Monthly Archives: December 2020

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Starting the new year with change – redoing our bedroom

The bedroom set that we will end 2020 with is probably 20 years old by now. Yes, it has lasted a long time and while I love it, I think it is time for a change.

When my husband was right out of law school and working for his first law firm, we bought this oak bedroom set – a King-size mirrored headboard, two large cabinet nightstands, a 9 drawer dresser with mirror and a six drawer dresser. It probably was the largest purchase we had ever done.

The set we bought 20 years ago replaced a waterbed and the large headboard and attached nightstand/cabinets made shopping for our first house a challenge as we needed to find a master bedroom with 11 feet of uninterrupted wall space. I am sure our realtor thought we were crazy. But we found our first house and then later a rental house in San Antonio when we moved that could fit the bedroom set. And when we built our current house, we planned for this set as well.

But now it is time to say goodbye to this set and start 2021 with a new bedroom set. Well actually the new one won’t be delivered until Jan 12.

What started the idea of redoing our bedroom set is my husband and I decided we are old. Our eyesight isn’t what it used to be and we are now having trouble seeing some of the words on our 32 inch TV. We wanted to get a bigger TV which meant get rid of the armoire and a bookcase to make room. But this means we would be losing some storage space so I began looking at storage cabinet that would go under the TV we planned to mount on the wall. (The other TV had been in the amoire.)

Somehow it went from buying a 65″ TV and a cabinet to us just replacing all the furniture in hopes that everything – or most everything – would match. I found a few bedroom sets I liked online and we narrowed it down to the one we liked best. The day after Christmas we went to check it out and purchased it. Now it will be here in 2 weeks. The cabinet I ordered will be here in 3 weeks. And the TV – well it will be here today. We have convinced my brother to come help us move some furniture and hang the TV this evening. (Bet he is regretting telling me he was free this evening.)

Hopefully, we will like the new set and that it will last us a good long time. It sure will be a change when we walk into the room. I think not having the mirrors on the headboard will be the biggest thing to get used to. I’ll post pictures of the “new” room after everything is here.

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Students can and will wear face masks

Back in August when our school district began considering having in-person school, many people wondered if they would be able to get the students to wear masks all day. Would the kindergartners be able to keep their masks on? Would teens think they didn’t need them and keep taking them off? Would teachers spend most of their time telling students to put back on or to stop messing with their masks?

When students started going back to school in the middle of September, these concerns seemed baseless as it seems students are able to keep their masks on and somewhat consistently follow the social distancing guidelines.

Last week, I saw on a social media site a parent complaining about high school students standing outside of a restaurant before school. They were not social distanced or wearing masks. This parent thought it was bad form for the parents to not stress to their children the importance of these important precautions to stopping the spread of COVID-19.

But I think this is more an isolated incident. I pick my high schooler up every day from school. To do so, I park in the student parking lot and wait for him. I see lots of high schoolers walking to their car (or to other parents waiting). And you know what, 98% of them are wearing masks as they walk to their cars. It impresses me as I don’t even do that. Once I leave a store, my mask is off. (I rarely wear a mask while outside and socially distant from others.)

And if I was walking to school as my middle schooler does, I probably wouldn’t be wearing my mask until I reached the school grounds. But the few times I have driven her to school, I see students walking to school with their masks on. Even my daughter wears her mask as she walks to or from school.

Now I don’t have a child in the elementary school so I have not seen how well they are or are not handling it but from what I can see at my kids’ schools, the mask wearing is not an issue. The socially distancing part is a different matter. I know in the classrooms and at lunch, the students are keeping apart, but at school dismissal and when they change classrooms, I know they aren’t keeping 6 feet apart.

Overall our school district is doing a good job of keeping our students safe. The positivity rate for the school has been 1-2% while the positivitiy rate in our city is significantly higher (12% last week). The school does contact tracing and the positive cases have all been traced back to off campus activities. Just look at social media and I bet you can guess where these transmissions occur. There are tons of posts of people gathering – and few if any are wearing masks. It seems the schools are doing a better job of preventing the spread of COVID than the parents and other adults are.