Anyone else getting a dose of winter today?
Kicking off week two of homeschooling the kids / e-teaching my students. Weekend was lowkey, and nice thanks to lots of facetime with my parents and siblings. Spending lots of time in the yard and in parks (six feet away from other families) helped too. My sister facetimed into her good friend's wedding- they switched to the backyard with a judge and parents only in attendance. I really do feel for all these brides coming here with their plans thrown off.
How's everyone else?
Re: Snowy Monday
Pretty chill weekend. We did a virtual game night with some friends on Saturday; it was actually really fun. We saw my family yesterday. My sister has turned into a raging bitch in this whole thing. She had the audacity to say it's a blessing from god so that people can spend more time with their families. Her total lack of empathy for anyone that isn't her is astounding. I think that's going to be it for seeing my sister until this is over.
I'm starting to get bored with the meal options in the house. Fresh Market is doing meal kits now. Is anyone else sick of spaghetti?
So I wasn't around much last week. Last Saturday (the 14th) I woke up with a fever of 102. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that I haven't had a fever since 1995. I don't get fevers. But I had sever body aches and a cough. I called my doctor's office, sat on hold for a good 30 minutes and then was instructed to go to their urgent care.I had to call once I was at urgent care (another 30 mins on the phone), and then was told I would be swabbed in my car. They test for the flu (A only!) and Covid-19. Let me tell you - the swabbing fucking hurt! They have to go very up up your nostril. I had been tested for the flu before, but I don't remember it being that intense!
My flu results came back right away - negative. They told me 3-5 days for the coronavirus test. In the meantime, I had to notify my job, and then everyone was told to work from home. My results didn't come back until this Friday, and they were negative. My fever had finally broke on Wednesday and I was feeling much better. But shit, I was scared.
I live in NY and work in NJ, so pretty much everything is shut down. My job is considered an essential business and most of us are still working from home. Sales are obviously down by a lot, and we had to lay off people last week. It's really sad and upsetting.
DH is on work day 2 being home. He's using some of this time to tidy the basement while other things appear to be slow. Woo hoo!
Kids are underfoot and hopefully the rain holds off so they can have a "recess" this afternoon.
DH did a run to a friend's brewery on Saturday where they had a drive through tiki bar pick up. He picked up two cases and headed home. We ran through the Costco grab and go food and now have the frozen and fresh stash. I have a lot of chicken broth and canned chicken so tonight it's soup and we'll see if that lasts into tomorrow.
I made homemade salt dough yesterday as a craft for the kids and then gave Chiquita the comment that "This is fun but I am not going to keep dipping into our food for crafts. " It was an odd conversation to have and one I didn't envision a month ago. DH and I are very fortunate and the comment wasn't intended to display financial concern - just to indicate that isolating also means not using up food for fun.
Sunday DH took the training wheels off Chiquito's bike. We have a bit of a hill in the backyard and he now balances! Last night when he snuggled before bed he was really excited about his progress. I'm counting blessings at how fortunate we are. There's nothing quite like this situation to put that into perspective. I made all of us go around the table to talk about what we're thankful for. I hope this is something we can continue because this is the time that the latest toys matter way less than some of our basics.
Baby has a mild cold. I'm also dealing with the second round of mastitis, luckily this time it's mild, last time i had a 102 temp and all the flu symptoms, plus my boobs hurt so much I could hardly move. If it doesn't calm down by tomorrow morning i'm going to call in for a prescription because I do not want to deal with that again.
Weekend was good! we were super productive around the house Saturday while the baby napped, then went for a really long walk and hung out in the evening. Yesterday we facetimed with both sets of parents and one of H's sisters. They're all missing seeing the babe in real life
Fair amount of snow here, but it is wet and fluffy, so I suspect it won't stick around. My rabbits saw it, went nuts for about 15 minutes, then realized how wet it was making their feet so they went back inside.
We did an online gaming event on Saturday, online church on Sunday, and then I dropped off a kettle on my parents' porch and went for a walk with the dog in their area. Their kettle broke, and my mom called me saying that they were boiling water for tea on the stove. I've had a random spare kettle in my house since I got married because my husband seemed to have two of everything - the thought was that the crappy old kettle from the 90's that he had would soon break, so he needed a back-up. Well, it's still going strong, so now my parents have a "new" kettle. They are going to trade us for an old sword that they found - seems like a good deal.
Hubby and I are working from home today - business as usual for me, bit of an adjustment for him. He doesn't know what is happening with education, so he doesn't want to give his students assignments only for it just to be busy-work. So he is tidying up the basement while checking emails to see if his students need anything in the meantime.
Saturday - BabyKitten refused nap and promptly fell asleep at dinner.
Sunday - got a little cabin fever so when M had to pick up something, BabyKitten and I hopped in the car too. We just stayed in the car, but still. It wasn't the house lol
She didn't nap again, but she was ok to chill in her crib for the full 2hrs {unlike Saturday when she kept removing clothes and diaper so we had to go get her}
While I was just lying on the couch for a bit, BabyKitten smashed a toy against my elbow. Same elbow I hurt not long ago. M got mad and raised his voice {not yelling, to be clear. More stern} and told her that was bad and we don't hit people.
I'm in tears - because I was 1000% sure at that moment my elbow was shattered! - and BabyKitten started to sob. I told M to deal with her unless I passed out lol
Which I didn't, but it's still sore a.f today
Weather hasn't complied with us to go for a walk, but hopefully next weekend. Maybe get BabyKitten out in a field.
Got news today we're slowly prepping to wfh - even me! I genuinely didn't think I would be, so that's a bonus that I'll be wfh since that means I get full pay vs 60% because employment insurance doesn't pay full.
Question for those of you in locked down states. How are people traveling through the state from out of state handled? DD is wanting me to come up next weekend. Illinois is on lock down but Indiana is not. I'm not sure I will go because I have never made it without a bathroom break. I don't really want to use a public bathroom even if I have my own lysol wipes to clean stuff. However, I really want to see the boys, and she might need me for childcare.
Plan on working on Italian and organizing more photos this afternoon. Already worked out but should start doing weight training.
You want to get a union, Karen? B/c that's how you get unions. We've already had one paralegal walk out this morning. She's quit. Another one is using her PTO to stay home b/c she's scared.
I just want to be at home. I'm 1000% absolutely willing to work from home and even engage in a different shift so as to not strain the server. But being in the office is hard to deal with right now. And the one person in charge is not in the office 90% of the time and doesn't even work anymore, but seems to think we all should.
@climbingwife, wow! I'm so glad you are okay. I'm sorry to hear they've already had to lay some people off at your office.
@levioosa, I'm sorry to hear about your FI's grandmother! Good luck to your grandma and her surgery.
They've done a lockdown for my state (Louisiana) that goes into effect today at 5PM and goes until April 13th. Just in time, my work (really, the client I work for) finally got WFH figured out and implemented yesterday. It took me about an hour this morning to figure out...and that was with my IT husband's help, lol...but I'm in! TBH, I thought I would run into more technical difficulties, so I'm a little shocked it is working as well as it is. I've actually never had a job where I could WFH, so it's a little surreal. Technically, I am using my home laptop to "drive" my work computer. So it's sure bumpy and slow, lol. But it works and that's the main thing.
However, here is the sucky part. There is only so much work I can do from home. Probably not 40 hours worth. The office is in an industry that is on the "essential" list, ie engineering. So their office is still open. Therefore their policy of WFH or come into the office...or take vacation/AWOP, still applies as far as they are concerned.
At this point, I'm erring on the side of taking extra vacation time to "supplement" what I can't do at home. Because there is nothing I do at the office that is "critical" for the projects (filing/copying). I'm lucky to have a lot of vacation time. And, I know, REALLY lucky to have a job. But I'm also PISSED they won't let us also use our sick time, considering the circumstances.
I'm going to see how things play out. But, if I start eating up my vacation time too fast, I might go to the office here and there. And/or I might call my endocrinologist and see what he recommends. Because if he says I can't go into the office, then I can use my sick time to supplement.
Technically, "diabetes" is one of the "at risk" groups. Though, as usual, they just lump all us Type 1s and Type 2s together. Even though they are different conditions. Nothing I've read about makes it sound like I'm more at-risk, since I'm otherwise healthy and don't have any complications. And, while Type 1 is an auto-immune disorder, my immune system isn't any weaker than anybody else's. But, I'll let my doctor make that call, if it comes to that. And I'd guess he'd say "yeah, don't go to work", just to be on the safe side.
Almost everyone from my office is WAH now, with very few exceptions. There's been a FB group started and everyone is acting like they're new. I'm a little cynical, as I am among the first 5 people in my company to ever work from home full time. I've been doing it almost 9 years.
We finished getting all the food/stuff we needed to truly hunker down over the weekend. If we don't have it, we don't need it. We watched the Tiger King documentary. It's truly...wild (pun intended). I'd listened to the podcast about it, but seeing it is a whole new experience. Heh.
I did a ton of housework over the weekend. I organized the shit out of our pantry stuff and freezers. I also started re-watching Schitt's Creek. And I did a lot of coloring in my swear word coloring books.
I stopped by my parents twice to bring them stuff. Mom is doing better, so that's good. I just hate that we cannot be with her at all. Video chatting is just OK. The kids love it though. They are hilarious and my parents just have the best time with all them talking to them at once.
My sweet nephew who's almost two has now learned to say, "LOVE YOU! BYE! MWAH!" at the end of phone conversations.
@VarunaTT this is just insane. Im mad FOR you!
@mrsconn23, sorry you cant be with your mom but video conferences are all the rage. I used zoom the first time Sat and liked it. Speaking of. How does this even happen?
https://big955chicago.iheart.com/content/2020-03-23-woman-forgets-shes-on-video-conference-uses-bathroom-as-co-workers-watch/?Pname=local_social&Keyid=socialflow&Sc=editorial
i just had a call with my doc vs. going in - sure she couldn’t take my vitals but I did labs last week for her and now have new meds to try to get my glucose levels down. Here’s hoping.
I work in personal injury. There's nothing, I mean nothing, emergency hearing that ever happens in these types of cases. I could make up something that might be an emergency and could possibly happen, but in 15 years, I've never had one happen, so the probability is pretty low.
Also, we could do it all from home. 90% of my job is perfectly possible to do from home. The other 10% could be managed with shifts for the office. This is a terrible mix of paranoia (they won't work if we let them work from home or they'll steal information) and denial (only 2.4% mortality rate, only attacking the old) ((all things I've personally heard my employer or office manager say)) and it's going to get people hurt and killed.
I had to say the same to my mom. My brother hasn't gone to work but his BF is considered an essential employee and has to go. My brother does my laundry at my parents' house. I told her she really shouldn't let him in to do it and she hemmed and hawed about it saying "well, I'd put out a sandwich and would stay on the other side of the room". I had to remind her that this is in the air for 3 hours. If she's going to allow him over to do laundry he needs to let himself in and out through the basement, cannot go upstairs, she cannot go downstairs while he's there and she has to wait 3 hours after he leaves before she DOES go into the same area and when she does she has to wipe down every surface he touched with Clorox or Lysol. He can wear dirty underwear.
It's not worth the risk.
Not the same but my parents are in FL for the winter and can't decide when to come back. Now that IN is stay at home order and presumably other states keep following suit they're not sure if they will come back or wait. I think mom wants to come back and dad wants to wait. Personally I'd rather they stay since my grandparents are there too and this way they can help them if needed.