I actually didn’t take a ton of photos or videos in the first very first days of our lockdown. So this post may not be as fun as later ones, as it will be mostly text and screenshots. Once we got a bit further into it, I started thinking more consciously about documenting this lockdown period as a moment in time, as you’ll see in subsequent posts.
Anyway, on with the lockdown…
DAY 1: Friday, March 13
Our fifth-grader wasn’t at home when we woke up Friday morning, because she had been on a (well-timed!) overnight class field trip the night before. (They squeezed that one in just under the wire.) As for her older and younger sisters, they headed off to school on Friday the 13th knowing it would be the last day at school for at least three weeks, and very probably longer than that. Indeed, Becky and I felt fairly sure it was the last day of in-person school for the entire year (which would prove correct).
Alas, I didn’t think to take any “last day of school” pictures of the kids. But Becky related a conversation she had at pickup Friday with the principal, who overheard her telling our third-grader to be sure and grab anything from her classroom that she might want for the summer. The principal did a double-take and asked Becky if she really thought school would be out for the rest of the year. Becky said yes, and explained that a mathematical extrapolation of Colorado’s case growth rate showed that, with exponential increases, we would likely have thousands of cases by the time school was supposed to resume in early April. The principal seemed stunned by this notion. (Keep in mind, at this point Colorado only had ~60 confirmed cases.)
Fast forward three weeks, and, well…
Anyway… as for me, although my employer had reaffirmed late on Thursday the 12th that they remained open, and did not “anticipate closing” — though they had contingency plans in place for various scenarios, including the “remote possibility” of a shutdown of the building — I elected to work from home Friday, out of an abundance of caution after feeling ill at work the day before. Also, I frankly anticipated that a general work-from-home policy would be instituted soon, so I wasn’t sure there was much point in risking one last(?) trip to the office on Friday, considering I had brought home enough work when I left Thursday to keep me busy at home for quite a while. So, I set up shop Friday morning in my basement “man cave” — which, as I then suspected & now know, would become my sole office for the foreseeable future.
Let’s see, what else happened on Friday? Oh, yeah, Frozen 2 was released early on Disney Plus, which got me singing:
Oh, and another important thing that happened on Friday: I texted our contact at Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue about possibly fostering some kittens.
More to come on that in a later post. 🙂
At dinner time, we had an extended discussion with the girls about what their modified screen-time rules would be during the “extended spring break.” (I may post audio from some of that conversation here later.)
Finally, there was this tweet Friday evening:
DAY 2: Saturday, March 14
In consultation with us (well, mostly Becky), the girls set up a whiteboard outlining their day-to-day responsibilites and plans during the upcoming period. Our seventh-grader labeled it the “Corona Panic Plan” board. 😂
As I write this (on April 3), that whiteboard remains a daily staple and centerpiece, in the same exact spot in the living room as three weeks ago.
Also, apropos of nothing, here’s a video of our lizard, Spike, eating mealworms on the 14th:
Last but not least, on April 14, Ted Cruz unironically & favorably retweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — surely a sign of the apocalypse, if ever there was one. 🙂
DAY 3: Sunday, March 15
Sunday morning brought a new update from my employer, affirming that the firm “remains fully open for business,” but explicitly permitting employees to “intermittently” work from home, barring a business need to be physically in the office. My immediate supervisor followed up a few hours later with an e-mail to her team, telling us she didn’t think there was a need for any of us to be physically in the office this week, and making clear that she preferred we “all work from home if possible.” She added that if we disagree, we should tell her and discuss the issue.
The only photos I took on Sunday were of our TV screen during the (final) Biden-Sanders presidential debate.
Note the social distancing!
In Sunday screenshots, news broke that night that Los Angeles was enacting the first (of many) “Italy-style” shutdowns that we would see in the U.S.:
Also, this:
And this: