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
PERFECT QUARANTINE LIFE PURCHASES
“Can we touch our friends yet?”
“Well, watch it again.”
“NOOOOOOOO (cue tears)!!!”
Olive runs out the front door to ride her bike…
I pour myself a margarita. Marg and Rita. My long lost friends (since yesterday).
CAN’T WAIT TO MARGA-MITA AGAIN
Screw it… I’ll sit and watch some TV and prop my feet up.
“Fine, you can watch Zootopia in bed.”
“Will you lay with me?”
“Ok… “
I’ve been doing more kitchen dance parties.
LIFE IS SHORT
“Ells, let’s go.”
“Only for two songs.” We let them fall asleep to lullabies usually.
“DADDY!!!”
Did I drain the tub again?
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?
Does Ella have school tomorrow?
What are we going to do for preschool in the fall?
It goes on forever…
Leave a Reply