Tuesday Top Five: These Uncertain Times
Mar. 11th, 2025 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nevannaOn March 11, 2020, I was informed via email that the school where I worked (one of my three part-time or on-call jobs at the time) would be closed for the next few days for an intensive cleaning, which would hopefully slow the spread of the “coronavirus” that I’d been hearing about for the past few weeks. The building remained closed for over a year. Some of the days that followed were stressful and frightening, but I am fortunate in that plenty of other moments weren’t.
Here are some memories that I associate the most strongly with my everyday life (and only my everyday life, which I am not comparing to anyone else’s) during the COVID-19 lockdown.
1. Teaching remotely. During the 2020-2021 school year, I temporarily pivoted from my school library job to a role as a paraprofessional teaching assistant for one of my colleagues, who badly needed help in her kindergarten “classroom.” This experience was challenging in some ways and unexpectedly rewarding in others. I regularly led several activities that the teacher designed, including a “Draw & Write” exercise in which students drew and captioned scenes from their daily lives. I often created my own examples to share with them.
2. Snazzual Fridays. I legitimately do not remember where I first heard of this idea, whether it originated during the pandemic or existed already, but I do know that several people who worked remotely during that time, and whose style of dress during the week was different than it had been when they went into an office, sometimes donned a fancy (or “snazzy”) outfit on Fridays, just for fun (hence “snazzual” instead of “casual”). Although I usually tried to make myself look at least somewhat presentable for my job (see above), my degree of effort varied from one day to the next, but I still enjoyed putting on a dress and sharing a snazzual selfie when I had the opportunity.
3. The company of ebooks and audiobooks. The former, in particular, kept me company while I was waiting in socially distanced lines. I encourage everyone to try and find out whether their local public library has a free digital collection.
4. Cutting fabric for masks. The current consensus is that cotton fabric isn’t an optimal protective measure, but during the first few months of the pandemic, it was a lot of people’s best option for minimizing the spread of the virus. Since I never learned to use a sewing machine, I coordinated with several local mask-makers and distributors and delved into my fabric stash, measured and cut countless rectangles, and then left them on my front steps to be picked up and eventually sewn together.
5. Walking around the city where I lived to drop things off and pick things up. I joined a local Buy Nothing group on Facebook around the same time (to the best of my recollection) that the pandemic began, and found people to claim the books that were taking up space on my shelf (especially as I looked forward to moving out of the apartment where, at that point, I’d lived for 10 years). Since I almost never took public transit during the lockdown, when I responded to other members’ offers,I found myself wandering through neighborhoods that I wouldn’t visit otherwise. I also regularly dropped off baked goods at some local friends’ houses. (If you were not one of those people, it doesn’t mean that I love you any less, and I will happily share baked goods with you now.)
Here are some memories that I associate the most strongly with my everyday life (and only my everyday life, which I am not comparing to anyone else’s) during the COVID-19 lockdown.
1. Teaching remotely. During the 2020-2021 school year, I temporarily pivoted from my school library job to a role as a paraprofessional teaching assistant for one of my colleagues, who badly needed help in her kindergarten “classroom.” This experience was challenging in some ways and unexpectedly rewarding in others. I regularly led several activities that the teacher designed, including a “Draw & Write” exercise in which students drew and captioned scenes from their daily lives. I often created my own examples to share with them.
2. Snazzual Fridays. I legitimately do not remember where I first heard of this idea, whether it originated during the pandemic or existed already, but I do know that several people who worked remotely during that time, and whose style of dress during the week was different than it had been when they went into an office, sometimes donned a fancy (or “snazzy”) outfit on Fridays, just for fun (hence “snazzual” instead of “casual”). Although I usually tried to make myself look at least somewhat presentable for my job (see above), my degree of effort varied from one day to the next, but I still enjoyed putting on a dress and sharing a snazzual selfie when I had the opportunity.
3. The company of ebooks and audiobooks. The former, in particular, kept me company while I was waiting in socially distanced lines. I encourage everyone to try and find out whether their local public library has a free digital collection.
4. Cutting fabric for masks. The current consensus is that cotton fabric isn’t an optimal protective measure, but during the first few months of the pandemic, it was a lot of people’s best option for minimizing the spread of the virus. Since I never learned to use a sewing machine, I coordinated with several local mask-makers and distributors and delved into my fabric stash, measured and cut countless rectangles, and then left them on my front steps to be picked up and eventually sewn together.
5. Walking around the city where I lived to drop things off and pick things up. I joined a local Buy Nothing group on Facebook around the same time (to the best of my recollection) that the pandemic began, and found people to claim the books that were taking up space on my shelf (especially as I looked forward to moving out of the apartment where, at that point, I’d lived for 10 years). Since I almost never took public transit during the lockdown, when I responded to other members’ offers,I found myself wandering through neighborhoods that I wouldn’t visit otherwise. I also regularly dropped off baked goods at some local friends’ houses. (If you were not one of those people, it doesn’t mean that I love you any less, and I will happily share baked goods with you now.)
