A Day in My Quarantine Life ⋆ Little Miss Martha

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It’s been like 55 days or something since my kids have really been anywhere and we started our journey in this quarantine life. I’ve only been to the grocery store 1x (this past sunday) and drive-thru lines for food like 4x since all this started. We are taking this Covid-19 thing seriously and don’t want to mess with it if we can help it.
Here’s a day in my quarantine life.
The date is May 12th, 2020… I think.
#staysafeathome

I don’t want to wake up most days… I could lay in bed all day long. This is not a quarantine life thing either, it’s most days prior to quarantine too. I’m tired all the time. All. The. Time.
But I slowly roll out of bed and head downstairs to my revolving office that may be located at the kitchen table, island, or counters, or maybe it’s the couch depending on the amount of calls I have that day.
My day has been starting a little late, I’m not going to lie. We’ve lost all sense of structure in my house.
Except my kids haven’t seem to have lost track of the times they’d like to eat.

THIS NEW NORMAL

Usually I get about 15 minutes in the morning when I get to make coffee and catch the first few minutes of the Today show before Olive (my 3yo) comes down the stairs alerting me to the fact that “it’s good morning time mom!” and she’d like her breakfast. Every day she requests toast and strawberries.

I pour a cup of coffee and sit down to my computer.
Sometimes I give Olive the phone so she can watch YouTube, other days she gets to take over the TV and pick her favorite Netflix show. Sometimes if I’m feeling ambitious, I accidentally put on something educational and tell her she can’t watch anything else until she watches that. Boom. Preschool by Netflix.

My husband heads out the door around 8. I won’t see him basically until tomorrow. It makes for long days for both of us. Not sure who’s got it worse right now?! Essential employee delivery guy or work from home, babysitter, teacher, cleaning lady, chef, mom? Jury is still out on that one…

Thank goodness my workplace is offering and accepting of the flexibility needed during this time. Aside from the insane amount of calls we are having because we “never see each other” and are still attempting to deploy new software to location during this insane time, I think we are managing things pretty well. I mean some days are better than others productivity-wise, but I think that’s to be expected.

EDUCATIONAL NETFLIX

When Ella (my 8yo) wakes up, if she doesn’t sneak in a game of Fortnite as soon as she wakes up, she comes and meets me at the table where I give a good morning hug and ask her if her iPad is charged. When she does sneak in the game, she lays in our loft under a blanket in hopes I won’t see her or notice the game running on the screen I guess?!?! Honestly, with the disaster state the loft usually is in, sometimes I might miss it.

The school sent home an iPad, but we could never get it to work so we just use our own. I realize that this is a luxury as some kids don’t have this option, but it saved my sanity that first week of e-learning. The only bad thing is the thing needs charged all the time. We are constantly setting up “charging stations” that move all over the house so she can participate in Zoom calls without the disaster of my house in the background and Flipgrids that won’t show the mess either! Each day, the mess seems to move around the house so new locations are needed.

AWESOME ZOOM BACKGROUNDS

Once both girls have finished breakfast, my coffee is cold and I’ve missed a couple messages from my friend at work. She’s got one at home too. We message about how different the “education” is right now. It feel like her teacher barely sends anything compared to my daughter’s teacher. I do applaud all the teachers right now. Most are in the same boat as me, working full time and teaching, and it’s stressful. They are being amazing. And they miss the kids too… This is hard for them in many different ways.

By the time school is ready to start, I’ve gotten in a good two hours of work. We run on a 2 (sometimes 3) hour delay over here for quarantine life school. I never liked trying to catch that damn bus at 710 anyways… So around 10, we start moving down the e-learning syllabus. We get a new one each day and now that we are down to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it does seem a little more manageable (for me at least).

BOREDOM BUSTERS

By 1030, she’s completed her flipgrid for the day, maybe a short phonix video or whatever they call it these days, and started one real assignment. By 11, she’s on youtube. This is how it goes. Damn youtube. Damn technology. We couldn’t do any of this without you but man you make me lose my mind. At 1101, I am nice. I say, Ella, the quicker you get everything done, the quicker you can have free time as I’m on mute for another stupid call that could be taken care of via email.

Shit, Olive’s still over there watching TV.
“Olive, why don’t you go play on the patio.” It’s not raining today. Sunny days are good days.
“Can you blow up the bounce house?”
“No, not yet. After lunch.”
“But I don’t like lunch.”
These are the chats with my 3yo during quarantine life.

I join another call and realize my 8yo has gone missing. Her ipad is next to me charging so something is up. This call is via Teams so I can’t walk around the house on mute for this one. I sit, I take some notes, I google something. The coffee I filled up at 11 is cold again now. Damn. Oh wait, I can still yell from downstairs.

CORONA PRINTABLE

ELLA!!!
There’s been lots of yelling.
Yelling about schoolwork, yelling about getting along with your sister, yelling about eating everything in sight, yelling about the messes. Everyday the messes are insane. No one here has gotten more organized during this time. It’s like we have a house of savages.

It’s lunchtime. Ugh. The one thing I’m totally hating about this whole being home all the time is the cooking (and cleaning). Three. Meals. A. Day. OMG. They always want to eat! And then they don’t eat or they don’t like it. OMG. It’s so frustrating. Spoiled turds. Their menu consists of the following:

LUNCHBOX NOTES

Chicken Nuggets and Macaroni
Ramen (only once a week max)
Chicken Noodle Soup
Frozen Pizza
Hot Dogs

WHAT KID DOESN’T LIKE THESE THINGS?! DO THEY TELL THE LUNCH LADIES THEY DON’T LIKE THE FOOD AT SCHOOL?!!

*Well, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that one.

So we eat. I grab a bite of macaroni and then I sometimes load them up to go get coffee from downtown where they’ll serve my lavender latte to me on a paddle through the window. It’s fun and you can feel their smiles through the masks. Plus, it’s out even if it’s not OUT and it’s interaction with people besides my kids.

CHARCUTERIE BOARD INSPIRATION

We come home and I throw a load of laundry in, pick up some shoes in the loft, and realize there’s still water in the tub from Ella’s bath the night before so I drain it. Have I even been upstairs since I rolled out of bed?! I don’t know…quarantine life is starting to get to me.

Around 2 we are back at it… Lunches are sometimes long. Sorry. It’s necessary and sometimes unable to be avoided. Bounce house has gone up for Olive – so glad this fits in our tiny yard so we don’t have to tell our friends they can’t play with us.

PERFECT QUARANTINE LIFE PURCHASES

“Mom, is the rona virus over yet?”

“Not yet hunny… it’s gonna be a while.”
“Can we touch our friends yet?”

“No Olive, we can’t touch our friends yet.”

Reading, writing and math are usually what we have left for classes. If it’s a good day, Ella will do it all herself with no help, but that’s not usually the case. It makes me question her school habits every time she asks, what do i do!?

“Ummm… did you just watch the video of your teacher explaining?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, watch it again.”
“NOOOOOOOO (cue tears)!!!”

If I haven’t lost my patience yet, I will go through it with her. We’ll work on it together. But there’s like a 10% chance I still have patience at this point of the day. I have another call and can’t figure out some of this 2nd grade work anyways…

“If you don’t know how to do it, skip that one and we’ll come back to it later.”

Is work over yet?! Damn ANOTHER CALL?!!?
Olive runs out the front door to ride her bike…

The afternoon is usually a blur. Did I do any work? Did I respond to that email from the Bahamas? Did I send that transfer I’ve been meaning to send all week?!

430! Thank god! That day was forever long.
I pour myself a margarita. Marg and Rita. My long lost friends (since yesterday).

CAN’T WAIT TO MARGA-MITA AGAIN

WTF, it’s time to start cooking dinner.
Screw it… I’ll sit and watch some TV and prop my feet up.

I sit most of the day, but yet my feet are so tired at the end of the day. From this point on, I’ll be on my feet non-stop until these turds go to bed which is my most hated time of the day.

Should we order something for dinner?! Maybe… Support local? Pizza? No. Noodles? No. Steak? No. Mexican? No. Screw it, I’ll just make something.

Chicken with Broccoli & Rice?

Tacos?

Meatloaf?

IDK…

I make something… It’s usually edible, but someone complains and Olive’s always like “I hate (insert dinner made).” It’s 7 and we sit down to eat. Husband still isn’t home. It would just be nice to transfer some responsibilities over to another human right now. ANYTHING. But can’t. Quarantine life.

DUTCH OVEN RECIPES

Bedtime routines start at 730/8. No naps have been taken today. Olive should be exhausted. She’s not. We use melatonin, lavender nighttime soaps in the bath, and there’s no progress on getting her to sleepy town.
“Fine, you can watch Zootopia in bed.”
“Will you lay with me?”
“Ok… “

I will say, I’ve been doing more laying with the girls.
I’ve been doing more kitchen dance parties.

More watching them play with less distractions.

More sharing.

More family adventures — bikes, walks, runs.

We’ve just been enjoying our time together. And while the days can be super stressful, and insanely long, they are times we won’t have forever.

LIFE IS SHORT

“Goodnight Olive”

ZZZZZ

It’s 9pm and Ella’s still awake too. I hear the garage door start to go up and am thinking THANK JESUS! But he’ll want to eat, shower and go to bed.
“Ells, let’s go.”

“Mom will you lay with me?”
“Only for two songs.” We let them fall asleep to lullabies usually.
“DADDY!!!”

“Say goodnight… we are going to bed.”

“Goodnight Ells.”

ZZZZZ

It’s 10. I’m so tired. Mike’s downstairs eating dinner. I come down to talk since we haven’t all day really. We talk about how many deliveries he had and how he had to run from a dog today. We might talk about how the kids drove me nuts earlier or how they don’t listen or clean up after themselves as I pick up the plates from dinner and move them to the sink. I’ll do the dishes in the morning.

I hit the pillow around 11. I can’t sleep. So many things go through my head.
Did I drain the tub again?

Shit the laundry! I hope I don’t forget that tomorrow and have to rewash. I’ll do it when I get up. Don’t forget.
Stop snoring Mike!
OMG did we finish that one assignment we needed to go back to? I should just do it. No, that’ll look weird submitting something after 11.
What day is it?
Where are my airpods?

Is the ipad charging?
Does Ella have school tomorrow?

Where could I donate the xbox?
What are we going to do for preschool in the fall?
It goes on forever…

It’s midnight. Screw it. I take a melatonin and prepare to start quarantine life all over tomorrow.