Today, we are starting the fourth week of “shelter in place” here in California. Week 4 of working from home, homeschooling, being together and trying to stay sane.
How are you doing?
The last three weeks have been surreal, exhausting, quiet, busy, and emotionally draining at times. No kidding, this is hard. And the number of COVID19 cases in New York are just scaring the shit out of me. The numbers here in the Bay Area don’t seem to rise dramatically yet, let’s hope all the restrictive measures help to keep the numbers low. Today, we have 1,230 cases in San José, doubling every 11 days. I follow this article from the New York Times.
I am very grateful
that my husband and I both have jobs we can do from home. I feel terrible for all the self-employed people with small businesses, cafés, restaurants, beauty salons, etc. who basically lost all their incomes. Therefore, we’ve been trying to support local restaurants by ordering takeout a couple of times a week. Today, I picked up my hair color from the back of my salon. This way, my hairdresser and I stay in touch and she can make a little bit of money. And, let’s be honest, we all have to maintain our looks as much as we can, or else we will all look so unkempt by the end of April that social distancing might stay a lasting thing.
The last three weeks were ok. We expected this to go on until the end of April and we were looking forward to the beginning of May. Everyone was pretty busy with working from home, teaching from home, getting school assignments done, walking the dog, trying to exercise and to find good ways to get used to this new lifestyle. My online teaching went pretty well and it was great to have a structured day and to see my students, at least on the screen.
A coworker has shared this article with us and I love it. Finally, parents see why teachers are superheroes! 🙂
“I just find it very strange that teachers aren’t losing their shit every five minutes, so they must be using some kind of supernatural power to get kids to sit down and shut up. At this point, I would not be surprised to find that teachers are all great sorcerers.”
© thedailymash.co.uk
This will go on for a while longer…
But last Wednesday, Governor Newsom announced that schools in California won’t reopen before the summer (June 4th) and that everyone will be doing online/distance learning for the rest of the school year. This message hit us all pretty hard, I honestly felt like punching someone and there were tears, too.
On Saturday, “spring break” started for our girls and me and we kinda slacked around all weekend. But that wasn’t very good for any of us. We were all kind of grumpy yesterday night and decided we need to adjust our plan a bit. We got rid of our schedule (Shelter in Place Day 1) and now we have a list of two columns on our board:
things you HAVE to do
things you CAN do
You have to do your work/school assignments/projects. Also, you have to do one exercise, walk the dog once a day, be outside for at least 60 minutes, do your daily chores like (tidying your room, empty the dishwasher, take out the garbage, …) and we have breakfast and dinner together, plus a game, movie, Just Dance battle or any other family activity together. But we decided we don’t want a fixed schedule anymore. Everyone should be able to do their duties at the time they choose to. Let’s see how that works.
Things to do at home for grownups
I’ve done and seen some special things over the last three weeks though. My friend had a virtual Disney trivia/charade party. I had several virtual happy hours on Meets or Zoom and I went for some distance dog walks through the neighborhood. I try to meditate every morning with Headspace and did a couple of live yoga classes from Ekhart Yoga.
My friend told me that she got out an extra table for jigsaw puzzles and that she ordered a custom puzzle at Shutterfly. I thought that was a brilliant idea and made one with family photos. The puzzle has been great but I think I should have rather taken pictures of our friends who we can’t see right now than ourselves who we get to see way too much!!
Baking! Honestly, everybody seems to bake these days. Breads, cookies, cakes, you name it. Here is my favorite bread recipe and in case you need a birthday cake, this is what you need to make. My husband loved it!
We played Scrabble via FaceTime with my mom in Germany. And we painted a lot of rocks with positive affirmations for our front yard. And people read them! A few of our neighbors told me how much they like them and we saw even people taking pictures of the rocks. I love it!
Do you know this coping calendar yet? You can download or print it on Action for Happiness.
Another coping strategy is decluttering. My friend actually came up with the perfection of decluttering: go through your liquor cabinet and use everything you have to make new cocktails! Brilliant.
Things to do at home for teenagers
My girls have done conditioning, team meets, hangouts with their teachers and German class online. My 12-year old worked a lot on finishing the yearbook of her school, which is one of her electives. I was super pleased that she had to work on this task together with her teacher and classmates. Other than that she has been playing Rummikub with her friend. If you connect them with your Facebook account, they can play private games. My friend CD Hullinger offers online Art classes. My 16-year old has been playing cards against humanity with her friends. They’re also giving each other daily chores they have to do and check on each other, which I find super cute. She has been also making vlogs of her day and. Her favorite workout channel right now is Chloe Ting. And Netflix parties are a thing now, too.
Things to do at home for kids
You can find lots of fun live classes on Activity Hero.
And I found this cool list of thing to do with your kids.
Avoid Cabin Fever With These 125 Ideas to Keep Kids Entertained During the Coronavirus Crisis
© parade.com
Finally, some cartoons, because really, we need things to laugh about to get through this time. Do you know @mattsurelee on Instagram? You have to follow him, he makes the best and funniest charts.
What are you doing right now to stay sane?
I hope you could find a couple of ideas on how to get through this time. You are not alone, we are all in this together. ❤️ Call a friend, write a letter, a postcard or if you don’t feel like doing anything right now, that is totally ok! We don’t all need to learn a new language or a new skill these days and it is ok if our kids won’t become the next Steve Jobs or Martha Stewart. The only thing I’m honestly hoping for is that the number of all our family members after this crisis is the same as it is now!
Keep good care of you and your loved ones!
