Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (3)
March 30, 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.
Week 2 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
This is a record of our weekdays. We are attempting to set up the occasional video call with other kids so that they can socialize that way.
This week’s menu planning: Roast pork shoulder, veggie curry, a rotisserie chicken from Costco. I meant to also make dumplings and tandoori chicken from scratch but PiC surprised me with that rotisserie chicken on our last run to Costco for a few weeks.
Day 1: I was finally mentally ready to get my act together and set up a tentative schedule for JB. I don’t know if we can manage this same thing all week but I like the general outline that gives us some structure and some chances to get work done without having to entertain.
8 am -8:30 am, Breakfast
8:30 am – 9 am, “art lesson” – watching an artist draw something new and copying it
9 am – 10 am, Call with Auntie – practice writing
10 am – 10:30 am, dance party with music
10:30 am – 11:30 am, free choice (probably art)
11:30 am – 12 pm, snack
12:30 pm – 2 pm, walk dogs and have lunch
2 pm – 2:45 pm, rest
2:45 pm – 3:45 pm, solo free choice – aka work at my desk but do not talk to me
3:45 pm – 4:30 pm, numbers/math time – maybe a few worksheets that they enjoy doing. *Note: couldn’t find it. Oh well.
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm, movement of some kind.
5:30 pm – 6 pm, inevitable lost transition time to whining or tiredness
6 pm – 7 pm, dinner
* The schedule went off the rails a bit after lunch. Rest turned into a 90 minute nap, I just let that happen. Solo free choice time was JB choosing to do worksheets so I just let that happen too. I skipped numbers/math time in favor of doing an hour of dance party with YouTube videos and song because there’s such a thing as too much brain work. We spent the whining buffer time cooking together, they cut up all the tofu and watched me stir in seasonings and helped with taste testing.
Dinner was an hour late. Eh, that was fine too. The structure earlier in the day seemed to set us up for a better day overall. We watched Wild Alaska on Netflix over dinner and that was our science lesson for the day. We also watched some Molly of Denali on PBS kids and it was great too.
Mostly I am mentally getting better at this “all the people around all the time” thing, but I am occasionally stunned to silence by JB. PiC ran all the errands again today, facing down the hordes for the entire morning. It’s our tenth consecutive day of isolation. They said to him when he got home, “I don’t really get to see you that much.”
You’ve been stuck with us and just us for ten days and you “don’t get to see him much”??? *faint*
Stress in general: I have no intention of spending recklessly, more now than ever there’s a need for very conscious consumption for so many reasons, but I feel the strong urge to buy nice things to enjoy even if half of them aren’t things I need. A new laptop when I like mine just fine and hate changing computers, two very colorful skirts when I really don’t have anywhere to wear them nor do I wear skirts at home where I am cold 100% of the time. Maybe part of my brain still lives in SoCal and perpetual warmth. Stop it, self. Or that big box of Sun Chips. Stop it, self.
Stress cooking: I low and slow roasted a pork shoulder all day. Nom. Freezing 3/4 of it for later.
Day 2: I used yesterday’s schedule as a rough guide for today. Drawing time, language time with Auntie, more drawing, snack, another activity, more outside time, lunch, rest, rinse and repeat. It was a very language / arts day with stories and drawing topped off with some David Attenborough nature channel at the end of the day.
I require at least one dance party a day to keep JB moving. Some favorite videos for free dance:
JB declared: “I’m never ever going to let people eat me.” Uh, good.
I spent the day trying to get as much work done as possible. The work is piling up almost exponentially because of COVID-19 and I have fewer hours than usual to handle it. Instead of my running the full day schedule today, we alternated in 2.5 hour slots so I could get a good batch of work done and he could take calls. I mused on how I’m grateful that JB is this age at this time – infant or toddler JB would have been a little Kool-Aid man bursting through every closed door demanding to be on video calls too.
I took the first minder-shift, with JB working with minimal supervision from me, he took the next one so I could work uninterrupted for a couple hours and they made lunch. We swapped again when he was scheduled for some work and calls, then swapped back to him when he was done so I could work uninterrupted again. I didn’t end up with any dog walking today. Some days I do, some days I don’t. PiC’s a champ about it because he always takes the morning walking shift, no matter what. In fairness that means I almost always take the breakfast making shift but not always. I called it quits just after 6 pm. We’re in this for the long haul. No point in burning out early.
Day 3: We’re officially shut down until April 7 but honestly, no one with access to all the news expects that to be sufficient, do they?
PiC and I both agree that we should expect and plan for this to be an ongoing concern for longer, possibly through the start or even the end of May. Settling into that notion has reduced my anxiety, probably because everyone is worried now and no one in my circles are being laissez-faire about it. That and having the bare bones of a routine and having my family close to me and as safe as we can be right now. We are so incredibly fortunate on the important things.
Day 4: It’s been two weeks of togetherness. Seamus is cranky today because we won’t be MORE together – he wants us all in one room all the time. JB was cranky because they were out of patience. I was cranky because I was out of patience. PiC was in the other room so he was spared for a bit. Sera is … never really emotionally dialed in. It’s annoying to see people in the community being terrible people.
The hard thing isn’t “having to parent”, we always have to parent. But we don’t always have to parent 24/7, at the same time as working, with no other place to go and spend a few hours. That’s simply not how we normally arrange our working and parenting lives despite my tendency to introvert and hermit.
Normally we’d have a swim lesson, or the park, or the library, or errands to run together. Low key, but we still had options. After 2 weeks of imposed isolation, I’m feeling the lack of ability to move about freely a bit intensely.
My work is ramping UP, not down, because of the pandemic so that’s more to juggle.
I remain grateful to have a job paying me, and I’m grateful we should be able to count on an income for a while as this situation progresses. I am keeping all our healthcare providers, sanitation workers, and the other designated essential workers who are out there working in our hearts.
Day 5: I need companies like Amazon and Instacart to stop being terrible to their workers at this horrible time.
What. A. Week.
Several Bay Area counties announced this week that they would extend school closures through May 1st. I needed some time to absorb that because they do appear to be the leading indicator of things to come. While our Governor hadn’t put an end date on the shutdown of CA, I also knew that there was no way we’d be out of the woods as early as early April. It’s almost helpful to have a target, even one that moves, so we can attempt to plan in chunks.
Maybe next week I’ll actually meal plan properly. I’d intended to make dumplings, for one thing, and I’ll have to substitute bamboo shoots for my crunchy green vegetable if I do.
Maybe artichoke chicken is next in the cards. I’m starting to feel the effects of flavor fatigue a bit and I really need to get ahead of it.
We had a strange influx of packages this week from backordered items I’d picked up a while back and a few surprise quarantine gifts. It got me to wondering if I can avoid buying anything all this week.
I’m also thinking about how long we can ration our remaining rice. We’re more than halfway out but our local markets are tapped out. Maybe we’ll be able to keep it on the shelves in a couple weeks.
:: How are you all doing? How are you coping with your particular challenges in this pandemic?
“I need companies like Amazon and Instacart to stop being terrible to their workers at this horrible time.” So much this. It really really makes me hate capitalism, or at least the american brand of it.
I think it is unlikely schools will start back up until fall. T thinks it is unlikely they will even be able to begin in the fall, and I’m hoping he is just being overly pessimistic.
I really hate the way people exercise capitalism here, yes. It can be so incredibly selfish. 🙁
HAHA, yes on buying and on SoCal! You are so right.
I have to wonder if the instacart situation varies around the country. Our local grocery swears that the instacart people get 100% of the tip, so we’ve been tipping quite a bit more than minimum wage, but minimum wage and COL is low around here.
I have a suspicion that Instacart is terrible to all their workers but that may be my deep and abiding cynicism.
I just used Instacart for the first time. When I checked out it said 100% of tips goes to delivery person. I hope they are not lying!
I hope so too!!