The other day my husband and I were watching one of Trump’s speeches, intercut with a similar speech given by Obama for comparison, which was pretty funny.

But also sad. I am a bit of an American Politics Junkie but lately I have had to pull back a bit on watching pundits and debates, because it is alarming and scary and sad. I have vowed to watch no coverage until after the election, and also to spend this time learning more about Canadian politics instead, which has actually been pretty interesting.

I did say to my husband, though, that whether you are pro or against Trump, everyone is going to miss the horribly entertaining reality show that his presidency has brought to television. It’s like a car crash that we can’t look away from, and when he leaves office, whether this year or in four more years, there will be a void for sure.

I propose that he be given his own half-hour sitcom/reality show after he’s done. We can build a set that is like a copy of the White House (perhaps the one used by The West Wing is still around). We can tell him he’s still the president and Truman Show him into the set with a fake staff.

Then we’ll tell him the (more or less) real news of the day, and have him do a daily half-hour briefing sharing his thoughts on the matter and his declarations of how he’s going to magically solve it all, and we can all watch and laugh, and feel light about knowing that he no longer has any real power, instead of the way we do now, with black pits of fear in our stomach.

I predict several Emmy wins for him and that should make him very happy indeed.

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In other news, COVID cases in Ottawa continue to climb and we are now in a weird place where no one really wants to go back to full on lockdown, and no one wants the schools to close, but it is perhaps the only solution, so we are all dithering about and putting off any hard decisions.

I for one would love to see the schools stay open because our kids are so much happier there. Since school started just a few weeks ago, we’ve seen all three of our kids perk right up. They’re happier and they’re interacting more with their friends, both in person but online too, having lots of video and Discord calls in the evenings to play games and talk about assignments and generally hang out. They’re enjoying the work they do on their in-person days much more, as well. It has made a huge difference.

So this led to a conversation I had with a friend of mine on the weekend about your School Breaking Point. She was saying that when her kids went back to school, she had it in the back of her mind that they could always pull them out if “things got bad,” and I think most parents probably felt the same way.

But now things ARE bad, arguably. There’s more daily cases here than there were back in March and April. Some schools have had to close classrooms or even the whole school due to breakouts.

The school my friend’s kids go to has had one case, announced last week. It wasn’t in their specific classrooms. As far as they know, it has just been the one case. So their kids continue to go, but we are now all wondering When. When will things be bad enough that we would actually pull our kids out? When there’s a case in your own kid’s class? When there’s an outbreak of several cases in your school? When a close friend or family member tests positive?

Well. Of course we are all hoping not to have to hit that point. But I am trying to give it some thought so we can be prepared, and take action if need be. For now, we are just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping the kids can stay in school for as long as possible, keeping all of us happier, if not healthier.