My library finally closed, to my huge relief. I am relatively new there, and also the very lowest level of employee, and also if I’m not there my work MUST be done by someone else, so I have no standing to say that I am not coming to work because I am choosing to isolate/distance/quarantine. I can call in sick, or I can quit; and I couldn’t do the former indefinitely, and I didn’t want to do the latter. But it was also pretty clear to me that the library, which rightly thinks of itself as an important community resource, needed to switch to thinking of itself as an important community virus-transmission hub. Especially when the public schools closed. Some teachers were sending emails urging students to go to the library to get study materials and even just fresh books for free-reading time, and in normal times teachers ABSOLUTELY should be encouraging library visitation, but these are not normal times.
The children are starting online schooling, and it is so overwhelming to me. I am trying to just be chill and not worry about it, which with my temperament exhibits as avoidance and denial and letting the children figure it out. I am spinning this as being good for the children’s independence and self-reliance, which has the ring of truth to it as well as being justification for me to keep playing games on my phone in another room.
Paul’s workplace is still getting set up for him to work from home, so he is using a vacation day today while they finish that up. He should only have to go back once more, to pick up the equipment. After that we will be staying in.
Meanwhile Paul’s sister is still posting scoffing, mocking, eye-rolly things on Facebook about how “idiots” are “panicking for no reason.” That’s heartening. Yesterday she reposted something making fun of parents for worrying about their children missing school, which then went on to suggest parents spend the time teaching their children to cook, clean, check the oil, balance a checkbook, “treat others with respect,” etc. Okay, honorary boomer.
I ordered four pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries and have no regrets.
Did I tell you that our last grocery store trip was done by Paul, because I was heading to Rob’s college to get his things? So I made a very careful list, with explanations. One of the things on that list was, and I quote, “SNACK CAKES!!” Reader, he came home without the snack cakes. WITHOUT. THE SNACK CAKES. I am respecting social distancing so I will not be consulting an attorney at this time.
I see that I can order various snack cakes from Target (Little Debbie strawberry rolls, which I used to find revolting but somehow in middle age have come to treasure! Hostess chocolate cupcakes! I assume given two examples you can find the rest yourself!), but the upside of an empty snack-cakes cupboard is that the prowling-for-snack-cakes children are now planning to bake cookies and that seems like one of the most perfect isolation activities ever.
It would be very hard to resist being snippy with a SIL posting things like that, so if you have, please pat yourself on the back. If you haven’t, I’m ok with that too. She should be more thoughtful of her immunocompromised nephew. And his mama. You sound like you are doing the right amount of panicking and the right amount of parent-teaching. I have four teenagers eating and lounging in various parts of the house, so I am trying to be in a different part of the house for my own self-care. It’s not too bad so far, and I am thankful for walks around the neighborhood and I am planning a therapeutic drive around town later today. Someone said we should be keeping a journal of our daily experiences, so I may try that.
In an attempt to give the two high schoolers a balance between structure and autonomy, I created a spreadsheet so they could figure out how they wanted to organize their days, which I think for most of us tend to slide towards meeting the ironclad responsibilities (school, work) and then filling the gaps with a lot of sitting around with something electronic.
One kid called me controlling, and my spouse said that as long as his grades are good, we shouldn’t worry about anything else (whereas I would take a dip in grades if it meant he were interacting with the world for more than dinnertime). The other one brought me the schedule filled out to the half-hour.
I got up and exercised this morning. Started work on time, remotely. Still haven’t showered.
Spouse is wasting food, which means he will get pushed out of the lifeboat first, I guess.
I still have Samoa’s and Trefoils in the house, but I also bought a jumbo bag of chocolate chips and another of brown sugar back in December, and parceled them out into cookie-recipe-sized portions. So I didn’t buy more snacks when we went shopping a couple weeks ago to fill in the gaps. We also have unsweetened cocoa for chocolate cake, and unsweetened chocolate, and sweetened condensed milk, just in case we need to make emergency truffles.
I’m so glad your library closed.
OMG that post. Several of my Boomers-in-Law shared it. Scott’s comment was, “Elitist much?” which earned my undying appreciation, even if he is blowing through the quarantine snacks at a faster rate than I would prefer.
Continuing to figure out how to support my HS senior in the midst of all of this….
Feeling your pain wrt having a senior in high school. I have my doubts they’ll be back to in-class instruction (who knew Friday the 13th of March would be your last day of real school as a senior!). I expect prom and many other social-type events to be cancelled (honestly, even including the graduation ceremony). So far school musical is postponed, but I imagine it will be cancelled (junior daughter in the cast). It is surely not a time we will soon forget! Unfortunately it’s our new (and hopefully temporary) reality.
A piece of real life experience from someone who has practiced social distancing through several years of flu season: start your vehicle(s) every few days. Most newish vehicles have security/alarm systems that draw power constantly and will drain the battery if not being started for several days. Stay safe and healthy!
This is great advice, but also, I moved my car today so I could put our trash out and just the feel of being in a moving vehicle was enough to make me decide that I would be going for a drive to nowhere in particular for as long as made sense just as soon as the weather got better because after just a few days of not going anywhere, I am apparently now all about the freedom of driving. Like, for four years I have been wishing I could dump my kids on a bus every morning, or that I lived in a more walkable area, and all of a sudden I am picturing just driving BY my kids’ school for the heck of it and it is a picture of BLISS. So yes, start your car for its health, but also maybe take a little drive for your own.
I too am having my kids fill out a schedule. My daughter wants a MWF schedule with TTh off; my son wants a shorter work day every day. Fine, fine. My husband always works from home and is offering both kids a course on photography. I can teach them a language but I doubt my daughter will take me up on it. I’ll be teaching my college courses from home, so it’s not like I’ll be wondering what to do.
Food is still in supply here and we’re not locked down yet. I’m wondering if we can mail things to my relatives in the Bay Area.
Oh, Paul. You doofus. I just placed a grocery pickup order for the first time, and am expecting similarly frustrating results. If I am in the store, I can make substitutions on the fly. If my husband goes, I can tell him, “if they don’t have x, get y, and if they don’t have y, don’t get any.” The online thing only allows you to say whether or not you want a substitution. This is a good problem to have (get my groceries for me and put them in my car!!) but relinquishing control is hard.
If it’s Kroger, they will text you the thing they plan to substitute it with and you can say whether it’s okay. You can’t say what WOULD be okay, but it’s better than nothing. I had around 10 subs (all of which I liked) last time, so they took $20 off my order! Worth it to me!
My husband also did our grocery run as I work in the Dean of Students Office in a large university and am still having to go to work to manage closure/move-outs, etc… Anyway, when I got home from a long head-ache inducing day I looked for a glass of wine. He told me “Oh, I almost bought some more wine but decided not to so that we could save money.” He may now be dead from my eyes only!
The fact that he came home empty-handed is horrific enough – but for him to TELL you he intentionally didn’t buy any makes this 100 times worse.
… four pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries !
… emergency truffles !
You are my heroes !
My daughter is in kindergarten. I saw someone posting “I want a professional to teach her to read, I can’t do it” and I FEEL this. I am trying to work at home, and keep both her and her nearly 3yo brother entertained. Did you know you can watch the entirety of the original Mr. Rogers series, on either Netflix or Amazon I forget which? The first one “isn’t even in COLOR, MOM”. Now you know. I told them we will be watching at least one episode every day.
I have to hope we will eventually go back to school but I despair a little. The small Lutheran school where she goes to kindergarten isn’t likely to set up online school, I don’t think. Not sure you could teach a kid to actually read that way anyway.
I hear you, Natalie!
I picked up “eLearning” packets for my 1st grader and Pre-K-er this morning. The only way for me to focus on helping my first grader is to use my highly prized quiet and alone rest time during the 2 year old and 4 year olds naps…. Which means I don’t get the “alone” part of that time at all. Today is the first day of trying to do school at home; I keep telling myself that tomorrow will be better. The reality, however, is that tomorrow will be harder, because we will be one day further in to social distancing and we’ll all be one day further into cabin fever.
Can you do a screen time swap? Littles get screens while you school big, then big gets screens when littles nap.
As I noted on Twitter the other day H went to the grocery store to stock up and bought like it was the Soviet Union circa 1980 – he bought one bag of chips. One. I mean were they rationing chips?? I don’t think he understands what the phrase stocking up means. Sigh.
I work in a hospital (support staff not clinical ) and it is not a good time. We are not overrun at this point but are preparing to be. Cancelling all elective procedures, planning for shortages, very strict visitor policy, checkpoints at every entrance. I try not to panic then here the scenarios we are prepping forand that is out the window.
Also, pro tip for quarantine snacks. My 2 kids and husband are all home and would level my stock of snacks in days. I hid stuff. They have plenty to eat but I dole out the treats. :)
I am mostly isolated as of now. My company, shockingly, allowed most of us to work from home starting tomorrow. Of course, there are certain aspects of my job that need my actual physical presence. My plan is to show up a few times a week at off times to deal with those things.
The NC governor just closed all restaurants, etc. from dine-in. For this I am eternally grateful – because that single action opened my adult son’s eyes to just how serious this is but, I am extremely concerned about the waitstaff – will they be paid? Most likely not.
We don’t generally keep snacks in the house on purpose. And if we DO have snacks, I generally keep them hidden just because The Husband does not need to be snacking…that makes me sound controlling but no, I’m doing it for him. If it is there, he will eat it and he wants to lose weight; so snacks are out.
My husband and daughter hit up Total Wine this evening. Her Snapchat said over $300?!? My husband claimed in part due to a special bottle of champagne to celebrate the all clear. He said they didn’t have many empty boxes left to load stuff into at the store…
He’s no fool since with both kids going to be back at home–and one of them is definitely gonna be infected (8 airports and many shots and tokes in between) and will be in isolation–we’re gonna need all that alcohol.
I placed a large emergency-Hawaiian-toffee order last week, as much because of the ongoing noisy/messy/disruptive work going on in our building (this is week six) as because of All This, but boy, am I glad to have it now!
My sister in-law sent a cheery text message to both my husband and me asking if, since her father had to cancel his Florida trip in late April, she and her husband and 3 kids could come stay with us for a visit the last weekend in April, and that way she could see her dad for his birthday.
I said that we’re in isolation until public health says otherwise, and she said something like “well yes, we’d come when things were back to normal.” There was some more back-and-forth between her and Jared and I with her mentioning “back to normal” about three times, then giving in with a breezy “I’ll get in touch again when the dates are closer.”
My husband told me he just about had a conniption over that conversation (okay, “conniption” is my word, but it’s politer than the word he used). He also called his dad and said “I think they might ask to stay with you since we’re saying no. You have to tell her NO!”
I haven’t got boomers, I’ve got homeschoolers, reposting memes about how we should skip any curriculum our school sends home and just “unschool” our kids with cooking lessons and backyard science and nature walks and putting on plays and I don’t know what the heck else. My understanding is that our state is not allowed to mandate online learning due to equity issues (not all kids have access, so you can’t require it), which means everything my girls’ teachers have recommended is completely optional. And it turns out, an hour or two of me pushing them to do worksheets and iPad learning games and quiet reading time STILL leaves PLENTY of hours for my kids to make a disaster in the kitchen and track in a bunch of mud from free playing in the rain, the cleaning up of which I then get to supervise. It’s keen.
As someone who knows how to change her car’s oil but does not because you still have to deal with the dirty motor oil, so why bother? — I hate that meme.
My kids are doing their schoolwork (I think), and I am just trying to make sure we all stay out of each other’s way as much as possible. Also I’m walking the dog A LOT.
Your SIL seems to exist to make sure you keep the memory of your MIL alive.
::snort-laughs, tries to make it sound like a cough, realizes that might be worse::
you win the comment section!