Day Two (Sunday, March 15th)

Day Two starts much the same as Day One, except we don’t sleep in as late.  I refuse to give up my routine of my daily Starbucks. At this point, the stores are still open and I can drive-thru and just spray down my drink when I get home.  It’s a sunny day and we go for a family walk with the dog and wave to the rest of the neighborhood from six feet away.  Franny builds another fort in her bedroom and Teddy and Ted drive around a bit so Teddy can get credit for some Driver’s Ed hours.  We finish our Monopoly game and start Risk.

I peruse Facebook to see that even though it’s only been two days, people are taking advantage of the free time and using Facebook for what it’s truly meant for: making you feel bad about yourself.  One person remodeled her entire bathroom yesterday.  Another one painted her living room.  Someone taught herself to knit and has draped the entire neighborhood canine society in scarves.  Don’t forget about the lady who made a scavenger hunt inside her house for her kids.  My feed is filled with Rube Goldberg machines made voluntarily.  What on earth?  Coloring and art projects and homemade applesauce.  Here I am feeling good about the fact I have taken over Europe in Risk, meanwhile, Next-Door-Nancy has already sewed 400 face masks for the local senior citizen home!  Not even a pandemic can stop the competition.

I decide to start MY big project for the day which is cleaning the refrigerator.  It ends up taking me five days.  Pop quiz: How soon after you clean the doors of the fridge will the handles become sticky again?  Answer: About five minutes.

This is pretty close to how it went down:

3pm: Wipe down handles                                                                                                       3:15pm: Notice they are sticky and wipe them down again.                                          3:20pm: Notice they are crusty and wipe them down again.                                          3:25pm: Notice they are sticky and wipe them down again.

You get the picture. For a group of people who are supposed to be washing their hands diligently, someone in this house is cutting corners.  I stop JUST SHORT of checking hands to find the culprit.  This goes on all day until I give up.

Side note: You may be wondering why I was opening the fridge door every 5 minutes.  SHUT. UP.  That’s why.

Day 3 (Monday, March 16)

Ted goes in to work!  I mean, Ted goes in to work.  (See blog from 10/18/18 “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to see how I feel about Ted working from home).  It feels more like a normal day so I pretend it is. The kids and I take a long drive to go get my contacts (a necessity for sure) and stop at Target on the way home.  I make the kids stay in the car while I get the necessities. It turns out the necessities are Pringles and crackers and trail mix and coffee and chocolate chips and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I also catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize I don’t have any makeup on.  I hadn’t even realized.  It only took three days for me to let myself go.

Later that day, e-learning emails start to arrive. Apparently, the superintendent told the teachers to send things in triplicate.  They arrive via email. And Seesaw.  And Twitter.  They arrive for each child.  They from every teacher.  I mean EVERY teacher.  Don’t forget to practice your instrument! Art projects are due on Tuesday! The gym teacher says play dodgeball with your siblings! The music teacher says sing sing sing! The soccer coach said practice your skills 30 minutes a night!  The band teacher sent you trombone BINGO!  Much to my children’s dismay, there is even VIRTUAL SUNDAY SCHOOL!!

And let’s not forget the suggestions from social media resources.  There are virtual museum tours and free scholastic websites and online national parks tours and don’t forget to watch the otters getting fed at noon and Josh Gad is reading to kids at night and also Mo Willems is doodling at lunch…😂😂  SO MUCH FREE TIME!!!  This quarantine is going to be soooo relaxing.  I think I’ll go refinish my floors.