So, COVID-19 real talk. I’m going to make a point of documenting our lives in a bit more detail using this blog, because one day we’ll look back at this series of events and marvel at what a strange time it was.
They closed the kids’ school this week, along with many others in the state. Initially they were slated to reopen in two weeks, but then the governor changed that to “indefinitely”, which leads me to believe kids across the nation are getting the world’s longest summer break, starting now.
Yesterday I picked up their work packets outside the elementary school; I drove up, and Ellie’s gifted/talented teacher handed me her work through the passenger window. She said she was grateful I hadn’t brought Ellie or she might have cried. You can tell their teachers miss them, but they’ve done an amazing job of putting together a curriculum at the last minute.
I also picked up a couple prescriptions for our pets, having paid over the phone so I never had to get out of the car. Weird.
The grocery store was another story; many Hannaford locations in our state offer curbside pickup, but ours isn’t one of them. I’ve never seen the shelves so empty. The run on paper goods like toilet paper is probably the most strange (y’all gonna eat toilet paper when things get bad?), but bread, frozen veggies, and canned goods were picked over, too. I watched a woman pile at least forty bags of frozen vegetables onto the checkout conveyor. We got ahead of the rush by stocking up last week, so I only needed to pick up a few things; I’d hoped to find a sense of normalcy by getting out of the house, but I left the store feeling more disconcerted than ever.
Everything else–dance lessons, counseling, physical therapy, school board meetings, etc.–is cancelled. Restaurants and bars have been ordered to close their dining rooms. We’re only going out to shop for groceries and other necessities. The atmosphere in town is weird, and maybe it’s because we just watched Contagion, but I can imagine society slowly devolving as this drags on. I’m not afraid of the virus, I’m afraid of people’s fear, and the American every-man-for-himself attitude. I hear gun sales are on the rise nationwide.
Thankfully the weather has cooperated and we’ve been able to get out for walks up and down the road. We’re also baking, and playing video games, and watching TV, and reading books. It all feels a bit perfunctory under the circumstances, but we’re trying to keep things as light and normal for the kids as possible.
Throughout all this, our jobs haven’t changed much; people need the internet more than ever, and we already work from home. The mechanics are the same, but the constant anxiety makes it hard to focus. Automattic (as always) encourages us to take the time we need to rest up, and I did take last-minute AFK on Tuesday because I couldn’t juggle the kids and everything else going on in my head. But I don’t want to take too much time because work can be a nice distraction when things feel heavy, and because everyone is experiencing some variation of this slow-moving disaster.
I have a sinking feeling things are going to get worse over the coming weeks and months, as the number of cases in the US continues to rise and we realize we reacted too late. What a house of cards our nation is built on, that one little virus could take so many lives and livelihoods.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong.