Author: Matthew Groff

  • Pondering the Change Out My Window

    The lot behind our apartment is in full blow construction now. There are workers swarming all over the lot, laying rebar, pouring cement, sawing things, and having equipment dropped off. It starts right at 7am, and goes until 6pm some days. We used to have our windows, but now it is difficult to do because of the noise, and the dust being kicked up. Sadly, we know that as we live in the third floor, that this 10-story condo tower will block out the sun and even the sky from our windows. We fear that we will be looking at brick walls out of all of our widows in a year.

    Yesterday, I found myself watching all the construction from my window. There was a sort of rhythm, steady movement of people go to and coming from different areas of the worked site. Guys spray painting lines and numbers on the recently poured cement floors, people cutting 2×4’s, people removing bags of trash, and one guy with plans walking around the site.

    I am witnessing the slow destruction of my window to the world. Sometimes I feeling like I should be more upset about this, my wife certainly is, but it just feels like this is the awfulness that is progress, or capitalism. I still haven’t decided. Maybe it is a metaphor for all the change that is happening in the world. Maybe it has no meaning. Either way, it is happening.

  • Busy Backson

    The day with the kid got away from me. What I wanted to talk about was the construction happening next door and how that affects concentration.

    Hopefully tomorrow…

  • Unicorns and Dragons

    Today is a day that I am not feeling it. There is a lot going on in the world, and personally, I am having a tough Covid day. Just not in a place to try to come up with something witty, or have a surprise twist to it.

    I asked my daughter, what should I write about, and her response was “Unicorns and dragons.” Always a good answer to any question.

    In that spirit, I think that I am again waiting for a unicorn to come along and make everything better. I am also waiting for the dragon to arrive and make the world an exciting adventure again.

    I remember when I was a little kid, say eight or nine, and I said that I wanted to grow up and be an adventurer. In my mind, I thought there was a company that you applied to for that job. I didn’t know yet that adventure is a freelance type of job.

    The unicorn for me is act of no effort, the silver platter experience, where you don’t have to do anything and it is magically better. You know, just handed to you.

    Those are the thoughts that came off the top of my head.

  • Learning to Write

    So, day two of full online kindergarten classes didn’t go any better today as compared to yesterday. In fact it was a little worse.

    Our online teacher is making the best of a bad situation, and she is dedicated to the students and, as far as I have seen in the past five days, she is taking all of the kid’s mental well being very seriously. It has been a morning video chat, and then an assignment asking the kids to draw themselves. Then we had a second video chat about emotions and expressing how we feel. A lunch break with another assignment to watch a video of a person reading a book and asking the kids to draw their favorite part of the story. On the final chat of the day, the teacher wanted all the kids to show their drawing to the class, and then try writing a word or a sentence that can describe the picture each drew. The teacher was very clear that each kid should try writing a sentences, or word, or even a squiggle. She was clearly trying to see where each of the kids was at when it comes to writing words, language, and phonic sounds. That’s when we came off the wheels at our house.

    My daughter got very nervouse, then really embarassed that she couldn’t write out a sentence. Since we were down to the last 15 minutes of the day, and I could see that this was making her very upset, that I sent a text to the teacher that we had to leave, and I shut off the chat.

    This had been building all day.

    This is a big change for all of us, and making sure all the kids know and learn how to express themselves is very important, and our teacher is doing a very good job with that. My kid-o had a very clear expectation in her mind that as a kindergartener she thought that she would be learning, everyday. And with five days of drawing pictures, she was getting confused as to why she wasn’t learning. She kept saying that to me all day, “I want to learn. When will we learn?” Then when she was asked to do something, she ran right into the wall of not knowing how to do it.

    This is my fault, and I know it.

    I spent all Summer with her working on teaching her how to read. We worked throguh two different series of first reader books, and she is picking out words she recognizes in other books, newspapers, and even on tv. But as I learned today, learning to read is not the same as learning to write.

    We spent the next hour working on letters, and writing simple words, and just trying to make her feel confident in learning about writing.

    I’ve got a lot of learning to do myself.

  • Internet is Out

    So… when our internet went out today, yes, everything grounds to a halt. I’m on my phone writing this, and it feels like I have been defeated by the tech Gods.

    The wife needed to work, the kid needed to go to school, and I wanted to use today pushing people to help Flip the Senate. None of that happened.

    Yeah, I’m pretty annoyed. I had a plan for today and it all went to shit fast. This was supposed to be a test first day at making a change. I got all fired up over the weekend with the passing of RBG. I was ready to get into good trouble.

    Now I have to wait a day… The Revolution will be streamed later…