“Stay the Fuck Home!”

            My brother, a custodial worker at a hospital, falls into the “essential worker” category. He earns less than a livable wage. He reports to work during natural disasters almost annually as he lives in the Houston area. He will continue to work through the COVID-19 epidemic until he gets sick. I worry that he may die if that happens.

            My nephew works at one of Texas’s largest grocery chains, HEB. His salary, also, doesn’t come anywhere what it should for him to report for work during an epidemic of this scope. Of course, he’s there extra hours so the rest of us can have the supplies we need to stay home. That means he’s exposed through every person who walks into the store.

            Every one of us has friends or family members who continue to work because of their essential occupations. For me, it’s important to give these people as much of an edge as possible. If they must be exposed to carriers of COVID-19, let it be in as controlled and limited way as possible.

            If you follow directives and stay home, you limit your contracts to only a few people on a daily basis. If you are the designated shopper, restricting the people you see means that you help limit the number of contacts my family members come into contact with, too.

            If you have a governor that’s not issuing sensible and safe guidelines that don’t have an economic drive (like suggesting our elderly should be willing to die to keep the economy going for this next generation), look to the states harder hit by COVID-19 and follow those guidelines.

            If you have a mercenary minister who continues to push you into church services, find another church. For years many of my religious friends have claimed that their beliefs aren’t attached to a building—that they can pray and worship at any place and time. Now’s the time to prove it!

            Stay safe for your family and stay safe for mine.

Copyright 2020 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"My New Normal"

            Sheltering through this biological storm shifts our days into an unexpectedly slower pace. My husband, who works remotely, sets the alarm for 6:30 to give him time to shuffle into the kitchen for a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and to check his email. He commented yesterday that he probably needs to nudge the alarm to an even later start. Always an early riser, last week I allowed myself to sleep until nine-ish before setting my daily agenda, which consisted of reading and yard work followed by a movie or a couple episodes of a random TV show. Because I felt this sluggish start set the tone of my day too move too slowly, this week I’m matching my husband’s hours.

Live Oak leaves abound!

Yard work keeps me busy

            

             My husband’s company put employees onto remote work on March 12^th. As my spring break drew to an end, I decided not to return to work.  My Facebook feed displayed vacationing friends, and as I’d been following COVID-19 and its progress since the beginning of January, I knew returning to work as a substitute teacher after co-workers and students had traveled throughout the US was stupid. The minimum wage pay wouldn’t come near to covering any medical expenses of a prolonged ICU stay. Of course, the school district decided to extend the break for another week. That turned into several more weeks closed. Finally, our governor declared the schools cannot open prior to May 4^th.

            As I have worked at some kind of job since I was 16, this unanticipated break forces me to reassess why I work so many days. Originally, grief drove me to fill my days while some financial draws added to my need to work. However, my part-time work morphed into working five days a week and lasted for seven years! Then this past fall, several friends battled severe illnesses. One died unexpectedly. A bout of bronchitis impaled me onto my bed for a couple of weeks with a lingering cough and some fatigue that pushed me to cut back my work days to part-time instead of a full five day week.

            Maybe Life wants me to finally retire.

Copyright 2020 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"A Mess"

            During the last few weeks, I’ve substituted for teachers whose desks and classrooms qualify as disaster areas. In one classroom, for my own personal safety, I cleared a path through junk strewn on the floor between the carpet where the students sat and the teacher’s desk and computer section. I shifted teetering towers of books, realigned precariously stacked papers, and swept away slippery empty baggies all to guarantee I wouldn’t trip or fall as I went about my day.

            In the back of my mind, I wondered about the impact of this level of disorder on the students. I always wanted my classroom to be inviting. My high school classroom included a reading nook with a small but comfortable couch, tons of pillows for around the room reading, and even a few throws in case the air conditioner chilled the room to subzero temperatures. Pole lamps in the corner offered extra ambiance. If I had a mess from ungraded essays or projects, I hid to out of sight from my students—usually in large plastic stackable crates that took up a corner behind my desk. Because larger students need room, I often tucked my desk tightly into a spot that took up as little space as possible, giving as much square footage as possible to those who stood over six feet and weighed close to 200 pounds. I rarely had discipline problems, and I’d like to think that most of my students enjoyed spending time in my room.

            In my current occupation, I work in dozens and dozens of different classrooms. Rarely do I encounter the chaos that I’ve witnessed in the last couple of weeks. The disarray bursts beyond the messy space and overflows into disrespectful student behavior. In every disorganized classroom, the students struggled to pay attention. Their own personal space (cubbies or desks) erupted with scrunched old classwork and cover creased library books.

            By day’s end, my head pounded. I can only imagine the impact the anarchy must cause on all of those young, developing brains.

     

 Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 

"Side Hustle"

            My son works tirelessly to establish his own business that branches out into a multitude of directions. His illustration skills lead him into work ranging from art for educational publications to logo designs to website art. His fine-tuned audio engineering talent means he rocks the house with original beats. He spends days behind the camera taking still photographs or shooting music videos for up-and-coming performers. As a youth, he made extra money selling his original t-shirt art to friends from school. This passion reignited recently, and he spent days researching companies to find the best one to meet his needs for printing and shipping original designs.

            When he approached me a month ago with an idea for my own t-shirt line, I instantly liked the creative outlet that combined playing with words and photography. Before I knew it, and with tons of help and guidance from my son, I started my own line.

            I won’t make a million dollars from this endeavor, but I will possibly have additional income that can let me splurge on a few monthly extras.

This “side hustle” opens me up for a totally new challenge, which I want to do as I get older. I know that keeping a sharp, inventive mind doesn’t happen by inactivity. With this t-shirt task, I will grab my camera more often. Instead of being a slug-a-bug in bed on Saturday mornings, I may head out the door on a photo-shoot at a location that’s totally new to me. I already find myself looking at words and phrases that would appeal to my intended market—women who love comfortable t-shirts, but want something a little nicer than a comic book character or “Best Mom Ever” slogan.

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

              

"Work Ethic

       Many years ago, I attended a birthday party where for entertainment a woman read our fortunes. I stood in fascination as she described the lives and futures of various friends and family members. I could barely wait for my turn.

            The woman did her card shuffle and looked at me with a sad smile. “You work,” she said softly.

           “Yes,” I responded and waited for her to reveal some future travels or adventures as she had for everyone else.

            She shook her head and glanced down at her cards again. “No. That’s all I see. You work. You work all the time. There’s nothing else that I see.”

            Tears blinded my eyes as I moved off to the side for her to take the next person in line. I rounded up my husband, son, and his friend and told them I wanted to leave. I couldn’t get into the car fast enough. Sobs shook me the second I closed the car’s door.

            “What’s wrong?” my husband asked.

           “You heard what that woman said,” my words drowned by tears. “She saw nothing but work.”

            That casual observation by a party entertainer punched me in the gut because it resounded with truth.

            At that time, I taught high school English. I slipped into my classroom an hour early every morning and stayed almost as long most days. My evenings and weekends involved chipping away at an endless mountain of essays, journals, and projects that never dwindled no matter how many hours I graded. With the time that remained to my day, I did house and yard work. Rarely did I do anything just for pleasure.

            Amazement filled me if I heard about friends taking off for evenings or weekends with “the girls.” How did they find the time? How could they simply leave their jobs and households for a few days at the beach? Guilt over spending that much money and time on myself would make the intended respite stressful for me. In my mind, I’d fret over all the stuff I wasn’t getting done.

            Over the years, I don’t think I’ve learned how to play without donning a layer of guilt like a second skin. For the last two days, I’ve had no substitute jobs because the openings have been at high schools, middle schools, or schools that are too far from my home. This year, I limited myself to only doing elementary schools within a ten minute drive from my house. I grab jobs at the high school campus that’s walking distance from my house, too. Yesterday, when nothing opened up, I convinced myself that the budget hit wasn’t too bad. I changed out of my work clothes and found my rattiest t-shirt and oldest pair of shorts. I headed out to the back yard and did three hours of yard work. In other words, I worked.

            With today off, it means a harder hit to my extra income. I almost talked myself into taking a slot at a middle school where I could possibly have a totally rotten day. I battled back and forth on the importance of the $78.65 I’ll net VS the Middle School Madness of students in May. I decided to stay home for a second day, but feel guilty about not taking that slot.

             As I sit at keyboard, my mind drifts to the hedges out front. My work ethic primly points out, “You should use today to trim those bushes.”

            Another voice, distant and faint, echoes in my memory. “You work. You work.”

            Maybe today I’ll step away from my overdeveloped sense of responsibility and enjoy an unexpected and unplanned day off—and do nothing at all.

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman