Snow day here in Chicagoland — which doesn’t mean the kids are out of school, alas. Chicago Public School is still meeting in these conditions, which I think is a TERRIBLE decision on the part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and it’s hard not to see it as petty revenge on her part against the teachers. It is literally putting students, staff, and teacher lives in danger, having so many of them drive to work in these conditions, which is outrageous. Really disappointed in her.
Here in Oak Park, all our schools pivoted to remote, and UIC did as well, which is actually kind of unprecedented — UIC almost never has snow days for bad weather, and used to just make us come in. The attitude seemed to be, well, if our hospital has to stay open, we might as well keep the whole campus open, which makes no sense. We live in Chicago, folks. Sometimes, there is genuinely terrible weather that is not fit for man nae beast.
All of which has meant a really quiet morning for me, which was a really nice mid-week break. Anand is a little cranky that he didn’t get an actual snow day with school completely cancelled, but he admitted he didn’t want to add on a day in June and delay summer vacation, so has begrudgingly admitted remote school is better for today.
For me, I didn’t have to get up to drive Kavi in to school — she has a 30-minute walk to high school, and our deal is that I will drive her in on days when it’s below freezing at the time she’d be walking. Normally that means I’m dragging myself into outside clothes at 7:30 and driving from 7:45 – 8:15 or so, which takes 30 minutes out of the day, so it was nice to get that back.
I also didn’t have to make Anand’s lunch at 8:30 (Kavi likes the school hot lunch, but Anand would rather have a salami sandwich on multigrain bread every single day, which is mindless enough that I can just manage it — and he can make it himself in a pinch, but Mommy cuts it into four pieces, which is a little beyond him (salami is slippery), and he does like that, so for just a tiny bit longer, I will make his lunches for him). So instead, I lay in bed and read until 9 or so — I’m reading the Rivers of London series, more on that soon.
Eventually got dressed, tea and breakfast and meds, worked out, showered, got dressed again in clean clothes, read some more, and am now going to remote teach, then have an IEP annual meeting on Zoom with Anand’s school, then remote teach my next class. But it’s nice to do it all in a more relaxed way for a change. Still feels a little like a snow day. 
(View out my front door — tons of snow, still coming down, Christmas decorations still up, and will probably be up for another month at least.)
