On Friday, March 13, 2020, Nick and I made the decision to preempt the inevitable decrees by the governor and our school district, and kept our kids home from school. The COVID-19 pandemic was approaching by leaps and bounds, and the writing had been on the wall. The week before, we cancelled our planned Spring Break trip to Florida (not that we would have been able to use our theme park tickets anyway, since the parks closed). That Friday, I left Nick and the kids at home, went to a brief meeting with ~20 people in the conference room, got our groceries for the following week (and then some), and once I returned home, our family isolation began. My office started sending people to work from home the following Monday; I didn't bother going in since I had my laptop at home with me. The school district went virtual the following Wednesday. I started collecting screenshots of major moments from the news outlets I follow as a time capsule of sorts.
We settled into our all-at-home existence. Nick and I took separate parts of the house (him at the kitchen table with lots of natural light, me in the office in the basement). The kids drew up a daily schedule to mimic what they did for a school day, and for the next months, stuck to it (mostly). A few weeks later, we did a 3-room swap: Felix moved from the sunny bedroom to the large basement bedroom. and we bought him a lofted bed with a desk. Iris moved from the dark bedroom to the sunny bedroom. She eventually got a loft, too. My office moved to the dark bedroom. The moves have worked well.
My weekly schedule pre-pandemic was such that I would work 38 hours in the office Monday through Thursday (the real office, not the one at home), and on Fridays, I would finish with a few hours of teleworking and have the rest of the day in a quiet house having my much-needed *me* time until the bus brought the kids home from school. That alone, quiet time has been nonexistent for nine of the last twelve months. That's been a mental challenge for me (oh, boo-hoo, I know, but I'm chronicling the changes this pandemic has wrought, and this is one of them).
After much deliberation and assurances by staff, we sent the kids each weekday to get some fresh air, sunshine and socialization at our local Y Camp for the entire summer. It was great to give them that opportunity to get away from us (well, me, since Nick went back to working at his office starting in mid-June) and the walls of this hours, and they got some much-needed physical activity because their summer ball seasons had been cancelled. But all good things come to an end, and so the summer ended.
Birthdays were celebrated with minimal socialization (no friends, though we did meet up with family at a park and kept our distance as best we could). We did allow the kids to play with friends in the neighborhood as long as it was outside only.
During the summer, we also made the decision to enroll the kids in our district's virtual school for the year. We weren't comfortable with the decisions the school district was initially making regarding in-person learning, and I was okayed to keep teleworking for the school year. I've been writing about virtual school experience occasionally HERE.
Part of Iris agreeing to make an effort with virtual school was our permitting her to join the local Y swim team for the first time. Large ventilated facility, treated water, masks on the pool deck - all went a long way towards assuaging our worries. She's been swimming for at least three hours per week since late October, and often asks to go more often. There have been no meets this year, but the team did two intersquad time trials to give us a small taste of what one is like. Iris has been focusing on 50 yd events, and shaved at least 10 seconds off her December times at the March time trial. We're so proud of her effort in that. She also chose to challenge herself, doing a 25 yd butterfly heat by herself (no nerves!).
As predicted, our social life became nearly nonexistent (not that we really had much of one before...). In the past year, we've had brief visits from my parents: maybe a dozen times; Nick's parents: twice; spent time with another family: twice; and ran into a friend at the grocery store: once. (These are all me, and Nick has had more interaction with friends/fellow attorneys.) All of these took place either outside or masked inside. We spent Easter and Thanksgiving in front of our computers, having family Zoom sessions. We finally got together at Christmas, but masked and physically distanced. As of this writing, both sets of grandparents have gotten both of their COVID-19 shots, so soon we will be able to gather again with them. Yay!
Because my social interaction became severely limited by isolation, I decided that I needed to make sure my brain stayed active. 251 days ago, I started a Spanish course online and have been putting time every day toward learning the language. Si viajamos a México otra vez, hablaré español. Around the same time, I bought a ukulele and learned to play it. Meetings turned out to be a great opportunity for me to practice chords and strumming patterns when I was muted (it also helped that we never use video during work meetings).
Our eating habits have also changed. Once we emerged from the late spring lock down, we made it a habit to support local restaurants once a week. The rest of the time, I've been planning meals as usual. I got creative in December by picking cuisines from all over the world. Persian fish stew? Check! Korean chicken? Check! The kids have also gotten old enough and interested enough to start including more in our meal preparation.
With no evening sports to occupy us, we've been creating in dealing with evening entertainment. We taught the kids how to play sheepshead in the spring and regularly play four hands of four-handed. We've also bought a few new board games to occupy us (like Azul). Just as the stress of this situation was getting to me, I discovered the Bob Ross channel on our Roku. (So soothing. How can everything be wrong when there's a happy little tree here?) As there has been so much doom and gloom with the pandemic and politics, I just don't have any interest in watching dramas. Thankfully, I've had Archer, Crossing Swords, and our newest discovery, What We Do in the Shadows, to entertain me. We've also taken to putting on the MST3K channel on Shout!, which has gotten the kids more interested in the show.
Politics. Dear lord. I don't want to go too much into this, but 2020 was a fraught year for that. Trump shouldn't have been trusted to tie his own shoelaces, let alone lead our nation through a pandemic. We're in a deep, dark hole, and it'll take society as a whole a lot to climb out of it.
We celebrated our year with Indian pizzas and later, fancy vermouth. It's nice to pretend we're somewhere else, but the tide seems to be turning enough that hopefully, as I just learned in my Spanish course, nosotros también esperamos viajar pronto.
