Currently: January 2022

It's time for the first "Currently" link up of 2022 with Anne at in residence. I love the prompts that Anne picked for us to write about this time because they're very "new year" focused. That was likely intentional :)

[anticipating]

I have to admit, I'm not anticipating much of anything right now :( Our province, Ontario, headed into a "modified Step 2" for Covid restrictions at midnight so, once again, we can't do anything. We can't eat in restaurants, we can't attend church or school or any of the kids' activities in person, our "social gatherings" are limited to 5 people indoors and 10 outdoors. Yeah -- it's super-fun right now. I guess I'm anticipating when this current set of restrictions will end. We've been told it's "time limited" but I'm not holding out much hope...

[organizing]

I made a goal to get our house in order. There's too much stuff. So I've signed up for an internet decluttering challenge, which also has an organizational component. So basically I'm organizing (or will be organizing) EVERYTHING. Nothing is safe. I told the kids what I was doing, because I'll need their help, and they are completely on board with it.

[reading]

I've decided, after some friendly pressure from my Blog Friend's Book Club people (Love you!!!), to try and track my reading on Goodreads this year. Thus far I've read two books and rated two books. I don't want to commit to writing mini reviews here on the blog and on Goodreads so I might just copy and paste the reviews from here to there but I haven't figured that part out yet...

My current read is this one:

[resolving]

My phone will no longer back up to iCloud so I'm resolving to go through all my photos and get rid of the extraneous ones. Do I really need 17 pictures of Rachel swinging or 32 pictures of a bouquet of flowers or 15 pictures of Sam reading or 12 pictures of my afternoon snack? I don't think so... My goal for January is to delete, delete, delete. I think I'll have to write another post like this one!

[scheduling]

Well, given that we can't really do anything, I'm not scheduling much of anything. And probably won't be for awhile. However, I was so grateful that I was able to schedule boosters for Dave and I, and a second dose for Rachel, for this past weekend. Vaccines are what is going to help get us out of this pandemic and we're thrilled to be able to do our part.

I'm sorry to be such a downer today but honestly, I'm frustrated. Families in our province waited all Winter Break to hear what was happening with schooling for our kids. Last Thursday (December 30th), our Chief Medical Officer of Health told us they were extending the break by two days (from starting back this past Monday to starting back today) but that kids were returning in person. He commented, "Our children have sacrificed enough throughout this pandemic in terms of their mental health and they need to be at school in person." (AMEN!)

Then, this past Monday (January 3rd) our premier announced that kids would be starting back online "until January 17th." Well, as many people have said, "I've seen this movie, I know the ending, and I don't like it." Last year we were told that our kids would be doing online learning for a week after Winter Break and it ended up being five weeks. Then after our delayed Spring Break, we were told our kids were doing online learning for "a few weeks" and our kids didn't return to in person learning for the rest of the year (two and a half months).

All this is to say, I feel a sense of dread as to how long this current "limited time, currently two week period" of remote learning is going to be. As a parent, and as a school secretary, this is really hard. I really hope that by February's "currently" link up, our kids will have been back in school for awhile and some of our current restrictions will be lifted but, once again, we shall see...