36 days…this is wild! It’s been over a month since I’ve seen my students face to face, and over a month since I’ve seen my coworkers face to face. When I started this blog, I figured it would go on for a couple weeks and then we’d be back to our business as usual. While I know that this, like so many other things, is temporary, it often doesn’t feel like it. This is starting to become our new normal.
Saying that we’re 100% quarantined isn’t accurate. On most days, one of us has to run out for something, usually to go to the grocery store. I don’t think I ever realized how many trips we make to the store. And normally it doesn’t matter that much. If we forget something, we can just run back out to grab it, and then come right back. But thanks to our going out routines and our store routines, I’ve been made much more aware of how many trips we make. Before going out, I have to make sure I have my face mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer. When I get to the store, I take my debit card out of my wallet and I place it and my keys in my right pocket. At that point I don my mask and my gloves, being careful to touch as little as possible. I take one last look at the list on my phone, commit it to memory (because I have no desire to bring my phone into the store with me), and lock it away in my 4Runner. While in the store, I shop like normal, except that I don’t have to smile at people anymore because of my face mask. When it comes time to pay, though, it starts to get weird: I take off my right glove, and with my right hand I touch ONLY my debit card and my keys; from that point forward, all activities dealing with grocery bags, shopping carts, PIN pads, and actual groceries, I do as a one-handed man (I’m getting versatile). When I get out to the car, I put my right glove back on, utilize the hand sanitizer, remove the gloves, and finally sanitize my bare hands. Only then am I able to take off my mask. It’s exhausting! That’s why I’m not trying to make ANY extra trips to the store. I’m turning into a germophobe.
Speaking of masks, my mother-in-law made us two masks each with HEPA filters. I don’t know how effective masks are at preventing the virus, but I see everyone else wearing them, thus I feel compelled to participate. These masks, by the way, make for a much more useful gift than hermit crabs. The hermit crabs have actually cost us more time, effort, and money than we would have spent without them, where as the masks are serving a purpose! (Also, the hermit crabs don’t DO anything. They’re mostly nocturnal, and so if we want to watch them do stuff, we have to skip Ira’s bedtime.) The first time I wore the mask, I was not crazy about it. I have asthma and recycling my own air like that starts to make me short of breath a bit; also, I’m slightly claustrophobic…having that mask right up against my face isn’t a ton of fun. As I’ve used it more, though, the idea of wearing a mask has grown on me. I don’t have to politely smile at people anymore; I also feel like I don’t have to look people in the eye anymore. The mask almost makes me feel invisible. It definitely makes me invincible too.
We do spend most of our time at home. I mean, almost all of it. Surprisingly, Emily and I haven’t started fighting a ton. There have been a few things about her that have annoyed me slightly, but nothing worth fighting about. For example: Thursday night, I sat down to watch The Dark Knight Rises (definitely not as good as its predecessor, The Dark Knight, but still a very good Batman movie), and she joined me about 20 minutes after the movie started. For some reason, the dialogue on this particular DVD copy is very quiet, but the action sequences are very loud; so, in an effort to not wake the children, I try to keep it more on the quiet side, and just listen closely. Well, when Emily sat down to watch with me, she did so with a bag of potato chips. Not just any bag, but a very loud bag of kettle cooked chips, the kind that makes the loudest noise while chewing them. This is hardly the first time she’s sat down with me to watch a movie with a very loud snack. Again, it’s annoying, but certainly not worth putting our marriage in jeopardy. I’m sure there’s nothing I’ve done that has annoyed her.
Things with school are going well too. Yesterday, during my office hours, I had two students “drop in” to ask questions. One was a simple question about something civics related (I can’t remember what it was): that conversation lasted less than 5 minutes. The other was a student who had a few questions about the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the world. We must have chatted about history for a solid 30 minutes, and it was awesome! I haven’t been able to just talk about history since the quarantine began, so that was a lot of fun for me. I’m feeling particularly sorry for the seniors right now, who should be enjoying their last semester of high school before shipping off to the corners of the earth for college, work, or whatever else they decide to do. So, Thursday and Friday, Ira and I made some cards for a few of them to congratulate them on graduating high school and to let them know that we’re thinking of them. Then, Friday afternoon, we drove around Greensboro, and hand delivered a few of them. It was wonderful seeing some of them. I don’t know if it did their souls any good, but it certainly did good things for me. Ira enjoyed it too (he wasn’t crazy about having to stay in the car the whole time, but it is what it is). Next week, I’ll likely make some more for other seniors and mail them out.
In other news, Margot is almost 11 months old, and still ends up sleeping in our bed for about half of the night. Experts say that we should stop doing this and stop feeding her during the middle of the night somewhere in the 4-6-month range. Looks like we’ve missed a memo somewhere. So, Emily has decided that now is the time to start trying to wean her of this. Additionally, Margot has gotten far more clingy lately, likely because we’ve been home all day every day. I say all that to say that last night, we spent a total of around an hour listening to her scream in her room. It was heartbreaking and infuriating all at the same time. With any luck, she’ll go to bed easier tonight.
Finally, Emily has come to the realization that she DOES, in fact, like cherry Italian ice. Again, my one joy in life is being taken away. She’s going to eat it all.
COVID-19 
Thanks Trey…
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