useless information and observations

instead, I often find success telling them “this scares me too, and this is how I handle feeling scared,” and then I give them some mental tools.

It works ALMOST every time. Example: when a kid’s afraid of bugs, I say “ew me too! They’re sort of creepy! What scares you the most?” Then when they tell me (the legs, the eyes, etc.), I tell them a cool fact, or I try to make the feature seem funny.

It doesn’t have to be true. I’m not actually afraid of bugs. The point is validating the emotion while teaching the child that it’s possible to exist and get on with things even while feeling the unpleasant emotion.

I’ve found some kids even have a natural want to comfort others, which can work too. During a thunderstorm, I can say “you’re afraid of thunder? Me too! Will you hold my hand? I think that will make me feel better. What will make you feel better? What about watching a movie?” Then I tell them how much better I feel being together watching our movie, and I thank them for being brave!

I think kids get a lot out of just feeling like we’re in this together. When the assumption is that adults know and can control everything but for some reason refuse to acknowledge and destroy things that scare them, the world must be so confusing. I’m not a psychologist or anything. I’ve just spent a lot of time working with children, and I get a lot of mileage out of basically just letting a kid know that grown ups feel and experience the same things they do, and that we can navigate it together.

If you have a few extra dollars this week, he has a gofundme set up.

Not only do people often put the book back in the wrong spot, but knowing that the book was looked at is important. Our circulation system has a category called “in house check-in” that we use to check in the books that we find on tables and other “put back” bins. 

It seems to us that people who don’t live in apartments with communal laundry rooms are baffled by how much effort is involved in all of this. (And I fully recognize we’re luckier than people in apartments *without* laundry who still need to go to laundromats.)

To minimize contact with others, we’ve been holding out longer in between trips downstairs and doing it late at night. As a result, I finished tonight’s laundry at 12:50am.

This is what’s involved in doing laundry for us:

Wash hands.

Put on mask and shoes.

Ride elevator to basement.

Put laundry in washers.

Ride elevator back upstairs.

Remove shoes in hall, step inside.

Carry shoes in, spray with Lysol.

Remove mask.

Wash hands.

(Wait 40 minutes.)

Wash hands.

Put on mask and shoes.

Ride elevator to basement.

Move laundry from washers to dryers.

Ride elevator back upstairs.

Remove shoes in hall, step inside.

Carry shoes in, spray with Lysol.

Remove mask.

Wash hands.

(Wait 60 minutes.)

Wash hands.

Put on mask and shoes.

Ride elevator to basement.

Remove clean laundry from dryers.

Ride elevator back upstairs.

Remove shoes in hall, step inside.

Carry shoes in, spray with Lysol.

Remove mask.

Wash hands.

If you live in NYC, text “COVID” to 64722 to get started.

Here’s a link as well: https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2020/mount-sinai-launches-covid19-app-to-track-spread-of-virus-across-new-york-city-pr

you really do have to vote blue no matter who.

bc RBG deserves to retire.

Liberals already lost their chances at taking the Supreme Court for a generation in 2016. The current makeup is 5-4 for conservatives, which means sometimes liberals can eek out a win, like the case that preserved the Affordable Care Act.

If Trump gets to replace Ginsburg with a conservative who will be on the Court for forty years, with a 6-3 majority, it would be devasting.