Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Love (Familial love) in the Time of the Corona Virus

Everyone is home, so the clock of social distancing starts.  
10) Day 1, have a family meeting and talk about how we're going to read books, practice music, organize closets, exercise and make homemade bread.
9) Day 2, sleep in, can't find book, everyone complains when you practice because it's interfering with the Netflix marathon of the Great Brittish Bakeoff. Microwave lunch, and pizza via take out for dinner.
8) Day 3, everyone oversleeps. Public service announcment that we won't buy anymore cereal as it uses two resources to make one meal. Feel virtuous serving poptarts.
7) Day 4: Attempts at outside sports turn into a massive brawl with all pent up passive aggressions becoming...less passive.
6) Day 5: No one wants to eat anything in the house, and no one wants to watch television and no one wants to read books and no one cares if anything is due, be it bills or anything else. Everyone is practicing social distancing, but more as a means of not killling each other.
5) Day 6: Rebellion ensues. We feast on pancakes, use up the last of the butter and syrup, and have a barbecue for dinner. No one complains about any of the food, we hug and promise not to let things get too bad again. Feast concludes with the last frozen apple pie.
4) Day 7: Reality resets in, as the dryer stops working because it's overloaded with towels. Hang them outside, kids are prowling the grounds and taking turns on the scooter, to go to Exodus and back --just down the block a mile or so. It's curious how many come back with what look like items from 7-11.
3) Day 8: Everyone knuckles under, there's no alternative. Breakfast is oatmeal, lunch is soup, and dinner is pasta. Everyone eats and it doesn't matter because that's what's for dinner. The kids watch a group movie, popcorn is served, and peace seems possible.
2) Day 9: The governor announces, it will be two more weeks. All emergency chocolate is eaten. Alcohol is served with dinner to all adults. (Dinner is Eggs, frozen waffles and heated sugared berries --defrosted) and whatever carrots are leftover.
1) Day 10: We look back at the past week and a half, at our first day goals and there's a mad scramble to catch up on all the work we avoided, on the desperate hope normal returns soon. The momentum last through lunch, fried spam and grits and onions  Drinks are the orange soda left over from the Superbowl, three different brands of root beer and one diet cream soda.  
Day 11...deer in the back yard, all children grabbed anything they had on hand, a spade, a rake, a wooden sword from the Renaissance festival, and a trombone. Not sure we'll have venison for dinner, but they've united and that's a vast improvement.
Dinner includes rice, beans and the frozen popsticks we forgot about from last summer.  

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