{"id":1939,"date":"2020-06-25T14:21:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T14:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2020-06-25T14:31:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T14:31:26","slug":"the-calendarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/?p=1939","title":{"rendered":"The Calendarian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m an old elementary school teacher and principal, having started every day of my career with what we in the business call \u201cCalendar Time.\u201d Each morning, I would gather my students around my rocking chair (during my teaching years) or around the PA system in the office (during my principal-ing years) to talk about the day of the week, the date, the weather, and special events that were upcoming in our school or community.

During that calendar time, we celebrated birthdays and special days (\u201cToday is National Ice Cream Day\u201d), we talked about the weather and the school menu and even gave a book talk on occasion. While these \u201cCalendar\u201d activities may seem pretty, well\u2026elementary\u2026I can tell you, that this training has served me well during the quarantine period of COVID19.

In an unfortunate turn of events, Mack and I have been separated by half a globe during this pandemic. He went on back to Seoul, South Korea after a trip to the States in January, with a plan for me to join him after visiting with the grand kids and delivering an encore Jane Long performance for the Daughters of the Texas Republic. Of course, we all know what has happened in these past weeks.

Unable to safely fly back to Seoul, I am quarantine-ing alone, as is Mack. I\u2019ll report that, I\u2019m not garnering a lot of sympathy from friends and family around the world. Being in our comfortable beach house with plenty of food and electricity and internet, I\u2019ll admit that I\u2019m not suffering much. A daily constitutional through the neighborhood and a late afternoon walk to sit and read on the beach have done much to keep me sane (though there are those who might question that \u201csane\u201d status). I know how fortunate I am. But, you know\u2026alone is still alone.

Every morning, I wake up at 5:30 and feel of my head to make sure that I don\u2019t have fever (ok, for the first few days, I felt my cheek, pillow-side down, alarmed at the heat generated from having my head on the pillow). As soon as I deduct that I am indeed, at 98.6, not coughing, and not experiencing chest pain, I thank the Good Lord for another day. Before I raise my head from that heat-inducing pillow, I go through my list of gratitudes\u2026my health, Mack’s health, the kids, the grands\u2026a roof over my head and a refrigerator full of goodies.

Then, I try to remember what day of the week it is.

This is where my years in teacher training come in handy. I visualize the poster mounted on the bulletin board behind the rocking chair in my old classroom and try to remember which square I filled in yesterday. I mentally mark the little blank with today\u2019s date, then turn to look out the window to see what the weather might be. Though it is still dark at 5:30, I can see if it\u2019s a windy day or a rainy day. I reach for my cell phone to check the temperature, and psychically choose a paper doll wearing either a bathing suit or a sweater or a rain slicker to place on my virtual calendar. Just like when I did it with Kindergarteners.

Then, I climb out of bed, singing Dolly Parton\u2019s 9-5\u2026\u201dI tumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of ambition\u2026\u201d Well, that\u2019s as far as I get. Though I have a list of hopes and dreams for myself during this time of quarantine, I don\u2019t often get through the list. Some days, just getting up is a victory. And, I\u2019ve decided that is ok.

I\u2019m a goal-oriented person. Always have been. I started out, back on March 17, when I self-quarantined, with a list of things that I wanted to accomplish during this unfortunate time alone. In conjunction with that list, I developed an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of my accomplishments. It had columns headed by such activities as Bible Study, House organizing, Exercise, Sewing projects, Writing, Academic reading, Recreational reading, Create, Meditate\u2026well, you get the idea. I seriously can\u2019t even find the document on my computer\u2026wonder what I filed it under?

Such quarantine gems as, \u201cIf I\u2019m going to cocoon, I\u2019d better come out a butterfly,\u201d or \u201cDoing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment,\u201d (Oprah) and \u201cWe are building muscle memory for who we want to be when this is over,\u201d (Brene Brown) are inspiring. Sadly, it appears that I will come out of quarantine as a calendarian. My only ongoing accomplishment seems to be knowing the day of the week\u2026usually.


\tEverything will be okay in the end. If it\u2019s not okay, it\u2019s not the end.\u201d John Lennon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m an old elementary school teacher and principal, having started every day of my career with what we in the business call \u201cCalendar Time.\u201d Each morning, I would gather my students around my rocking chair (during my teaching years) or around the PA system in the office (during my principal-ing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,28,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1956,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}