So after talking with @anakinfansince1983 I thought it would be helpful to just to start a thread that was kinda away from all the news of the day (which change by the second) and be kinda a place to just kinda free flow whatever is on your mind including being a emotional support for each other or in other words.

I guess just a place to get away from the news as it is not going to get any better for quite awhile now and share experiences, thoughts, support, ideas etc. I guess I will kick it off with this that for @Runjedirun along with others who have kids and are struggling out of ideas to keep your kids entertain and learning, Cincy Zoo is doing a "virtual tour" everyday about different animals:

https://www.youtube.com/user/CincinnatiZooTube/videos

Our older boys love it as we done an animal a day as we watch about it and then look up more about it online. My daughter as not been a big fan of them as much (though she started to watch it today more) therefore we been watching some of the virtual tours they have from the Shedd since she loves the "fishies".

I can shall more ideas as well including my wife and I have set up a classroom for them and we turn our spare room into "our office" since will be both working from home until the school year ends which we also designated as the only place will talk about stuff like bills, what is going on etc. Every place else we want to make stress free for the kids sake and frankly our own. We understand this will go on for weeks and weeks therefore no sense in stressing out wondering when it will end because we know it won't be for a long time. Just take it two weeks at a time like Fauci says and go from there.

Anyways I have so many random thoughts I could fill up an entire board but really just wanted to kick start this thread as a place (if it's okay with the moderators) to just escape which brings me to my last thought. Our state has now closed for two weeks therefore my wife and I talk earlier. We pretty much decided that we are not going to pay attention to the news other then look for alerts on our phone when it comes to local announcements (in case the groceries store change their policies) because we been already been in self hunker down mode since school got out Friday and other then to grab my parents some stuff (mainly their medicines and a few other items for them and us which in their case I left at the doorstep) I have not left the house other then to take a walk. I been really struggling with my mental health because of this since I am a person who wants to go out and help in anyway I can but for right now I being told to hunker down and stay home so that is what I am doing. So other then checking for local alerts we are going to stay off the news basically for awhile or try to. It's not going to get any better and we are just going to focus on being strong for our kids and being support for people who need it since were in good shape all things being equal. I feel so guilty about this though as I know so many others cannot do this right now but I feel like this will keep us all healthier and that is what we need right now. I honestly feel selfish that I am not doing more. Should I?

 

My son has calmed down now It's hard enough on us adults that our world has changed. Luckily there are two of us parents here and my husband and I make a pretty good team. When one of us can't find the answer the other one usually can. Or for some reason the kids just prefer a different parent for different situations.

 

I would not even know what I do without my wife. She read today about in Italy and France the majority of bad cases were men. They are not sure why but it's mostly been men. Perhaps it could because they are huge smokers but either way they been the majority of bad cases. She reads it and goes, "okay other then our walks you are not going outside as I will do the grocery shopping." I tried to fight her in it but she is too stubborn to win something like that and added, " besides I know how to cook so know how to use ingredients across different meals plus I am using your credit card".

 

Yeah, apparently smoking has gone way up among younger generations in Europe. (as if I didn't have enough reasons to be thankful for never being a smoker)

 

Usually I hate my son's sleep over birthday parties. I only host them because he likes them. Never thought I'd be so heartbroken to cancel one. Both my kids are disappointed. I told my son the truth, that maybe we can reschedule. We have to wait and see how long this lasts. We ordered dinner last night from our favorite restaurant and today I'll bake the cake as planned. Anyone want cake? Going to be a lot of leftovers.

 

I am working on trying to get my elderly mother's many prescriptions switched over to a mail delivery service. It's difficult because she's in another part of the state and gets mixed up enough already about all her meds, so her ability to help me get it all figured out correctly is limited. She also doesn't have a smartphone and has never used a computer, so I'm trying to set the online account up for her and I will monitor it. Having some issues setting it up though and can't seem to get through to the customer service of the delivery service.

This is just one of many worries I have for her right now. She lives alone and has virtually no support system where she is. Tried to get grocery delivery accounts set up for her too, but delivery dates are quite backed up. She normally drives to get her own groceries and other shopping, and is physically able to do that, but of course I want to limit her need to leave her apartment. But then on the other hand, staying home mostly alone all day every day isn't great for her mentally/emotionally either. :-(

 

Yeah my @Juliet316 cousin who is a plastic surgeon that is now been pulled into other duties said they are bracing for a ton of young people who smoke to come in. Again never been more thankful to never been a smoker in my life. Still upset that my wife is going the shopping but for practical and it seems for now health reasons as well. We are well stocked but family of five does go thru stuff quickly plus she does not want my parents going so she is going to buy for them too and just dropped them off at the door.

And I understand @Runjedirun as we had planned my daughters birthday party for the end of next month and it was going to be her party with kiddies but that is postpone at least to end of May if not June. We decided will have it anyway no matter how many months late but not until it's truly safe to have it. So we are going to have a party here (whatever we can come up with) and do some facetime/Skype with family members.

Yeah @Pensivia that is a problem for a lot of people right now. My parents were thank god back from Florida just before this all broke for a funeral of all things so I was able to get their medicine (which they got a three month prescription for) while my wife dropped off groceries as we left it all on their porch. They are hoping to have deliveries up and running better in a few weeks at least who I talked to in the grocery business. Ditto pick up orders. They are in the midst of a big hiring frenzy (ditto all the food producers) for a whole slew of reasons so the hope is they can get more pickup and delivery services running better soon. Obviously it means less people in the store which is good for everyone and plus they can watch hoarding more. So far he says most people been pretty reasonable but it only takes a few bad apples for a run on certain products to happen. See TP, hand sanitizer etc for reference.

And it's good you bring up emotional/mental state. That is something the medical profession is concerned with as not enough people are thinking about that.

 

Just another crazy thing about this situation usually @Pensivia I'd be happy to hear about your mother's ability to live alone at her age. Whatever age I live to be I want to be self sufficient. Good luck with everything. I know this is stressful.

Something I don't think I mentioned that I have been trying not to get upset about. When I spoke to my younger son's teacher last week (1st grade son has autism) she said she had left her lap top at school cause she didn't realize they might close so suddenly. I'm now very concerned she won't get that lap top until all of this is behind us and so, no schooling for the son who really needs it. Honestly there is nothing I can do, it's an unprecedented situation and I am just trying to focus on now. There's going to be so much to deal with when we try to come back out of our homes and I really hope we can help each other readjust.

 

That is just ridiculous @Runjedirun though our school has at least one administrator on schedule and in the building from 8am-2pm (my boss said they were originally going to do shifts by day but now since were cancelled to end of April they are going each take one week each) which is now the "school hours" Monday-Friday therefore if for some reason we need to get the building we can by appointment though I think a few of us are going to be pressed into action in order to help with food deliveries/picks up for students who are in need. Therefore should be someone in the building that can let her so she gain grab her laptop.

Btw I am shocked they told her not to grab that. We were told on Monday during our institute that we must grab everything we need in case we don't come back even though we could get back in the building if we had to.

And I wrote this in another thread and perhaps it belong here instead but I think my first celebrity crush due to shutdown. My boys been asking for Star Wars as their binge movies and we been watching the ST (my parents bought both my brother and I digital copies) so I think in the middle of another showing of TLJ *gag* I realized I might be crushing on Daisy Ridley. Now it just isnt how she looks as I read and watch interviews with her and I like her personality. She is smart, funny and feisty. But yeah I think I am celebrity crushing on her which makes me feel guilty. Not that I didnt tell my wife, I did (she just laugh and said she can see it) but rather i am 42 and she is only 27. I feel like a creeper.

 

Thank you @Luke02 and @Runjedirun for your comments.

I have tentative good news on the subject of my mom's Rxs...finally got a hold of customer service yesterday and got some of my questions answered about how the deliveries/refills will work, and confirmed that the service did receive the order I had her doc call in toward the end of the week, so I think *fingers crossed* that situation is stabilizing (though I won't feel more at ease until I hear that she's receiving them as scheduled).

The groceries and other household staples issue is still unresolved though--my mom told me she went to her local super Walmart this morning (unfortunately she didn't get there in time to take advantage of the "senior hours," because it's still not fully daylight there until right at the end of the designated hour and she doesn't feel comfortable driving until it's daylight) and she said things were really picked over. I hope the shelf stock situation stabilizes there by the time she needs to get more stuff (and still hoping to have delivery service set up for her by that point).

And Runner--that's so frustrating about the school issue for your son. I know parents in general have so much on their plates right now trying to manage all the e-/home schooling. Hopefully the issue can be resolved soon!.

 

No one has been allowed in any school buildings in our county since Thursday March 12. The only plan they ever had in place was for Monday March 16 at first teacher's were going to go in that day just to do some training for "possible distance learning". But things got real here on the 12th and our county in particular shut things down fast. A teacher tested positive and now in the county next to us 2 more teachers and a principal. There's been a lot of emails assuring us they are "Working on a plan." But if they won't let anyone in the buildings I don't know what that plan can be.

I do know cases here are escalating (or more than likely testing is finally picking up.) That's why I am bracing myself for the possibility the teacher never gets the lap top. What's important is everyone's health and safety. Other stuff comes later.

 

My guess is @Runjedirun is they will find a way to get that teacher a laptop or chrome book so she can work even if she needs to order one. And yeah it's a combination of cases are obviously going up but also too it's partly due to the back log of tests are finally getting done.

My bff wife is a special ed early ed teacher and I can ask her for some ideas if you get in a pinch. And again my kids are really like the YouTube videos from different zoos. Will watch a video and then look up what the animal is.

 

The scholastic stuff works for about an hour and my son went along with it for three days. He might be up for it again on Monday. He flat out refused to do school on Friday and I don't even remember Thursday cause I was so freakin' busy on Thursday with my job. He's going through a lot emotionally too, not understanding why school and baseball and birthday parties and everything is cancelled and we can't even tell him when they will be a thing in his life again. Because trust me even if we give an estimate he will remember and hold us to it.

I've been letting the kids just relax this weekend. I'd like to try the zoo thing tomorrow, but unless our state shuts down (not likely) I got to go to my office (grrr my company just isn't willing to let us 100% work form home if it's not mandated.) So tomorrow since I won't be here and my husband is working it's just nice that the kids get food

Oh and I have a MUCH worse celebrity crush going on @Luke02 I'll be 42 in June and I kept trying to tell myself I didn't have a crush on Trae Young when I was watching Hawks games

 

For 20 years on active duty, I stayed up to date on chemical and biological warfare training. Now I'm feeling like I'm in a big exercise to test my readiness. Too bad I turned in my gas mask when I retired. Sometimes I feel like there's an evaluator watching and grading my behavior and threatening to downgrade my score and send me to remedial training class. I just want to hear that the exercise is over and we can go back to business as usual. My area is under a state of emergency, which isn't exactly urgent or onerous cuz we're way out in the country and no one is stopping us going outside, but I still find I'm getting back into the mindset I had in SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), especially the PoW camp training.

 

Sounds like you are the right person to have around for this @Sarge and why they aren't letting the military run more point on this I don't know but this isn't the thread for it. This is the escape pod after all.

I hope against hope @Runjedirun that more governors come to their senses and shut their states down. More they wait the worst they make it for everyone long term. Let me know how the zoo videos go. Again Cincy Zoo is making one video a day but others zoos have other videos. The Shedd keeps my daughter interested better but keep in mind she isn't four yet.

And hahaha I do feel a bit better about my new celebrity crush of Daisy Ridley. My wife and I normally leave three spirals out to leave notes, thoughts, concerns etc for each other since we can be passing ships in the night at times. Typically they are green (happy), yellow (middle of the road) and red (angry). For this we just have a purple spiral. It was in the spiral I told her I been crushing on Daisy Ridley and been guilty for a slew of reasons. She said she thought it was funny/cute and said when she can she will dress up like Rey one night when the kids are asleep.

That got me thinking. Anyone thinking about a list of things they want to do when this is over? They can small, big or even unrealistic.

Oh and btw @Runjedirun if you are 42 like me, does that make you a 96er like me?

 

Maryland shut down all non essential businesses. This means I now have to work from home since my office is in Maryland. Luckily our construction sites are considered essential so somehow, someway I get paid and keep my job (at least for now). Virginia officially closed schools for the year. All the county could say so far is they are continuing to work on distance learning plans. So we shall see. Today my 1st grader diligently worked on the scholastic free lesson. He seems to like those, but the whole lesson takes about 30 minutes and then he's "Done with school." I tried to get him to let me show him a YouTube video because I wanted to see if he'd watch the Zoo videos. No, he wouldn't even let me type in the search bar. Maybe he'll bend sometime. Maybe we'll get some direction from the school. Just gotta wait and see.

Sixth grader is doing very well, he even did a 10 minute kick boxing video in the basement with me as P.E. just before lunch. We decided it was raining too hard for walking to be worth it today.

All I really want to do is the same thing I have wanted to do since I was 15. Go see Wild Bill Hickok's grave. Can you believe I bought the whole family plane tickets to South Dakota on Cyber Monday. I am pretty sure I'm going to lose the money At least I can cancel the hotel and rental car. But yea, I have wanted to do this for SO LONG, I finally made the plans and this happens.

 

Week two: my teenage son has entered the "sleep until noon" phase of his lockdown. It's spring break, technically, so why not really.

 

As long as he doesn't push it to waking up around 18:30 in the morning it's fine

 

The main thing @Runjedirun they are doing something. It's going to take time with e-learning. Everyone knows it's going to be a little bit to start but hopefully as time moves on, they get used to it. Teachers should not be expecting at the beginning at least that is what we are being told. Give everyone some time to get used to this.

Again @Rylo Ken that is why I am keeping my "office hours" later in the afternoon. I fully expect no teenager to be up before noon for the next few months.

Today I must admit was hard. Really hard. I think it was because I felt like things were finally being taken seriously and at least we were going in the right direction. But every time we seem to take a step in the right direction and a bit of good news, it is gets swallowed by bad news due to mind numbing dumb decisions. Guess that serves me right for flipping the news on. Nothing locally is going to change anytime soon (I fully expect our shutdown to last 60 days) so I need to just keep following that. I always tell the kids think locally act globally yet I am failed miserably at that today. I need to make sure I start doing what I preach. Focus on what I can do here and nothing more. I am on Spring Break but I am getting everything ready for e-learning days and reach out to the administrator in charge of community outreach to see they need help with logistics since I have experience with that.

So I am trying to put today (now yesterday) bad day away and take as a day to self pity and use tomorrow to spend more time with the kids and get more prep time in since those things I can help with and not worry about what is going on TV which I have no control over.

 

Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this, but people have complained that this sort of thing is triggering if it’s posted in the mental health thread. For the last several weeks I’ve found myself so angry all the time. It really started with Super Tuesday, when Biden won a commanding lead in states he hadn’t even campaigned in. I’d worked very hard for the Bernie campaign, and I found myself looking at my fellow Americans and wondering, “Why are you like this?”

That’s kind of an everyday thing to be mad about, though. People’s preferred candidates lose all the time, and eventually you get over it and go to whatever your Plan B is.

But then the pandemic hit and the economy went all to hell, and suddenly I’m hearing **** I never thought I’d hear in my life—basically that it’s cool if millions of Americans die, just so long as we and our friends make money. I guess it’s supposed to be all right because a disproportionate number of the dead will be elderly or people with disabilities. I wish I was exaggerating the issue, but I’m not. Here, I found this random Jonathan Bracco guy after a short time scrolling. 7 retweets and 79 likes at the time I posted this:



1.2% of the US population is almost 4 million people. Google claims the US has 7,500 cemeteries. If you imagine each cemetery has 500 free gravesites, which seems like a good, generous number, then that’s 3.7 million available graves. If we did nothing about the Coronavirus pandemic, we would literally run out of graves to put the bodies in.

I don’t really know how Jonathan Bracco et al. figure that more would die in a depression. Perhaps they’re imagining some kind of civil war or famine, although nothing of the kind seems imminent in any of the countries currently locking themselves down against the Coronavirus. Or perhaps the specter of war and famine is just a figleaf on the willingness of Bracco and company to pour lost lives into the stock market the way that Congress pours dollars.

And then there’s folks like Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who appears to have forgotten not to say the quiet part out loud:

So he figures his grandchildren would rather have cash than a living grandfather? That’s sad. I hope that’s not true, because that’s really cold and sad, man.

This has left me feeling horrified, and asking America: WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?! I don’t hear significant numbers of British people saying this kind of stuff, or Canadians, or Venezuelans, or even Chinese people or Italians, who have suffered most. It’s just mentally-warped Americans, who of course like to vote and make political contributions in disproportionate numbers.

Anyway, the whole thing really pisses me off. I wish there was more I could do but complain, hide out at home, and vote (if they let me). But there’s not. So here we are.

 

I understand @poor yorick as I truly think the Tale of Two Cities could break out in the next ten days. Best we can do is let our voices be heard locally and call/email your local officials. Only way this changes is neighborhood by neighborhood.

I think one of the biggest problems top is that too many people just think everything will go back to they it was. It won't. And honestly I don't know if things will be worse in the end or maybe better. I think a lot of that depends on what we do on the days, weeks, months and even years to come. Again could be worse, could be better it really depends what we do going forward but the people who are thinking the world wasn't fundamentally change by this is living in self denial and that isn't good either.

 

Today's been kinda weird. Started off rough because last night I realized that even though my kid isn't a high school senior he is in his final year of elementary school. I had already planned to wear sunglasses so no one would see me cry when we went to watch the sixth grade graduate in June. There will be not sixth grad graduation now and I think I'm the one who's the saddest about that. It'll blow over, it was just another thing I realized we had to miss out on. Luckily work has been super kind today, yesterday emails were flying in and today it's been nice and quiet. I needed a quiet day.

Younger son walked with me and the older son at lunch today. It was great all of us getting out. Unfortunately, the husband and i decided to call and see if a junk removal place would take away our broken, disgusting theater chairs. They were taking up space in our basement and literally flaking everywhere. Well they were more than happy to have business, so we had to haul the chairs out to our front lawn this morning so no one would come in our house and my youngest son loved watching the spectacle and never did school today. I feel really good about our new clean basement. Maybe the younger son will do school tomorrow.

The middle school has figured out lap top pick ups for needy students. And our elementary school is working on distributing computers to 3-6th graders. But what does that mean for K-2? How are they going to do distance learning? I guess we just wait and see.

I know it's hard @poor yorick but try turning off the news and doing something else for a few hours a day. It really helps. Maybe you are already doing this, but it's my best advice.