Week 1: Coronavirus Quarantine

We just finished our first week -- not even a whole week -- at home together social distancing to flatten the curve, lowering the infection rate of the coronavirus to stave off medical disaster from all of us falling ill at once.

Most things have been shut down now. Restaurants are mostly closed or only doing walk-up or delivery, if they are open at all.

Stores are still open, but some shelves are bare.

I've been out once for groceries. Eric has gone out most days to buy something or other that we need. He gets stir crazy. I am fine nesting and being very grateful at the moment not to need to go out.

The kids are doing well with a new normal of an arbitrary structure of a daily schedule and help from Caroline on Mondays and Wednesdays, some help from Brenna, and some steering from us on the other days.

We've kept up game night and screen days. We fell off the wagon a bit this Sunday and last, watching more tv than we would have otherwise, but both days we worked on puzzles as we watched, so that *almost* counts.

I'm growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of real information. I don't even know what they think the infection rate is here in NM or whether the moves we've taken are helping to flatten the curve.

I work in City govt., yet I know nothing and have heard nothing from leadership since Sarita's email ordering us back to work one more time for "more direction."

I'm still resentful that I was made to feel like I was overreacting when I asked that my team be sent to work from home after APS cancelled school. Yet all the things that I mentioned in my email will soon come to pass as the standard routine, I think.

And I feel stupid carrying that resentment when there's a bigger picture that's much more frightening and warrants our full attention: the potential for this to be months long and millions of deaths in the U.S., thousands of deaths here in Albuquerque.

But even that's not worth worrying about beyond staying home and washing hands and surfaces, since it's impossible to get info about what measures the govtments are taking to build fever centers or even wings in the hospitals so that staff isn't carrying the virus from floor to floor.

Heidi seems lonely. Mom seems ok. Shelle told me Katon had come home from Spain and is under quarantine for 14 days.

I feel so grateful for everyone I know being well, and for being able to work from home, and for kids who still like learning and who aren't tearing each other apart -- yet.

And for Beckett's therapist, who is still coming to the house 5 days a week -- for now.

Heading into week 2, I want to remember more times during the day to take a breath and feel grateful and meditate to bring me back to now. To here. To safety in the ever-present now. For this to be enough.