yo has Asperger's, OCD, ADD, and chronic depression. The psychiatrist thought bipolar type II was possible instead of ADD and depression but ultimately decided that it was probably ADD and depression instead because the ADD meds actually help instead of making things worse. She didn't finish her university degree, but she did go back to cc this past summer to finish out an associate's degree. She has had a cashier position at Office Max for three years now. It is part-time (20-30 hours/week). I'm just thrilled that she has a job and has been able to keep that job for several years. There is only one other employee at the store that has been there longer than she has. She doesn't do well on her own (like when she was at university) because she spirals into a depression and stops taking her meds, which makes her depression much worse. She has regular responsibilities around the house that she completes each week, pays for her own gas, health insurance, and car insurance, and contributes money each month for common expenses. She pays her own medical bills (monthly psychiatrist appointment and medications). I tally up the common expenses each month (electric, water, cable/internet, phone, groceries) and let her know what her share is that month. She actually only has about $200/month left over for spending money after paying her expenses. She really can't live on her own. My 24yo has Asperger's and MOG antibody disease. She finished her university degree but is much more Aspie than my oldest, so employment has been more difficult. She works as a custodian at HEB and works 32-40 hours/week. She had to go on medical leave for three months when her immune system attacked her spinal cord and left her unable to actually do her job. After she finally got appropriate treatment (first neurologist was incompetent and sent us to an orthopedist who sent us to a physical therapist who sent us to another neurologist who finally did an MRI and then transferred her to an MS specialist), she regained most of what she had lost. She still has numbness in her hands that will probably never go away but she can tell where her arms and hands are without looking at them again. She owns her own car and pays all of her own bills. She also pays her share of the common expenses. She is actually capable of living on her own, but there isn't any reason for her to live on her own and spend all her money on her own place to live when we can all live together in our house. She can also wake up any morning blind and/or paralyzed and that condition could be either temporary or permanent, so I'm not exactly eager for her to live on her own. She has made it through two illnesses since her MOG diagnosis without having an attack, so I'm not feeling as nervous as I was about this really crappy diagnosis of a condition that doesn't have a cure and could cause major physical disability at any time. My 21yo is still going to university. They have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, OCD, and PTSD along with chronic depression. They have had a handicapped parking placard for the past year which has really helped a lot. The first university they attended didn't want to comply with ADA and everything was a fight. They were home for one year after that and then went to the cc for one year to complete an associate's. Now they are attending a local university again. They can only handle 3 classes/semester (which is actually full-time at this university because every class is 4 credit hours) because EDS is such a strain. They had a part-time job while attending the cc but they can't handle a job while attending their university because they courses are so much more rigorous. They can't live alone unless they pay someone to come do the things they are physically capable of doing. They can put clothes in a washing machine, but can't get them out afterwards. Picking things up off of the floor is extremely difficult. They dislocate 10-12 times on a good day. On a bad day, they have to do the best they can not to move at all because any movement causes dislocations. They are in constant pain and have been in constant pain for the past 6 years and the pain will never go away. Despite all of this, they still manage to do a lot. They had surgery this past summer which reduced their pain quite a bit. It's amazing how removing nearly 2 pounds from your chest reduces your overall pain. So I expect my kids will be very likely to live with me until/unless they find lifetime partners. And I'm fine with that. We make a great team together.

Both of my older kids went to UT Dallas on full tuition scholarships after hsing all the way through (oldest did go to ps for 6th and 7th grades). It was a great school. My oldest had to withdraw one week into her 2nd semester for medical reasons and was able to keep her scholarship. She returned to school the next fall. When she did start having issues with keeping her grades up, she was given two semesters to salvage her grades. She ended up leaving school after 5 semesters. She finally went back to the local cc to finish the one class she had left to get her associate's degree this past summer after her youngest sibling got their associate's degree. They didn't want to be the only one who hadn't gotten a degree past high school. My middle dd was able to graduate with a double major in three years because of all the dual credit she took in high school. The campus is very quiet. It is NOT a party school. Both of my girls were thrilled that there was NO football team.

Personally, I would rather have a screened-in deck. I don't need more interior space. A screened-in deck would be a place where the dogs and I could be outside but not getting rained out. The screening would keep us from getting eaten alive by the mosquitos. It would also act as kind of a buffer area for dogs to get mud off of their feet before coming into the house. I really miss having a covered porch. My last house had a wraparound porch and this house (16 years now) doesn't have any covered area in the backyard at all.

1. Don't fall again. My fall the week before Thanksgiving has cost me almost $6000 so far and the physical therapy starts this month with my $2600 deductible back down to $0 before insurance pays for anything. 2. Eat healthier. That really fell by the wayside after my fall. 3. Find another job outside of teaching.

I teach high school. My students already don't do their assignments during the school year. They absolutely would not do them over a break.

I was very happy to get rid of our pool table. It came with our 2nd house and then we moved it to our 3rd. We didn't really have enough room for it here. We gave it away and nobody missed it.

We have three female dogs. We got our German shepherd mix, Kylie, as a 9 week old puppy from the shelter. She needed a companion once I went to work full-time outside the home when she was 2yo, so we scoured the shelters to find another female dog about the same age and got a (probably) golden retriever/rottweiler mix who was 1.5yo at the time, Jenny. They do get along very well, but Jenny has abandonment issues from having been left at the shelter twice and she has a lot of anxiety. I feed them in their crates because Jenny can be defensive around food. It has worked out fine because Kylie is submissive. Then three years ago my youngest got a 12 week old rough collie puppy with eye problems from a breeder who couldn't use her for showing or for breeding. We were worried that there would be problems with Jenny, but Jenny still sees Aspen as a puppy even though she is 3yo now. It may help that Kylie and Jenny are both mine while Aspen is my 21yo's dog. Or my 21yo belongs to Aspen while I belong to Kylie and Jenny.

I love my air fryer. It is rare for me to go more than one day without using it. I made toast in it twice today and also made roasted brussels sprouts. My favorite things to make in the air fryer are toast and fried chicken.

My 21yo also has Ehlers Danlos, which can cause digestive issues. The feeling of a food not being safe isn't about taste. It's about texture. There are some foods that are right on the edge between what they can and can't handle. Some foods they love the taste of, but can't eat because of the texture.

My 21yo has not been diagnosed but it fits them very well. Neither of us had ever heard of it before until a few days ago. I was also like that all the way up until partway through my freshman year in college when suddenly all those foods that had previously been so repulsive to me that I couldn't even look at them suddenly didn't cause that reaction anymore. But I had a lot more foods that were safe than my 21yo does. I have no idea why my food block suddenly went away. Complicating the issue, my 21yo has food allergies and OCD. We had always chalked up the food issues to that combination but ARFID makes a lot of sense. There is very little they can eat outside our home. They have tried for years to expand their diet and have been only marginally successful. I tried all the same strategies with no success until my block suddenly went away.

I had always planned to change my last name as soon as I had the money to do so after college but getting married took care of that. I divorced in August and have kept my married last name. My youngest changed their full name at 18yo. Unfortunately, they were in denial and so they chose another feminine name. I had been suspecting that there were gender issues but their anxiety was so very high that I hadn't brought it up with them. Six months later they came out as nonbinary. The name they chose doesn't fit. They do have their new name ready and have been using it for about one year. They plan to make it official this summer. It costs about $250 to do it here.