We've been encouraging Olive to write in her journal while we're stuck at home with the, you know, worldwide pandemic that is going on. I thought I'd get down some of what it's like to live through for me.
Being at home all the time is still pretty great so far. The reason is troubling, and my average screen time has shot up despite quitting social media for Lent due to my never ending refreshing of Google News, but I'm really enjoying being here. I sleep later, not having to worry about getting Olive to school, and even with the "10 minutes to anywhere" commute in Lubbock I have an extra hour a day. The coffee here is better than in the office and stopping now and then to check out what crafts the girls are working on is way better than buzzing by the kitchen to see if there happens to be any free food.
I know eventually we will all get sick of this, and it creeps out of all of us occasionally (except June, she's digging it). Olive had to cancel an outing with her best friend over spring break that she was really excited about. When we planned to brave the outside to try to score some flushable wipes, she got frustrated and teary about not being able to come to the store. Alisa and I have each made shopping trips, and at least for me, it felt grim to be out in a sparsely populated store, everyone quiet, trying to make sure I didn't get too close to any old people. Olive thought I was joking about people wearing masks.
The toilet paper thing is one of the main things I'll remember about all this. I read that in previous hoarding incidents (before hurricanes, blizzards, etc.) they had not really seen people hoard toilet paper. I know in Lubbock anytime they say it will snow it seems like all the tortillas and bottled water disappears. Milk, bread, and eggs are all common hoarding targets - but why toilet paper? This particular shortage I think is what's driving a lot of the people to go to the store themselves instead of curbside pickup. You can't reserve toilet paper for pickup, because of the demand. So you have to go in. The other drawbacks to curbside (not getting exactly what you wanted) seem pretty inconsequential. We're already making plenty of substitutions in our cooking (the other night I made "lemony chicken with fingerlings and olives" despite being out of both lemons and fingerlings).
This week is some kind of limbo between spring break and "real" virtual school starting up again, and we've been trying to figure out some sort of schedule or rhythm. Alisa is doing a ton of work, making all the meals (and usually some kind of dessert), setting up activities for the girls (today they did a cool art project on the fence using sidewalk chalk), taking them on walks, making baby food, and who knows what else. The dishwasher is full every night.
I've set up a desk on a folding table in our bedroom, along with an old monitor we weren't using. I'm missing my mouse more every day, but the girls consider the multi screen setup pretty high tech. Often June will come and hang out right behind me on our bed and play with her bag of tricks. She's always laughing and squealing and plays happily on her own for pretty long stretches and is generally a delight to have around. Sometimes the girls come and sit with me and I try to explain what I'm working on. Often I just sit and talk through a problem with them, something the girls know I call "rubber ducking" at work.
We still have standup at 9:30, on video. The standup bot apps you see for remote teams seem crazy to me in a time like this. Wouldn't you rather see everyone? I guess sometimes I'd rather not everyone see me at 9:30 though! To try to add some levity (and maybe subconsciously inspired by all the crazy hats I've been seeing in Kingdom), I started wearing some silly hat from the girls dress up stuff for our meetings. Online meetings seem to be ok. Maybe people pay closer attention because they have to think about managing their mute button. We had a similar meeting for Sunday's Bible class at church and I thought it went surprisingly well.
Oh, and we all are kinda sick. Olive seems fine, but everyone else has something. It's pretty mild, and Alisa has had hers for a couple of weeks, but everything seems to be a symptom of the virus. Eleanor was coughing at bedtime the other night and cried and asked if she had corona. Something about it sticks with me - we haven't hid what's going on from the kids, but it also seems like something a 5 year old shouldn't have to worry about. She seems to be doing great today, and spent most of the afternoon writing up clues for charades for family game night. She also insisted we play "ring around the rosie" (appropriate) and a couple of rounds of telephone before bed.
Really there is just way too much that goes on to get down here. We had a bird funeral yesterday, for example. But before this all fades into meme and memory, I wanted to put something down about what life is like in the middle of it. We have it really easy, and are thankful for it. There are little things to complain about, and it can be isolating and frustrating, but we are ok, and it's good to have each other.