We're well into our third week of social distancing and being home all together all the time. I have to say we're doing better than I thought we would, particularly with the uncertainty and the small house. Benjy's school started its distance learning yesterday, which primarily consists of each teacher coming up with a bingo board full of activities that the students need to choose from. It took us an hour for Benjy to choose activities and for us to create a schedule (each class has a different number). Once it was time for Benjy to actually work on the activities, he zoomed (ha!) through them much faster than we allowed for. He's also dong a couple of Outschool classes a week. This week he had a murder mystery class that teaches logic and reasoning, and will have a canine behavior class that will help with Ruby/Benjy relations.
A really important part of this quarantine is everybody getting enough exercise. We've all been doing the elliptical machine every day, with at least one, maybe two of us taking Ruby for a walk daily. Here's a picture of Josh and Benjy's walk over the weekend. That's a wooded conservation area at the top of our street. This also gave me a chance to have some alone time, which is in fairly short supply these days.
We're about to get to the point in self quarantine/social distancing where grooming changes begin. Benjy's good, because his hair is long and he's rocking the gorgeous curls. Josh's hair is longer than he likes it, but I'm trying to convince him he can have more than an eighth of an inch of hair on his head and not have to cut it. Either that, or I get the job, and goodness knows if he'll be happy with it. As for me, my gray is growing in, but I can't decide whether to self color or just let it get gray til I can go back and get it done right. But I'm definitely going to refresh my red streak b/c that's fun.
Though we're stuck here at home, a lot of our community is becoming very acquainted with Zoom. Temple Isaiah has had some lovely shabbat services we've participated in, and Benjy's Hebrew school has T'filah on Zoom. Also, his camp has had a singalong and a dance party via zoom that Benjy has really enjoyed. He's doing a book club with his friends three times a week, and I sometimes listen in. They use a different app where they can kick each other off, and I hear Benjy shouting, "Stop kicking each other! Stop spamming the chat! Stop muting everyone!" They do talk about books throughout this conversation, so mission accomplished, I guess. This would frustrate the hell out of me, but I'm not a 12 year old boy.
As for me, I've been working on a website and social media marketing for Dr. Stephanie Kriesberg, a psychologist who is also working on a book. I've learned how to make quizzes on a website, and I'm about to have a conversation about Twitter marketing to help her build a platform for her book. I despaired about having more work, but I have a conversation with a potential new client today, referred by Shari Berman, whom I built this site for: www.cannahealingconsulting.com. Building new sites and exercising my brain is really helpful to keep me grounded and not focused too hard on the virus.
Last week I realized that I wasn't so much depressed about being stuck at home, but in an absolute rage about how poorly the Trump administration is handling the crisis and how many people will die because of their incompetence. Rage may be too mild a word. Incandescent anger? Fury?Whatever comes after rage and fury?
In any event, we're surviving. We're going out only for groceries, and then we wash everything we wore and wipe everything down before putting it away. Quite a way to live.
I will say this. Benjy better have camp this summer. If he's home all summer, we'll have to have a different conversation. Until next time....Socially Distant Stephanie