This morning after breakfast we tested my son's temperature before departing for school. He answered the five family health questions in the wellness app we must fill out before heading to school every morning. We arrived a few minutes early because I had a prescription for my son to be kept on file in the office and I wanted to get there early as opposed to late. At eight-thirty on the dot, my son's two teachers came out of the classroom, picked up the thermometer from the basket they'd laid outside the door in preparation for the arrival of students and waited as the Upper Elementary students exited their cars, one at a time, and began to approach the classroom.
My son now out of the car, I start to inch forward, looking for the admin staff member I'd seen up ahead only moments ago. Michelle, my son's teacher, said to me in a tone that told me she had something important to tell me to please wait before driving off. I nodded and waited. About ten seconds, later the car in front of me drove off so I inched forward, looking for Rachel so I could hand off the prescription.
Michelle said again, this time in a tone that sounded both serious and dire, "could you please wait?" I responded in a chipper tone, "I wouldn't leave you!" Right after that she walked over and told me, "he's got a fever of 100.2". Now I understood why she was so upset. I responded with a blurt in a confident, not defensive or upset way, "I know he doesn't have a temperature."
This was bad, just like the other time this happened. I suggested they let him stand to the side and recheck it in a few minutes. I was confused though because this time, unlike the last time, the car wasn't hot and it wasn't beating down late summer rays. I wasn't worried about my son having COVID-19 so much as I was worried it would cause us to take him out of school, get a COVID-19 test, and then he would (I think) still have to stay home for two weeks.
I was thinking about asking for a secondary thermometer to be tested on him when I heard the assistant teacher say, "she's got a fever too." Michelle was not looking happy. Was COVID-19 on campus the second day of school after all the preparations and precautions?
Then Allison called out, "and this student too. That's three in a row." By now, the backup thermometer for the class was outside and my son's temperature was being tested via his ear canal. Michelle looked at him and said, "you're fine, go on in" with a look of total relief on her face.
It was then that they realized what they'd done: they'd left the thermometer outside the door to the classroom and it had been affected by the hot weather and possibly the sun on it. Everyone was relieved and now we all knew a good tip for thermometer storage. Stressful lesson learned.
The Big Boy Update: Yesterday my son ate almost none of his food. I had expected him to eat a large amount given it was the first day back to school. Then we remembered: the Adderall, which he hasn't taken all summer, sometimes causes him to lose his appetite. I wondered if it would be a while for him to adjust, but today he ate a good bit, which is good because he's doing a lot of thinking and work at school. They are also walking over to the state art museum for lunch every day in addition to playing non-contact, non-proximity games on the playground.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter created the most darling hedgehog today during breaks between her online classes with Blake. The hedgehog is bound for Aagaard's Animal Emporium (otherwise known as Mrs. Aagaard's house) in exchange for a pet my daughter has asked her to make and send our way. I showed Blake where some of the supplies he might need would be in the craft room and that was all he needed to guide my daughter into making the spiky little hedgehog using red and blue felt, crystal stickers for his claws, and slices from a tiny coffee stirrer straw for all the spikes.
That Pesky Printer Clog: I took apart the extruder three full times last night with the last time being even more of a dismantling so I could get to the stepper motor. The stepper motor is a little thing that advances the filament down to the extruder nozzle. The nozzle heats up and melts the material but before it gets there, it passes through a little constriction that grabs and pushes the filament forward or backward. A small piece remained in there from a filament color change that was too high up to melt and too low down to be pushed forward by the stepper motor. Once we got deep inside the extruder head (my husband helped hold things in the end so wires didn't have undue pressure placed on them) we could easily see the blockage and just tap it out. It was a long way in to get a five-millimeter piece of filament. It's all it took to seize the printer head up and render it useless. Now that the clog has been cleared, it's happily printing again and has been doing so all day.
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