quarantined.

I’ve been working from home since March 10th, about a week before everyone was ordered to stay home and the schools closed.

While the wife is considered an “essential worker” and has been going into the office some days of the week (and starting this Monday, every day of the week), I’ve been working with the boys and helping them with the schoolwork they are expected to do.

The Hybrid is pretty much able to handle his stuff on his own; being in fifth grade, his teacher and classmates do some of their work in google classroom video chats which is good for me. And he knows what is expected of him and he does it.

The Hybrid 2, however, needs some guidance since he’s in second grade and only sees his teacher and classmates once a week via Zoom. The workload that he is getting seems to be increasing by the week as well.

The first week it was visiting some educational websites to help with reading and math and few worksheets to be printed out and sent electronically to his teacher. Now he’s got projects, more websites, more worksheets, and other lessons to do.

This doesn’t include, music, typing/technology, art, and gym lessons he has to work on as well.

At first it was wiping me out trying to handle all of it, but now I’ve sort of got a groove. I am able to start my workday earlier, around 7am, and put in a couple of hours before helping the Hybrid 2 with his work from 9am to 11am (give or take a few minutes), and then continue working from then until my end of day.

I’m lucky to have managers who understand and give me the freedom and time to address what I need to, when I need to.

We’ve gone on the occasional walk around the neigborhood after dinner to get some fresh air and some exercise. There seem to be more and more people walking around than before.

And for the last three weekends, I’ve actually looked forward to doing yardwork, which I hate. Hate.

I have also started doing the Hybrid 2’s gym assignments with him so I can get some exercise because somehow there seems to be more and more snacks making their way into the house the longer we’re stuck here. It started all healthy foods and snacks but now there are chips and Ring Dings, and cheese danishes, and having Easter candy around hasn’t helped either.

The boys have done a lot of gaming the last few weeks. The Hybrid, with his friends online playing Fortnite, and the Hybrid 2 alone on the xbox playing Battefront 2 or Halo: The Master Chief Collection, or roblox, or every so often joining his brother on Fortnite.

My wife has become somewhat of a Zoom expert now. She uses it with her brother and parents, former college suitemates, our friends, and her extended family here and abroad. Meanwhile Im trying to avoid using it like I always have at work. I do use a video background I made of Godzilla chasing me because when I used photos I took of Galaxy’s Edge, my manager thought it was a picture of somewhere in New Jersey and a project manager thought it was a nuclear plant. Because why wouldn’t they.

Overall, it’s not as bad as I expected it to be. Wearing masks when out and washing hands when handling anything that’s not from inside the house is slightly annoying, but it’s definitely better than getting sick, or worse, spreading it around.

This quaratine will probably last into next month or even June. We should have enough toilet paper for the next few weeks so we should be good on that end. We’ll continue doing what we need to do to get through this.