Hm.

I'm sitting in my living room taking a break from work while Skipper has a FaceTime piano lesson. Cook is on a conference call, and Duchess is rattling around somewhere. I've had three hours of conference calls today, and have two more scheduled for later. I also have a date scheduled with a friend - we're planning to complain to each other by phone while we walk in our neighborhoods, miles apart.

Our household is pretty much in full social distancing. Kirk and I both work at home full time, and often one of us is on a conference call in one room while the other is on a conference call in the next room. School is closed through the end of April. The school district is scrambling to set up distance learning, and in the meantime Duchess has no homework and Skipper is supposed to do three hours of stuff a day.

Restaurants and bars are closed, library is closed, activities are cancelled. The kids both got to hang out with friends (outside, no touching) yesterday, but I think that was probably the last time. Skipper has begun writing letters to friends. I go to the grocery store once in a while, but they're often out of things like split peas or toilet paper or flour or tofu (all apparently important staples here in Portland). We're all just... waiting. Presumably we're waiting until they can start robust testing and we can all start circulating again and find out what's left in the rubble. I've been buying gift certificates to local businesses in the hope they'll still exist in a year.  My boss has begun a conversation about how staff would like to begin cutting the budget - cut back on extras, reduce hours, reduce retirement contributions...?

There are some outcomes that seem positive. We bought a Nintendo console, to be more American and have another home entertainment option. Cook and I are scrambling to figure out cheap jury-rigged home office setups that aren't terrible ergonomically. We're getting some yardwork and baking and household chores done. (I have been attending remote plenary sessions for the conference I was planning to attend in Chicago, and it turns out listening to people talk while washing dishes is a good combination.) Duchess is planning to crop and hem a bunch of t-shirts so they look cool. I'm getting more confident with conference call tools. I think. We're trying to make the best of this, or at least not the worst.

Ha, and I thought perimenopause was crummy!

We're "social distancing" here in Oregon. Today was the first day for me of working remotely. My office is encouraging everyone who can to work from home with no/limited in-person meetings, and Cook's office is reorganizing around staggered shifts and partial teleworking so they can all stay six feet away from each other all the time. (All the meeting rooms have been assigned quotas based on their size, so the smaller meeting rooms can now accommodate two people who sit pressed against the opposite walls.) I was supposed to go to a conference in Chicago next week, but it was cancelled. (And I was really looking forward to it.) Skipper's school trip to Japan in June has been cancelled. (Though our family trip to Japan is not cancelled- we're going to hope as long as possible that we can pull that off.) Skipper's baseball season and Duchess's ultimate frisbee season (long story) have been postponed. All my meetings have been cancelled or turned into video chats. THE LIBRARY SYSTEM HAS CLOSED.

All the stores are out of toilet paper, which briefly seemed very problematic when I thought this morning that we had only two rolls left in the house. Turned out we had an unopened box in the basement containing 36 rolls, so we'll make it a bit longer.

The kids are out of school as of today, through next week and the following week (which is spring break) and half the week after that (unless they extend it). All activities are cancelled. I'm not sure how that's going to go. Based on experience so far, Duchess will spend it lying in bed texting, and Skipper will read a bunch of books and periodically appear to ask questions like "What's communism?" or "What's a nuclear family?" or to startle me as she did this week when we were talking about COVID-19 and she said "Well, Mom, one death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a statistic" and I said "ARE YOU QUOTING JOSEPH STALIN AT ME?!?!?" and she looked at me with a puzzled expression and said "Yeah!" like that's a normal person thing.

None of us know how to prepare or what to do. Skipper had a sore throat and abdominal pain this evening - do we now all stay in the house for 14 days? Are grocery stores going to run out of food as the supply chain falters? Should I have bought more canned beans today? Is it really going to snow tonight? The future, even the immediate future, feels wildly uncertain. And yet, people are still out and about, going to work and to bars like it's normal. I met a colleague at a coffee shop this morning; he was firmly in the this-is-overblown camp, and mentioned that his 75-year-old mother who has compromised lung function is really paranoid right now and makes everybody wash their hands. Sitting there, eating an almond croissant, with people socializing cheerfully all around us, I felt crazy. (And I told him his mom is right and he should wash his damn hands.)

Anyway. I bought a puzzle and the new Hilary Mantel book. We may starve to death, and/or have to wipe our butts with rags and moss, but we're not going down without reading material.