A day in the life

A new board game arrived today.

Something new today - I thought I'd try and capture what the day is like each Friday, to get a picture of life during these strange times. 

By Friday the schedule has got a little lax and weekend-like. The kids wake up and get themselves breakfast around 8am. We have milk and cereal again so that's good. Then the kids head to screens for a while - not the usual school-day routine, but I'm letting it go for now and I really don't feel like conflict. Sometimes showers happen, sometimes they don't. Both kids are embracing PJs-all-day. It is possible that there may not be underwear changes - I need to check up on that!

Around 9-10am they transition to school work. Both schools were already using a lot of online tools such as google classroom and schoology so the transition to distance/online-learning has been pretty smooth. The school district had a couple of scheduled times where you could go pick up a laptop if you didn't have one at home. Not sure what they were doing about providing internet. But I really doubt either hardware or internet were an issue in this neighbourhood. At the start of each week the teachers post a curriculum with due dates. Grading is still happening for some but not all of the assignments. They even get PE assignments! Overall, the schools have been great and at the moment the projection is that school will end in June as normal, that with the online learning there will not be any time added on into the summer holidays. 

That is my parent perspective. ThingOne, on the other hand, is pretty unhappy that he has to do school at all, and there have been some instances of him curling up in a ball on the couch saying that this new schooling is stupid. But this morning he got down to his assignments without complaint. Next week things will change quite a lot for him - the whole of Grade 8 at his school will have scheduled Zoom classes with their teachers from 9am-1.30pm each day plus homework. 

ThingTwo's experience  in 5th grade has been much more social. She has had a couple of Zoom meetings with her teacher and whole class over the last week - and she seems to do her homework while chatting with friends most days. She has created a school nook up in her bunk bed and I really think she could happily spend the whole day there 'working', chatting, and watching the Simpsons.

My morning started really well - the local Jazzercize instructor that I used to go to pre-surgery is now teaching her classes online each morning. I finally got the go-ahead to exercise again this week so today I went online (Zoom, of course) and bopped around for an hour with 57 other ladies and one gentleman. They are a pretty friendly group and people hung out online afterwards to chat about things such as whether it was safe to still go to the local farmer's market and where you could get good goat's milk. Someone suggested "get a goat!" People actually are panic-buying baby chickens! 

I spent the morning in domestic 'bliss' folding an alarming amount of laundry (how is it possible given everyone has worn the same set of PJs all day all week?) and coordinating my various food delivery options. Mainly I was trying to remain informed but not obsessively read the news all day. 

Mr Husband emerges around 8am, makes coffee, and disappears for the day into the spare-room-now office.

Pepper spends the day with his head down a gopher hole, convinced that the creature will just run up into his salivating jaws. 

Around noon the kids emerge in hunter-gathering mode to make lunch - quesadillas are the current favourite. Everyone is looking a bit bleary. ThingOne suggests going for a bike ride, ThingTwo signs up and I decide I'd better go too. We head out to a trail that runs along the train tracks and ride for about an hour and a half. 

California poppies along the train tracks.

Back home, ThingOne bakes. I accidently ordered 32 apples so he makes apple cake. The house is full of the wonderful aroma of cinnamon. ThingTwo rollerblades around the back garden. On the bike ride she told me about this ongoing story she is making up - a parallel world where we are all centaurs. The centaurs read 'magical stories about these creatures called humans'. She likes to spend time rollerblading because she can tell herself her story. 

I decide to interview the kids with the Proust Questionnaire - slightly modified. 
Here are the transcripts:

ThingTwo

Me: What's going on at the moment?

ThingTwo: Uh, coronavirus so we are all staying in our homes. 

Me: What is happening with school? 

ThingTwo: It is closed so we are doing school online. Today we had a chat with everybody in our school. Exactly 127 people got on.

Me: 127 people? That's amazing!

ThingTwo: Well, some people couldn't so we only had 110 but we once had 127 but people got bored. After raising the roof for, like, 16 minutes.

Me: What does raising the roof mean?

ThingTwo: [she pushes her palms up and down] It's putting your hands up and pushing the ceiling.

Me: So what is different about being at home all the time compared to being on holiday?

ThingTwo: You don't get to communicate with friends. On holiday you can have playdates and sleepovers, you can have a night out with friends, go to birthday parties. Instead we are not allowed to bring anyone over, you have to stay in your house, you can't go on walks with people, you can't go to classes. 

Me: Are there any things you like about it more?

ThingTwo: I like to do my homework in bed.

Me: [laughing] You spend a lot of time in your loft bed.

ThingTwo: Yeah. 

Me: Ok, I've got some questions here from something called the Proust Questionnaire. It is just a bunch of questions - some of them are appropriate, some of them maybe not, we'll see. Ok. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

ThingTwo: Living on a farm with a with a lot of money and a lot of horses and a lot of cats and a lot of chickens.

Me: Which historical figure do you most identify with? Do you know what that means - which person do you feel most in common with, most similar to you. 

ThingTwo: [Says something indistinguishable] Wait, no, no,  Molly Pitcher, definitely Molly Pitcher. She served water but when her husband died by the cannon she just took it and started firing. She took control and I think I would do that. [ThingTwo is studying the American Revolution at school - it has made quite an impression.]

Me: Which battle was that?

ThingTwo: The Revolutionary War.

Me: Which living person do you admire?

ThingTwo: My mom, there. [Much laughter] You are living.

Me: What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

ThingTwo: Virtue? Do you mean what things are overrated? I think cheese is overrated. No no no no no. I'm just saying something. 

Me: What? I thought you liked cheese?

ThingTwo: No no no no, that was just like a like a - something that I thought you meant? 

Me: Ok well, here's a different question - what things in the world do you think are most overrated?

ThingTwo: [Pause] I think homes. Homes. Not everybody has a home. Homes think they are so great but you can live outside. We could all have our own tent.

Me: On what occasion do you lie?

ThingTwo: When it is about someone's feelings or my protection so I don't get beaten up or yelled at.

Me: Beaten up? Who is going to beat you up?

ThingTwo: Yell at me, that's something. Beat me up? Probably like one of the boys at my school?

Me: Really?

ThingTwo: Everyone beats up Noah for some reason. Pushes him off the slide. Actually off [slaps hands down].

Me: Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

ThingTwo: Um, phrases? Banana slugs. I use that a lot. Words that I use a lot... like? And I say um a lot. Even in my text messages. 

Me: Which talent would you most like to have?

ThingTwo: To be able to see through walls. That's a talent! [Much laughter]

Me: That would be an amazing talent! What is your current state of mind?

ThingTwo: I've, like, magical stuff in my mind. I've got magical things going through my head.

Me: What is your most treasured possession?

ThingTwo: My money. [Much laughter] Because money buys your most treasured possessions.

Me: How much money do you have?

ThingTwo: 26.

Me: How did you get that money?

ThingTwo: Three from the tooth fairy and from savings.

Me: Where would you like to live if you didn't live here?

ThingTwo: In Canada in the same place I lived since I was born.

Me: Ah, that's nice. What is your favourite thing to do?

ThingTwo: Like regularly or not regularly? Regularly - rollerskate and lie in my bed, and not regular, horse riding because I only do that once a week and I miss it a lot.

Me: What is the quality you most like in a friend?

ThingTwo: Total happiness even when she's upset. That's all my friends, even me. 

Me: Who is your favourite hero of fiction?

ThingTwo: Um, well, Cass in the book I'm reading now. She's really overprotective. She prepares for disasters and she is really funny and, like, really serious. I think that's nice. She rules everybody.

Me: What are your favourite names?

ThingTwo: Um, Tonka, Pepper, and ThingTwo.

Me: That's nice. 

ThingTwo: Sorry, not your name. 

Me: You don't like my name?

ThingTwo: [squirming and laughing] No? I like Dad's name. I don't like ThingOne's name.

Me: If there was one thing you could change about your life right now what would it be? 

ThingTwo: I'd be living on a farm in Canada with all of the horses that you can buy, just loads. 

Me: Nice! Ok, thank you very much.

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ThingOne:

Me: So what is going on right now? Why are we at home?

ThingOne: Coronavirus outbreak.

Me: Have you ever had anything like happen before? 

ThingOne: No.

Me: Right I think most people round here would agree. Ok I'm going to ask you these questions. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

ThingOne: There is not perfect happiness.

Me: Ok, what is your idea of almost, pretty good, kinda happiness?

ThingOne: Um. It can. [long pause] I don't know. It would be fun if I went into that tunnel we saw on our ride today.

Me: Which historical person do you most identify with? 

ThingOne: Myself in the future! [Laughs] No, no. Um. I don't know. [Very long pause]

Me: Are you thinking about people, or having you just stopped thinking about people? I can't tell.

ThingOne: [long pause] 

Me: Are you still thinking? 

ThingOne: No, not really. Ummmm. I do not know. Next question.

Me: Which living person do you most admire?

ThingOne: [long pause] hmmmmmm. You are pretty cool. [chuckles]

Me: Ha ha, that's sweet. [Much laughter]. How about someone not in the family? Skaters?

ThingOne: Skaters aren't good people. [laughs] Chris Joslin is a good skater and seems like a pretty nice guy.  But I don't know, I don't admire him the most. 

Me: What about people who do good things in the world? 

ThingOne: Chris Joslin almost tray-flipped a 20-stair. That was pretty cool.

Me: You know what I meant by good, right? Like, good deeds. 

ThingOne: Exactly.

Me: What do you consider the most overrated thing in the world? The actual question is what do you consider the most overrated virtue, but you can do thing. ThingTwo did a thing. She said cheese. 

ThingOne: Yeah, it's cheese. 

Me: You are down on cheese too? It's funny because we seem to eat a lot of cheese.

ThingOne: But only in, like, tortillas. You can't eat cheese by itself, it would be horrible. It's the worst. Yeah. Like, everyone likes cheese so much, like, uh, I'm going to eat this cheese, this like 100-year old cave cheese, oh yes, cave cheese. But it tastes, like, bad. Like, it tastes horrible.

Me: Really! You don't like cave cheese? 

ThingOne: No, I don't like cheese. Just, like, grilled cheese sandwiches. Snodwiches. 

Me: On what occasion do you lie?

ThingOne: All the time. 

Me: When you talk about cheese?

ThingOne: Hmm... no.

Me: Are you lying now?

ThingOne: [much laughter] No.

Me: Which words or phrases do you overuse.

ThingOne: Obama. [laughs] It is probably true. [Note: Saying Obama has something to do with memes. He really does say it alot!]

Me: Which talent would you most like to have?

ThingOne: Skate better.

Me: What is your current state of mine?

ThingOne: Bad. 

Me: Elaborate. Bad because of what's going on right now?

ThingOne: Yes. And I'm kind of sad because I was trying to get your attention on the ride and you just weren't having it. 

Me: Which bit?

ThingOne: The entire way back. 

Me: Oh. What did you want to tell me?

ThingOne: It's fine. It's like... nope.

Me: Ok. What is your most treasured possession?

ThingOne: My arm. 

Me: Which one?

ThingOne: Left hand because I am left handed, mother. 

Me: I knew that.

ThingOne: Maybe my leg also. [chuckles] Probably my brain. 

Me: Where would you like to live?

ThingOne: Uh, over there. 

Me: What is your favourite occupation?

ThingOne: This. Actually. None.

Me: You don't want to work?

ThingOne: Nope. I'll work for myself. I'll make myself pies and stuff. But I'm not going to work for someone else. That would suck. 

Me: What is the quality you most like in a friend?

ThingOne: High fives. 

Me: Being good at high fives?

ThingOne: No.

Me: Just giving you high fives?

ThingOne: Constantly.

Me: Who is your favourite hero of fiction?

ThingOne: Hmmmm. Jesus. No! [Chuckles]. No, it's just joke. Probably, I mean, uh, Spiderman is pretty cool. 

Me: What are your favourite names?

ThingOne: Names? (short version of the name) ThingOne... [long pause]... 

Me: Just (short version) ThingOne? 

ThingOne: And (long version) ThingOne.

Me: Ok! Thank you very much (short version) ThingOne and (long version) Thing One.

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We ate pork lo mein for dinner - used leftover frozen ham from Christmas and finished up the hoisin sauce, hope we can get more. 

Tonight would have been ThingTwo's elementary school variety show - ThingTwo would have been performing in the 5th grade finale dance. A couple of parents organized a Zoom variety show and  ThingTwo and I watched her friends perform songs, play instruments (including Disney songs played on a veena!), dance, magic, perform a version of the Monty Python Cheese Shop skit (British family!)

We ended the day playing a new board game called 'Pandemic'. It is a collaborative game where we all try and coordinate to stop the spread of four deadly diseases around the world. Good news: the humans won last night.

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COVID-19 update:

Santa Clara has switched to this fancy new 'data dashboard':