Weekly Review March 20 '20

Well, here we are at the end of this strange week. It feels like it's been much longer than a week! I bet most people are feeling that way. I'm not going to do a daily summary because there's not a ton to say about each day (I also didn't keep very good records of what I did). I don't feel like I got much accomplished...didn't work on projects at all...but I dedicated most of my free time to keeping Seth busy with things that didn't involve a screen, and I feel like that is a worthwhile thing to do so I don't feel bad about the things I didn't do. I'm trying to keep him on as normal a schedule as possible. He doesn't have school work (yet) because in Frederick County they decided to treat these 10 days off as "snow days" that will need to be made up. I think when they decided to close the schools for two weeks, they made that decision because they were thinking it would only be 2 weeks. And maybe it will be...but it certainly isn't looking that way right now. Seth did bring home some things so that they can transition to "distance learning" if needed and yesterday the school district sent out an email saying that they are working on a plan for distance learning that they hope will be approved and if the kids don't go back to school on March 30th, they will begin distance learning then. Seth already does some work through Google Classroom, and some of his teachers have put some optional stuff on there this week. So he will probably do most of his work that way although maybe they will have some other things set up too. Meanwhile, I hope they really aren't going to have to make up those 10 days. They have already said, though, that if they are back in school before the scheduled spring break that they will not have spring break and they will use those three days as three of the make up days. Then they also have 8 snow days built into the school year and they have only used 1 so far, so that would account for the other 7 days they need to make up. That would take them to the originally planned last day of school, but that is June 23rd, which is pretty late. (That's what I get for looking at the school calendar a few weeks ago and being happy that they hadn't used most of the snow days and were going to get out of school by June 12th!!) Anyway, what I'm really wondering is if they don't go back to school at all this school year, as some people are predicting, how do they expect to make up those 10 days? I guess we'll worry about that if it happens.

So, as I mentioned, I've been putting a lot of effort into keeping Seth busy. It's gone pretty well. He's definitely had moments of boredom and complained a bit about not being able to have more screen time (I've stuck to his 2 hour a day limit pretty well) but he has done pretty well overall. He's spent more time in his room playing (he also cleaned his room!!), he's done some reading, and he's played outside a few times. I've been having him help me with chores each day and he is still working on his goals to exercise and to read scriptures 3 times per week. I played board games with him one day and we spent quite a bit of time the last 3 days making a jigsaw puzzle. We have also gone on a walk every day. On Wednesday we went to the park for a couple of hours. We met a few families from our ward there (this is before the hard and fast rule about no gatherings over 10 people was decided, and there were only 11 of us anyway) and the 4 boys played basketball and 4 square together (2 of them were Seth's deacon friends), along with the Dad of one family while the 3 girls played together and the 3 moms talked. (We were sitting in a pavilion and we sat far apart.) It was about 50 degrees that day and I got pretty cold sitting outside that long, but it was really nice to get out of the house for a few hours and to talk to some other human beings!

Having church at home was really lovely, although I miss seeing the other members of our ward. Seth shared something he learned in his scripture reading during the week and we read Jacob 5 and talked about it. (I had found some information about it to help Seth understand it better.) And of course, we had the sacrament. We dressed up in Sunday clothes for church, and plan to do that for as long as we are doing church at home. On Sunday we also did a Facetime call with all the Utah boys, which was nice. This Sunday I think Frank is going to give a talk about "following the prophet" because he was actually supposed to do that for sacrament meeting this week. I don't think he minds that he got out of doing that!!

Last Friday, we went out to eat at Cracker Barrel because I hadn't planned anything for dinner (I thought we were going to be in Philadelphia that night). I'm glad we got to do that before everything shut down!

I have been exercising most days but my left ankle started hurting on Monday evening for some reason (I don't remember doing anything to injure it in any way) so I had to take a few days off from jogging. It bothered me quite a bit on Tuesday but was starting to feel better on Wednesday. By yesterday I was able to start jogging again and it feels fine now. So that was weird, but I'm glad it didn't last long. I finished reading the book Midnight's Children on Saturday and returned it to the library. That was the last day the libraries around here were open. It was a strange book...pretty interesting and I learned quite a bit about the history of India. I can appreciate that the author is a talented writer, too. But other than that, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Now I have returned to reading the Wings of Fire series that Seth loves. I'm in the 7th book in that series. I got a few small things done, like cleaning out the in basket on my desk, and I started sorting through our 2 -3 boxes of memorabilia that I've been saving our whole married life (birthday cards and programs from events and things like that) although that project is going to take a while! Yesterday I mowed our front lawn, which had gotten quite long and bushy. We've had lots of days in the 50s and yesterday and today the temperatures are in the 70s so things have been growing. The back lawn isn't as long because it doesn't get as much sunlight. I decided not to mow it too because the battery for our lawn mower needs to be replaced. The charge doesn't last long and often doesn't last long enough to mow both the front and back lawns. We've been trying to find a battery to replace it but have not been successful yet. Other than the trip to the park, I haven't been anywhere this week except to the grocery store twice. (I get a few items, like fresh produce, on Mondays and the bulk of the weekly groceries on Wednesdays.) This week I got a lot of stuff on Monday because we wanted to stock up a little on some meat and canned / frozen fruits and vegetables (in case fresh ones aren't available). Those are the things that Frank needs for a healthy diet--meat and vegetables. Like everywhere else, we have a lot of shortages here although I think we're a lot better off than Utah. On Monday there were pretty slim pickings when it came to meat, milk, and a lot of canned items (plus TP, paper towels, and cleaning products have been gone for weeks) but I did manage to get a lot of the things we need. When I went to the store on Wednesday, some of the things that were missing on Monday had been restocked (which is encouraging) while other things had become scarce. I still managed to get most of the things on my list. We have a fairly decent amount of food stocked up in the house now so I'm not too worried about that. 

Frank is still working at his office, which I think is strange because they have about 40 people in his office. He could certainly do a lot of his work from home, but they haven't started allowing people to work from home yet. It's been a difficult and stressful week at his work, with lots of "crisis meetings". The company he works for is getting hit pretty hard economically because they're a restaurant chain and they also own some hotels. A lot of Frank's large projects are on hold now because they don't know if they'll have the budget for them (most of them involve equipment installations). He still has plenty to do, though. They put a hold on all raises which is a bummer because he hit his year mark recently and was supposed to be getting a raise soon. But at least he still has a job--I can't complain when so many people are out of work right now. We're much better off than that. We're not worried about Frank getting laid off--he's the only IT guy--but we are worried about the overall financial health of the company he works for and the long term economic impact. I mean, overall I think things will be okay but it's definitely unsettling.

Honestly, I'm not feeling that great physically. I keep feeling like I'm coming down with something. I've had a lot of headaches and the last few days my throat has been somewhat sore. I really don't think I have the Coronavirus, but I've got some sort of mild cold or something. Frank says his throat has also hurt a little and Seth was complaining yesterday that his ear hurt. I don't really think we are hypochondriacs! I think my headaches might be stress related but the sore throat is probably something else. It's not really getting any worse, though, so I'm grateful for that. And I've been keeping away from people, of course, so whatever it is, I'm not passing it on to anyone else.

That's all I can think of to report this week. We're glad the earthquake in Utah wasn't too bad. We are thinking about all of you, and will keep all of you in our prayers!! I'll finish up with some photos from this week:

Playing Battleship with Seth on Monday

I won the game! (But you can see that Seth was doing really well.)

When Seth found out I was planning the meals for next week, he made me a list of "demands".

He actually does know how to spell, he just thinks it's funny to creatively spell things. (It says Sunday--Mashed Potatoes, Tuesday--Tuna Casserole, Thursday--pizza, Saturday--Mac & Cheese)

Starting a puzzle on Tuesday

Making progress--Thursday morning

Puzzle finished--Thursday afternoon

And last, photos from our walk last night (we walked along the river behind our house, which is pretty low right now):