Livin' the COVID-19 Quarantined Life - Week 1

This week brought many more closures around town.  All gyms, dojos, hair/nail/piercing/tattoo salons, movie theaters, and many other similar facilities have been ordered closed.  Our library was open til Tuesday.  Then they announced that they would close, but do a curbside pick-up for books that we put on hold.  Unfortunately, after only 24 hours of that, it was discontinued.  Now the libraries are completely shut down.  All restaurants can only do pick-up/drive-thru.  It has been tough for everyone.  I had been in a cooking lull for a few weeks (months..) and most days I didn't care if we ate cereal for dinner.  But now this has required a whole new view of food and being resourceful and creative.  We are making smaller meals, we are using ALL of our leftovers.  We should have been doing it all along, but now we have a whole new view of appreciating the food we do have.  I went to the store this past Saturday morning.  I got there right when they opened and there was a line that wrapped the length of the store and doubled back again.  It took half-hour just to get to the door, which was actually quicker than I thought if you saw the length of the line.  I am not prone to anxiety, but it produced a fair amount of anxiety standing there waiting and wondering what they would have once inside.  I realized as I was shopping that the vast majority of people had lined up to get toilet paper.  Fortunately we didn't need any.  They were out of so many items.  Massive areas of emptiness in the freezer section.  Several refrigerated sections were covered in plastic as they were emptied and not going to be filled.  After walking around for a while, it became humorous to see what foods people left behind.  Protein bars, Vienna Sausages, Organic carton whole milk, Lucky Charms, chicken wings.  At one store, Todd found a huge supply of Spam, which got him excited only to walk over to it and see it was "hot and spicy."  With the toilet paper shortage, it's not surprising "hot and spicy" got left behind.  Despite not getting many of the foods we are used to getting, we do have plenty of food and we're grateful for all we have.  We're trying new foods because that was all the store had left.  If we keep the perspective of having a food adventure, we'll be okay.

This week we did school as usual.  The first few days were a little rough because the neighborhood kids were having their second week of spring break while the school systems figured out what to do.  So the vast majority of our Monday and Tuesday had the kids doing their work with their necks craned to look out the front window.  Grumpily watching their friends roller blade and ride bikes.  That has been a bit of an issue for us - the neighborhood kids have no sense of "social distancing," "6 feet apart," or "quarantining."  It's been frustrating for our kids as they want to be out there in the mix, and it's been frustrating for us trying to keep the quarantine going.  Not only are we trying to stay healthy for the general population, but also for Todd who has asthma and really doesn't need to get this virus.  By Wednesday, the neighborhood kids must have gotten their virtual/online school because it got very quiet outside.


Todd has been able to go into work this week.  We are very grateful that he is still able to work, that he still has a job.  At this point, all of his coworkers are telecommuting, so in the entire second floor of his building, he is the only one there.  He has enjoyed the casual dress code that he has instituted for himself.  I, too, have enjoyed wearing yoga pants every single day.  No fear of anyone knocking on the door or having to go anywhere.  All comfort.  All the time.

Earlier in the week, the International Space Station flew over our house.  The kids stayed up later than usual and we stood outside staring up at the sky at the time it was to pass over.  At first it was really hard to see what was a star and what was an airplane because the clouds kept moving and it was seriously playing tricks on my eyes.  But then there was this really, really bright dot in the sky and it moved in the exact direction the ISS was supposed to travel.  It moved really fast (17,000 mph), but it was a cool sight to see, especially since we just went to NASA.

Bright dot in the middle is the ISS.

We've had some quarantine boredom, some chaos, and some fun.  The kids have watched way too much TV, played way too many video games, but we have also broken out the glitter glue, played Geography Bingo, drawn lots of pictures using Art Hub, played with popsicle sticks and water, tossed the football, tossed the baseball, rode bikes, climbed trees, and walked the neighborhood.  Josiah has really loved watching the Mo Willems Daily Doodles each day at noon.  He has renewed his love of the Mo Willems characters, especially the pigeon.  In fact, he has made many pigeon puppets to help with our CC lesson this week.  We are doing Virtual CC with our group for probably the remainder of the year.  This week we'll do our first "meeting."

Josiah also drew a picture of Babe Ruth.  I thought it was pretty good.  Faces are incredibly difficult.

To combat the chaos and noise volume and constant asking "Can I do media?," I think we're going to have a more strict schedule of when we do things this week.  That way everything has a time and they don't have to ask me a million times if they can do something (namely, media).  While we're used to homeschooling and being at home together in general, we do usually have quite a few activities that break up the days/time.  Without them it's just us, together, all the time, with no breaks.
This is an odd time.  We don't want it to be a miserable time for our kids.  We want them to come away from this with a healthy way to deal with tough situations.  We all have to be flexible as things change daily, yet firm in following the guidelines of social distancing and hand washing.  We need to relax and enjoy time with our family, but also keep a schedule and stay on task so we don't go crazy in the chaos of always being around each other.  We want them to know that through it all, God is bigger than all of this.  It's tough, but we can get through it.  It's frustrating and annoying and disruptive, but it's also only temporary.  And maybe when it's all finished we'll appreciate so many more things that we did before.
Josiah's pigeon puppets for our Virtual CC lesson. He wants to take over as host and he has a pigeon for every expression.