Little changes

Before we begin, a few spectacular photos from our travel during the last couple of weeks.

Camellias from the garden outside our building.

Fog in the park outside our back gate.

I would have been in Sydney this past week at a conference, had the year been normal. Instead, all my travel photos are taken within a ten minute walk of home.

The state of Victoria has had a spike in covid-19 cases. We shut down again three weeks ago, but the numbers of positive tests keep going up and up and up, reaching record highs every few days. This is most concerning to me because Jonathan is back in school. Only the students in years 11 and 12 are in school in the state, all the others are online. But because there are exams at the end of high school, and the state doesn't want to figure out how to run different exams for different students under different levels of quarantine, they sent the oldest students back.

I am worried. High school is a place to spread viruses -- we all came down with a bad cold in February that had been spreading around Jonathan's high school. If they keep sending the teenagers back, it seems inevitable that we will all get covid. Maybe we will be lucky and not hit hard. But the disease seems so random we cannot know.

The decision is out of my hands, though. By law, Jonathan goes to school each morning, wears a mask all day, comes home.

Masks are obligatory outside of home now. We're all getting used to wearing them as we walk around the park out the back gate.

Possibly as a way of taking control of some aspect of a life spinning into chaos, Jonathan has decided to upgrade his vegetarianism to veganism. Basically that means he has decided to cut out dairy. He doesn't like milk anyway, and doesn't drink it, but he has had to give up cheese. I am not switching to veganism. I am eating all of the cheese that we bought for Jonathan before he decided on the upgrade.

I'm happy to support a new diet as long as Jonathan is taking control of it, thinking about nutrients and balance, and doing his share of cooking as it becomes more challenging. So far so good. Today Jonathan joined Tim at the grocery store to explore the vegan aisle to see what options were available. He came home loaded with non-dairy cheese, cashew-milk yogurt, falafel, tofu. Tonight Jonathan made green curry with tofu and veggies, and it was tasty. Tomorrow Tim will try a variation on pizza with non-dairy cheese for Jonathan. Many of our vegetarian soups and chilies were already vegan. We'll have to give up the pasta bake, lasagna, unless we make an alternative meal. But I guess we'll see whether this will work or not.

The final small change in our lives is that the new semester starts Monday, and this time around I am teaching. It will be my first teaching of the year. A new class. Online. Taught from my bedroom, where I can look out one window to the garden and the camellias, and then look out the other window to the park. And then look at all the faces on the screen. This is how we teach, now, here. And this is how we learn.

Unless we are in high school, year 11 and 12.