Sunday, March 15, 2020

Life In The Corona World

I only wish I was talking about the beer. Life has been nothing short of weird lately. I can sum up my week simply:

Sunday - not worried about Covid-19. Not worried at all. We just got back a week ago from SLC and are perfectly fine.
Monday - get questions from parents. Not worried.
Tuesday - get more questions. Text bff's about my sentiments of the insanity of the world right now.
Wednesday - okay, I'll start taking things more seriously. Do I need to come up with a 'what if' plan for daycare? Nah...but I can't get all of my regular groceries because things like carrots and baby wipes are sold out. Weird. First issue with finding tp in stores.
Thursday afternoon - all hell breaks loose. Our largest public school system in Iowa calls for additional time off after spring break (that begins this week) and people lose their shit. I pull a daycare preparedness plan out of my ass since there's no playbook for this. Sit at conferences and listen to the teacher's side of things. Sit in meetings to come up with a preparedness plan for the Children's Museum. Finally do hours of proper research about Covid-19. Realize I was wrong and should take things a bit more seriously.
Friday - the insanity isn't AS insane, but it's all people want to talk about. Can't even watch a press conferences because I can now see every wrong step taken. Declare to my family that we will continue to live as normally as possible while also practicing social distancing.
Saturday - grocery shopping. See first hand how selfish and stupid humanity can be. Makes me eternally grateful for working with children, who feel that if they have one banana, everyone should have a banana (clearly, replace banana with tp, tissues, infant formula, meds, etc.).

Basically, it's been an eye opening, eventful week. As you might have gathered, the minis had spring break from 3/16 - 3/25. They'll now be out of school until the end of March, if not longer. Our original spring break road trip to Texas has been cancelled, but we still *may* be going to South Dakota. We're driving, have a remote cabin in the Black Hills, and doing nothing but some hiking in the area. We'll actually be more secluded there than we would be at home.

Daycare will remain open unless mandated or one of us becomes ill. I've had enough of the "dooms day" type talks, so I haven't really thought about what our life would look like with a mandated closure, but I'm taking things day by day, moment by moment. Our school teachers had hours to prepare (in addition to holding conferences) and gave us a list of websites to use while on this Corona break. They are simply amazing! The minis are having fun with the sites, we're having a relaxing weekend, and then we'll be having fun with friends on Monday at daycare. Kind of normal, but with extra precautions and an eye on any breaking news.

I haven't shielded the minis at all from this. They've watched the news with me each morning and night, they've spoken about it in school, they've heard press conferences and our thoughts about everything, and you know what? They're okay. They're good, they are sick of hearing the word Coronavirus though. We must be doing an okay job of keeping things relatively normal. I do like that they are up-to-date on world news and are conscience about how our actions can affect those around us. If anything, I'm more proud of them than ever before as I listen to their thoughts on the world right now.

All in all, life is odd right now. We're trying social distancing, while also keeping life as normal as we can. We're still keeping active, but not in large crowds or groups. We are being mindful of who we choose to go around--we skipped my grandma's birthday party this evening and will stay away from my inlaws because they're in the target age group. Hubs will still be going to work and I'll be inviting kids (also known as germ carriers) into our lives, so it's not a smart idea to have the minis or us around them. At least for the time being.

Through the past few days, the craziest has been grocery shopping. It's one thing to read all about the grocery store madness, the memes on FB are funny, but it's heartbreaking to see it firsthand. People stockpiling the oddest things, children's medicines, infant formula and other needs out of stock. It was like being in one of those dooms day movies I don't particularly like. Times are weird, but it will all be okay. That's about all I can tell myself, my children, friends, daycare families who worry. It will all be okay and until then we'll make it as fun as we can.

Watching the news before school as she waits to leave.

Goofing around at conferences. It was eerie to see the teachers and administrators clearing out plants and classrooms. As of Friday at 6 p.m., Des Moines Public School buildings were on lockdown for two weeks. No one in or out except the cleaning crew for deep cleanings of each school.

Thursday night Hubs treated me to ice cream. Friday night I drank Thursday's craziness away.

Lots of board games, educational websites, reading, and movies. 

We offered for the minis to come grocery shopping with us, but I'm glad they didn't. There was no Black Friday type of store fights, but the picked over shelves and what was out of stock was hard to see. I had to grab extra of a lot of things due to the number of kids I'll have at the beginning of the week, but I felt horrible doing it since so many things are out of stock and/or back ordered now due to other's hoarding.

The stores weren't unusually busy, which I was kind of expecting. The cashier at Trader Joe's informed us we missed the real craze the day before. For that I am grateful.

Dinners and meals at home. We are still doing what we can for local businesses though (as we always try to do). We told the minis we weren't eating out at a restaurant over break, but we will order food (although all of the food pictures is good ole' Trader Joe's chinese food). Orchestrate Hospitality, which owns a good number of our local restaurants here in Des Moines, will have food available for delivery and making it so people can still get food, but from home. We also ordered coffee from a local shop and will go to places like Freidrich's and Grounds For Celebration to get a coffee fix.