I’ve done it again–got stuck in the “just-one-more-compile-and-check” trap. Argh.
If I thought I’d tested my calculus muscles yesterday, that was just a warm up compared to today, but let’s backtrack.
I met with Micah today on confetti. He noticed immediately that my physics was not quite right… Good for him! I might have been more disappointed if he hadn’t. He reviewed everything and gave me a few to-dos. Ultimately, while it still wasn’t perfect, there were far fewer todo’s than my last assignment, so that’s progress, i think…
I’m a little frustrated, because as of the end of last week, I had a working sandbox, but couldn’t get it working in the actual app. On Monday, I got a few todo’s with a self-assigned target of wednesday to have it all completed. Considering I had it pretty much working by end of day yesterday (Wednesday), had i not gotten sick all day tuesday and had weather close school down early yesterday (threats of severe thunderstorms and tornados, both of which were uneventful–fortunately, i suppose), I would have finally been on track for once if today were Wednesday! Oh, life… Isn’t that always the story?
Anywho, there was a post, I’d wanted to write on Tuesday that I didn’t get to write. Ironically, though the day had been in front of my thoughts for several weeks and I was excited to write the emotions of the day, I’m somewhat at a loss for what to write. Let’s pretend it’s Tuesday (then I’m really on track for my assignment!!!).
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Sunday was my 6 year wedding anniversary. We didn’t really do anything special other than have the four of us pile into bed around 730PM (which for the record, it was daylight savings day, so it was actually like 630 our time) to watch a movie on our ceiling projector–How to Train Your Dragon 3. It was kind of perfect, and I think we were both pretty happy just to be together. Afterall, being together is a lot more than we can say for last year…
Last year, Keith and I were supposed to go to New Orleans on Friday March 13th for a wedding that Keith was standing in on our 5th anniversary: March 14, 2020. Up until two days before we were supposed to leave we were still working out arrangements–remember, Leo was only like 5 months old at the time, and I certainly wasn’t ready to be away from him for an entire weekend.
The plan was that Keith would drive down on Friday for the rehearsal. He really wanted me to be there, but I wasn’t going to go until Saturday at which point our good friends Matt & Brett were going to join us in Nola so that Saturday evening they could watch the boys while Keith & I were at the wedding.
That was the tentative plan up until Thursday afternoon.
The Monday before that (so much time travel to tell a story…), Louisiana got our first case.
My mom called me that evening in a near panic that the “corona virus” was getting out of hand and that I should be stocking up to have at least a two week supply of food & supplies. Fortunately for me, I am forgetful and thus there had been several months I’d forgotten to skip my shipments on Amazon Subscribe & Save for necessities like toilet paper, lysol wipes, dog food, cat food, toothpaste, floss, diapers, make-up, walnut oil, tofu, wall-plugins, & whatever other necessities I had in my subscription.
Honestly, i probably could have been arrested for an act of hoarding publicly necessary supplies with the stockpile of tp & lysol wipes i had in my utility closet–i offered them out and gave out several packs later on. Nonetheless, i choice to appease my mom–I mean what could it hurt–and order some extra water & non-perishables.
Those came in on Tuesday from Walmart & Wednesday from Amazon, and I shoved them all under the guestroom bed for two reasons. One was so that we wouldn’t accidentally eat them prior to the upcoming apocalypse, and two because I didn’t want Keith to find them right away because, well one, I recall money was a little tight at the time, but mostly because I knew that he would think, in the most loving way a husband can, that I had actually completely lost it–i was close as it was with having just returned back to work a month or so earlier and thus still trying to figure out life with work on top of a newborn, a two year old, and some sort of postpartum depression that just wouldn’t leave me be.
He finally found my stash last December as he was packing for this recent move–i got a call about it… At least by that point, I could laugh about it and happily eat my little fruit bars that sounded so good at the time of purchase.
Anyway, so the plan was that Keith & I would meet in Nola on Saturday for this wedding where we would secretly celebrate our 5th anniversary–together.
That changed Thursday, March 12th.
Oddly, I don’t remember that day much, except that it was announced that schools were shutdown for the following two weeks.
That’s a little scarier–maybe we should be taking this a little more seriously…
And so I did. That evening, I made the unpopular decision that I would not be going to this wedding of 100 people or more, and that I would stay home with the boys. This disappointed Keith as well as our friends who were looking forward to babysitting. This actually wasn’t out of context for me–i tend to back out of social events from time to time, so they probably thought I was just doing my flakey thing, but this one felt warranted. Besides, flakey or not, I wouldn’t normally back out of a good friend’s wedding without good cause.
Friday morning, they announced that schools would be closed through the end of the year until the following fall.
Hmmm… this big deal just got bigger. I could feel fear start to mount, but it was calculated. I wasn’t scared of the disease. I wasn’t even scared of the zombies. I was scared of the people. Of the panic, which we saw in an odd way with the depletion of toilet paper (thanks for keeping me stocked amazon!). I was scared of not having a big enough army in-house in the case things did get weird and out of hand.
Keith & I would fight like hell to protect our little family, but the reality was that we had a 5 month old & a 2 year old. It’s not like they would sit patiently in the bedroom while Mommy & Daddy fought off the bad-guys. Even if they did, what if Mommy & Daddy lost? What if Keith was at work when things turned for the worse, then it would just be Mommy fighting the bad guys. I couldn’t wait it out and leave that to be an option. If it got that bad, Keith would be with us no doubt–I don’t want to make it seem like he would put his job before us in any sense, but who was to tell when that turning point might happen?
I recall some of my thoughts:
- “What if people panic? What if they become violent?”
- “What if things shutdown”–food, water, electricity, manufacturing…?
- “Keith & I alone cannot sufficiently protect our little family from violent panic.”
- “Is airfare running?”
- “Maybe we can wait this out…?”
- “What if they shutdown airfare? I could drive.”
- “What if it becomes too dangerous to drive on highways (run out of gas, stranded with no help and luters taking stuff)?”
- “What if they shutdown highways? Can they do that?”
- “If I don’t get out now, I may not get out.”
- “Am I starting to panic?”
- “No, of course not. Besides, you have two babies to protect–and your own sanity.”
On Friday, while Keith was at the rehearsal dinner, I called my boss and told him I had to leave town indefinitely but would have my computer–he was surprisingly understanding… Then I started packing. I called my parents and asked my dad if he could get me. Putting my two little children in a single engine plane for the first time to endure a long 6-7 hour plane ride wasn’t my ideal method of travel, but at this point, the benefits outweighed the risks and we would deal. My dad said the weather looked good Monday morning, so we would plan for then. I didn’t really want to wait, but maybe things would blow over?
I spent the weekend packing not really knowing what to pack. Sunday, Keith came home. He was already well aware of my plan, and while he didn’t like it and couldn’t come as he didn’t have the option to work remotely, he was incredibly supportive of my needs–neither of us knew that two weeks would turn into almost two months.
To Be Continued…
Rex:
Rex says “but” in front of most sentences right now. “Mommy, but you can have this red car and play with me”. “But shoes are for running & playing in the dirt.” “But, can i play in the dirt for a little minute?” “I don’t like dinner, but that bike is orange.”
Speaking of dinner, Rex did well at eating his tonight. Yet like other nights, he left the majority of it as done in order to get up and play.
Leo:
Leo took notice that Rex had left a potato fritter thing that I’d made. He promptly got up when Rex was out of sight, used Rex’s fork to stab it, slyly took it back to his plate, sat back down, and proceeded to eat it–had I not been watching him, he’d been slick enough that he probably would have gone completely unnoticed..
Later, when I told the boys that it was bedtime while they were enjoying their nightly cap of milk & squares, Leo looked at me dead in the eye, dumped the rest of his squares on the couch between his legs, changed his expression to look concerned, and said “uh-oh…”
Obviously, this type of insubordination is completely unacceptable, but what could I do other than give him a quick scowl before turning around in order to hide my laughter.