Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (2)
March 24, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Money
Our spending went way (waaaaaay) up this month because of the stocking up on food and medications and the house repair which had nothing to do with the pandemic, just the weather.
The groceries were manageable, I focused on sales and specific recipes to make the most of our food and prevent waste. I also picked up a lot of apples and oranges that will last a few weeks in the fridge to stretch out time between grocery trips.
The real kick in the teeth was the medications and Seamus’s final labwork. I think we spent about $800 all told on his stuff. But we simply cannot risk him going without his pain medications due to any interruption in the supply lines.
I canceled both our dogwalker and my massage therapy but I paid the former anyway and bought a gift card from the latter to help the business with a bit of income while they have to be shut down. Luckily, my brain therapy is already remote so I will keep that appointment this week.
As much as our budget can bear, I’m trying to anonymously help out folks who have lost their income.
We are both very fortunate that, for the moment, our jobs are relatively safe. We don’t know how long that’ll be the case and I have always planned against the worst case scenario happening and will continue to do so but I won’t forget to be grateful. The not great thing is that PiC had finally located some jobs to apply for and we don’t know if the companies will freeze hiring. I hope not. He’s been unhappy in this job for so long, I sure hope he still has opportunities open. But either way, we know we are so incredibly lucky and we are grateful for our current financial stability however long it lasts.
Our brokerage is dropping like a rock but I knew that was going to happen. I’ve watched them happen this when I had no skin in the game so that was good practice for maintaining investing calm. Obvious caveat: this is made easier because we don’t need that income to pay bills today. I can’t vouch for how calm I’ll be when we do need the income from our investments! I am sticking to my usual investing schedule of a small weekly purchase of index funds. The last time the market took a massive dive like this, in 2008-2009, I had no money to put in the market when it bottomed out and that was a heck of an opportunity cost. I am protecting our cash in case we unexpectedly lose our incomes but I still judiciously add money to the market. We have no idea what’s going to happen in the future but we hold a long view when it comes to this money. I would like to refinance our mortgage for a lower rate if that’s an option but that has to wait for at least another week before I can even begin to figure out where to find the brain space for it.
There’s a lot of priority-juggling right now.
But.
This is what we spend a lot of time planning for. This is what the emergency fund and frugal bare bones budget exercises are for.
Do you want to help support independent bookstores? I’ve asked friends to give me links to their local shops and looked for some myself that are doing low cost shipping during this period. Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego is shipping free, Old Town Books in Alexandria is a new bookshop doing $1 shipping, Anderson’s Bookshops in Illinois is doing 99 cent shipping.
Parenting
PiC and I have been taking it turn and turn about. He’s not used to working with JB nattering and singing away at his elbow so his turns with them are shorter and hands on. He can’t get anything done when he’s thinking and they won’t stop talking. My turns are usually longer because I can talk to JB / half ignore them and still do my work. We’ve been training for this! When I can’t handle the talking anymore, I put in my earbuds and ditch them for a couple hours. #ZeroGuilt
It’s a decent balance. The first few days were stressy and messy and somewhat disorganized, and he certainly felt guilty for having such trouble transitioning to working remotely, but we’re all doing the best we can.
We are not enforcing any kind of normal schedule, we’re letting JB sleep in and we’re doing the work we can when we can.
I am enforcing a semi-latchkey kid mentality: “no blood no problem” has been a mantra for a long time, I now apply that more broadly. JB is to solve their own problems within reason, I just ignore their plaints and hollers of alarm because 90% of the time they’re over something less than minor and guess what? If I ignore it, they figure it out.
Generally my attitude is that JB will do a little bit of learning, but also just have a lot of creative time because they are five, there’s no reason to kill ourselves stressing over being perfect homeschooling parents when we’re both working full time. We are going to be doing everything at least a little subpar to our usual, it’s fine.
I did order a Singapore math book to support an indie bookstore and to dabble with teaching JB a different way to math though, because why not? But that won’t come for a while.
Partnering and home
There are very few people in the world that I could stand living with, thankfully my spouse is one of them. Still, it’s tough for me to have the whole family home all the time when I still have to work because as an introvert, I need at least 40 hours of alone time to feel refreshed. I only get that time during business hours during the week. Now … not so much.
As usual, we are managing and splitting our duties as much as possible. He’s doing all the house repair work and foraging for supplies amongst other humans. I’m doing all the indoors work and a lot of the childminding and direction, Ronnie the Roomba is doing the vacuuming (I love Ronnie too), and JB is in charge of tidying their messes daily. During the normal work week, I don’t enforce daily tidying simply because they don’t have time to be making much of a mess. Having everyone home all day changes that equation dramatically.
Free entertainment
I don’t have time for entertainment between working and parenting at the same time so these resources are for JB.
If I DID have time, I’d be doing more of what I already do – cooking, cleaning, baking, eating baked goodies, reading all the books I can get online, watching all the shows I can’t watch normally, running JB around, checking on friends.
We have a stack of library books, coloring books (and markers and coloring pencils and crayons), workbooks and paint pads (and watercolors). The watercolors have produced several HOURS of bliss and it’s relatively mess free.
They have been letting loose with a pair of scissors and stack of construction paper, and a glue stick. We have empty laundry baskets for them to play pretend adventures alone. We have taken really incredibly long walks with the dogs, doing I Spy, and getting the jitters out. We cook and bake together and I have them doing so many chores: putting away groceries, putting away laundry, putting away clean utensils and dishes, picking up after themselves (make it a race to see if they clear a swath before I finish a project.) We do simple hands on math problems like “if we need 2 scoops of food per day for the dogs, how many days’ worth do we have in this bin?”
Other resources:
- Virtual tours of museums
- Virtual tours of national parks
- Storytime from Space: astronauts reading kid stories. This was more fun when JB had the book on hand and could read along.
- Sign up for Skype a Scientist notifications
- NASA Kid’s Club has age appropriate games that JB is enjoying.
- Lots of artists are doing drawing tutorials on YouTube and online for kids. We’re enjoying these: Grace Lin (how to draw a dragon), Mo Willems (Lunch Doodles), Rob Biddolph (Gregosaurus), How to Draw a Cute Unicorn
- Scholastic has a cool Learn at Home page
- TIME FOR KIDS (as in, TIME magazine) makes their digital library free the rest of the school year.
I am feeling the alone time deprivation thing keenly. We are trying to preserve some sanity for all parties, but I do think it’s contributing to my sleep troubles.
I appreciate this slice of life post.
I’ve always had trouble sleeping as well, and this hasn’t helped one bit! Last week was much worse though, so I hope as things progress a little, maybe you’ll be able to find a sense of peace.
[…] Our extended family is stressed even more than we are. My brother (Uber/Lyft driver & college student) and sister (hairdresser & dance instructor) both work in industries that are shut down. My mother is in the high risk category for multiple reasons and has had to forego seeing her grandchildren. Fear and uncertainty are hard on us all. (Enjoy how Revanche is navigating her new world in this blog post). […]