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.
