79

So the Covid-19 lockdown happened and I found myself working from home, with my wife and kids in the house, and it was on the one hand a very strange, arguably historic/era-defining/watershed moment, but on the other hand it was ... familiar? I was in my own house, with my family, and as I've mentioned before, working from home was not new to me. In fact it was often an option I took advantage of specifically because one or all of the kids were home, too sick for school or off for a teacher workday or the like.

On top of the circumstantial similarities, it felt like I was someplace I had been before, on a visceral level. It felt like Snowmageddon: No school! Office closed! People freaking out about toilet paper! (Which - seriously? I lived through it and I still can hardly believe I typed that. The whole TP situation will probably merit it's own post down the road.)

One of the things I think I will always remember about those early days (but I'm recording it here nonetheless, just in case) is sitting on the loveseat in our front room, laptop on my knees, doing my job remotely, and frequently glancing out the window. As if I were going to see snow. Or something like it, some visible indicator that the very atmosphere outside my house had changed, become somehow hostile. In a sense, that was true, after all, except for the whole visible part. And that was the irony, because not only could I not see thunderheads or hurricane gusts or dumping rain or snow or hail, I saw beautiful clear blue skies more often than not. After so many years that it felt like forever where we went from brutal winters with mid-March snows straight into equally brutal summers with April heatwaves, 2020 offered up one of the most picture-perfect springs weather-wise. Sunshine and pleasant temperatures, weirdly commingled with pervasive dread due to the undetectable plague creeping everywhere. Bizarre.

Over time, the feeling of familiarity would fade, because even super-blizzards only shut the region down for a couple of weeks, not a couple of months. And of course when two feet of snow cover the ground, nobody denies that it's happening or downplays the dangers of driving through it. So the metaphor falls apart. But I do, even on day 79, find myself glancing out the window often. Now, though, it's because on some subconscious level I'm looking for a sign that it's safe, that it's over, that we can get back to normal. But I know I'm not going to see that, either.

77

I was berating myself the other day for not blogging regularly throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, because someday a quarantine journal might be interesting (to me and mine, at least). Today it hit me again, mainly because it is Memorial Day. My kids have the day off from school, but then again, they haven't been to school in two and a half months. My wife has the day off, but then again, her semester ended a couple of weeks ago. I am working, albeit working from home, but then again, all I do anymore is work from home. Although I used to work from home now and then in the Before Time. Although I used to get holidays off. And the reason why there is so much work for me to do is directly because of Covid-19, and school closures, and so on. It is a strange national long weekend, to be sure, and almost certainly moreso for other people than me, but as far as chronological markers to finally jump in with my usual better-late-than-never verve? Sure, why not?

So clearly this is a multi-post project, wherein I can both report in real time on Life in Historic Times, and also belatedly fill in the backstory as best I can reconstruct it. The subject of this post refers to the fact that, for me personally, it's the 77th day of lockdown. Eleven weeks. I'll take a stab now at sketching out how it all started.

Which of course means I have to provide some current context, because this here blog has lain in disuse for so long. I have been working for an education non-profit for a little over four years now. My wife has been teaching full-time at the local community college for two years. The little guy is in sixth grade, the little girl is in third grade, and the 'bino is in first grade. We still live in the same house we have for almost the entire existence of the blog. And lots of life stuff has happened but that probably gives you enough for now!

So my actual quarantine experience began on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. I remember that the week before, coronavirus was very big in the news. My company does work internationally and the novel coronavirus outbreak in China was impacting some of our projects. My boss said, "What's going to be crazy is if we get a similar outbreak here in the U.S." and I ... scoffed? I really did, I admit it. I thought it wouldn't happen. Not that it couldn't, just that it wouldn't. I don't know why I was so convinced of that, other than my usual cock-eyed optimistic belief that everything will work out fine, but I was very wrong, and I admit it.

On Monday the 9th, there was one reported case of Covid-19 in the NYC skyscraper where my company has its home office. Not in my company's office, not anyone who works for my company, but someone else at a different company on a different floor. Still, in an abundance of caution, my company closed our office, sending everyone to work at home. Including everyone at all the other satellite offices, which of course included me. So we packed up on a Monday, and on Tuesday, I was working from home, while my kids went to school, and my wife happened to be on spring break. Things escalated quickly that week, as my company announced we would stay closed for at least a month, my wife's campus decided not to re-open after spring break, and my kids ... continued to go to school, through Friday, which was a half-day for them anyway. By then, at least, the governor had closed schools state-wide. So I worked from home for four days in a row, and as I mentioned above, working from home was nothing new for me. I did it one day a week with regularity, and sometimes twice a week if the need arose. Four straight days was a bit of a novelty, but then it became apparent that it was going to be five days in a row the following week, and the week after that, and ... question mark? Of course at the beginning no one knew how or when it would all end, and two and a half, nearly three months later, we still don't know.

So that's the intro! I will add to this as often as I can, hopefully. Stay safe and well.