Dispatches from my living room: Coronavirus day...3? 4?

It's hard to know when, exactly, coronalife started for us. Today is Friday, March 13. As it happens, my spring break started last Friday, so I wouldn't have been in class this week anyway. But by mid-week, it was pretty clear that things were not going to be "business as usual" any time soon.

Fortunately, E (daughter, 11yo), G (husband) and I are all fine. We got the call today that E's school will be closed for at least two weeks, and earlier this week we learned that my college courses will all be moving online for the next month. So, we'll be home, staring at each other and thankful for electricity (and the internet--although that's a blessing AND a curse, isn't it, since instruction will continue for all teachers and students in this house).

The prospect of being cooped up for a few weeks is unsettling, but more for the reasons behind it than the actual experience of it. We're lucky that we like each other. The main thing I have to keep reminding myself is that we are cancelling everything to AVOID disaster, not BECAUSE of disaster. (That could change, but fingers crossed...)

In fact, it was a gorgeous spring day today, and I was so distracted by corona-news that I almost didn't notice that it's too early in the year to be so warm, or for our daffodils to be up. Silver linings, right?

I'm starting this blog because I have family and friends who are elsewhere, and I want to keep you informed of what's happening. I also feel an impulse to document it. This experience is happening all over the world at once, and yet we each have a different set of circumstances and a different context.

So that's it, so far. We're all going to be home for a while, and provided I can figure out a halfway decent way to deliver instruction to students who didn't sign up to take an online course, we should be fine.

More soon! xoxo, Lex