Day Sixty-Six

All right, kids, buckle up. It's time to place your bets!

Here's the thing - when the world suddenly shut down a few months ago, it did it too quickly for anyone to really plan. That's my very true explanation for why there is a perfectly good bag of Caramel M&Ms in my desk drawer at work. That's the last place they should be. Global pandemics are basically an excuse to eat crap all day every day. It says so right in the rule book.

Mila has good stuff left in her desk at school as well. She has a terrible habit of smuggling toys to school, and it seems one of her favorite half-naked glitter-encased LOL Dolls is hanging out by her pencil box. Mila has mentioned how badly she wants it a few thousand times, but KARMA! Don't take toys to school and you won't have to worry about being separated from them for months, kid.

Alexis. Alexis also has good stuff in her locker at school, or so I assume. What I know for a fact is there is her lunch box filled with food. She took lunch to school that last day, but then ended up buying for reasons I don't comprehend, and then forgot the lunchbox in her locker. It's going to smell FANTASTIC when we get our hands on it, I'm sure. Alexis also had library books in her locker. But ... what else? There has to be something else.

There is definitely something else.

We finally got the email from the school district announcing their plan for returning all of the kids' things to them. We have scheduled times to go to each school and drive through the bus line. School staff will place the kids' items in your trunk. It's all no-contact and seemingly well-organized, shockingly enough. It is based on one thing, though. Those school administrators have to collect the kids' stuff. They have to dig through Mila's hurricane of a desk and place all the unsanctioned toys in a bag. They have to open Alexis' locker and set everything in a bag or box.

I explained this fact to Alexis today. The look on her face as it sunk in that someone will be opening her locker? PURE HORROR. She is utterly and completely mortified and would not stop about how it's an invasion of privacy.

SO WHAT IS IN HER LOCKER?

Place your bets, kids!

Day Sixty-Five

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, the first few weeks of this whole thing look different now. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was in London, working alongside people who had travelled from China, and we were talking about how our office in Shanghai was likely going to shut down in the coming days.

Of course, it did close. The entire country closed completely - even "essential" businesses - for two weeks. They've been gradually reopening since because it turns out that whole "Coronavirus" thing we were ignoring back in January was actually a BFD. I maybe should have figured that out faster as my international flights were empty.

Like, seriously, EMPTY. There couldn't have been but maybe 50 passengers on my flight to London and the plane was large enough to seat several hundred. I had three entire rows of seats to myself. The few people that were travelling internationally at that time were mostly wearing masks and they were already avoiding standing near other people. It took the United States until, what? March? April? Before we figured that out? (An argument could be made to say we still haven't figured it out...) Knowledge is different in other countries. What people want to believe isn't held in the same regard as scientific fact.

That's the thing that's going to be hard to explain to the girls some day. There's this whole thing going on where we allow opinions to matter excessively and we confuse what we want to be true with what is actually true. I have to think that Americans will find their way to the other side of the nonsense, and I hope it's such a thorough departure that both Mila and Alexis are SUPER confused when we tell stories from this time of epic stupidity.

In hindsight, it also seems SUPER weird that we went to Harrisburg for a dance competition a mere week before everything shut down. I'm glad we did, but that's the privilege of not having anything bad happen because of it. If things had gone sideways and dance studios from all over the state had ended up further spreading COVID-19, that weekend would seem like the biggest pile of stupid ever.

Still, since it didn't end badly, I'm glad we went. I'm glad we took the time to wander over to Hershey to check out the World of Chocolate. I'm glad we did a ton of shopping. I'm especially glad we managed to have several really good meals at restaurants - especially that one that was ice cream for dinner. When we will be able to sit inside a restaurant and freely eat ice cream again?

When will anything be the same again? Ever? When we all left work and school that last Friday before the governor shut things done (fortunately - if he hadn't things would have gotten much worse quickly), we thought we'd be back in a few weeks. I grabbed my plants from my desk at work, but everything else is still there. I now know that it will be months before I set foot near my desk again, and I won't be returning to it full-time ever. Alexis has a lunch bag full of food in her locker. We'll be throwing that away the second it returns to our possession, obviously, but will Alexis ever set foot in the middle school again? Survey says ... probably not. In a perfect world, she's at the high school in the fall, though she may not return to the same school district. 

And Mila. Mila was just figuring out this whole kindergartener thing. I think the disruption is the worst for her because she doesn't have a normal to compare to. She was adjusting to changes left and right, looking forward to her first ever summer at summer camp, and everything just stopped. If I had known how different things would suddenly be for her, I would have handled much of it differently as it was happening.

Alas.

20/20 hindsight, and all that.

Day Sixty-Four

Excuse me, but someone has some explaining to do. WHY DOES THIS INFANT SUDDENLY LOOK LIKE A KID?

I swear to you, I turned to her a few days ago and Mila suddenly looked two years older. I don't know if it's because her hair is getting longer (she has still only had one haircut in her entire life ...), because the baby is falling away from her face, or if the pandemic is aging her just as much as it is me, but WTAF.

It really did happen very suddenly. I can't explain it. It's not like I don't see the kid nearly every minute of every day and missed some growing up. It seemingly happened overnight.

Because it happened so suddenly, I couldn't help but comment to Mila that she was getting old. As in, I asked her, "Why are you suddenly an old lady?"

She looked at me all sorts of confused, so I tried to explain. "You look really grown up today. I thought we agreed you would stay the baby?" We've had that conversation a lot, of course. I tell Mila she's the baby, she agrees to always be the baby, we're all happy.

But now the kid was sitting in front of me looking all sorts of grown up. Like, she might even appear old enough to be allowed to go to school. She's still pocket-sized, of course, but older.

Mila's reply to my dismay was the best part, though. The child turned to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "The only old lady in this house is Alexis."

TRUE STORY.