Shelter in Place Update

We started another week of social distancing today.  I've lost track of how long it has been.  I want to say five weeks.  Looking at the calendar it actually is only three - really two since the order I think.  The week before was spring break.  Gib5on had two days of Corona-related school cancellations prior to that.  I'm looking right at a calendar, so I guess that's the true duration, but it really feels like it has been longer.

This weekend my brother-in-law and his family moved in with us.  They were in a high risk area and got the hell out of Dodge three weeks ago.  For the first two weeks they did a self quarantine in an AirBNB across town.  Then they got a deep discount to stay there so they hung out for another week before coming to us.  At the end of that week the landlord tried to get them to stay again but they declined.  I guess it is a rough month for AirBNB owners.  So we went from two adults and two kids to four adults and three kids.  It has only been two days, but so far it seems to be going well (at least from my perspective).  It is nice to have more people to talk to face to face and even though the kids are spaced age-wise in a way that isn't conducive for playing together it feels like they all get some satisfaction from having other kids around (two of them are too young to actually express that feeling, so there's a lot of assumption there).  Each day has felt like it has gotten smoother.  Finding a way for each of us to get on a conference is a challenge - we're all still working full time.  I think we'll figure it out soon.  They are currently only planning to stay for one week and then go on to my in-laws in Indiana for maybe another month.  It will be a shame to see them go.  We'll see if that impression sticks.  The reasoning behind going is that Gib5on's Grandparents are alone and could use the company.

Work continues apace.  Mrs. TANBI is trying to group most of her meetings in the morning and I am trying to group mine in the afternoon.  That lets each of us spell the other with the kids for roughly half the day.  We'll keep that up for another two weeks until my teaching ends (how long it will end is a significant unknown in my life).  It is an arrangement we are used to because it was what we did before Gib5on went to daycare.  The status quo is going to take a hit next week as Pittsburgh Public Schools will begin official distance learning.  When we first heard about it we were hopeful that we'd be able to manage it without the thing winding up to be more work for us.  Now we're not so sure.  We got Gib5on a rebuilt Chromebook so he can do school without him using one of our machines.  He's pretty stoked about that.  Unfortunately a large portion of what he'll be doing is apparently writing, which kind of requires a touch screen.  So we're already off to a running start.  I looked to see if there's a USB tablet for a Chromebook but an initial search came up empty.  Like so many other things it is just a wait and see thing.  So we'll wait and see.

People seem to be relaxing some.  Just based on what we see walking up and down the street.  More and more groups of folks that really seem unlikely to be families or housemates.  The Governor put a rule in place last week strongly advising face coverings whenever leaving the house.  For a couple of days last week it looked like the majority of folks had masks.  But the last few days, as the weather improved, the number of people with masks has dropped fairly steeply.  I'm not sure why.  This is a fairly easy ask compared with "stay in your house."  We've got masks for all of us, even some small ones for Sabian, although the CDC says kids under two should wear masks.  We figure that in spite of that we should have something in case one of us in the house gets sick.  Late today I put a fairly passive agressive message on the sidewalk in chalk: "If you go out please wear a mask."

Probably won't help, but probably doesn't hurt.