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.

More updates

Yeah, that's pretty much all this blog is now - it's my facebook for all of you.

Things are fine. The kids wrapped up the semester, so they're at the half-way mark of the school year. There's an info session at the middle school coming up for incoming sixth-graders, an unwelcome reminder that our year off from middle school is also half over. 

Winter is warm and swampy around here. We seized some rare sunshine recently to go for a walk in a place we haven't visited since 2013. (We do not go for walks very often...)

Family viewing

The TV/movies we've been able to watch as a family is a pretty limited universe. Things that we've managed to enjoy together:

• Mythbusters
• Amazing Race
• Horrible Histories
• Great British Baking Show
• Master Chef Junior

And now, the thing we currently most enjoy watching together, the thing that makes Skipper laugh uncontrollably in a way that nothing else ever has...

Total Wipeout

This is a show in which normal British people go through an obstacle course while the hosts mock them. It's really mean, and actually seems like it might be a little dangerous, and it is SO funny. The best thing in our lives is a pizza on Friday night, eaten while laughing at the Total Wipeout contestants as they bounce off giant red balls, get punched in the face and fall in the mud.

In other news, the girls have spring break this week. Duchess is off at hippie horse camp again. Skipper is planning to Do A Lot Of Reading.

Settling in

The kids are getting into the groove of serious school now, past the heady first days of orientation and nametag art projects. Skipper feels pretty optimistic* that this year will not be as terrible as last year, and that her teacher is less of a tyrant than last year's edition. Duchess is thrilled to be back among her people, and resigned to her class schedule. They're settling to the after-school schedule, as well - Skipper walks herself home and reads for hours after school (except for her once-weekly roller-skating class) and Duchess catches a ride from a teammate's family to her rowing adventures and busses** herself home afterward. 

There are two major battles we're working through with the kids right now.
1) Sibling assholery. They're awful to each other, and it poisons our family life. Our current approach is to pair off on a revolving basis for on-on-one time*** (which I'm calling "dates" in the absence of a better term, much to Duchess's dismay, because she's revolted by the notion of a date with her dad) to strengthen our connections to each of us so we can better deal with all of us.
2) Duchess's phone. I don't even... it's just shitty. What I  hate most is that her attention is always partly in phone-land. We just recalibrated our devices policy to create more blocks of phone-free time, so she's either totally on the phone or totally off it and she's pretty much being a jerk about even the mild restrictions we're enforcing. I'm sure the drama will continue to unfold.

What else? I have been reading this blog from the beginning (and so have the girls), and I was struck by how wearisome and unstable our life was from 2008-2012. Reading it, I remember how exhausted, how spread thin, and how despairing about the future I felt. Our current state, in which I can casually buy expensive groceries every week AND a new hammock chair for the porch AND a pair of brand-new shoes for Skipper AND save money for retirement, and our kids take care of themselves after school, is dramatically better in almost every way (except for trying-to-guide-a-kid-through-growing-up-in-the-smartphone-era and the president). Also, I really enjoyed watching videos of Skipper in her moray eel phase.

I might get a job for real (at the place where I've been temping in one form or another for four years). I'm interviewing in a few weeks.

That's pretty much the news. I'm leaving out The Great and Endless But Slow-Moving Saga of the Crumbling Foundation. You're welcome.


*Or what passes for optimistic in Skipper-ville.
**It will very soon become too dark after rowing ends for me and Cook to feel comfortable with this - she catches the bus at a physically isolated stop on a bridge (under another bridge) near multiple homeless encampments, a stop where I wouldn't feel comfortable waiting alone. So we're going to have to start picking her up, which adds another step to the evening. I recognize that it's still a much easier routine than when both kids needed retrieval from daycare/school, but it's annoying.
*** Some of the dates so far: Cook and Skipper went to see RBG, Skipper and I baked blondies and made lemonade, Duchess and Skipper went to see a bad second-run kids movie and eat lots of candy and popcorn, Cook and Duchess played video games together. They've been pretty successful. SO FAR.

Hiccups

Last week, Duchess went to do her daily chore of sweeping up all the poop in the guinea pig cage (this needs to be done twice a day, because guinea pigs are prodigious poopers) and was very alarmed to find it smeared copiously with blood. Turned out Snufkin had injured his back - the fur on his back was matted with blood. Cook spent most of Tuesday driving Snufkin to the vet (all the way across town), watching the vet pull away the matted fur and then be sprayed with arterial blood, leaving Snufkin and $300 there for surgery, driving home again, and then driving back later to retrieve Snufkin after surgery. The vet declared Snufkin's problem to be "weird - really weird" ; the bleeding was because he had somehow ruptured a growth that he had had on his back (which we were ignoring because it was small, not changing, and didn't seem to hurt or bother him in any way) which was somehow involved with blood vessels, AND was somehow associated with an old injury (childhood trauma probably incurred in the garage where he spent his youth with a LOT of other pigs) that had left a huge scar down his whole spine. Snufkin seems fine, indifferent to his comical shaved patch and stitches, though he really hates the probiotic and antibiotic he has to ingest twice a day. His whole "fuck you, don't touch me, just give me food" attitude somehow seems more nuanced now that we know his previous life literally left him scarred. Like he's a tough, damaged loner who's secretly tender-hearted and vulnerable under all the tattoos and intimidating glares. (Also, because the money we spent on repairing a rodent who literally spends all his time eating, pooping, and running away from us in terror is now spent, and I have to emotionally justify it by making a connection with the rodent.)

Also, this week we have sounded the alarm on Duchess's health. She's generally fine, but she's missed quite a bit of school and activities lately because she intermittently feels tired and dizzy and vaguely sick. I have been annoyed by this; she's a responsible person (except at home) and doesn't really like missing school, but she's also kind of whiny and inclined to laziness (she gets this from me!), and it I have been feeling like she should Just Toughen Up And Stop Malingering.  However, it's starting to feel like an actual thing, so we finally called the Kaiser advice line, which suggested that it could be anemia, a potential diagnosis strongly supported by our subsequent googling. She is not enthusiastic about eating liver, so we'll have to find another way to iron her up. She'll need her strength for all the rowing.

On Friday, I had to go (along with all my coworkers) to a 5-hour training on how to interrupt microaggressions, which put me even further behind on all my work tasks that keep piling up. So I would say it's been a First World Problems kind of week.

People say that life is the thing.

Here's the long story of my trip to England. I know you have been waiting.

I went away for ELEVEN days. Skipper was sad about it, and I pointed out that she has been to summer camp, so it's not like we've never been apart. "Yeah," she said, "but that time I left YOU! This time, you're leaving ME."

I met my mom in Heathrow*, and we went straight to Oxford for a few days. We visited some colleges. (Duchess now wants to go to Oxford, so she can eat at a dining hall that makes her feel like Harry Potter.) These are dining halls in Oxford - I can't remember which colleges. (The dining halls at my college were mostly in basements. One had big windows, which made it very fancy.)

We even visited Balliol, which I knew only as the alma mater of the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey (the second person in a book I wanted to marry, after Sherlock Holmes - I have a type). We went to Evensong at Christ Church. We visited the Botanic Garden and climbed the tower at St. Mary's. We walked under the Bridge of Sighs. We walked past the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera and Oxford Castle. We even watched people punting. We went to the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum (I could have spent weeks at both those locations).

Oxford Castle. I am wearing my absolute favorite piece of clothing. My poor mother saw me wearing that wool hoody every single day of this trip.

Then we went to the Cotswolds, and walked bits of the Cotswold Way.The Cotswolds are so preposterously picturesque that I just kept taking photos, none of which did the place justice. Walking is the perfect way to see them. (Though I found that four straight days of Full English Breakfasts was three too many for me.) I can't recommend it more, though we lucked out on weather, and rain might have dimmed my enthusiasm. Should you wish an itinerary (because I really wanted to find one when I was planning the trip, seeking a lazy no-more-than-five-miles-a-day approach), here it is:
1) Train to Moreton-in-Marsh, which is where we learned that in the Cotswolds, traffic signs are funny, and all the buildings are made of yellow stone. The roofs are made of the same rock as the walls. In Moreton-in-Marsh, a lot of the roofs have little fences at the edges, presumably to catch the slates before they slide off onto your head.

My mom, being silly.

2) We took a taxi to Chipping Campden. (The bus doesn't run on Sunday. Because nobody without a car needs to get anywhere on a Sunday.) Chipping Campden was sunny and ludicrously charming.

This is the underside of the slate roof of that really old market hall.

3) Walked from Chipping Campden to Broadway. This walk was basically the definition of picturesque. The official end point of the Cotswold Way is at that market hall. I wish we had had time to go all the way to Bath.

My mom, being silly.

Dover's Hill, the site of the Olimpick Games. I'm pretty sure I'd be really good at the shin-kicking competition.

My mom, being awesome.

My mom, being silly.

4) Caught the bus to Toddington, walked to Winchcombe.

Hailes Abbey

Hailes Church

This polite notice is the most passive passive-aggressive thing I've ever seen. 

Downtown Winchcombe

St. Peter's Church in Winchcombe

Our hotel

The view from our room

Behind Sudeley Castle, which we did not visit.

5) Walked to Cleeve Hill, caught the bus to Cheltenham.

Belas Knap

Cleeve Hill

Cheltenham, as it turns out, is the birthplace of Edward Wilson, Robert F Scott's saving grace, and a hero of one of my absolute favorite travel book, The Worst Journey in the World.

Then we caught a train to London. London has a LOT of people in it. Also, a lot of art, and we saw ALL the art.**

I really liked this painting.

Portobello Market

This reminded me of Duchess.

Tate Britain

Piccadilly Square

Harrods, where I didn't buy you presents.

Whistlejacket at the National Gallery

The ceiling of the lobby of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The batshit weird Wallace Collection, which I tremendously enjoyed.

It was a fabulous trip. I missed Cook and the girls a lot; I was actually physically homesick for them, something I haven't experienced since childhood. However, I loved everything we visited, and I loved learning about new stuff,**** and I just felt really lucky.

*Heathrow is a terrible place.
**We did not see the portrait of Thomas Cromwell, which was disappointing to me, as I had picked up a used copy of Wolf Hall in the Powell's Books at the Portland airport and plunged into it with an immersive pleasure I did not expect*** and then been astonished and delighted to run into Thomas while walking in the Cotswolds. 
***This book, you guys. How did I go this long without reading this book? (What other books have I been overlooking? How many hours of my life have I wasted doing other stupid things when I could have been reading?!) Maybe I'm just at the right moment in my life to read it, but this book devastated me. I sat on the plane in the middle of the night, squished between two friendly Canadians, weeping desperately over the death of the daughters of a fictionalized version of a person who has been dead himself for nearly 500 years. I don't know. Something about life and death and love and the transience of everything, and the flickering attempts we make to mean something. Our almost-instincts are almost true.
****American history classes do not teach about the suppression of the monasteries, and all I knew about the Tudor period was pretty much "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived," so I feel I've made leaps and bounds there. Also, I learned a little bit about the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Artists, man. They're so adorable.