Day Three

Yes, I am going to keep titling blog posts with the day count. If we get to Day 30-something, I swear to all of the gods I will ... do nothing. If that's how long it takes, I'll accept it. BUT I WILL BE VERY ANGRY.

I made it all the way to Day Three before I caved into all of the things that Mila wants. The kid is having the worst time with all of this because she's somehow a freak of an extrovert. While I would looooooove a few days of not having contact with anyone, that's her kryptonite. She. Is. A. Mess. She just wants to go to school and why can't she go to school? The bad germs have to be gone by now. She'll wash her hands. See? All better!

Oh, Mila.

Given that I'm already defeated, I let her trash every room in the house and didn't even raise an eyebrow. There's toys on the floor? That's cool. There's broccoli stuck to the ceiling? Seems reasonable. As long as we're staying away from internet articles about how to build a bomb, I think we'll be okay.

All of that giving up means I stopped trying to keep Mila busy elsewhere while I was in meetings. I am incredibly fortunate to work for a company that makes things that are crucial to basic infrastructure, so I'm good professionally. The company is owned by a giant conglomerate that has plenty of cash flow, so we'll be able to weather the storm. Unfortunately (fortunately?), we happen to be getting our asses handed to us right now because business is ... woof. There are so many things going on. Business is good, basically, which means I have no shortage of things that need to get done.

So I'm in a lot of meetings. It's essentially my job to be in meetings and make decisions. On a normal day, I'm in 6-7 hours worth of meetings. Right now I could be in 14 hours of meetings per day and I still wouldn't get to all of the business critical stuff, but whatever. I very literally spend my days jumping from one meeting to another.

(Side note: Microsoft Teams for the mother-effin win. I can't believe I ever slummed it with GoToMeeting or WebEx. Teams is sooooo much better.)

So, Mila is being super needy. I spend my days in meetings. She decided she was staying wherever I was all day today. I happened to be in her bedroom because our dogs are jerks and won't let me work from my home office. They bark nonstop the second I go up there, but Mila's room is at the far corner of the house and always quiet. Mila followed me to her room first thing this morning and that was that.

Several things happened.

First, I had a leader team meeting where I had to present some project updates. It just so happens that as I was reviewing a super critical project, Mila decided it was time for her to get dressed for the day. Basically, she was running back and forth in the background behind my computer the entire time I was talking. Streaking. Streaking my boss and aaaaallllll of the people who have the word "president" in their title. They didn't see her, BUT I COULD.

Try to keep a straight face while reviewing a project when there's a naked kid RIGHT THERE running back and forth. Go ahead. Try. If you succeed, we will know you're a better person than I am.

After that whole episode, I tried to convince Mila to go find another part of the house to exist in. Any part of the house. Her response, "Mom, this is MY room. I can be here if I want to be."

That's great considering she hasn't slept in her own room for like three years. I didn't know she knew it was her room.

Another meeting had extra special guests - every single stuffed animal Mila owns. She decided they all needed to sit in my chair with me, so she kept piling them on. It's a good thing she's short because there's only so much you can adjust your webcam so that your co-workers don't see your fuzzy little stuffed unicorn.

At the end of all of my meetings, Mila decided it was time to voice all of her opinions. For what it's worth, I have explained to her that it's my job to be in meetings. It's how I get money to buy her toys. Mommy sits through a project update and Mila gets a new doll. It is that simple. Thus, at the end of it all, Mila turned to me and said, "You get money for doing THAT?"

I'm not sure if she was impressed or horrified.

Day Two

Caution: Rant ahead. If you aren't in a place where reading a rant is a thing you want to do, bail now. I totally understand.

Ahem.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH OUR SCHOOL DISTRICT?

::sigh::

So ... schools across the nation are adjusting to the ever-changing state of life with COVID-19 in wildly different ways. There is no "right" way to handle any of it, but I'm pretty sure our district has found the exact wrong way.

First of all, they weren't at all at the forefront of closing down. Our district was fully intending to continue classes this week and only stopped because the Governor said so. Kids were not sent home with anything on Friday. Teachers were not asked to prepare for the inevitable. It was business as usual. In fact, Alexis had cheer try-outs Friday night along with a HUGE group of other girls, even after the Governor declared schools closed.

Let's contrast with a neighboring district, shall we? I have a STEM outreach program with a high school. I mentor a group of girls on careers in engineering. I am not an engineer, but as a Product Manager, I'm super good at telling them what to do. We meet every Thursday to review progress on their project. They're designing a real product that my company will "finish out," so to speak. When I was there last week, it was very clear that every student and staff member knew they would not be in the school on Monday. Teachers were using the time between classes to complete a training on how to use the virtual classroom tool that the district had already decided to use. In fact, the same teachers were required to have 15 days worth of lesson plans prepared by the end of the day. Every single person in that building was clearly preparing to be working remotely on Monday. Chromebooks were being taken home, kids who didn't have access to Wifi had been identified, and solutions had already been put into place.

I checked in with my teaching peer today. She's up and running, albeit with her own kids sitting next to her making her crazy. There was very little disruption.

Guess what I got today from our school? NOTHING USEFUL. Emails went out with ideas for things kids could do while they are off, but the email made it extremely clear that the district fully expects to return to business as usual on March 30. Mila is supposed to do some sort of BINGO game and Alexis has a poem to write and some other nonsense, but all suggestions are exactly that - suggestions. Nothing they do will be graded or "counted" academically. It's just for fun and it's obvious that the teachers considered it "for fun" and didn't put major effort into it. I do not fault the teachers for this. They were clearly all given the same instructions and followed those instructions. They're also dealing with crazy times just like the rest of us, and I would absolutely do the minimum if I were in the same situation. Also, since no arrangements were made in advance to give kids access to technology, they really can't assign anything useful. But, no worries! They'll be back on March 30!

I work as part of a global team so I get a lot of information about how COVID-19 has tracked in various countries. We are currently 9-10 days behind France and tracking EXACTLY in line with them. The entire country of France shut down yesterday. WE ARE NOT RETURNING TO LIFE AS USUAL ON MARCH 30. I would love to be wrong about that, but I will be more surprised if kids go back to school this year than I will be if they don't.

Basically, kids in our district are going to lose half a year.

But you know what my girls won't lose? A SINGLE SECOND OF DANCE INSTRUCTION.

In even more startling news, the dance studio that both girls take classes at has moved to fully online instruction. Mila only has one class. She already has a video of her class for the week and another video with her recital choreography. On top of that, she has a worksheet activity to do. She'll continue to get video classes for as long as needed, which is fantastic and amazing because she did the class she has four times already. The teachers worked a zillion hours over the weekend to make content available and they are basically superheroes for doing it.

All of Alexis' competitions for the next month are cancelled, but she has classes headed her way as well. They seriously will not miss a beat, despite the giant interruption to our routines.

A dance studio adjusted faster and more effectively than our school district. That's ... ugh.

Is this whole COVID-19 thing over yet? I don't think the super nerd Big Kid or the extra extroverted Tiny Human can survive weeks - or even months -  without school.

Day One

Well, that escalated quickly.

It was only five days ago that I was sitting in a co-worker's office giving my opinion about his vacation plans. He had a Disney vacation scheduled for this week, a vacation that his 6 and 8-year old kids have been looking forward to for a year, and he had until the end of the day to decide whether he was canceling or not. At the time, I was seated squarely on top of the fence. On one hand, if things stayed steady, his little family might have been able to have a Disney vacation with relatively small crowds. On the other hand ... well, here we are.

Disney canceled for him.

In those five days, the situation has changed dramatically. It's become very clear that everything 2020 is going to be defined by COVID-19 and I probably should just teach Mila those words because HOOOBOY IS SHE PISSED ABOUT EVERYTHING. She might as well give her anger a name.

I like that it has a name, personally. Coming to terms with the fact that healthy, symptom-free people can spread this nonsense has been ... ugh. Y'all, I have traveled A LOT this year. I was in London just as this whole thing started and I was there with people had just traveled from China. In other words, I am only two degrees of separation away from direct contact with the start of this all. I may have been carrying COVID-19 and not even known it. None of my team that came from China ever showed any symptoms, but still. They could have passed it to me and I may have been passing it to others and I never knew.

I mean, I don't get sick. That's a thing I have admitted out loud numerous times. It's never come back to haunt me. Mila can puke all over me and I will be completely disgusted and hold a major grudge, but I won't catch whatever she has. There was even a point when Alexis had strep and I took the quick test for funsies. I had no symptoms at all, but tested positive. Apparently some people can just carry sickness around without getting it?

(Don't be jealous. It's likely a result of growing up in less than ideal conditions. IMMUNITY DUE TO EXPOSURE, HUZZAH!)

So, everything is cancelled. Nobody is going anywhere. This is going to be all sorts of fun, and by fun I mean Mila showed up for a video call just in time to show my company's leadership team that she had a naked Elsa doll. It was pretty great.

We'll get through it, though. Today I also had calls with people from Singapore. They are on the other side of this whole pandemic thing and are nearing normalcy. We just need to do a good job of keeping our distance from one another and we'll get there, too.