Words like quarantine, pandemic, Covid-19, zoom, and social distancing are a part of our every day vocabulary, but there was a time when these words were foreign. For me, March 5th was the first day, I even heard about the virus. I spent most of my day with some colleagues traveling to Enid, where we spoke with their administrators about their SEL implementation. During this trip, the superintendent joked about shaking hands and then my friend, Kenny filled me in on the news of a virus that had infected a nursing home in Washington and warned that it was likely that schools could be shut down. At 4:00 that afternoon, I received a text from my boss asking us to think about how we could provide work to students via packets, if we needed to shut down for a week or so. Honestly, I was annoyed to even think about something so crazy especially when so many other things needed my attention. The following Tuesday at my monthly Administrators meeting, Dr. Hartzler began to warn that he was concerned that our year would be interrupted by this unknown virus. He predicted that we might be in session after spring break but was doubtful we could make it through April. That evening a basketball player tested positive before the OKC Thunder game and the game was cancelled. Looking back, this was the first huge domino to fall, in a string of other dominos that would completely bring our nation to a halt.
During a faculty meeting on Wednesday, I received a text/ summons to the ESC for an emergency meeting. We were asked to put together work packets in the event we couldn't come back after spring break. Again, I was perturbed to ask my teachers to gather /create work with two days notice and hated adding to their stress level. However, we got the job done and I settled in to paying much closer attention to the news. That's when I realized that I needed to buy toilet paper as it was flying off shelves. I ventured to Target that Saturday and realized that shelves were completely bare of toilet paper, Lysol, hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes. The shelves would stay bare for quite some time. The mayor and Tulsa County Health officials banned large gathers and placed restrictions on all non-essential businesses.
The week of spring break was the beginning of life was we knew it. The State Department of Education announced that Spring Break would be extended by two weeks. We went ahead and went to Branson as planned but for the most part, Branson was shutting down like most areas of the country. We just moved our place of quarantine from Skiatook to Branson.
After Spring Break, we settled into a life of Quarantine. Outside of essential businesses, everything was shut down until the beginning of May. Rick and I spent a few weeks working across the dining room table before I made my office in the front room. The kids finished school online and we developed a new routine of daily walks and looked forward to take out nights.
Church went online. The first week, I tried to make communion bread like my mom use to make. Unfortunately, no one liked it so we transitioned to crackers. Each Sunday was interesting as we gathered in our pajamas and we tried to keep two dogs from going crazy.
Mo finally learned to walk on a leash during our daily walks. I am pretty sure this is about the time when I really started to bond with "baby, Mosef."
We face timed Mimi. She was quite tickled to see herself. She kept saying, "I'm so little. I'm so little."
Senor Salsa take-out never tasted so good.
Delaney was kind enough to let me go hammock with her one afternoon.
The quarantine was very difficult on the kids and it was definitely one of the hardest challenges as a parent to date. I hated seeing how unhappy they were not to be with friends.
Still under quarantine, we had our own Easter. We didn't bother dressing up but I did make a traditional Easter dinner and made the kids hunt eggs in the house. They might not admit it, but they had fun!
We opened the pool early and spent some beautiful afternoons outside. I was never more grateful for our pool.
During the month of May, businesses began to open back up. However, by the end of the month, it became apparent that our summer would not go as planned. The kids learned that the Houston mission trip was cancelled and Summer Camp would have to be very different. Rick held out as long as possible, but eventually we came to the realization that we couldn't go to Jamaica. Even if the resort opened in time, the kids passports hadn't arrived and there was a huge backlog. Rick was a bit reluctant but we decided the safest option for vacation would be to book a beach vacation in Santa Rosa.
