Quarantine schedule

Although I have a tight schedule printed and stuck on my refrigerator, I sort of knew all along that we would never follow it. Mostly because it assumes we’d be getting up early, which I refuse to do (sleeping in is my one luxury right now - you can pry that from my cold, dead hand) - but also because it’s just too rigid. I’ve seen posts on FB from slackers like me pushing back at (what appears to be) perfect Stepford-like home schoolers with their wipe boards and desks and art supplies; then posts from people who need structure offended that others are saying nobody does. It’s an interesting sociological experiment to see how different parents are handling this, and how everyone’s feeling a little touchy and shamed for not “doing it right”. This pales in comparison to the “stay the fuck home” shaming vs don’t tell me what to do pushback, equally fascinating (and potentially more deadly). Here is our actual schedule as it’s played out the last couple of weeks. For reference, I believe schedules are largely dictated by how many kids you have, their ages, birth order, and genders, whether you have to work from home or still go out or not work at all (me), if you have someone helping (not me, currently), whether you have access to a safe empty outdoor space for kids to play (not me). 

7:00 AM - kids awake playing video games while I malinger in bed

10:00 AM - I drag my carcass out of bed after about an hour of anxiety scrolling through the latest news and reaching out to friends 

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - I brush teeth, shower, dress, make breakfast for kids, make kids get dressed, poop, and brush teeth

11:00 - 12:00 - kid’s school work. The teachers are slowly setting up online platforms, which is currently a huge pain in the ass, because there are several for each kid and they’re in various stages as of today. 

Theo now gets an email from his kindergarten teacher each day with a long list of busy work, including needing to video him doing something and then send it to her via email; now there’s also some class app thing where he has to do a project each day and take a picture and make a video and upload that, plus there’s another app where he’s supposed to do online reading and take quizzes, plus we’re also supposed to read and I’m supposed to quiz him on his rainbow words every day. We’ve been getting through 50%-70% of this every day before he’s climbing the walls. 

Bobby has a big pile of work with nothing online yet, but that’s supposed to change next week. I can barely get him through one of the five pages of math he’s supposed to be doing each day (especially since today we finally hit the wall of no longer doing math he was taught in school), he can do the reading but hates the comprehension/writing/annotating part, and has done two of ten daily journals he was supposed to have done by now. There are websites and access codes and PIN numbers all being sent to me via private message, email, and school app, and it’s almost impossible to keep track of it all, especially when to try to set these up on their impossibly outdated iPads means painstakingly going through each’s storage to delete a bunch of stuff to make room for all this new stuff, updating IOS and browsers, etc, none of which our currently crappy over-taxed internet can handle. Sigh. We’ve been getting through maybe 30%-50% of Bobby’s work each day before melting down. 

1:00 - 2:00 - afternoon snack/lunch. Since I haven’t made lunches for these kids for years, I’m pretty much at a loss here. Just kind of throwing things together randomly.

2:00 - 5:00 - afternoon play - legos, mostly. Video games and/or iPads also.

6:00 - dinner and bed time routine, depending. Today I’ll make B practice violin and then when they’re in jammies with teeth brushed I’ll read them a chapter of Harry Potter and then have them in bed by 8-8:30.

All day long I feel like I do nothing but cook, full the dish washer, empty the dish washer, do laundry, tidy up, manage garbage, anxiety scroll latest news & FB, take unneeded naps, watch TV, occasionally pop outside to tend the garden. 

Yesterday I e-filed my taxes and paid myself via payroll, then deposited a check to my empty household account to cover April costs. I am set for now. So much is going to happen in the next 30 days. Right now I don’t feel a need to put all my payments on hold - but I may change my mind if things start to look more dire and people start asking for refunds. The BF thinks I should apply for unemployment, but I don’t feel right about that - not unless I know for sure I can’t do my event. Maybe I should be more mercenary, but I don’t want to look at this horrible situation, with people all over suffering and dying, as a big cash grab. 

The BF is back at work trying to rustle up cash. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m glad he’s motivated, has something to do, and is relatively safe since he works alone in a workshop that nobody else goes into. I doubt his plan to make money will be successful. His being gone means I can no longer get out to exercise, and makes trying to school two kids almost impossible since they both need help with everything all of the time. But it does make the house quieter and less chaotic - mealtimes are a train wreck when he’s around, and I’m horribly offended by his awful food - sodas, chips, meat, canned food, endless pasta and pre-prepared crap, velveeta and canned cheese and other garbage, not a single vegetable or whole food anywhere. I hate it all. If we come out of this alive I can’t wait for him to take all of that shit out of my overstuffed refrigerator and freezer and leave it all at his work. It’s also nearly impossible to get the kids to bed before 10 pm when he’s around. So yeah - part of me wants him to keep going to work, part of me wants him to stay home. It’s a toss-up. 

I see lots of friends being super creative and accomplished during this; I for one have zero motivation to do anything outside of basic survival. I can’t read, knit, organize or work on any projects of any kind. Mind you all of these creative friends don’t have kids and live alone. But still. I don’t know if I’m depressed and just need to give myself this break, or if I’m just being self-indulgent and lazy. Honestly? It’s probably a little of both. But the cold, grey weather isn’t helping, and fear of economic collapse makes me not want to invest emotional energy into making any plans or working on any projects. It seems far more important to keep up with the constantly changing news than it does to be doing much of anything else.