We knew it was coming, but yesterday 4/9/20, Gov Mike Parsons cancelled school state wide through the end of the year. My heart breaks for the seniors, as they miss the last semester of school, sports banquets, prom, and graduation. I'm sad for all the spring brides that had to reschedule their weddings, not knowing if things would go back to normal when they rescheduled it. Nephew Austin Booth and good friend Carly Kimbrough have both had to change their spring weddings.
I have relied heavily on the app Marco Polo during this as a way to feel connected to my dad, my friends, and my sister. I don't know what I would have done without that face to face human contact. I have a pretty robust one with friends Elise and Amy. Amy has teens and Elise has Avery, who is Maggie's age. We've gone around and around on which is easier during all of this. Teens are more independent, yet are missing their friends and social life more, littles are more demanding and make it almost impossible to get any real work done from home.
I'm writing this in between breaks working from home, so this may be a little all over the place.
I remember seeing articles saying we needed to prepare here. It had already been an outbreak in China and Wuhan was shut down. I had just done my big tax return shopping trip to my local box store, so we were pretty set. I looked around a bit and thought, we're good.
Then they started asking for people to stay home and socially distance, use hand sanitizer, but school and daycares were still open. I remember talking to my boss thinking we were screwed if they closed the schools.
It gets a little blurry after that as far as the order of things, but fast forward to now. Daycare is open, but only for essential workers. I'm technically deemed essential, but have the ability to stay home. Matt and I are switching every other week but unlike me, he's burning time when he's home. I'm not sure what we're going to do until next fall, he'll run out of time. We are talking about letting the reps take phone calls from home and we would go to an every 3 week in the office schedule. News come in every day about when the virus is supposed to peak and what the estimated death toll will be. It looks as if social distancing is working, the curve has flattened and the projected deaths have fallen, but the numbers are still scary. There are pictures of medical workers (including my sister) in basically hazmat suits, pictures of refrigerated trailers for bodies, mass graves, it's just insane.
In true American fashion, there is also a LOT of humor which I live for. It's made all of this tolerable. I'm going to post a million clips, some I'll caption, some I won't, but it will give a snapshot of what life is like.
And I can't talk about all this without admitting how lucky we are to be employed, have a home and food, board games, netflix, a dog, etc etc etc. There are people out there REALLY suffering and I'm terrified for when this virus takes a hold in third world countries.
4/22/20 - I would love to take the time to make this a cohesive, descriptive account of this historical time, and you would think I would think I would have all the time in the world, but believe it or not, it is really hard to sit and put thoughts together with kids.
I have begun to transition to working from home full time. I have started to use the emergency covid sick time. This is sick time on top of the sick time you already have accumulated. I qualify because Matt is still working and the kid's schools are closed. I get paid at 2/3 time so I only have the use 1/3 of my own time. This is my first week home and I've been working from 7-0 and 2:30-4:30. This allows me to focus on the homeschooling, which up to this point has caused a lot of tears and been an all around disaster. Charlie is just too young to be able to complete this independently.
Yesterday was his first zoom with his teacher and class. It seemed to do wonders for his mental state and his motivation. Maggie has had a couple of zooms, but she mostly just hides behind her chair and stays as silent as possible.
Last Sunday, my girlfriends and I threw in the towel and got together for socially distanced drinks in Elise's back yard. We brought our own beverages and lawn chairs and just spaced out in her back yard. Talk about good for MY mental health. I am relying on those girls A LOT during this time. Everyone is strained being home with their spouses and kids, no matter how much love is there. You need to make time for your other loves (my girls)
I'm upset that I may go a year without being able to see my parents. I see them so rarely as it is, to miss one, maybe two visits would be devastating. I need that time with them.
We have been getting community produce boxed from C&C produce. These are vegetables that were meant for the restaurants that they are divvying up and selling for $20. It's a heck of a deal and helping a company that would probably be struggling. We've gotten standards like potatoes and apples, but have also gotten mangoes, leeks, aloha peppers, and avocados. It's made it fun to cook and experiment.
We got an extra box and sent some over to Pat and Annette. I brought the kids so they could see grandma and grandpa. Maggie was SO excited to see them. While she knows she can't go up and see them and hug them, she doesn't understand and the look of wanting to and even at this young age, stopping herself brings tears to my eyes as I type this... my kid's need their grandparents. All 4 of them.
And this was from the Pitch editor 4/25/20 - I thought it hit the nail on the head.
He writes:
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5/2/20
‘Some of this time is good and some of it is old. I don’t hate it and I don’t like it. I’d really like it to end and I’d never want it to go back to the way things were before.’ -my poet of a cousin Katie Krebs Peck, perfectly putting it into words.
We've got an opening up plan in place.
It isn't perfect. but we're doing our best here. Both the Mayor's office and the city businesses have released plans that suggest a smart system of ramping things up again, albeit with the focus placed on maintaining public health and (most importantly) backtracking immediately if anything looks screwy with the numbers.
There's nothing smarter than acknowledging what you don't know, and we certainly don't know what comes next. So let's all dip a toe in together, do our part by not pushing too hard too fast, and see what happens when we're all here for each other. - Pitch editor
It isn't perfect. but we're doing our best here. Both the Mayor's office and the city businesses have released plans that suggest a smart system of ramping things up again, albeit with the focus placed on maintaining public health and (most importantly) backtracking immediately if anything looks screwy with the numbers.
There's nothing smarter than acknowledging what you don't know, and we certainly don't know what comes next. So let's all dip a toe in together, do our part by not pushing too hard too fast, and see what happens when we're all here for each other. - Pitch editor
5/22/20 - I think this says more than I can. Things are starting to open back up, but nothing has changed with the virus and so I think we all know, or are in denial, that it's okay. We do need to weigh mental health in the argument to open up as some of us are going a little bonkers. The discouraging thing is that we're 2 months in and we're all losing our collective minds and they say we may be battling this thing for years, if not forever. This virus will most likely become part of our lives.
6/8/20 - We all went 'back to normal' on 6/1/20. I went back into the office, Maggie went back into daycare, Matt has been working this whole time, and Charlie is at Sheila's for the month. Nothing has changed with the virus, it's just as active, but I guess they have all decided it's time. What do you do? It's been a hard transition. First, wearing pants. Second, not getting as much time with my kids. They drove me NUTS but what a treat to get this time with them. I broke down the first two days because I didn't remember what it was like to get home at 5:40 and not even have dinner started. That, and Matt's summer hours have kicked in so it all hit me like a ton of bricks and I just lost it. I'm getting back into the groove now. It's been so good to have Maggie come home happy and tired from playing and excising all day. Something she definitely didn't get at home.
We have seen a spike in cases in Kansas City, but I still don't know someone personally who has had this. One of the girl's I supervise's parents have it, a girl from high school that I only know through work had it, but no one I actually KNOW. I'll count my blessings.
On top of that, the world has been set aflame by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. What a tragedy. Watching that unfold and getting to have some amazing conversations with Charlie about it. I'm excited to be raising a little warrior for justice and equality. I don't even have to prompt him, he was born with it.
I'm going to go ahead and update this, but I will try to keep documenting. We're still here!
