The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 36, Beginning of Week 6, in which I contemplate a thing that I did.

I put a color conditioner through my hair this weekend, which dyed the lighter parts of my hair a lovely, pale blue.

I truly, honestly love it.  I may just always have blue streaks, now that I've done it.  I plan to run the rinse through my hair again tonight to try to darken up the streaks a little bit.  Because why not?

I am, of course, not the only person doing things to their hair during this COVID-19 social distancing period.  Enough people are doing it that others are writing article about it.  And this quote from an article in Allure struck me:

"Hyperfocusing on the physical can be an attempt to escape the emotional; and in the midst of a global pandemic, everyone is experiencing new, sometimes scary emotions (fear, sadness, existential dread) in new, sometimes scary ways (home, alone, with no diversions)."

Even though I do sincerely like how my hair looks with the blue streaks, I think a little bit of escape is going on here for me too.  I think that putting a blue rinse through my hair and getting instant blue highlights is also helping me work through my anxiety.

I've had anxiety all my adult life -- probably all of my life, really. I've mostly dealt with it without medications, though there was a period early-ish in my career in which I had a couple of prescriptions to help me get through the day. Changing jobs eventually made the medications unnecessary, but there were many days early in my career when I would need to place a half a Xanax under my tongue just to calm down enough to be able to work.

Anxiety steals your focus and confuses your thinking.  It makes monsters and creates invisible enemies. It turns your psychological distress into a perceived physical threat.  You really do feel fight-or-flight, but it's your own thoughts that you need to fight or flee, so you feel trapped, causing you more distress. It's an ugly condition. And it's not simply enough to tell yourself to calm down when you're in the midst of an anxiety attack. You have to figure out how to break the cycle. Xanax can do that chemically.  But when you're not taking medication, you need other ways.

For me, anxiety is a lot about control, or the lack of it. The less in control I feel, the more anxious I can become, and the faster I can slip into a cycle of anxious dread and full on anxiety attacks.

For the past more-than-a-decade, since I changed my career focus (if not subject matter), I've dealt with my anxiety with lifestyle type stuff:  exercise, rigorous scheduling and planning, lists, meditation, the dog, magnesium, Disneyland (for real), wine, chocolate, mint tea, making sure I get enough sleep, setting and enforcing clear boundaries between work and home and self . . . .

That last one, the boundaries, has really been difficult to do during this quarantine time.  It's important to do, but with work and home and recreation all being in the same place, the lines are difficult to draw and maintain.

So I think that, this weekend, I drew them in my hair.

The blue:  It makes me feel lighter.  It makes me happy.  I like the way I look.  Importantly:  This is a thing I can control absolutely.  And feeling that certainty, feeling the control, is calming.  In a world where there is so little I can control right now, and in which there is so much to fear, having a little bit of control, however frivolous, is important.

And so, it's not just that blue is traditionally a color associated with calm and so my blue hair calms me. This blue is part fashion and part meditation. It is my certainty and my control. And, being that, it delivers to me inner peace.

Have a good week, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 29, Beginning of Week 5, Utterly Unimportant Numbers

I'm doing better than last Monday.

In fact, all last week, I did better than I was doing last Monday.  Nadir Monday.  I think . . . .

The thing about this historical event we are all living through is that it will change us.  It has to change us.  We have to change in response to it.  And change is hard.  And forced change made rapidly out of fear and necessity is harder.  Psychologically, we aren't built for that.  It's bound to take it toll.

I've been thinking a lot about what's not so important and what is.  In the "not" column are a lot of numbers:  weight on the scale, size of my clothing, number of York Peppermint Patties I consume in a day, number of screen minutes my kid gets in a day after he's finished all his schoolwork, number of projects actually completed.  These are utterly unimportant to whether we live healthily and happily.

What is important sometimes does sometimes involve numbers too.  Regarding health, for instance, I'm just not worrying about weight and size numbers anymore, but I am going to continue to worry about numbers related bloodwork, blood pressure and cardiovascular health.  Those numbers bear no real relation to the size of my clothing and the force of gravity on my body on this early.  At best, the relationship between the two is marginal.  (How do I know:  I've been "overweight" a large portion of my adult life and I can assure you that my bloodwork and blood pressure have been good-to-excellent for decades.) But bloodwork, blood pressure and whether I can walk a mile or more with relative ease are measures of health that seem to matter with regard to how I feel and how I function.  So those are what I will pay attention to henceforth.

The number of hugs given and gotten is a happy number.  The number of laughs with your family . . . the number of times your child's eyes light up . . . the number of chin licks from the dog . . . the number of York Peppermint Patties to give you joy of them . . . .  These are also good numbers.

But number of blog posts about a scary event . . . not so much.

I noticed last week that when I stopped writing so much about this event, I stopped thinking so much about it.  When I'm not physically writing, I'm still writing.  I put together ideas, words and phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs, in my head before I even put fingers to keyboard.  Because I have a good memory, I can do that and then come back to the keyboard and unload it all.  Then I edit.  It's how my work-writing works too.  Letting ideas form and reform, marinating in my brain, before I ever commit them to paper or the digital screen just works for me.  But it also means that my brain is marinating in whatever it is I am writing or intending to write.  It's why sometimes my work is so exhausting . . . because I don't just quit at quitting time, when I'm writing something.  I can't.  That's not how my writing brain works.  It keeps working.  So any brief I've written for work, for instance, has been written over many days and many moments of so-called free time.

Last week, after my Monday post, I decided not to write any further posts that week.  Shutting off that self-imposed task allowed me shut off my brain about the pandemic.  I mean, I still thought about it. But I didn't ruminate, marinate, write and rewrite in my head.  And that was good for me, very, very good for me.

So I've decided to cut back writing this disjointed history for my own well-being.  I'll check in once a week, maybe.  Check in, as well, if I have a good story to tell, like The Frog.  But I am taking the pressure off myself to write and, really, to perform here in this blog.

I do think, sometimes, in hubris, that maybe this blog would be a useful document in 50 or 100 years to study the effects of the pandemic on regular folks.  Maybe it will.  And maybe it won't.  But if it will, a few fewer blog posts to save my sanity will not hobble any future historian's work.  (Hello there, future historian. Creepy, huh?) Mine will be but one drop in a sea of personal narratives about the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.  I'm sure that their dissertation or historical extract will not suffer from my writing less, and less often.  In fact, maybe the fact of it will be just the anecdote they need for their chapter on mental health.  (You're welcome, future historian.)

Stay safe, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 22, Beginning of Week 4, Anonymous 49.6 Year Old Female

I've been having a hard time.

I'm scared.  I feel safe in my house and I feel like my family is safe.  We have developed systems here that I think are the best we can do to keep ourselves safe in our house.  It has been more than three weeks since we have really had to go out into public at all.  I haven't been anywhere beyond my neighborhood (other than a recreation drive in the car) since we started shelter-in-place, and the only place my husband has been is the drive-up window at the pharmacy to pick up our son's and his mom's medicine.  Anything and everything else we need we have delivered.

But we can't be here forever.  We won't be here forever.  Eventually, we will have to go back out into the world.  And there will not be a vaccine to protect us.  Our systems won't protect us out there.  We will have to develop protocols to come back into our house.  My husband can dress fairly casually to work.  I will be in a suit most days.  How does one sanitize a suit?

I made two face masks this weekend.  It was hard.  The fabric is thick, which is a good thing, and I'm terrible at pleats.  (Plus, the tension on my thread got screwed up on the second one, which slowed me down, but I fixed it.)  I need to make more, though.  I need to make at least enough to last each member of my family for a week.  That's a lot of masks -- 21 masks.  It's going to take a long time to make those masks.  And, yes, I know that two-ply cotton masks (even if they are made from high-thread-count Laura Ashley sheets) are not tremendously effective at stopping the virus, but they're better than just relying on our nose hairs to do the filtering before the air gets to our lungs.

I have a very public-facing job.  I am literally in court nearly every week, sometimes multiple times a week.  And those courtrooms are filled with people.  Sure, the Court is going to video court soon and my office is going to telephonic meetings of creditors.  But, again, that can't last forever.  Can it last until there is a vaccine?

Will there ever be a vaccine?

I input my information into the COVID-19 Survival Calculator.  Here are my results (which were somewhat amusingly entitled "anonymous 49.6 year old female"):

The 52.9% infection risk scared the shit out of me.  Basically, I, who have been sheltering in place with all the precautions I can think of -- we wash the dog's feet after every walk, FFS! -- have a 53% chance of getting this disease.  But the mortality risk and survival probability were heartening.  From what I have read of first hand accounts like this one, though, having this disease is awful, even if you're not hospitalized.

I had the flu in March of 2017 and there were a couple of days when I really could not move without great effort and I had fleeting thoughts of "so this is how this bug could kill someone." And compared to what I have read about COVID-19, that really bad case of the flu I had for merely a week was a walk in the park.  I don't want to get this disease.  I don't want my husband or my child or my parents or my in-laws or my brother's family or my friends or my work colleagues or even those other lawyers that I may not like very much to get this disease.

Nevertheless, I'm bending my mind to the idea, attempting to accept the idea, coming to terms with the idea that one of us will probably get it.  Maybe more than one of us.  And the best I can hope for is . . . we suffer a miserable two to four week illness at home, not requiring hospitalization, and that we do not spread it further?

So, I've been having a hard time.  I've been depressed.  I've felt a little hopeless . . . a lot hopeless.

I cried when I walked the dog this morning.  Not single-tear-down-the-cheek crying . . . audibly sobbing, that was me, as I walked the dog.  Not loudly, but audibly.  Like, if there'd been someone on the other side of the street walking their dog, they'd have heard me and looked in my direction.  Mournful.

I guess I am in mourning.  But for what?  For my old life, my pre-novel-coronavirus life?  The halcyon days when I could scratch my eyes, pick my nose, and do facepalms with impunity?  Maybe I'm prematurely mourning the loss of the safety I feel in my home now, the loss that will come in a month . . . or maybe two . . . when we have to go back into out there.

I even told the people at work on our MS Teams chat (which is now and, I think, shall ever be, an omnipresent distraction on my desktop) that I was not doing very well this morning.  It's not like me to own stuff like that very often.  I'm as stiff-upper-lipped as a girl from East Texas can be, I suppose.  I push a lot of stuff down.  Probably not healthy, but I do it.  But I couldn't keep it down this morning.  I couldn't keep it down as I walked the dog and tried to image going back out into the world where, to me, the novel coronavirus is everywhere.  I couldn't keep it down when I logged onto work and it was all just too much.

Almost immediately, one of my lovely colleagues sent me a private message commiserating and trying to buck me up.  Another two with whom I regularly text, took it to private texts and urged me to take care of my mental health.  All three of them were just what I needed.  I felt better.  We are all suffering.  We have our ebbs and flows.  Today, I ebbed and these three wonderful ladies flowed toward me.  One day, it will be my turn to flow toward them.  We all, every one of us, need each other now in ways we never have.  Now, is the time to lean in, but not in the way Sheryl Sandberg meant several years ago.  Now, is the time to lean into and on each other.  I think it's the only way we get through this.

The COVID-Telework: Day 18, I'm so tired.

By Wednesday, I am tired.  It is hard to get out of bed.  It is hard to walk the dog.  It is hard to do my job.  It is hard to be a substitute teacher for at-home school.  It is hard to stay focused on anything.  It is hard not to lose my patience with people or things or animals.  This thing we are doing is hard.

Things that make it easier:

• Hugs and cuddles.
• Coffee.
• Chocolate.
• Ice cream.
• More hugs and cuddles.
• Fun books to read.
• Star Wars, anything.
• Specifically, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 7.
• Cheese.
• Tortilla chips with salsa.
• Ranch dressing.
• Dried pineapple.
• Walks with the dog.
• Watching the Boy play.
• Reading the Boy's writing, which is surprisingly good.
• Text messaging silliness with my friends at work about work and about not-work. 

And one more thing:  checking on others to make sure they are okay.  That makes it better, makes it easier.  Try reaching out to someone else and check on them.  Make sure they're okay.  It will lift your spirits.

Have a good weekend, friends.  Hang in there.  Stay safe.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 16, Let's Talk about Video Conference Calls

My immediate superior in my organization, it should be said at the outset, has always been a fan of Skype for Business.

I have not.

I don't like feeling like I'm in a fishbowl. I don't like that I feel rude if I have to (or want to) look at something that's not within the field of view of the other people on the call.  I don't like that if you want to roll your eyes or pull some other face, you can't because everyone will see you.

I don't like how I look on the screen.  Is that what I look like?

Last week, my immediate supervisor started trying to test out Skype for Business.  She'd place random calls through the device -- voice-only calls and video calls.  And with no or little warning.  I know that the efforts were (probably) sincere, but they felt like bed checks, especially since I was also trying to help my son with his school iPad and trying to keep him on task while I also did my non-impromptu-testing-of-Skype work.

All that testing revealed that Skype for Business took an enormous amount to bandwidth.  Our weekly attorney meeting last week was via video on Skype, but all the sound was via our office conference call line.  That's the only way we could do it which is to say it was unworkable.  And especially unworkable when we know that the courts are considering moving to video court.  We need the flexibility to be able to appear in court via video.

(Video court will also mean, of course, that we will have to get dressed in suits in our houses, at least from the waist up.  And that feels silly . . . silly, but necessary, though.)

So by the end of last week, our agency suddenly switched to MS Teams.  I say "suddenly" because nothing happens quickly in government, but in exigent circumstances, even the wheels of government can turn quickly, I suppose.

We impromptu-tested MS Teams yesterday. (I was troubleshooting my son's iPad again, naturally, when the unannounced and unanticipated call came through.)  It did actually work better.  (But my hair looked a fright.)

Today, we had our first real meeting with MS Teams.  I took the trouble to fix my hair (hair dryer and a round brush) and put on a little make up for the first time in over a week -- even lipstick.  I should note that I did this for me to make me feel better about looking at myself on the screen.  Also, I put a pair of R2-D2 earrings on and a gray cardigan over my Yoda t-shirt.  (It says, "Always in motion the future is.")

The meeting went okay, I guess.  I think that we could just as easily have done this by not-video conference call.  I don't know why we have to look at each other while we talk about stuff.  Again, my inability to pull faces during these meetings hurts me.  Actually, though,  I do pull faces, but now I know that I do it -- unlike in face-to-face meetings when I'm not looking at a tiny image of myself at the bottom of the screen making faces.  So, really, it just adds to my, "What are people thinking of me" unnecessary stress.  But anyway . . . .  They're happening.  They will continue to happen for the foreseeable future, so I and my overly expressive face had better get used to it.

Nighty-night, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 15, Beginning of the Third Week

Well, Week 3.  How are we all doing?  What can we say?  I hope you're doing okay.

We've had technical difficulties on all three fronts:  my work, husband's work, kid's school.  Some of them are being worked out, some of them are ongoing.  We will muddle through.  We have to.

The good news for us is that, after 14+ days in isolation, none of us are displaying symptoms.  Well, not consistently, anyway.  On the weekend, for instance, I had a dry cough and I didn't feel quite right.  The pollen count was through the roof over the weekend.  Still, I checked my temperature a couple of times.  "Is 98.8 the sort of low grade fever they're talking about?"  Fortunately, I did not continue to register even a minuscule fever.  And, after taking three different types of OTC allergy medication (Allegra, Zyrtec, and Flonase), I felt much better.

We have several friends on the front line of this war against an invisible enemy:  doctors, nurses, other medical professionals.  I worry about them all, and their families.

We have a friend who works in the oil and gas industry who still has to go to work so that there's still fuel for the country.  I worry about him and his family too.

My fellow bankruptcy lawyers are bracing for the flood of both individual and business bankruptcies that will inevitably follow this crisis.  It will be sad and it will be hard . . . like after 9/11, but more cases across the country.

Also, how many desserts is it okay to have after lunch and/or dinner?  Three?  Is three the right number?  I think it is.  I think any number is the right number when you're under extreme and prolonged stressed.  Go get another cookie.

This afternoon, I had a telephonic hearing and, despite there being a sign on the door not to enter,

The Boy came running in with a Lego problem.  Thank goodness that the phone was on mute.  Signs, apparently, are ineffective in the face of an issue with your Lego man's arm.

Hang in there, friends, I think we've got several more weeks of this ride to go.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 14, The Dog's Diary

It's been like eleventy-hundred days since I have been to doggy daycare.  I'm not sure why my people decided not to send me there anymore, but they did and now I can't play chasey-chase with other dogs anymore.

Also, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma don't go anywhere anymore.  When I used to go to doggy daycare, they would go to their own daycares, I guess, and then either Alpha or Beta -- usually Beta -- would pick me up at the end of the day of playing chasey-chase, which, did I mention, I don't get to do anymore because there are no other dogs in our house.

On the plus side, I have been able to guard our den perimeter pretty successfully and have managed to keep many other packs from invading our turf.

Also, Alpha and I walk probably 30,000 miles a day now around our neighborhood on what I like to call wide patrol.  I do see other dogs when we are on wide patrol, but I have to tell those dogs to get outta here because this is my territory, unless it's the cute cavachon that lives on the cul de sac down the way (she's a pretty alright girl) or my best friend, G, who is often also out on wide patrol with one or more of her people.  Frankly, I don't know what this neighborhood would do without G and me protecting it from invasion.

Also, I get to sit with Alpha on the sofa a lot, and I get good head scratches from Beta.  So having the people around isn't all bad . . . but still, no chasey-chase with other dogs is a high price to pay.

Gamma plays a lot with his plastic blocks and little plastic men with claws for hands.  When I was a puppy, I chewed on one of those little men and swallowed a claw (not the rest of the man, just his claw).  Alpha found the claw the next day in my poop.  She's a good Den Leader.  I know that she's the Den Leader because she calls herself that and sometimes refers to us as Bears and not dogs (or people or whatever).

Also, though, she's the Den Leader because she's Alpha.

At the end of every wide patrol, Alpha and/or Beta washes my paws and sings a song for each paw.  This is a weird procedure, and not one we used to employ when I used to get to go play chasey-chase at doggy daycare, but it's better than this stinky stuff that Beta called "hand sanitizer," which they put on my paws for a couple of days after walks and THAT I HATED.  Alpha said hand sanitizer is not good for dogs and Beta agreed . . . because she's Alpha, and also she had a website to back up her claim.

Today, though, at the end of our last wide patrol of the day, Alpha didn't just wash my paws, but MY WHOLE BODY.  But I got her because I shook the water off all over her.  She said that I had started to smell "like a dog," to which I replied, "Well, duh, Alpha."  Alpha is smart, but she's still just a human.

Okay, well, I need to start getting ready to demand some part of the dinner that Alpha, Beta, and Gamma are going to eat.  They feed me my Royal Canin Small Adult Dog Food every night, but I like it topped with something tasty like green beans or broccoli or the soupy stuff from black beans.  I need to make sure that they do that, you know, by yipping at them and/or whining, and that takes mental preparation.

Your friend, The Dog 🐶

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 13, Shopping and Sanitization

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Two things before we begin:  First, I lost count at 10 days.  I called my entry, "The Frog," Day 10, but it was really Day 11.  I . . . lost . . . count . . . after only 10 days.  Second, there is no entry for Day 12, which was Friday, March 27, 2020.  I was tired.  The boy was difficult to get to sleep.  I didn't write.  But, had I written yesterday, this is what I would have written about . . . .

Shopping.

Shopping is different, now, under the shelter-in-place order.  Only pharmacies, grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores are open.  (Yes, liquor stores . . . because Texas.)  But we don't go to stores.  Going to the store exposes you to a lot more people, a lot more vectors for virus.

We shop online.

But even then, we take precautions to minimize the chance of the novel coronavirus entering our house and making one of us sick.  Here's what we do:

• We do not open the front door.  That's where packages are delivered and, therefore, that's the most vulnerable point in our space because that is where the most people who don't live in our house (e.g. possibly virus carriers/transmitters) appear.
• For nonperishable items:
• Once a day, my husband drives around to the front of the house and puts the packages in his truck bed.
• Each package is labeled with the date it arrived and a date three days out when it can be opened. (This is because the virus has been found to survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours . . . maybe a little longer.)
• We have three boxes in our garage for these items to keep Day A separated from Day B separated from Day C in order to avoid cross-contamination.
• Once 72 hours has elapsed, my husband opens the packages and wipes them down with a disinfectant (bleach wipes or Lysol or an isopropyl alcohol solution) and brings them inside.
• Once inside, I put the packages away.
• In the case of clothing (some summer clothes for The Boy arrived this past week), they go straight into the washer (which is our general protocol anyway).
• For perishable items:
• My husband wipes each item down immediately and I put them away.
• Vegetables and fruits are washed in the sink with soap and water and set out to dry or dried by hand before we put them into the refrigerator.

Yes, it's a production, but, as I've noted before on this blog, Dr. Fauci has said that if it seems like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing.

This production of bringing items into our house, though, has made me re-evaluate my online shopping habit.  And it is a Habit.  Now, if I find that I am bored and I think about perusing the Talbots or ModCloth or HerUniverse websites, or even Amazon or Lego, I think about what would have to happen before the item I am considering can be incorporated into my closet or played with by The Boy.  Is it worth the effort?  Often, it is not.  I don't know if it's coincidence, but I seem to be getting more and more emails from my favorite retailers -- Kate Spade is especially pushy -- offering sales and deals.  I'm probably not the only person in the United States rethinking their online shopping habits.

Also, I've decided to buy fewer fresh fruits and veggies for the next several weeks and will rely, instead, on frozen or canned items.  It's easier than the sink-full of fruits and veggies.  Of course, we washed our food before we ate it pre-COVID19, but we did not necessarily do all the washing immediately upon bringing it into the house before it went into the fridge.  And we didn't always use soap and water.  I think, now, however, I will always use soap and water, just to be safe. 

This virus has taught me -- taught us -- that, as modern as we think we are, we are not invulnerable.  In fact, we had become complacent thinking that all the dread diseases of yore -- small pox, plague, measles, polio, diphtheria -- were mere sepia-toned memories of a brutal past, not something our technicolor world need worry about. We thought we didn't need to worry about wildly infectious diseases anymore, we who luxuriate in our First World Problems and abundance so great that online shopping is a habit.

Some of us had even become so arrogant about infectious disease that we refused to vaccinate our children against them.  The idea of a disease cutting down wide swathes of a population was so ancient a proposition as to be laughable to certain segments of our society.  In our modern hubris, we have become less careful about everything.  I hope that has changed.  My complacency about my own health and safety certainly has.  I hope it's changed for others too.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 11, The Frog

A frog lives in our backyard.  I didn't know this until Sunday, but he (or she) is back there.  (I'll get to how I found out on Sunday that The Frog was back there in a minute.)

This morning The Frog was sitting by the side of the pool at around 6:30 a.m. when I left through the backyard to take The Dog for a walk.  And I know this because, as I walked past the pool, I heard a plunk into the water.  I looked back into the pool in the general area of the plunk and saw this.

That's The Frog sitting on one of the steps to our pool waiting for me and The Dog to get the heck outta the backyard so he (or she) can get back out of the pool to eat some bugs or whatever he (or she) was doing when The Dog and I so rudely interrupted.  (This photo also shows how desperately we need to get our pool resurfaced, but you are going to ignore that, recognizing that we'd planned such maintenance for this spring but now that project, like all other non-essential maintenance project, is being deferred indefinitely.)

I think that The Frog is a Southern Leopard Frog.  Southern Leopard Frogs sound like THAT.

About a week ago, The Working Dad and I were awakened in the night by THAT sound, except that it sounded muffled and almost mechanical. We could not figure it out.  We thought maybe it was a wounded bird, maybe a baby opossum . . . a frog, we did not come up with.  It would go silent during the day.  "Nocturnal," we thought.  We settled on it being a baby opossum who had lost its mom.  We were sad for it.  We tried to, but could not find it.

Every night -- or really around 5:00 a.m. -- THAT sound would start up again.  Muffled and mechanical and, we thought, the sound of a dying baby opossum that we could not find.  It was tragic.

The Working Dad started leaving the back porch light on to maybe stop the creature making the sound (nocturnal creatures not being fond of the light, you see).  It seemed to work, but then . . . .

On Sunday afternoon, we heard THAT sound.  In the broad daylight!!!!

I went into the backyard and waited for the sound.  And it happened.  I moved to the area of the yard the sound seemed to be coming from and picked up a stick.  I gently prodded the bushes, hoping to cause the creature to make the sound again.  And it did make the sound again, but it was coming from behind me, where the pool was.

I turned.

I heard THAT sound again.  And, remember that I said it sounded almost mechanical?  The sound was coming from the pool drain.

I opened the drain.  It was full almost to the top with blossoms that had fallen from our pear tree in the backyard.

I waited.  And I heard the sound again.  It was definitely the pool drain, I decided.  Something was stuck in all of the detritus and it was making our pool drain make THAT sound.

I stuck my hand in, heedless of what might lie in wait for me, and started pulling handfuls of pear flowers out of the drain.  When I was halfway done, I saw it:  A frog's leg kicking away from the flowers, trying to escape the drain and the giant hand that had scooped and reached so near to it over and over and over again.  THAT sound wasn't the drain and it wasn't mechanical.  It was the muffled call of a trapped frog.

After a couple of tries, I managed to catch The Frog and set it on the pool deck.  The Frog sat for a moment, stunned, and then hopped off into the ground cover next to the pool.

As far as I can figure, The Frog had gotten stuck in the drain at some point on Thursday night last week.  It couldn't escape the drain, but because the drain was so full of flowers, it had a nice little island to sit on, rather than be sucked to the bottom and drown. I imagine that the odd bug made its way in there at one point or another, which served as sustenance.  So for four or five days -- which must be an eternity to a frog, it was stuck on an island of flowers eating bugs, catch as catch can.  I'd like to think that The Frog was happy to be free, however harrowing that escape might have been.  I was glad to have been of assistance.

I wasn't sure I'd ever see The Frog again, so this morning, I was delighted to find that, despite The Frog's not-so-fun several days in our pool drain, he (or she) had decided to hang around our house at least for now.  Welcome to the family, froggy friend.

The COVID-Telework Diary Day 10: Jelly Bellies

I just ate a handful of Jelly Bellies, but just my handful.  Maybe a quarter of a cup.  Too many . . . putting my pancreas to work . . . but not, like, the whole bag.  Anyway . . . .

The bubble gum flavored ones are vile, cloyingly vile.  But I ate them and kept eating them . . . because they were in my hand.

Also, chocolate and berry are surprisingly good together.  I didn't intend that combination.  I thought the chocolate was another berry.

Also good:  toasted marshmallow and buttered popcorn.  Another happy mistake.

I also like the black pepper flavored ones . . . and, of course, licorice.  (I didn't used to like licorice.  As a kid, I hated it and would always wonder why my dad would eat it.  Now I know why.  And the reason is because kid's don't know anything and that shit is delicious.)

The sour cherry one that I ate all by itself:  Devine.

There were no weird ones in my hand, thank God, like grass or booger or ear wax or vomit (damn you, Harry Potter).

I saved two watermelons for last.

The COVID-Telework Diary Day 9: The One with Photos of a Lovely, if Lonely, Afternoon in the Backyard

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 8, A Shelter in Place Order and School is in Session

Day 8, March 23, 2020

Dallas County is under a shelter-in-place order that takes effect today at 11:59 p.m. and extends through, at least, April 3rd.  Don't count on it lifting on April 3rd, folks.  I think we are in for AT LEAST a month (more like six weeks).  County Commission Clay Jenkins (who, let's face it, is a badass making unpopular decisions in the face of a genuine public health crisis) shared a graphic when giving his announcement of the stay-at-home order that shows our hospitals being overwhelmed by approximately April 12th if there were no order to stay home.  Here it is.

Pretty terrifying, huh?  So, stay home, Dallas County Friends.  (Really, the rest of you should do that too. A regional shelter-in-place will be more effective than a patchwork county-by-county process.)

And in the face of this, The Boy started his distance learning today, or what I've been calling School at Home.  Because this really isn't homeschooling . . . homeschooling does not really have an independent school district pushing curriculum to the students and a teacher supervising remotely while the parents supervise at home.

Anyway, School at Home started and it was cute at first, him sitting next to me working on his iPad doing his daily check in with his teacher.

We were off to a good start, but . . . 

. . . soon there were technical difficulties.

Videos wouldn't load.  Documents wouldn't download.  It wasn't clear to us how assignments were to be turned in.  I emailed the teacher more times that I wish I needed to.  I wondered whether other parents were also having these issues, but I didn't actually text anyone to ask because I was doing my day job at the same time.  Holy crap, this was HARD.  He needs my help.  My work needs my attention.  Too much all at once.

My usual day-to-day is me focused on work followed by me focused on parenting.  Seriatim, a we lawyers like to say.  Now, I must do both at the same time.  Eodem tempore.

And lots of you must be doing both as well.  And, even if you're not, will you join me in a cleansing virtual yell?

YAAAAARRRRR!

Sigh.  That's better.  But, you know, you roll with it.  Technical difficulties happen.  They are stressful.  They are (usually) temporary.  I was locked out of my work computer for no discernible reason this morning.  We resolved it.  And we also resolved the boy's technical issues too, thanks to suggestions from his very helpful teacher.  Imagine her job today, fielding emails like mine from who knows how many parents.

Hang in there, folks.  We are going to make it while we flatten this curve.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 7, in which we went on a driving scavenge hunt

Stir crazy.

Even with frequent walks around the neighborhood with the pup, we are getting a little stir crazy.  Rainy days and social distance can take a toll on anybody.

I've seen a lot of in-house scavenger hunts and in-the-neighborhood scavenger hunts online, but it's a dreary day (again) so we went for a drive.  I made a prize bag for The Boy to choose from upon completion of the scavenger hunt.  (The prizes are left over party favors, mainly.  And I plan to use these for incentives for him to do other things during our forced isolation.)

This scavenger hunt allowed us to:

• Spend some fun time as a family.
• Get out of the house.
• Maintain our social distance.
• See things we haven't seen in a few days.
• Exercise our brains a little.
• Sing Le Freak to The Boy, to his immense horror, and have a little laugh.

I recommend this for a dreary or sunny day get-out-of-the-house activity. 

Here's the scavenger hunt I made up, if you'd like to use it for a driving scavenger hunt with your family.  Or make up your own scavenger hunt that suits your environs.  Have fun!

The COVID-Telework Diary: Days 6, The First Weekend

This isn't actually the first weekend.

It's the second weekend our family has been perfecting its isolation and disinfection.

I haven't been anywhere other than my immediate neighborhood since Friday, March 13, 2020, when I got word that The Boy's school was shutting down (and, therefore, I knew I'd be teleworking the next week).  If I can mark a date when our family decided to really hunker down, it's Friday the 13th.

We had been accumulating things during the week:

• hand sanitizers (the miniature variety from Bath & Body Works because that's all I could find at that point thanks to hoarding);
• paper towels (24 rolls of Viva from Amazon, which I thought at the time was a ridiculous amount and now wonder why I didn't get more);
• Lots of canned beans;
• Lots of microwave pouches of rice;
• Lots of pasta;
• Lots of frozen veggies;
• Lots of cartons of milk;
• Cereal;
• Lots of chicken breasts to make various things in the Instant Pot;
• Lysol wipes and Lysol spray (just a few items, fewer than it seems we will need, now);
• toiletries; and
• ice cream (because you gotta have some joy).

We did not buy all of the toilet paper, I promise:  The fact is that we had already bought an inordinate amount of toilet paper over time thanks to a few months' worth of Amazon Subscribe & Save accidental over-buying. I've been pissed off at those boxes for a couple of months, but now I'm glad they're here.  Turns out that I am thankful for my repeated monthly failure to go into Subscribe & Save and skip that month's delivery.  Finally, my procrastination has served me well.

Since we don't go out into the world that much, our main focus in our home has been figuring out how to keep our space more sanitary.  It's an evolving process, but we are approaching a pattern that we are comfortable with.

It's unlikely that, at present, we would bring the virus into our house, isolated as we are.  But if the infection rate gets to 75% or higher, the odds that we might bring the virus into our house from simply going outside for a walk becomes much greater.  So we are practicing now for what we hope doesn't happen later.  (We hope that you all are also hunkering down too.  To those who haven't: stop treating this like a extended snow day -- going to the park with other people, hanging with friends in the evening, letting the kids hang out with each  -- the little vectors, making frequent trips to the store....  Social isolation means no socializing and you isolate yourself.  Call someone or do FaceTime if you miss voices and faces.  Click that link about to see a graphic of what happens if you don't.)

So, anyway, here is what we do, right now, recognizing that this is an evolving process: 

• After we have gone outside, before we step inside, we take our shoes off.  Then we wipe the bottoms of the shoes with Lysol before bringing them inside.
• We wash our hands after we come back into the house.
• We let 72 hours elapse before we open nonperishable packages that come to our door.
• We wipe down every package that comes into the house with disinfectant.
• We clean surfaces regularly.
• Today, we started using only one door to enter and exit the house, thus limiting the amount of disinfecting we need to do at doorways.
• Today, we started wiping the dog's paws with hand sanitizer when we bring him in.  (We were able to acquire a large bottle of it from a friend of my husband's who had bought quite a lot.)
• We do not wear the same clothes a second day.
• We do no wear clothes that we have worn outside the house to bed.
• We bathe every night before going to bed.

This may, and likely does, seem extreme to you, but it's informed by reading the news about the survival rate of the virus on surfaces, by the odds of spread as reported in the news (see above), and by conversations with a doctor friend, whose wife does intake at an ER and who has treated COVID-19 patients.  It's what we've come up with.  You don't have to copy us, but I thought I'd share what we do.  And, as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, "if it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing."  You only need look to Italy and the lines of army vehicle holding coffins to see where we might be headed.  Not to be morbid, but we don't want to be in one of those truck.

Stay safe, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Day 5

The Working Mom's Guide to

Pandemic Teleworking

1.  Be patient with technology.

Say that your work cell phone keeps sending you to look at text messages when what you're trying to check is your voice mail.  Resist the urge to throw that piece of crap against the wall.  Do what any good 80s teen would do with technology:  Turn it off and turn it back on again.  Also, you may experience latency in your broadband.  With multiple people using it all the time, you are bound to have connectivity issues.  It's okay.  Everyone else is in this boat with you.  Well, metaphorically, in this boat with you . . . we're all socially distancing, so we are all in our separate little boats.

2.  Be gentle with your family.

I know your kid is driving you nuts -- asking you to play when you're trying to work on a document, watching cartoons when you're trying to do a conference call, refusing to do the homeschool work you've given him (even though, let's face it, it's not required of him . . . you just want him to do it).  I know your spouse might be doing some things you think are a little much -- bleaching the countertops A LOT, bringing home all the canned black beans, using lots of hand sanitizer even though you're just in your house.  But you are also doing things that are driving them nuts and that seem a little much.  Be gentle.

3.  Exercise at least once a day.  

Your brain and your body need the exercise.  You need the break.  I have been trying to walk my dog two to three times a day, weather permitting.  If you decide to go for a walk for exercise, here is my social distancing tip:  Sharing the sidewalk means more than just stepping aside and letting someone go past, now.  To properly maintain social distance, you need to cross the street and not be within 6 feet of that other person.  You're not being an a-hole; you're being prudent. Wave at your neighbor from that distance and call out a friendly "hello" to them.

4.  Don't "diet."

I'm actually not a big fan of "diets" anymore.  Unless you are going to be on that "diet" forever (and you might be, but most of us don't do that), every "diet" is virtually guaranteed to work only temporarily until you eventually give it up and go back to your old eating patterns.  (To me, "dieting" and the diet industry is designed to set you up for failure and all the negative feelings that such "failure" brings to the dieter who has "messed up." I could write a whole blog post about this -- and maybe I will one day -- but my point now is that the last thing you need right now is the additional pressure of a restrictive eating plan.)  Instead of "dieting," nurture yourself with the food you have.  And, honestly . . . bake the cookies, eat the ice cream, enjoy the chocolate. munch the chips, savor the cheese. Do not beat yourself up.  Do not uses negative words to describe these actions . . . you have not "failed," you have not "screwed up," you have not "been bad."  You have eaten something that you enjoy at time when you are under immense stress.  This is not failure, or screwing up, or being bad.  This is living.

5.  Each day, have a clear and definite stop time for work.

With your office and your home one-and-the-same now, it would be very easy to let work consume you and your day.  You need the break.  Have a hard stop.  Turn off the laptop.  Turn off the phone.  Don't pick it up again until the next day.  Give yourself downtime.  Sure, sure, there might be emergencies that force an exception to this rule.  But those emergencies don't happen every day.  Most of what we are working on can wait until tomorrow.  You need this time away from work for the same reason you need the exercise.

6.  Be kind to and patient with yourself.

Working from home with a kid (or kids) and a spouse (if you have one) there too is HARD.  There are distractions.  There is noise.  You will get frustrated.  You will fly off the handle.  Give yourself a break.  (And, apologize for losing your cool if you do.)  If you feel like you might erupt, see #3 above.  Exercise will help break that tension.  And when your work day is done -- because you will be done each day, right? -- do something fun for yourself, whatever that may be.  Give yourself the right to enjoy something during this rather unenjoyable time.  And have that cookie while you're doing it.

Have a good weekend, friends.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Days 3 and 4

Day 3 -- Wednesday, March 19, 2020

Every day, for the past several days, it's been rainy, overcast, damp, and dark.  And this morning when I walked the dog was no exception.  There were massive puddles from last night's rainstorm.  The clouds still hung low in the sky dusting me with droplets of mist.

The weather cast a mood for a pandemic.  Isolation weather.  In your imagination, you picture people suffering from the plague or the Spanish flu or small pox or cholera in darkened rooms under overcast skies.  It's dark, the world is dark, and people are sick and dying.

When I called into my telephonic hearing this morning at 9:30 a.m., the world outside was still dark, unwelcoming, brooding, even threatening.  It's dangerous out here -- dark weather, a mysterious virus, dark times.

But sometime during the 2+ hours that I sat on the phone listening to other people talking, and talking a little bit, the clouds parted.

When I took the dog for a walk at noon, the sun was dazzlingly bright, almost obnoxious in its brilliance after so many overcast days.  The heat felt good on my skin and the top of my head.  I could almost feel summer streaks starting to form in my honey-colored hair.  I vaguely worried that the small strip of scalp at my part might get burned.  The sky was robin's egg blue with cottony clouds, no more storm clouds for the moment.  A slight breeze blew my hair into my face and I left it there because it felt nice.  My dog veritably pranced down the sidewalk with a trot that seemed to smile at everything he passed.

This is not pandemic weather.  And yet it is.  Dallas County reported 11 new COVID-19 cases today, bringing the total number of cases in Dallas County to 39.  The stricken range in age from teens to 70s, and one person is critical.

So, until the next rain storm, we live in this incongruity, with spring emerging, while we all hide from each other and a threat we can't see or know whether we've encountered.  Sunny, happy skies and social distance.  It wasn't always rainy and dark in the times of the plague or cholera.  They also suffered the brutal reality of an infectious disease in the light of a pleasant, sunny day.

And later in the afternoon, as if the world knew that we were still under a metaphorical cloud, real clouds started rolling in again, and by evening, another storm was brewing.

Day 4 -- Thursday, March 19, 2020

Today, I fixed my hair for the first time since I've been teleworking.  I put powder on my face, tinted lip balm on my lips, and mascara on my eyelashes.  I put on R2-D2 earrings, a Cub Scout bracelet that says "helpful," my watch, and my wedding band.  I have tired of seeing my disheveled self in the mirror.  And to get just a little cleaned up, makes me feel better.  I don't really do much to fix my hair on a daily basis, nor do I wear a lot of make-up -- not much more than I have on now -- day to day.  But to do it was a small exercise in self-care.  And we need to be doing that to preserve our sanity while we hunker down.  Do something for yourself too.

The COVID-Telework Diary: Days 1 and 2

I know, I know.  I only ever write blog posts anymore when there's some major upheaval at work.

"What about parenting in these our modern times?," you ask.

"What about your diatribes on feminisms and leaning in?," you query.

"What," you interpose, "about Mom Jeans?"

Those are good questions.  (For answers to the first two, please see my prior years' posts.  My positions have not changed.  For the Mom Jeans, check out the high waisted, curvy, straight leg or barely boot jeans at Talbots. Yes, you may have to size down a size, which will make you feel super skinny.  Also good are their "skinny" jeans, but you'll need to buy those true to size.)

But back to work upheaval posts:

In years past, you've watched me write my way through various government shutdowns . . . or near shutdowns.  And we've had a good time with that, right?  I mean, maybe?

But this is something different:  Something, entirely, completely, and profoundly different.

This time, my dear reader, you are here with me.  This time, you also are experiencing a major office upheaval.  We all are.

More and more offices are closing their physical doors and opening wide their virtual doors.  Each day, more and more of us who can are working from home.

Our kids are home too.  So soon, in addition to our working from home, we will also be educating at home. We may not have written the curriculum and the lessons, but we will be the people responsible for making sure that the kid does his school work and doesn't, for instance, binge-watch Ninjago or play Super Smash Bros on his Nintendo Switch all afternoon.

Working parenting is always hard. We clock off one job and, clock into the second one, the one we like better (usually -- even when our co-worker is petulant and yells at us when their shower water is a nano-degree too hot), but it's still work after the work-a-day job is done.

Now, though, we will work both jobs at the same time.  We will parent; we will educate; we will continue to do the work we are paid to do.  All at once.  All jumbled and piled on top of each other.

Tomorrow morning, I have a telephonic hearing at 9:30 a.m.  I have already told my sweet little co-worker that the house needs to be very quiet tomorrow morning while mommy is on the phone with the court.  I've actually already handled several calls with him playing nearby with no disturbances or trouble, but a hearing is different.  It's formal.  You can't have extraneous noises.  Noises can turn into fines and sanctions when you're participating in a telephonic hearing.  So I'm a bit concerned about that, but I expect he'll be the good boy he has been being the last two days.  Today, he said, when I was answering my phone, "I'm going to go into the other room for Mommy."  He's a sweetie-man.

I should mention that my office is not officially 100% telework yet.  It will be by the end of the day tomorrow.  I have, however, been teleworking since Monday because my son's school was closed starting March 16th.  My co-workers (the law office ones, not the little one at my house) join me in the perpetual virtual office bright and early Thursday morning.

Non sequitur:  I had to practice Skype this afternoon with my immediate supervisor and one of the other attorneys.  I shared my home screen with the other two.  I don't like Skype.  I look weird.  (Maybe I just look weird?)

The tension with this not-shut-down, this shift to the completely virtual office is different.  Actually, I don't feel particularly tense at all about working from home . . . except for background noise in telephonic hearings and that godforsaken Skype.  I think that my son will be the good kid that he is and I think that we will be able to balance lawyer work and school work fairly easily.

I do feel tension about this disease, COVID-19.  I don't want to get it.  I don't want my husband to get it.  I don't want my mother in law or my parents to get it. I don't want my son to get it (even though he's just a kid and would likely fare the best of all of us).  I don't want my brother's family or any of my in-laws or other extended family to get it.  I don't want my friends or their families to get it.

And yet, I expect to hear about someone I know . . . or one of their relatives . . . contracting this disease.  I fear that it's already in the community.  I worry that we don't know the extent of the "community spread."  I honestly don't want to be around anyone, now.

When I walk the dog, I cross the street constantly to avoid coming within six feet of another person.  And I think that this is how I will walk the dog for weeks.  Months?

I keep wondering whether we will be more like Italy or more like South Korea.  I think we will know which way we are headed by this time next week.

So, with this somewhat lack-luster first post of the COVID-Telework Diary . . . and with that somewhat despondent note . . . I leave you with a hopefully lighter-in-spirit injunction:

Be gentle, friends, with yourself, with your family, and with others. 

We are in for a long ride.

Try to make it easy.