I can't believe how at the beginning of this I thought it would last for two, maybe three weeks and then life would get back to normal.
We are over 4 months in and things are still changing all the time. The only constant is how you cannot predict what's going to happen next.
Here's the lowdown: Dan is still working from home. The kids finished school and we should hear during the week of August 1st what the plan is for the fall. I'm guessing Alec and Jenna will do a hybrid of a few days a week at home and a few days a week at school. I'm definitely going to be driving Alec back and forth to school and Dan will bring Jenna. Michaela's classes are all online from Oneonta, and her roommate decided not to go back to live on campus, so she's staying home for the fall semester. This was a huge disappointment for her, but probably is safer in the long run. We should know more by Christmas if she will be able to go back for the Spring semester. I'm still collecting unemployment and am planning on returning to work the first week of August in people's houses. I just sent out emails today to clients to see who'd like to get on the schedule. I ended up applying for four different jobs and didn't get any of them, which was a sign from God... I did a lot of praying about putting me where I was supposed to be. I also did a lot of crying about it.
We went on vacation to the Outer Banks with the Hartles and their friends the Condons, who were super nice. We stayed at a house right on the ocean, and woke up to see the waves every day. We ate at the house and watched movies at night. It was just about as safe of a vacation as we could get. We went to a t-shirt store one morning and to the grocery store nearby once. It was so good to be out of the house, away from everything and a wonderful change of scene. Unfortunately, North Carolina is on a travel advisory list of NYS so we are now self-quarantining for two weeks to make sure we aren't infected and don't spread it to anyone else. We are one week down and everyone is bored. We're keeping our distance from Gammie, too, only seeing her outside to be sure we don't expose her to anything. But it was a great vacation and worth it.
The rest of our summer will be low-key. Alec is signed up for a week of outdoor camp at the Parker school and today I signed him up for a second week in August to help keep him active and busy. We may be able to go camping once or twice but I'm not sure.
We talked a lot on the vacation about the tension between keeping everything shut down and keeping people safe vs the economic destruction that causes. We are in Phase 4 of re-opening, which means stores are open but you need to wear masks and limit the amount of people in the store. Restaurants are still mostly takeout and outside seating. Doctors offices are open but everywhere has new protocols in place to avoid people gathering in waiting rooms. There was a slight uptick in our county's numbers after the fourth of July but that seems to be settling down, and now all eyes are on Texas and Florida and Arizona and California as the hotspots. Some states are still grappling with whether to mandate mask-wearing, and people are claiming that a mask mandate "infringes on their rights. " It's like living in an upside-down world.
And because a global pandemic isn't enough, a police officer in Minneapolis killed an unarmed black man by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and all hell broke loose. Protests, demonstrations, rallies, marches, and deep conversations have all started to address systematic racism in our country. Seattle has established its own minority free from any police intervention, searching for a utopia. It's not going exactly as they planned. We have had some really great talks in the house and online elevating our awareness and thinking about our role and culpability in oppressing others.
So all of this is going on AND a presidential election is being held in a few months. There is still lots of talk about an absolute shitshow of a flu season intersecting with this virus and causing another round of shutdowns and hospital bed and supply shortages. But things happen so quickly, its impossible to know what will happen by then... thankfully every few weeks a good report comes out about a vaccine being developed and ending the worst of this pandemic.
Overall, we're bored. We're tired. We've watched all the shows and played all the games. We're ready for life to get back to normal and feel like we can see people safely again, go places safely again, watch sports again, celebrate milestones, and live our lives again. But until that time, we mark off the days and weeks, watching them turn into months, and talk wistfully about how we did things Before.