Day In The Life: Quarantine Edition

Allena posted a Day In the Life: Quarantine Edition a few days ago and I was inspired to do one too. After all, right now it feels like this will never end but I know eventually we will be back to (closer to?) "normal" and I will wonder, "What did those days really look like?" So welcome to our Monday.

I have been setting my alarm so I don't sleep until all hours. I set it for 7am and then I usually check e-mail, read blogs, look at Instagram in bed for awhile. This day I came downstairs around 8am. The kids were playing Minecraft on the couch. They can have unlimited screen time from the time they wake up until about 9am.

I took this picture around 8:15. I'd started coffee, and was commenting on blogs on my laptop. Yes, I read them upstairs on my phone and comment later on my laptop.

By 9am, I'd started on my first coffee-hot chocolate of the day. Sam had put away breakfast dishes and Rachel was getting her oatmeal toppings. For the sake of documenting, Sam has been eating a HUGE bowl of MiniWheats every morning and Rachel has been loving regular oatmeal with chocolate chips, brown sugar, and maple syrup. Nothing like a sugar rush to start your day! I think I also put a load of laundry in the washer during this time.

By 9:30 our bed was made. Dave has a regular 9:30 team meeting and, since his office is in our bedroom, our bed needs to be made by then. And since I hadn't gotten dressed by 9:30, I got dressed in Rachel's room. No flashing of Dave's co-workers over here :)

I read a post on the weekend about how day planners are more important than ever these days because we're all out of routine. Honestly, I'd been making a daily schedule ("to do list", more than "a schedule") on recycled sheets of paper but I have to put that 2020 planner to use somehow.

Sidenote here: When this all started I asked the kids if they wanted a daily schedule to follow or to have every day be different. They both voted for "different" and so, while we have fallen into somewhat of a routine, every day does look different. Thus, I wrote our list for the day (and some items for the next day) in consultation with the kids around 9:35-9:40.

I had this dream that one kid could work on their iPad for online learning but their iPads are too old so they can't submit their documents online. Thus, Rachel uses Dave's laptop and Sam uses mine and I find offline things to do. This day I decided to start tackling my mending pile. I also texted with some friends, ate a banana muffin and yogurt for breakfast, and drank some coffee-hot chocolate. And banged my head against both Grade 3 and Grade 5 math. Ugh.

I'd like to point out that this is the first time in his entire school career that Sam has ever needed help with math. Another friend and I were comparing notes on this particular lesson because it was hard.

By 11:04, online learning was done, my breakfast was done, my mending pile was done, and we headed outside.

 

I hung a load of laundry out, washed our winter outerwear, hung that out, watered my pansies (it's still too cold to plant them outside - boo), and the kids played trampoline soccer the whole time. I didn't get a picture of them but I did get this one of my pansies. And the winter wear hanging on the line. Whooo hoo!!!

One of Rachel's assignments last week was to build a bird's nest. Well, it was too cold for me to help facilitate that so yesterday was the day. We ended our outside time by gathering some more bird's nest materials around 11:53.

We ate lunch around 12:00. This week Rachel and Sam have gotten excited about muffin tin lunches. They like splitting a 12 cup muffin tin. They had goldfish, cheese, summer sausage, kiwi (for Sam), cucumbers for Rachel, seaweed (for Sam), green apples and I don't know all what. Hey -- if they eat a variety of food I'm calling it a win.

The other thing that almost never changes is that we do dishes after lunch. I wash them and Sam and Rachel dry and put away. I forgot to get a before picture, but this is the after picture, taken at 1:02pm.

Since I knew it was going to be a gorgeous day, we went on a long walk. We left right after dishes and didn't get home until 3pm. I had to pick up a pair of contact lenses because my appointment from March has been delayed at least until the end of May and I don't have enough pairs to keep me going.

Then we stopped at our friends' house and picked up a bunch of hand me downs. We also had a socially distant visit for about half an hour and it was sooooo good. We haven't done that much this quarantine and it made my week. They stayed on their porch and we were on their driveway. Also, Rachel was so excited about the clothes, she immediately pulled out this black fuzzy cat sweater and the pink Uggs to wear home!

We got home a bit after 3pm and I grabbed a picture of Rachel and the bags of hand me down clothes and shoes. Then she had a quick snack.

By 3:30, Rachel was doing modern dance on Zoom and Sam and I were reading and eating a snack.

By 4:30, I'd moved my reading upstairs (along with a Coke) and Dave was finishing off his work day. When he finished work (around 4:45), he and Rachel went outside to build the bird's nest and I had a nap.

Rachel woke me up around 5:20 to check out their bird's nest. It held up to having a bunch of water poured over it and the wind test, so we counted it a success.

Dave and I don't always cook supper together but fried rice requires both of us. I boil the veggies and the shrimp and fry the rice while Dave makes the scrambled eggs. This was us working on supper at 5:53.

By 6pm, we were sitting down to supper. It was National Lima Bean Day on Monday and this is the only meal we make with lima beans so that's why we had this for supper. Yum!

After supper I checked my work e-mails (very few of them actually pertain to me), while Dave and the kids did dishes. I also brought all the laundry in from outside.

At 6:45 I decided it was time to deal with the disaster know as the playroom. This is after the kids had spent ten minutes cleaning it. I hung up the winter outerwear downstairs, we cleaned up the last few pieces of cardboard, and most importantly, I swept up all the teeny tiny bits of dried paint while Dave shook out the rugs. It looked so much better afterwards.

Also, I'm fine to let the kids get creative and play in there for up to a week, while keeping their projects on the go, but every once in awhile we need a fresh start. As of this writing, the kids are putting together a 500 piece puzzle in the playroom and Rachel has part of it set up like a classroom with her whiteboard and her workbook. Plus they have a Minecraft card game in progress and Rachel has pulled out the paints again to paint a birdhouse.

Like everyone else in quarantine, I'm attempting to grow celery. I don't know how it's going. I also have a basil plant growing in there. I tried lettuce but it just rotted. I spent some time watering these guys and cleaning up the dining room.

By 7:20, Dave was back from a quick errand. We'd been attempting to buy a bottle of Sprite for over 24 hours. Things conspired against us like the corner store was closed and the other store I went to only took debit (I don't know my debit card pin because I never use it). Dave finally took his debit card to the store so we all enjoyed a glass of Sprite.

After, I started working on this blog post and around 7:45, I decided to FaceTime my parents. We talked with them for quite awhile.

I headed off to bed around 9:15 and was going to read my book while I ate some goldfish. However, I got sucked into the news about the mass shooting in Nova Scotia. Mass shootings are fairly rare in Canada, and this is the largest Canadian one ever (22 victims thus far, and they're expecting more). It's just such a sad and horrible situation, compounded by the fact that people can't grieve in regular ways :(

After that, I read for a bit and probably fell asleep around 11:15 or so...

And this was a day in our quarantine life.