So, that happened. School is cancelled for the foreseeable future. As a kid I would have thought it was a dream come true.

But as a kid, I would have received some basic assignments, done them in thirty minutes and been out playing for the rest of the day.

Now I live in the Czech Republic, where teachers generate lists of essays and exercises with scant explanation for my third-grqader and fourth-grader. I’m also a parent, not a kid, and I’m stuck with the endless mandatory assignment lists, screaming kids, twice the cooking, nothing on the store shelves and a business I have no time to run.

It will be at least two weeks, likely a month, possibly several. months. I am already hoarse and my body feels like someone beat me with a stick. But my hubby is home at the moment, and I’m going to put down a few words before I collapse because I can’t see how there will be a blog by the new moon, if I don’t.

As far as I can tell ours was the first school in Europe to close outside of Italy, where there is a real epidemic of COVID-19. (Note from the future: In the Czech Republic, there were ten cases when the school closure was first announced, but by the time of this publication there will be a thousand cases in this country of ten million.)

At first writing, this is the third day I'm home with two extreme ADHD, moderately dyslexic kids and the demands of authoritarian teachers. It’s only the first day of national quarantine, but ours was the only school in the country to close two days early. Our school closed fast before kids even returned from spring break and parents had a three-hour window—announced quietly online and missed by most—to pick up books and supplies

Still, for most people this is day 1, so I’ll call it that.

Day 1 of National COVID-19 School Quarantine

We take the train down to a town 20 miles away to get Marik’s (age 9) first set of braces. This was planned well in advance. At 7:50 a.m. the orthodontist’s waiting room is packed. So much for quarantine. The braces go on fine. We get lessons in how to tighten them and leave. There are no sinks for washing hands, so we don’t eat on the way home on the train.

9:15 am - The train arrives in our little town, Mnichovice, and it is pouring rain. We walk home through rivers of mud and arrive drenched on the path that leads to our chicken coup. The chickens are wet too. The two new ones have a nasty habit of breaking all the other eggs in the coop for fun. I mentally schedule chicken gravy for next week.

9:45 am - We get inside, hang up wet coats and hats and warm up and wash hands. I sit down at the computer to check the latest batch of dispatches from the teachers, still officially working but mostly not.

I was relatively okay for the first two days of our local “quarantine.” I put “quarantine” in quotes because there hasn’t yet been a single suspected COVID-19 case in our town or even in our county. There are a few in hospitals in the nearby city, but the schools there stayed open until today.

Marik’s teacher sent a page and a half list of assignments for today and admonitions about the consequences of not keeping up: five blocks of 15 math problems of various types, four blocks of grammar and spelling exercises, a chapter of foreign language memorization and some online exercises.

The Internet says Czech teachers are giving kids plenty of work in hopes of keeping them occupied. No one seems to be considering that children working means some adult has to be working twice as hard supervising them. Do the teachers actually think parents need more work under these circumstances?

Shaye (age 11) has four blocks of 20 math problems, three pages of grammar exercises, an online history memorization exercise, two pages of foreign language spelling words and instructions to “prepare a presentation about ecosystems.” All of this is typed in a dense block of single-spaced text, no line breaks for easier comprehension, let alone bullet points.

I spend the next hour and a half rounding up all the required books and materials, messaging teachers back with questions about things that were so sloppily written as to be unintelligible and restructuring the chaotic, disorganized lists of teacher fantasies into bullet points that kids can actually read.

11:15 am - Time to get kids off of WhatsApp chats with their friends and to work. A half an hour of yelling and protest ensues. No thrown objects and nothing but a few pencils broken. Hey, maybe this won’t be so hard.

11:45 am - The kids are actually seated at their desks with their assignments and their school books. I’m a goddess! And they’re hungry, so I head downstairs to heat up lunch. Thank the gods for leftovers.

12:15 pm - Break for lunch. I also have a moment to breathe, which I use to call Shaye’s teacher to ask for some teacher engagement during school hours and some help with explaining assignments and checking work, considering that I am 95 percent blind and cannot physically read the textbooks or handwriting.

The teacher, who happens to be a man, says he is too busy to deal with students directly. What is he busy with? Well, that’s not really any of my business.

I ask him point blank if I can write in my documentation that he refuses to discuss the work with my child on the phone or through WhatsApp or similar technology. He blusters and diverts but after three repetitions of my question, he “threatens” that if we don’t just do the work ourselves, my daughter will be required to visit him in person for an hour each day. I cheerfully attempt to schedule these visits at which point he quickly backpedal’s and agrees to a five-minute consultation with her later in the day.

1:00 pm - During the five-minute consultation, the teacher asks my daughter if she understands everything. She lies and says yes. She doesn’t actually want to do the work after all. He asks a few questions to check that she actually has the assignment list in front of her and that’s the end of the call. It takes her four more hours to do half of the work, and that’s just all that’s going to happen today.

1:30 pm - My son Marik is doing a bit better in that he is making an effort, but his new braces are driving him crazy and no one can understand a word he says. Most of his work looks like chicken scratch. It is hard to tell if it’s right or wrong, since I can’t read it.

2:00 pm - After multiple emails describing my vision impairment, Marik’s teacher relents and does a real consultation call and spends 45 minutes talking to him over WhatsApp and helping him through several sets of problems. I actually get to drink half of a cup of tea.

4:00 pm - I go through the foreign language work with the kids, which I can actually do, since the foreign language is English and we have long since left their curriculum in our dust. Then I listen to the kids read.

5:00 pm - I’m hoarse, can barely stand and I’m getting dinner ready when my hubby comes home. I hand everyone a tortilla.

6:00 pm - I collapse into off-duty mode. Papa is in charge for the evening. I vehemently wish the teachers would either start work themselves or curtail their expectations a little. At this rate, I will do nothing but sleep, cook and try to force kids to do assignments and even then I won’t come close to finishing each day.

Day 2;

8:00 am - We get an earlier start today. Marik’s teacher actually sent assignments overnight. Shaye’s teacher hasn’t gotten up yet but there are things to work on from yesterday. Marik’s teacher has been a bit more realistic in the amount of work assigned today, and she calls to get him lined out for the day.

10:00 am - Shaye’s teacher calls and asks pro forma, if she has any questions. Then he tries to hang up, when she mumbles something negative. I stop him and let him know that Shaye has her list of written questions in front of her on her desk. He is clearly unhappy but he grudgingly gives vague replies as she grudgingly asks the questions that she spent the morning using as excuses not to do her work..

11:00 am - It takes me several hours but I manage to order groceries. I can’t drive and shopping is a nightmare for a blind person even in the best of times.. Now, the stores are packed with people and the shelves are empty. Even the online stores have no more pasta, rice, granola bars or toilet paper.

I’m not joining the panic, mind you. I mostly just need to do the weekly shopping as usual, but in the end I decide to buy an extra bag of salt, that being the old prepper standby, and useful if civilization does end and the electricity goes out and I have to make pemmican out of our freezers full of meat and blackberries.

The order arrives later with a third of the items missing, but at least we get something, including the salt.

1:00 pm - I sent Shaye to the tutor’s house. She is a private tutor and we pay her a goodly sum to help with the kids learning struggles. She can at least make a dent in Shaye’s pile of assignments. And I get to drink most of a cup of tea, while Marik actually gets an hour of relatively calm study time.

2:30 pm - We go to Shaye’s therapy appointment by train. The kids see someone in a medical mask on the train and I explain that some people have immune disorders that make the current situation specifically dangerous to them, but we don’t really need to be afraid.

The therapist chuckles over the fact that her office has officially banned shaking hands. She then forgets and reaches out to shake before we leave. Automatically, my hand comes out and I remark, bemused, that we have just broken the new rule. Shaking on meeting and again on departure is so ingrained in this culture that it will be a hard habit to break.

4:00 pm - Now the government has declared a state of emergency. All gatherings of over 30 people are banned with the singularly alarmist exception of “funerals.” Restaurants, bars and clubs must close at 8 pm. Swimming pools, fitness centers and any other body-oriented businesses are closed. All educational institutions are now closed.

The Czech Republic is still one of the least hit countries, with less than ten confirmed cases of COVID-19. A student I haven’t seen in two weeks texted to cancel her next business English lesson because one of those cases turned up in her company. She had no physical contact with him that she knows of, but she is still on two-week mandatory quarantine and cannot leave her home.

5:00 pm - When we get off the train coming home, it is pouring rain once again. Cars speed by through sheets of water, spraying fans of dirty sludge across us as we walk home. I imagine their discussions inside the vehicles. “Look at that idiot, out on the street in the rain with those poor children! And with this sickness going around! They’ll be sick for sure! This is not a time for a stroll in the rain!” Their contempt for people with more troubles than them pours off of them along with the sheets of muddy, oily water. No one slowed to spare us even one wave..

Day 4:

Saturday. At last. No massive assignment lists. I haven’t been this happy it’s Saturday, since middle school.

5:20 am - I wake up with the first gray light, scattered thoughts sorting in my head. I finally have enough mental space to remember some things, like today is the day a local chicken breeder brings hens to the square and my phone beeped with the message yesterday that I am supposed to pick up two 20-week hens at 9:30 sharp.

But unfortunately my hubby (and the only one in the family who can drive) is gone for his annual weekend with his buddies, scheduled way before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, so that means I’ll have to get there without a car and get the hens home again. With kids, of course.

More details flood in. We need some basic supplies and ordering groceries on line hasn’t worked. The system is overloaded with all the people actually under house quarantine. That number is growing rapidly. Everyone (and their entire family) who had any possibility of contact with one of the confirmed COVID-19 cases is under mandatory housebound quarantine and cannot physically shop for food. So, I should try to get some milk, cabbage, flour—just the basics, while I get the hens.

5:40 am - I can’t sleep anyway with all that going on in my head, so I roll out of bed and do my morning meditation, get tea and take care of the animals before 7:00.

7:00 am - Marik is up and needing intensive attention and reassurance. We haven’t paid much heed to the panic about the virus, so he isn’t really afraid of it, but the restrictions have started to get intense enough that it is impossible not to notice that it isn’t just school being out. He’s clingy and afraid to be in a room with dark corners, like he was as a little kid.

I get him set up cracking eggs and running the mixer for waffles. At least we have eggs. Those are in very short supply in stores but even if the chickens are eating theirs, we still have the ducks.

9:00 am - It takes longer to leave the house than usual, given that “usual” with my kids is utter chaos. By the time we finally get down to the road, I’m afraid we’ll miss the chicken truck. I try duct-taping a cat carrier to the footboard of my electric scooter for the hens, but it is far too large. In a hurry, I grab a small paper box, slap on some duct-tape and tear down the road after the kids, who have already started the trek to town.

The scooter is my main form of transportation. When I say “tear,” I guess I mean a brisk walk by anyone else’s standards. I can see just enough of shadows and shapes to keep the scooter on the sidewalk. Once we’re in town, I’ll have to slow down to avoid hitting anyone or anything. But beyond being nearly blind, I have crooked legs and can’t walk without extreme pain for more than a few miles a day.

I notice immediately that the roads are eerily empty, even for a Saturday morning and the sidewalk is even emptier. We pass two children, a few hundred yards apart. Not another soul.

My kids comment that every driver who passes us glares at me intensely. Again, they are coming to conclusions about the crazy lady out riding a scooter with her kids during what has quickly become “national lockdown,” not just school quarantine.

9:30 am - The chicken guy is not impressed with my paper box and duct-tape approach to chicken transportation. Neither are the hens. The box is torn and I have to duct-tape it back together around them, but eventually they settle down and think they are in a laying box. I duct-tape the box more solidly to the scooter and we’re almost ready to go home.

9:50 am - But we swing by the main grocery store in town and I leave Marik outside to watch the hens while Shaye and I go in. I’ve heard rumors about some frantic buying over the past two weeks and seen the havoc caused in the world of online groceries, but I am shocked at the scene inside the store.

Unlike the sidewalks, the store is packed with more people than I had ever seen in it before. All of them move in grim silence. Pairs of people whisper urgently together and everyone passes strangers and neighbors alike with averted gazes. Shaye was definitely the only child in the store.

I veer toward the baked goods, but stop before I quite get there. Even I can see the shelves were entirely bare. Two women are searching for the last few bread rolls that had fallen between the boxes on the bottom shelf.

I turn into the dairy aisle. Here too, whole sections are bare. Not a single bottle of milk of any variety. Shaye finds the last buttermilk carton, tipped over in the back of a cooler shelf. We’ll need that if we are to make more waffles. I find ultra-pasteurized, eternal shelf-life milk in the canned goods section. It tastes bad, but does the trick, especially for baking.

No hope of cabbage. I send Shaye to search for flour while I take a quick detour into the chocolate department, realizing that the Spring Equinox is coming up in a week and at this rate, I might not have chocolate treats to hide in the kids’ plastic eggs. Even here the pickings were a bit spare, though still relatively abundant. In the end I have to settle for large chocolate bars with breakable sections.

I give the harried but still rosy-cheeked cashier a bolstering smile and wishes for continued strength. Then we are off toward home. We stop in at a tiny specialty shop and manage to get a bottle of maple syrup, liquid gold even at the best of times.

11:00 am - The new hens are in the coop and seem no worse for their unconventional trip home. The sun has actually come out and it looks like spring. The kids are huddled by the cold wood stove whining that they want computer games and more waffles instead of lunch. I lay down the law. There is a bit of weekend homework to be done and they need to play at least one non-electronic game for the first time all week… before electronics.

Little do I know what my rules will start. As I start getting lunch, they grudgingly begin, first with a card game and then with board games all over the table. As they warm up, they become more enthusiastic and by the time lunch is ready they are outside, climbing on the side of the house and trying to rig up the summer-time swing.

After lunch, they are back out there. I have a fright when Shaye falls off of the jungle gym mounted on the side of the house and comes in screaming in obvious pain and limping badly. There couldn’t really be a worse time for an ER visit, unless you count being snowed in.

Fortunately, it turns out to be just a bad shin bruise, already turning black and purple with blood seeping through a small cut. Disinfectant and a bandage will have to do.

2:00 pm - To my astonishment, the kids play outside most of the afternoon. I actually get to drink a whole cup of tea while wrestling with the online teaching platform finally chosen by Shaye’s grumpy teacher. It is mostly based on Adobe Flash, which I didn’t realize went out of fashion about the time I graduated from college.

The teacher has an old Microsoft desktop computer, so he thinks it’s fine but all of his students are on Android phones and iPads, none of which are going to work well. It takes me a few hours, but I finally find an Android solution and send it to him. He has started to give me a bit of grudging respect as he sees that my demand that he actually work, if he wants the kids to work, is coupled with a willingness to help.

4:00 pm - My phone pings with another message. The sender isn’t in my contacts but is marked ominously as “The Government.” They must be sending mass messages to the entire population now via cell phones. This time they’ve locked down all stores and businesses other than grocery stores, pharmacies, pet care shops, newsagents and electronics stores. I wonder about the electronics stores for a moment, until I realize that the entire country is going virtual and not everyone is well prepared in advance. It’s actually a reasonable exemption.

Now we are truly on national lockdown. Anything more and you’d be courting humanitarian disaster. But how long can we realistically hope to make this work and how long will be long enough to make a difference? There still hasn’t been a single COVID-19 death in this country, but there have been several hundred seasonal flu related deaths in the past week, not to mention as-of-yet uncounted stress-related suicides and heart attacks.

Day 5

As of midnight last night, the whole country is quarantine. No more therapist appointments. No more tutor to help drag Shaye kicking and screaming (literally) through her schoolwork. No one is allowed to leave home, except to go to work or to shop for food. There is an exception for individuals to go to natural areas to commune with nature alone. But neighborhood kids are not allowed to play together. Even private tutors are banned from teaching.

Shaye has three times as much schoolwork today as she can realistically handle in a day—write a short story containing seven words the teacher randomly selected, do several grammar exercises, write an essay on the Central Bohemian region, do four whole sets of math problems, do two pages of foreign language exercises, and read for a book report.

She does part of it, throws books and chairs and refuses to do the rest. I’ll dock her time on phone games and social media because iron consistency is the only way with her, but on the other hand, the amount of work handed out for a fourth grader with multiple learning disabilities is beyond excessive.

Marik does manage to finish most of his third-grade work by afternoon. It is sunny again, so he spends the afternoon bouncing on our trampoline and hollering back and forth with the boy two houses away also bouncing on his trampoline alone. I’m sure the neighbors in between are not happy, but I am passed the point of caring. Those neighbors have five dogs which are so starved for attention that our lives constantly have the irritating backdrop of incessantly barking dogs. Now with the quarantine the whole situation feels even more claustrophobic.

On the bright side, I manage to get the grocery order I put in last week today. We are now well supplied for as long as two weeks if necessary, and I got chocolate eggs. Toilet paper may only last about ten days but I have lived in places and times where one had to use newspaper. That too could be survived.

As usual, the real conditions of hardship—such as the distant virus or low toilet paper supplies—are much less troublesome than the purely human-caused problems—such as overzealous teachers, cruel motorists and irrational fear.

With that thought, I summon the last shreds of my energy and call the elderly woman `i know with fragile health and message a couple of friends with chronic health problems, who could be in danger from the virus. I don’t really know what I can do to help, if any of them are in crisis, alone or without supplies. Without a car I’m not likely to be that much help, but I’ll think of something.

As it turns out, they are all doing okay so far

Day 7:

I’ve never been a real “prepper” but I have leanings in that direction. For once, no one in my family is criticizing me for it.

Today’s halfway-prepper menu:

Breakfast: Oatmeal with dried fruit and boxed ultra-pasteurized milk that lasts forever unopened.

Lunch: Romani Halušky - grated potatoes and wheat meal and one egg, mixed with a little water and boiled in small bits, then tossed with smoked meat and sauerkraut. Sauerkraut has all the fiber and vitamin C you need when fresh food is hard to come by. It also lasts months packed into a large urn and can tide good preppers through the winter, but I didn't make mine last fall, so this is the last of what we bought at the store when stores still had such things.

Dinner: Half a hen with buckwheat noodles and broccoli. This is good if you have frozen broccoli or manage to get some. Then you kill the hen that has been eating all the other hens’ eggs (hopefully it’s only one of them), pluck it and boil half of it all day in the slow cooker to make gravy. Freeze the other half for next week.

Snacks: Celery and peanut butter (because ... celery = what you happen to have that needs to be eaten while its fresh.)

Dessert: Chocolate zucchini cake, cause you haven’t quite run out of flour and you managed to save a few eggs and you did freeze grated zucchini in bags last summer, didn’t you? (The kids rebel because they just saw me get an order including a bunch of packaged food, but that’s all for when the flour and sugar run out. Flour and sugar were among the things even the online stores are out of.)

Day 8:

Yesterday I was almost joking about being a “halfway prepper.” Today it feels a lot less funny. Major factories are closing. There are 30 mile lines of trucks at the borders. They are checking all the drivers and the loads before letting anyone cross. The food shortages are widening and deepening.

People have started buying up seeds and gardening supplies as well as just food and toilet paper. I’m starting to think that a little hoarding might have been a good idea while I had the chance. Now there are quotas on everything and you can’t buy large amounts anymore.

I know that with my root cellar potatoes, chicken eggs, pantry and freezers we can get by for two more weeks easily, probably a month with creative cooking. But there is no sign that the crisis will be over in a month. Estimates put it at “six weeks at least.”

The government comes out with a new, tighter rule every day, as if reminding the population of their fear is somehow going to help. Hubby went downtown to see if he could get some supplies and came back mainly with an armload of face masks. As of 6:00 p.m. the new rule is that anyone who goes out to shop or go to work must wear a mask.

I have to wonder how that will play out if/when the looting starts. A little seed of fear has started to creep in, and I find myself sternly admonishing the kids not to waste their cups of yogurt. I’ve never been one for wasting food but this is different.

The kids schoolwork is still a problem, but whatever consequences the school hands us are starting to seem less important. It’s almost becoming routine, and Marik goes to his studies almost without protest. He has also started to help out in moments of family chaos, making the fire or washing off the table according to my rapid-fire requests. Sometimes he complains that his older sister refuses to help, but as kids have always done in hard times, he is starting to rise to the challenge.

Shaye still screams and carries on about schoolwork and refuses to help unless she is bribed with something specific that she desperately wants, which adds up to it being more of an educational experience for her than a help to the adults around. But this evening she was serious for a moment before bedtime and promised to try not to throw fits..

Day 9:

6:00 am - It is the Vernal Equinox. I get up and walk up to let the chickens out of their coop, only to discover that all the ducks, which don’t tolerate being shut in for the night, are gone. I find a fox tunnel under the fence.

I sit down heavily on a boulder and curl around the knot of sorrow, frustration and, yes, even fear in my chest. I don’t cry, even though I usually cry easily. I don’t know why no tears come.

I go back to the house to do my spiritual practice and meditation before the kids get up, but I have little heart for it. This is usually one of my favorite seasons. I love the budding life of spring and I relish the fresh, cool breeze and only slightly warm sunshine. I usually feel full of hope and energy at this time of year, but not today.

Now I sit in front of my altar and candles and I feel nothing but exhaustion and sorrow. I do feel some shame for being selfish and not wanting my children home all day every day. But mostly it’s just sorrow. In all the years I’ve had animals I’ve never had a loss this massive. Hardship and bad luck always seems to come in waves. It never rains but it pours.

Gods, why? Was it something I did? I don’t believe in vengeful Gods, but I do believe in reaping what you sew. Still I don’t see how my careful and conscientious actions could lead to this.

I go through the traditional words of hope in the Equinox ritual, but I don’t feel it. My faith is sometimes like that. I have to fake it til I make it, but this has happened before. I’ve been through despair more times than I care to remember.

8:30 am - Shaye takes a swing at me with the broom while she is supposed to be sweeping as her daily chore. She walks around dragging the broom behind her with one loose hand. I firmly but constantly explain to her how she needs to sweep and stand in her way so that she cannot simply walk around the room dragging the broom loosely. That’s how she takes a swing at me. I catch it but it’s close.

9:00 am - Shaye’s teacher calls an hour early and is harshly critical that her phone was turned off. He has my phone number and I have told him repeatedly that she does not have unlimited access to a smartphone because she developmentally has no capacity for self control about YouTube and other time-waister apps. He doesn’t accept this and hangs up, refusing to help her today.

10:00 am - Shaye is sitting at the kitchen table struggling through a test sent by her teacher. I couldn’t help her cheat much even if I wanted to. I don't know this level of Czech grammar. I can hear Marik upstairs talking to his friends on WhatsApp instead of doing his schoolwork. I’m too exhausted to intervene. I make myself a cup of tea and drink all of it.

1:00 pm - After heating up lentil soup for lunch and listening to the kids squabble, make farting noises and complain over it, I manage to get outside for a moment to clean up and check on the chickens again. There were two eggs yesterday and one today but more importantly there are no little piles of shells and slime showing where eggs have been eaten. That doesn’t mean they haven’t become more sneaky about it, since there should be a few more eggs, but it is possible that the chicken gravy did the trick. It better have, since there will be no more duck eggs.

I take a deep breath of the free clear air and smile up at the slightly warm early spring sun. There seems to be less air pollution. Most planes aren’t flying, cars are few on the roads and many large factories are shutting down. The things we wanted to happen to combat climate change are coming true in an odd way.

It does make me wonder why it is that the world can come together to save a small percentage of people who could die from a COVID-19 infection, but we were never willing or able to make similar sacrifices for the entire next generation which stands to lose everything to clearly demonstrated danger. Climate change already kills far more humans than the seasonal flu and COVID-19 combined.

Of course, I know the answer before the question is even fully formed. Those in danger from COVID-19 are at this point wealthier and more powerful than those who die every year from extreme heat, drought, floods and famine.

3:00 pm - The kids are finally finished with their schoolwork, which means I’m free as well. I get out my favorite Equinox decorations—blown eggs colored with waterproof acrylic paints. Back in February when the kids were away skiing, I had a little time and I painted a few more to replace those broken last year. I was so proud of myself, getting the jump on Equinox preparations. Little did I know then that those little touches would be the only preparations I would get a chance to do at all.

Now I string the blown eggs on embroidery thread and hang each one carefully from the branches of my favorite lilac bush in the front yard. It is a bit too shaded by our massive oak tree but it is what I want now—a little tree with colorful eggs on it. Usually it is a cheerful welcome for people coming to our home at this time of year.

This year few visitors are likely to see it. I sit on the grass and smile up at it, feeling unduly happy. Marik runs over from the trampoline and sits beside me, cuddling into my side. “Ids priddy. When do we ged tocolade eggs?” he lisps through his braces. His speaking and eating has gotten a little faster over the past nine days, but he is nearly impossible to understand.

“Maybe tomorrow if it doesn’t rain to much the Ostara bunny will hide chocolate eggs for you,” I say, hugging him close.

That was one tiny moment of calm and bliss in the chaos. That little bit of decorating is the only non-essential, non-food-related, non-school-related task I have done in a week and a half with the exception of this blog, which barely counts as a task.

That’s all I’ve got, folks. No great inspirational thing about hope and peace and humanist love. Just this bleak and unpleasant survival. If this post has a message, it is a plea to remember those who are vulnerable in this crisis—and not just those who might get sick.

If you are happily alone and able to binge watch everything you usually can’t, spare a thought (and maybe a phone call) for those who are alone because of age, disability or family rejection and who feel the isolation of quarantine more bitterly. If you are happily amid your family, spare a thought (and maybe a care package) for single parents with several kids trapped in small city apartments and others with too great a burden of care-taking.

It isn’t that thinking of the misery of others should make you feel better about your own situation, no matter how hard it is. But it is worth remembering that some people have it harder than others. And your elected representatives need to know what is happening to the most vulnerable in these times.

What is hard for me is easy for many. I have only two kids and we can go outside in our yard. For me it is hard because of my physical disability and my daughter’s behavioral-developmental disabilities. What is easy for me may bring another family to the brink. I wonder how people are fairing who don’t know how to cook and are used to buying packaged food and eating out.

Similarly I may be stuck in lockdown, but unlike many people I don’t have any pressing need to go somewhere. I’m an introvert and the fact that I haven’t seen anyone but my husband and my two kids in a full week doesn’t really bother me. My main problem is no alone time, rather than social isolation. But that’s just my specific situation. So if things are easy for you now, consider that many others are already enduring serious hardship.

I don’t know how long I can keep this up. For now, I’m truly just taking it one day at a time.