Day 8 of Family Quarantine

Captain’s Log 21 March 2020

To see yesterday’s post, click here.

So, yesterday I started this Quarantine Blog and found it to be emotionally draining. Truly, after writing a week’s worth of weirdness I was kinda spent. I had mentioned yesterday that I thought more government restrictions were coming if people didn’t take this ‘social distancing’ and self-quarantining seriously. Well, as I was writing that Governor Pritzker ordered a ‘Shelter in Place’ mandate for the State of Illinois. I hate it when I’m right.

Shelter in Place sounds scary, doesn’t it? Like as if a zombie apocalypse is imminent or something. In, reality it is what we have been doing for 8 days now. We are supposed to stay home, all essential businesses are open, i.e. grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, and doctor’s offices. Heck, they have even deemed the liquor stores and cannabis dispensaries as essential (insert a myriad of jokes here). Restaurants can still have take-out and delivery food too. What is shut down are things like gyms, boutiques, shopping malls, nail salons, and a million other things. I’m not sure about services like insurance companies and accountants, they are probably closed too. On that note, the Federal Government has pushed back Tax Day until July 15 (our State hasn’t though so we still have to do the work now).

We haven’t been frequenting anything other than the Grocery Store so ‘Shelter in Place’ hasn’t changed anything for us except that, being government mandated and not my own free choice is kind of scary. In all honesty it makes me mad. If people had just stayed home, been prudent, educated themselves, and not panicked we could have just done this without being ‘mandated’. Again, my mantra, Be Prudent but Don’t Panic.

We hosted a Live stream on YouTube for about 2 hours today. There was still some worry and questions about when we think this will end and how travel will look in the future. We hate to speculate but, mankind has always ventured beyond their home and will continue to long after this pandemic. A few of our followers had suffered losses of some sort, a job, a family member—it is hard to hear and harder to not be able to do anything. I keep looking to all those who are keeping things going, the supply chain people, warehouse workers, truckers, stock(wo)men, the nurses and doctors, the people in civil service. They somehow help make the losses easier because you see them doing their part, working hard, pulling extra weight for the rest of us. I am rooting for them from home.

As for our family, things are pretty good. Mark has been cleaning and organizing like a man possessed—I’ve been waiting our whole marriage for this and all it took was a global pandemic! Truth be told, now that he is all up on the cleaning, he’s driving me a little batty. He isn’t that well versed in organizing. None of his logic on where things go makes any sense to me but, that’s ok. He feels better and, as my father in law would say, It’s a Start!

He did do a magnificent job cleaning the basement. Our basement is the kid’s realm, read: filthy pigsty. Mark found no less than 32 socks, a melted box of Junior Mints under the couch (I’m soo excited to work on that Giant Stain!), about 1000 nerf bullets, 5 empty bags of chips/cookies/beef jerky, 4 t-shirts, 2 sweatshirts, 1 pair of jeans, and a partridge in a pear tree.

The boys played several games online with their friends yesterday. It was the first time Liam got to play online with 2 of his friends from school. He was joyous! He tends to get very loud when he is excited. Because I couldn’t hear myself think, I made him play in his room with the door shut. Mark and Caleb could still hear him while they were in the basement. It’s cute in hindsight, his excitement spilling into his voice. I am glad he got some friend time.

I am ok, except for the fact that I keep falling into some time warp. The 3^rd day of this I went down to make dinner after being buried in a book. I thought it was around 6p, it was 845p. Whoops. I did it again today. The boys said they were hungry for lunch, turns out it was 4p. So, Liam said, that’s ok we will just have intermezzo instead. Our world may have gotten significantly smaller but that kid’s vocabulary hasn’t, praise God!

I checked in on a bunch of friends. For the most part the majority of our friends are holed up at home and are doing fine. Many are getting long forgotten projects done, reading that book they’d bought years ago, and playing more games with their children.  I worked out with my friend via Zoom today. That was different but it was good to see her and catch up. The best thing was that I got to see my friend across the street—in person! In ‘the old days’ (a week ago) she would have hollered, I’ll be right over, then run in to pour a glass of wine and met me on my porch to chat. Instead we met in the middle, about 8-10 feet apart and talked rather louder than normal for 5 minutes. It was Awesome! I love my husband but not being an extrovert and not being around another adults is hard—and weird. We typically have friends over once or twice a week. One week without people coming over and I’m all sixes and sevens. I am going to be so socially awkward at the end of this. I feel like I will have forgotten social norms. I’ll probably be hugging every person I see, that will go over well in the grocery store, I am sure.

I do wonder what it will be like. I picture us all coming out of something like a bomb shelter, blinking at the bright light of the sun…

Until Tomorrow,

Jocelyn