This is going to get weird. It already is weird but when I stop and focus on it, it feels even more weird. It is like I am in one of those movies where someone is stranded or lost at sea and they start counting the days. It has been 12 days since they asked people to so a 14 day self quarantine. They announced yesterday that starting this Tuesday at noon there will be an even more strict 30 quarantine going into effect. Basically all businesses that are not essential are to be closed and other than emergencies, no one should leave their house unless it is to go to the bank, grocery store, hardware store, or doctor office. I have also heard that they will start fining people that are not following the quarantine and multiple offenders can even get up to 6 months of jail time. I have not verified that so I don’t know if it is true or not. This is when things could start getting ugly.
Matthew and Allison seem to be doing ok so far. I can tell Emilee is stressed, the past day or so I can tell she is getting some pent up energy and she keeps asking a lot of the same questions over and over. Maybe I will start a rating system for how we are all doing mentally.
We had church today. This is the first time in my life that I have ever had to have the sacrament done in my own home. I thought is was a really good meeting. I could feel the Spirit. It is a huge blessing and comfort that we have the Lords gospel and it is organized and clear how to do things. Even when new situations that haven’t ever really happened before come up there is a clear process and way to do things. We kept it pretty simple and did an opening song,prayer,business, sacrament song, Ryan blessed the sacrament and Matthew passed it, then we read scriptures and had a closing song and prayer. Our Primary pianist and chorister made a video for the kids to watch for singing time so we did that afterwards. We assigned out some parts for next weeks church.
We had a planning meeting today also for this upcoming week. We talked about making sure all our bodies needs are met-physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. We discussed things that each of us need to do each day like;
- Switch off between exercising and stretching for 45 minutes each day
- Personal prayer and scriptures
- Family prayer and scriptures
- Read for fun for a minimum of 30 minutes a day
- Go outside everyday
- Daily chores
- Laundry helper (kids will rotate each week)
- Cooking helper
- Practice piano minimum of 20 minutes each day
- Teaching life skills with mom ~2 times a week
- Hygiene habits with mom ~2 times a week
There is other things that vary a little bit but those are the things that will be standard each week. School stuff will get added in there too when the school stuff is out online from the district more. Life skills and hygiene habits are short little sessions with mom that review some aspect of hygiene (like using a q-tip) or life skills (how to sweep a floor) that they already know or should know but need a review. For example today we covered how to shower. They thought it was hilarious and were mortified that I had a stick figure drawing to help illustrate but all of them discovered 2-3 things that they were forgetting or not doing right.
Allison is going to get a little garden started this week with her dad. She is hoping to be able to do a salad garden with lettuce, peppers, and carrots. She wants to take over the whole back yard but I told her she has to start small and if it goes well she can expand.
Ryan is going to build the shelves in the basement bedroom closet. Emilee and I are going to finish condensing the toy room and her room while I finish getting the basement bedroom converted from a toy room to a bedroom. Matthew is planning on focusing a lot on his hitting and throwing for baseball.
It is all just odd. The world we lived and worked and socialized in less than two weeks ago has completely changed. Basically it has been canceled. There is nothing to prepare or get ready for, nothing to go to. It is a weird feeling. No reason to go to bed, no reason to get up in the morning. No plans. At. All. I can see how isolation can get to people. I wouldn’t say it is getting to me yet. I am pretty good at being alone but I have always had the option to change that when I decide I am not good with it anymore. I have my family too, so technically I am not alone. People that are single or live alone are in for a long couple months. Ryan is lucky to still have a job to work at home from too. So many people have been let go or had to close their business and that starts a whole other train of people that become affected as well. The economy was strong-growing and thriving in fact but this is a huge set back to recover from. I wish they would just implement a ‘pause’ in all of the financial stuff until this is over so people don’t have to declare bankruptcy or lose their job. It is going to be a job to get everthing ‘back to normal’.
I am sick of social media. The memes are funny but the rest of it just drives me crazy. Lots of rumors, misinformed or uniformed people ‘explaining’ things, people criticizing others. There is lots of good stuff going on as well. Many businesses and people are donating supplies or food or services during this time. I have taken a break from pretty much all of the news for the next little while. Ryan will let me know if I need to know something.
The icing on the cake today it that we found another gift from our crappy builder this morning. It has been raining a lot and one of our living room windows has water dripping inside from somewhere. We are thinking it is probably flashing or something but…getting it fixed is going to be a pickle. It might just be a ‘caulk the crap out of it’ until all this is over fix.