The plan was that virtual schooling was supposed to be an option that parents and guardians could select for their children this year in the state, and many parents and guardians signed their children up for public school providing the needed documentation to allow them to start virtual schooling on the very first day.

This was the case… until the state governor removed all state funding for virtual schooling, stating that all students would be expected to attend face-to-face in the middle of a global pandemic that is still clearly going on, and further elaborating on that point by stating that if districts wanted to offer virtual schooling as an option for their enrolled students that they would have to fund it themselves. A few districts around here considered it, but came to the quick realization that they did not have enough money to fund it, and as a result no virtual schooling is being offered in my state (to my knowledge, anyway). This is in spite of the fact that children under twelve years of age can not yet get vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine currently available for children over the age of twelve, and even if they can not be reasonably expected to attend face-to-face instruction because of safety to themselves or a household member. This is absolutely absurd.

Needless to say, I homeschool two children for a plethora of reasons. One of the reasons that I am not wavering in this right now is the Delta variant, which is shown to affect children more adversely than the formerly mild-assumed strain that had started all of this mess in the first place. You don’t want to take chances with things during an actual pandemic that has killed people, to include children. And yet the state of Texas, they which have a tenuous grasp of science at best, is actively striving to do this. This is absurd.

So I actually got a check for my first Advance Child Tax Credit payment even though the IRS has literally had my bank information on file since the first stimulus check. I checked, and all of that information is still in the portal on the website. But somehow, some way, I miraculously got a paper check in the mail. I had to make time to go down to my grocer, where my bank works, to deposit this check into one of my accounts. It should be deposited at around midnight if you want to get the most technical, and then I can begin doing what I told myself (and everyone else) that I was going to do with it… buy personal comfort items and toys for them.

I got Monster one of the toys that he has been wanting for going on a year now because he saw a YouTube commercial about said toy… the Peppa Pig Sing-a-Long Kitchen Playset. No one in the United States sells, or sold, it, so I had to buy it from a seller on eBay since I had enough money to cover it waiting for the child tax credit check to officially be deposited. He won’t know about it until it actually arrives because of the struggle that he has with conceptualizing time, waiting for things, and understanding the mail service in general. That, and it’s literally coming from another country, so if it gets here in a week I am going to be surprised.

Now to figure out exactly what to buy them with these payments, and help their dreams come true.