Craig is getting more stir-crazy than the rest of us. He is constantly looking for excuses to leave the house, which makes me crazy because he's probably most at risk out of all of us, due to severe asthma as a kid. He's run quite a few errands, which are generally helpful but still risky. He's technically working from home, but most days that has looked like a conference call and some email checks before getting in a workout and spending the rest of the day keeping the boys occupied. Jacob misses basketball a lot. His team isn't practicing currently and our hoop only goes so far. And of course, the one day it was near 70 degrees (super randomly) we had to put the hoop away because we also had 60mph wind gusts. Carter would probably be content 24/7 if we left him in a room with a screen, but clearly that's not a good idea. It's been hard to explain to him why he can't play with the kids across the street.
As for me, I'm working normal hours from my desk in the dining room. It's full of interruptions and distractions, but I'm basically sitting there for the better part of eight hours. And Friday afternoon and today it's been my responsibility to monitor the inquiries that come in through an internet form taking questions about issues related to the outbreak--mostly campus-related stuff, but there have been some random health questions, too. It's a little exhausting mentally, just because answering questions with sensitivity and yet maintaining an "official" voice is challenging. The other day I was dealing with a student who was planning on moving out this weekend but her hometown was instituting a shelter-in-place starting Friday, and she was trying to either get approval to stay in her room until the end of the shelter in place in two weeks, or figure out how she could still get home without getting her and her mom stuck outside the city. It's a lot to manage as a college kid when the rest of your semester was already turned upside-down. But beyond that, just trying to be productive while helping with homeschool and fielding questions and lunch requests is a challenge. There are perks, I guess--I only shower every other day, I can wear what I want, I only do minimal makeup, and yet it still gives me enough purpose to keep moving every day and not live in my pajamas. And, of course, unlike a lot of people right now, I continue to get paid. But it's weird having pretty much your only real human interaction outside of your family be on a video chat with your co-workers.
My biggest struggle right now is that tons of people are posting all of this productivity and family bonding--long walks, fun learning, and snuggly movie days--and I feel like I can't do most of it because I'm stuck at my desk all day and feel guilty taking breaks. I should be doing a better job with the fun and the teaching and the family togetherness, but work makes it hard. I should be spending this weekend trying to make better plans for getting Carter's schooling working more smoothly. Right now it's just a struggle. He needs to do two 15-minute reading sessions, one writing prompt, and one math activity. Reading is pretty simple--we set a timer and he's good. The writing prompt comes from his teacher in the morning, and trying to get him to do more than a sentence is tough. The math gets a bit more complicated. We have an online file full of worksheets, but I don't want to print them all with our printer. He can play games with dice and cards to practice his addition and subtraction, but getting him on task when it's so open-ended is hard. I need to get a few things set up to just hand off. Of course, then there's all of this cool online content that would be fun extra learning for him, like Mo Willem's Lunch Doodles or the Cincinnati Zoo's daily safari, but Carter is unimpressed. He loves Mo Willem books, but he claimed the first Lunch Doodle was boring. Of course, he did run off and start drawing afterward, so whatever that means. Keeping him away from the tablet in between learning is a job in and of itself. Fortunately, Jacob pretty much takes care of himself. He logs on sometime after 8am and is usually done within an hour or two after checking in on all four of his main classes on that day. He complains sometimes (and freaked out a bit when I reminded him of his monthly novel study probably still being due at the end of the month), but as a whole he's been pretty independent. But unless the weather is nice, he's getting a boatload of screen time, too. I feel like it's inevitable and I'm trying to take the advice of the people who insist that quality family bonding time is best and letting kids be kids for a few weeks won't kill them. But I do worry about bad habits and the quarantine version of summer slide, so I'm trying to find a balance that will keep all of us sane.
Without the structure of school on weekends, waking up feels almost pointless. We have nowhere to go, and nothing pressing to do. Sure, I can do my diamond painting, do a few things around the house, and make a couple meals, but there is nothing truly exciting on tap....for weeks. Craig was so bored yesterday he cleaned out half of the garage today, and today he did a shelf in the basement. He's also reading a book, which almost never happens. I know there are tons of things I could be doing, and hopefully I will get to them when the mood strikes. Even though the consignment and donation stores are probably not even open after the most recent state-wide non-essentials shutdown, now is the time for me to soak and wash the baby clothes and start getting those ready to go. We're out of bins, after all, and I'm not buying another until I start emptying those. I have plenty of other projects to do--Easter decorating, other donations, getting my tax stuff together (oops), paying bills, meal planning, deep cleaning--but right now I'm just sort of blah. I wouldn't say I'm depressed but I'm definitely a little down. Sometimes I feel fine, even optimistic, about things...and then an hour later I read a new article, see a new cancellation, or think about what a legit month of this will look like, and I'm overwhelmed. It's still really hard to process that this is our lives now. It feels like something out of a book, movie, or history book. We're trapped in our house for weeks on end, and while it could be worse, it's just surreal. I feel better that much of the country is doing it together, but it still stinks.
Friday was supposed to be my day to go to Wegmans. We were finally out of a couple essentials and I had pinpointed a few additional items I thought might make eating easier. But when I went to bed on Thursday night, I noticed a slight sore throat and a little extra stuffiness. It was no better on Friday morning, and then I coughed a few times before noticing that I felt a little off. It felt like something was about to happen with my lower digestive tract, but nothing really did. But after reading that the first day of symptoms can seem like a basic cold and that half of the Chinese cases presented with digestive issues, I got nervous. Maybe it was day one and I had no idea, or I was one of those people without real symptoms. So then I was nervous about going to Wegmans. Eventually I realized I couldn't in good conscience do it, so Craig grabbed my list off the fridge and started writing it down. Of course, my list is sort of crazy and vague so he had no idea what some of it was. That meant I had to go back through it and include notes.
Even then, he called me about five minutes in and we were on the phone for the rest of the trip. A few things were still out of stock, and a few others either were forgotten or lost in translation (like the fact I wanted both hamburger buns and good sandwich rolls), but it went better than expected. Of course, one of the forgotten items, peanut butter, is an essential and we're almost out, so presumably we'll be back soon. On the bright side, I woke up yesterday morning feeling no worse, and based on what I've seen, if I was going to get worse, it probably would have happened already. So this is probably just a bit of a cold or worse allergies. It's been in the 30s the last two days (after 70 Friday), so perhaps that's why I'm not sneezing or sniffling nearly as much.
With a lot of other stuff closed and going out in public unadvisable, I feel like there are a lot of opportunities that won't come to fruition during this time. Lots of people are painting or doing other home improvements. We're not good at that stuff, and having contractors in the house probably isn't advisable either. But even the thought of running to Lowe's to get my garden started or to the craft store for more time-fillers or to Walmart or Target for normal household stuff feels as dumb as the people packed on Florida beaches right now. We just need to stay home. But at some point I might need something to keep our house functioning, and I will use my best judgment then, but for now, we'll just make do. I know there's always Amazon, too, but some things are easier to buy there than others. I've been oddly unproductive with normal things in the meantime, like stacks of newspapers and magazines, and even a pile of mail. I may just be out of my routine, or maybe I'm too busy sanitizing after I bring mail in, or maybe I'm just so exhausted by keeping it all together right now (even though on the surface it doesn't feel that way) that I just can't muster anything else. Who knows. I'm hoping eventually I'll settle in and start feeling the urge to get things done, but I guess for now I'm just giving myself a little grace. I did get through the pile of mail and reading material this morning, so I guess it's a start.
A bunch of college commencements and Rochester's Lilac Festival got canceled this week, as did my cousin's wedding, which was supposed to be next weekend. They even opted to not do a small ceremony in the meantime, for many reasons. We'll celebrate later, but it's a bummer. I'm getting worried about what our Easter might look like, and with spring and summer already short enough around here, I'm a bit worried about what activities might be limited in the coming months. The impacts of this are huge. In some ways it seems like overkill given the damage to the economy and people's financial situations, but in others it seems like the only prudent thing any of us can do since none of us knows how our body might react to this virus. It's overwhelming, and yet I hope society as a whole takes advantage of this time and we come out of it as more grateful, lower-maintenance people. Wishful thinking, I'm sure. Stay tuned...more from the boredom fest soon, I'm sure.
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