Week 1 of Captivity and Social Distancing

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Image courtesy of
HyenaReality/freedigitalphotos.net

Week 1 of Captivity

How our week has gone so far:


Sunday

We went to church, possibly for the last time in a month. They had taken great precautions with how the Lord's Supper and the general mingling should occur. Most of the congregation was there, with many of our elderly members missing, which I anticipated.

I teared up when they announced we wouldn't meet again until Easter (hopefully). My church family is dear to me, and the church is there to encourage us in tough times. I do support the decision. It makes sense, and we're trying to continue encouragement from a social distance.

In the afternoon, we got the ominous message I'd been praying not to see for another week: schools were closed. I struggled to rethink my plans for the week and offered to help out the single mom across the street. She needed help with the kids on Wednesday and maybe Thursday, and I told her no problem.

Monday

Can I survive this nightmare of crazy kids at home? That was the question foremost in my mind. My granddaughter is ADHD, and when she's ramped up, she's loud. No really. She's LOUD. I spent a large part of the morning begging her to use an inside voice. The request fell on deaf ears.

Food shortages because, ya know, kids at home, created the need to go to the groucery store. So much for social distancing!

 My granddaughter kept begging for things that I knew were out of stock. She refused to believe me without seeing proof. We were there two hours! When we managed to find a somewhat short line, we still stood in it over thirty minutes. Of course,  my grandson kept asking to go to the bakery. If I had a dollar for every time I told him we were not getting out of line, it would have paid for my groceries!

Tuesday

I had scheduled my taxes for Wednesday but moved it to Tuesday in anticipation of the neighbor's children staying at my house. I hoped there would be very few people there. It's a small office, so the kids could play on tablets quietly during my appointment. (That part worked, fyi.)

BUT, I needed to finalize some details (originally planned to do Monday and Tuesday). My grandson didn't go fifteen minutes with out interrupting me. The result? I left out multiple pieces of information and subtotaled my Excel spreadsheet the wrong way. My grandson was swarming my office by then. I teach Excel, have done so for years, but I'm no match for an eight-year-old ADHD, OCD boy, so I only discovered the error once we were at the appointment.

Wednesday
Image courtesy of pixabay

In-home schoolwork today! Woohoo!

I picked up my grandson's Chromebook and assignments as well as the schoolwork for one of the children I had volunteered to watch that day.

My granddaughter and the older child use Google Classroom already, so they got right to it. For the younger two, it was a struggle. The volume of work bowled me over, and, the chrome books were not cooperating. We couldn't access most of my grandson's assignments. So, instead of getting some of my work done while they worked, I spent most of the day trying to get him working on something. On anything.

I'd hoped the neighbor's kids and mine would be able to play some, but the work took up the whole time they were here. We went right up to dinner time, and my grandson couldn't finish most of his due to messed up connectivity with the websites.

I can't imagine what these teachers went through to get these assignments set up in time. They're staying available for questions during regular school hours, too. We don't pay these men and women enough.

Thursday

So, here we are today. After getting the kids dressed, fed, and other typical morning tasks, they are working. My grandson has only interrupted me six times since I started typing this post. I'm sure I'll have to check on his progress soon, but it's smoother today. [Edited to add: now he's in the room with me so I can keep an eye on his progress. He's, also, trying to get the dog to type his answers.]

Thankfully, the school district fixed most of the connectivity issues.

One week almost in the books.

Hopefully, I'll survive the remaining weeks of captivity and get some writing done, too!

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