Hello from the lockdown

Things have escalated rapidly in this whole coronavirus pandemic. Our school district, under the direction of our new progressive Superintendent, has been quietly preparing for emergency "e-learning" for a while now. Of course, they thought they were preparing for weather emergencies like hurricanes or snow days, not this. Every student has a district-issued laptop where teachers can post lesson plans and video lessons from home and students can log onto the Google Classroom app and do their work. They even did a few class periods online last semester as practice. Last week the Superintendent sent out directions for teachers to begin making virtual lesson plans "just in case" school closures were on the horizon. So when the governor announced on Sunday night that all South Carolina schools were canceled, our whole district was ready to go. It's been astonishingly easy for our students to make the transition and despite only being 2 days in, there were very, very few parent phone calls. The teachers are reporting a great first two days. Our administers, guidance counselors, office staff, cafeteria workers, and school nurses had to report to work yesterday and today while last minute kinks got worked out, but now we're done, too. No one has any idea when we might be able to go back. I actually got teary-eyed when I got the text a few minutes ago that we're not to report to work anymore until further notice. It drove home how real this all is.

Today was also Gregg's last regular day at the pet store for the foreseeable future. He plans to go up there every other day an hour or two before opening to maintain the aquarium systems and care for the animals, but that's it. No more contact with the public. Almost all of his side jobs maintaining aquariums are gone, too. At best, he's looking at earning only about 15% of his normal salary for the duration of this thing. I don't care....I'm glad we're both off work to ride this thing out at home, money be damned. Hopefully our small savings will carry us through until things go back to normal. Gregg can't afford to take chances with his reduced lung function and other risk factors.

I won't lie to you. I'm scared. I've never seen anything like this, and I just hope it's not too late to get it under control. Lots of people are disappointed for various reasons: vacations canceled, weddings and parties put on hold or scaled down, even some of my coworkers who are afraid their high school senior kids won't be able to take part in a graduation ceremony or senior prom. My birthday is next week; I don't expect to have any kind of celebration whatsoever. But as long as we can manage to not get sick, that's the best anybody can hope for right now.

I imagine I'll be blogging much more frequently now that I'm hunkered down at home for the next few weeks. How are you doing with all this? What do you do to cope? I made a run to the ABC store the other day and stocked up on gin, vodka, and whiskey. I imagine a drink or two is going to be sorely needed in the next few weeks!