Life in the time of corona …

I can’t think of a good reason why I never posted in 2019. Believe me, I have all these blog post introductions running through my head at bedtime. They keep me awake long enough for me to feel doozy the next day so that I’ve forgotten all about them after my morning coffee — replenished with enough hot water to make the coffee diluted — has been drunk.

My two kids at home climbed to the top of Moreeb Dune while hubby was competing in the Liwa Race, January 2020.

Anyway, life has suddenly become so … so relaxing. Suddenly, there’s time to paint (not really), doodle (it’s not as easy as it looks) and craft (something I avoided while my kids were younger lol). Seriously. Aside from cooking … of course, this being a blog about books and cooking, gotta mention that!

Crafting keeps me sane nowadays. These are thank-you cards for friends and relatives who voluntarily donated towards my mother’s hospitalization expenses. My mother underwent an emergency brain surgery in Taiwan.

Maybe it’s because the departure of two kids has flattened the demand-for-my-cooking curve … Perhaps it’s because my youngest child is now officially a teenager (with all the attendant pimple-induced stress it causes) and is adept in the kitchen …  Nah, it’s YouTube … All those Crash Course videos has taken the burden of teaching from my shoulders.

The composition may be off but hey! You can’t keep those camels from walking while you’re capturing them for posterity. January, 2020

Whatever the cause for this sudden opening up of Father Time … One thing’s for sure. After 10 years of homeschooling, I am grateful that now there’s only one kid to homeschool. Our 2017-2018 homeschool calendar  was so stressful (with my youngest son compelled to begin US History midyear) I stopped writing altogether.

In the Middle East,  flowers bloom during the winter and wither once spring arrives. Chasing a bee inside a rose in our garden, January 2020.

Anyway, our 2018-2019 and the 2019-2020 homeschool years were also hectic with us beginning the schoolyear one quarter late after vacationing in the Philippines. Still, we managed. How? I thought about what I remembered of my sixth-grade education at St. Scholastica’s College in Singalong, Manila. I recalled our class in tears after losing a volleyball tournament. We may have won the cheerleading championship, though … I’m not sure. I recalled climbing the stairs to the airconditioned library to cool down after playing football on the grounds near St. Cecilia’s Hall (this may have been during seventh grade; again, I’m not sure). I thought about how my adviser, Ms. Orca (memorable because the film Orca: The Killer Whale was released during this time), solicitously inquired after my health after learning my absence was due to sickness. Did my recollection include any lessons?

Veggies for dinner last night

Oh yes. I recalled opening a big world map to look at the coordinates of several places during a geography lesson. Nearly everyone was on the floor. I remembered a science presentation — our group had a town complete with traffic lights c/o a classmate named Ivy. But. I could not recall a single academic lesson. For the life of me, I could not remember a grammar, math or science lesson. Not one.

Which led me to ask myself: did I learn anything in grade 6? I don’t know. Because I’m not sure that what was taught to us in school would have been something I learned on my own. What I do know, though, is that my youngest child has learned a lot while being homeschooled in sixth grade. Violin. Pastries. Cakes. Writing. Krav Maga. Electronic die-cutting. PowerPoint. How to distinguish between Progressive and Perfect tenses. 

Dug up these two books when news of the coronavirus began circulating. We were in Singapore when SARS hit so I had an idea of how things would work out if COVID19 were to circle the globe. Though old (the one on the left was published in 2009 while the one on the right was published in 1994), the observations therein are still relevant to our times.

Except for the last one, I did not force any of those subjects down her throat. For sure, I did not learn any of those things in sixth grade. The real experts, not the ones writing the curriculum or syllabus for profit or for education departments, will tell you that children will learn when they are ready or when they are motivated.

Thus. Even though I was so stressed out over the academic requirements of our homeschool provider, I told myself: Relax. When she graduates from university, she won’t remember what you’re stressing over now. That the coronavirus has given us a month-long extension of the deadline for submission of grades and portfolio is a much-needed breath of fresh air.

 

Meanwhile. Everyone’s on lockdown (our community isn’t but it sure looks like it) with school opening today, albeit online, after an early spring break. So, we continue to … read discuss the plots of The Mandalorian, The Last Ship and Homeland over meals. Er, everyone does except yours truly. Because. There’s so much to learn! So. In between YouTube tutorials or reviews of what’s on my wishlist, I continue to … paint read, what else?

That is, when I’m not in the kitchen. All these articles about the COVID-19 virus has driven me to concoct smoothies and cut up veggies for every meal. Again. Plus. Check up on friends and monitor coronavirus-related data from Europe and the Philippines. It takes no effort to monitor the situation in the Philippines where netizens are up in arms over the bumbling efforts of our present administration. Martial Law, anyone?

Years from now, when my kids read this, I wonder how much will they remember of 2020? 

Note: Unlike the Philippines or the US, there’s no call for donations for PPE’s or face masks here in the UAE. In our desert town, which is populated mostly by ADNOC employees and their families, panic buying only ensued after it was announced that malls and wet markets would be closed with some exceptions. Meanwhile, stringent measures have been adopted by companies (which must remain open) to contain infection.