equivalent of smoking two cigarettes

November 9: A nearby town is on fire, and it has sent plumes of ash into the sky. It is tinging everything with a red brown glow, making it look like golden hour before lunch time.

November 10: Nick sheared George and even trimmed his bangs. But he cut the bangs unevenly, so that it looks like he did them diagonally. It make George look like an emo kid.

November 11: Today, I hit 53,756 words for my novel. It is now officially the longest thing I have ever written.

November 12: Somewhere in Richmond, there is a beer waiting for me, courtesy of Ryan.
Armistice Brewing Company

November 13: The air quality is still at code red, so we had indoor recess all day again. It looks like it will continue this way all week. The kids are quickly becoming agitated and sickly. Yet, I still see hoards of people smoking as if they aren’t getting enough of that already.

November 14: We are teaching the Kindness Course again in program. I wanted to center my lessons around bullying because I knew my kids were having a lot of problems with that. The issue was that I was having a lot of trouble finding activities about bullying that they couldn’t bully each other during. They proved me right. We made poster about putting a stop to bullying. We decorated cutouts of our hands, signed it, and taped it on. They took the paper hands, folded down all the fingers but the middle one, and flipped each other off.

November 15: Due to the air quality, being outside for an hour is the equivalent of smoking two cigarettes. But the school districts are holding off on canceling school because they are afraid of losing government funding next year. Melissa joked about taking pictures of our kids all holding cigarettes with the caption “they might as well be”. When it was announced that school would be cancelled on Friday, Melissa wrote it on a piece of paper and slid it to me, knowing that saying it out loud in front of the children would spark pandemonium.

November 16: The school felt almost haunted all week. The front yard, normally filled with screaming children, was quiet and empty. The front gate screeched opened and slammed shut with a heavy thud. Everything was grey and obscured by smoke.




much love,
hedgie