OMG, I'm so FUCKING tired of having to be on Matilda to do every single thing. I have to hound her to get out of bed. I have to take her phone away to make her do her homework. Then she dawdles for hours instead of focusing. Then I'm trying to get her up to go for a walk with JZ so she exits the house and does one stupid thing with her body today, and it takes four prompts to get her up and out of her robe and into her shoes. I literally had to stand there and order her to "Get up. Take off your robe. No put on your shoes." Because all the previous times I told her to do those things she simply flopped back into bed and did none of them.

Her absolute and complete slothful unproductivity is driving me bugshit. And it's not like I'm expecting her to do six hours of schoolwork a day. Just two hours, keep up with assignments, get off social media, get some fresh air, move her body, and read a fucking book. Expectations are really bare minimum and she does nothing like the Great Inert Lump.

well, that's my big brother.

Whoa.

Okay, you've mentioned him and I assumed some smart infectious disease doctor who'd done some cool things. Didn't realize he was major league.

eta: I realize I am completely fangirling your brother. That's accurate.

Parent of teenagers solidarity fist-bump, David.

OMG. I am so with you on the floppy teens!!! Liv has been pretty honest about her lack of motivation to do her school work, but I finally have to just tell her to DO IT. I know it doesn't feel like you're learning, but we just have to get through another 6 weeks and then you are DONE!

GAH!

I am taking a shift at work tomorrow--answering phones and taking requests for pick ups. We are doing curbside pick up which just started today but seems to be taking off. I still have some benefits to claim but it will be nice to talk to patrons again and get out of this god-forsaken house.

So one good thing from this, the changed commissin people to hourly based on their average effective hourly rate for Jan and Feb and I had sales in Feb, not a lot but enough that it gave me a teeny bit of a higher base pay. They did this so commission people don't have to worry about making commission but still will make about the same. I am making less because I haven't been commission that long in that time frame but it's a nice little bump.

David, my youngest niece is like that when it's NOT a world-wide pandemic. So, you know, solidarity. Also it could be worse?

I realize I am completely fangirling your brother. That's accurate.

Thanks Cass! He's actually pretty quiet about all the stuff he does: he never told us he was the one who brought this information back to the US to be examined! And we never knew he went to Wuhan!

...and for parents who find their kids frustrating, it's worth pointing out that my brother was a mediocre student for a long time, ran pretty wild, partied a lot as a teen and young adult, got into a fair amount of trouble, and sank my dad's van in a pond in high school. Oh, and flipped one of the family sedans. We were lucky he survived to 18, much less 57.

So there's hope!

sank my dad's van in a pond in high school.

I desperately want to hear this story.

Parent of teenagers solidarity fist-bump, David.

OMG. I am so with you on the floppy teens!!! Liv has been pretty honest about her lack of motivation to do her school work, but I finally have to just tell her to DO IT. I know it doesn't feel like you're learning, but we just have to get through another 6 weeks and then you are DONE!

After I wrote it out I realized that Matilda might be depressed. Not only are we isolated from school and friends, but we started with a hard two-week quarantine, and then she didn't get into SotA, and she got a shitty high school assignment and then her grandfather died.

But it's hard to tell with teenagers who just want to sleep and flop all the time anyway.

I wouldn't care about the schoolwork if she was busy beavering away on Harry Potter fanfic, or reading All The Books, or drawing or making films or doing *anything* that required two brain cells sparking off each other. But she's literally on Facetime with her friend while her friend is playing a computer game for hours.

I am trying to ascertain regular teen angst from The Depresh constantly. Owen has a psychologist we can call but Liv hasn't seen a practitioner yet. Keeping a close watch.

Hope it's just ennui. Nobody dies from ennui outside of Gashlycrumb Tinies, right?