I do my best to keep a 'normal' face on for the sake of the kids. They are uneasy and alright with the situation things are in alternating turns. For them, COVID-19 isn't fully real because it hasn't changed our household much. They're doing school from home and enjoying it. They are figuring out how to communicate with their friends via the laptops and starting to do things like share things they're writing with their friends. They still get to play out in the yard (mask free) because no one else is out in that yard and the neighbors observe social distancing. The kids are doing a pretty good job of social distancing with people outside of our family, but it's not a big difference from what we usually do. It's just putting a little more physical distance between them and the neighbors.
As Beloved and I have discovered, our lifestyle is pretty much straight up social distancing. We're not antisocial at all. It's just something that we've fallen into over the last several years. Between the work of keeping up with the kids and Beloved having a busy job that leaves him burned out on the weekends, we don't really have a face-to-face social life. Our virtual social lives aren't exactly hopping either, to be honest.
We had some bad experiences on social media (*cough* Facebook *cough*) and tend to be more cautious about social media now. So, social distancing is just our routine with a few modifications, like no trips to the park or stopping at the ice cream shop for a treat when the day is really warm and the kids have been awesome. The thing that is wearing on me is the distance learning stuff.
They've got 40 minutes of work per class for the week. Because we do some work on each subject every day, we manage to get most of it done about mid-week. The work for the day manages to be be completed by the end of the morning. According to the teachers this is fantastic and we're doing a great job. It's hard, however, because the kids get bored and start fighting once we run out of things for them to do.
I try to get them into playing board games but they're not interested. I've had a little success with needlepoint. Attempting to teach Snuggle Bug how to knit ended in a combination of knots and tears of frustration. Crochet was also a source of great vexation. I don't know what to do next with them. I don't know how to keep them distracted from the ongoing tragedy unfolding. We don't watch the evening news but there are advertisements about how deadly COVID-19 is that pop up on their Youtube videos. They have questions and get uneasy at random times through out the day when it occurs to them that there is this thing called a pandemic and that it is dangerous. I'm asked every day at some point if it is here.
I don't know how to explain to them that it is everywhere. I've tried. The scope of it being everywhere is just too large for them to grasp, I think. It doesn't help when there are random anti-vaping ads with scare tactics labeling it an epidemic. This leads to confusion and some anxiety that vaping is somehow tied to COVID-19. Beloved and I have done our best to explain to them that they're being figurative in their description of vaping as an epidemic and COVID-19 is a real pandemic. They're afraid of it being here and all of us getting very sick and possibly dying.
I do my best to keep my response neutral and as reassuring as I can manage. I do my best to be stoic about my own fears about COVID-19's many effects on people who catch it, the risk pool, and the economic impact's potential hit to us. I avoid reading the news. Partly because the stupidity of the president suggesting that we should try ingesting bleach or injecting disinfectants just gets worse every time he opens his mouth. Poison control centers around the nation at the state level are getting record call volume regarding people poisoning themselves on the basis of the crap coming out of that man's mouth.
At the same time, in my day planner, I have been keeping a tally of the state's COVID-19 numbers and my county's statistics. I feel it is important to record this, especially when I witness news about these things getting buried. I've been tracking the spread of COVID-19 through my state since about when the index case became public. It's moved along the lines that I anticipated. Stargazer was a hobby epidemiologist and fascinated with plagues. We discussed the topic many times while we were roommates at college. Where other people were coming up with plans for the zombie uprising, we were talking about what we would to if there were to be a global pandemic like this.
Where other people went out and panic bought toilet paper, I looked at my canned goods and said "Time to stock up." I felt guilty because I didn't have a good hoard of canned goods to begin with because of the way I was raised, expecting SHFT to happen at any time. It was a very stressful way to be raised. I blame the Cold War and my parents being a touch insane. I may not have all the skills I need to do everything necessary to homestead but I know enough to get started and have some of the research necessary to do it.
When stores began rationing, I found myself thankful for the WWII cookbook that I inherited from my late paternal Grandmother. Mom thought I was weird for wanting that particular cookbook, but my brain latched on to it saying "We're going to need this someday." Now, here we are looking at the beginnings of rationing on a more regular basis, I know that cookbook is going to be handy because it has recipes for how to can jelly and other things, complete with instructions on how to do it. All I am lacking is canning jars, lids, and a large pot for water bath canning. All things that I know where I can acquire them. I have a rough memory of how to can things from watching and working with the women-folk of the family when I was a young child bringing in the harvest on the farm. Put that together with a Ball blue book of canning and some materials to work with, I think I could put up tomatoes with out too much difficulty and work my way to other goods.
I keep finding myself thinking about things in terms of what are we going to do if things go sideways. What can I barter or trade be it goods or services to others for things like some ground beef from a local butcher; what can I barter or trade for things we need in the way of non-food needs; etc. These are not normal thoughts. These are the thoughts of someone who was raised in a household whose motto was if SHFT happens, you shoot first and ask questions later. These are the thoughts of someone who was raised with the idea that at some point in their life a world altering catastrophe was going to happen and always analyzed what they could do that would be of value in the event of said catastrophe because their family continually told them that if they were not a valuable contributor they'd be kicked out and left to manage said catastrophe on their own. Imagine being seven years old and being told that if you weren't useful when the bomb dropped and the city folk came in hordes to take what we had, you were going to be thrown to the wolves like Lot's daughters.
So, I do my best to stay stoic and keep a shield up between the kids and the tragedy unfolding. To them, this is an inconvenience and boring. If I can keep it that way and teach them some life skills in the process (like how to bake bread or to do some basic sewing so they can mend their clothes), I will count this a success. But I am tired. Staying stoic is not the healthiest thing for me to do. I'm tending into depression with all of this. My anxiety is steadily rising the harder I try to tamp it down. But I can't break down and cry. Because that scares my children.
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