3/16/2020

This is an account of my experience as a bystander in what has become a tragedy in some parts of the world. So far it is a cautionary tale where I live, but that could change in the near future. Wherever you are, I hope you are healthy!

Today we stayed home and had no visitors to the house. Schools are closed for this week in our California county, and we woke up to 7.5 inches of fluffy, wet snow. So it’s also a Snow Day. The roads are slippery and chains are required in all directions, with some road closures. The stove store was supposed to send out the guys who were here on Friday to finish cleaning the wood stove (it’s still clogged), but they cancelled due to the weather. They may be here tomorrow around noon.

So it’s quite chilly in the house as well as outside. It was still snowing off and on in the morning, but also melting. It was 32 degrees when I got up around 7:30, and the high was around 40 degrees. The sun peaked out a few times during the middle of the day. By nightfall, most of the snow on the shrubs had fallen, and the snow on the benches at the edge of the deck looked like melting ice cream. A single space heater in the living room side of the great room kept the temperature between 55 and 57 degrees in the main part of the house. We stayed in the kitchen, where the oven was on for about an hour, and in the studio, where there is a gas wall heater. I already feel like a caged rat, but after the wood stove is working again, we can spread out and get warm.

I spent a lot of time this morning on email, texting, and scrolling through social media, posting pictures of the snow and sharing words of wisdom and other distractions. Then I baked some cookies, and at last got around to working on notes for my classes that I post on Google Classroom. I had an epiphany about the fact that my husband and I need our home to be a refuge. He needs to not have me in his face like his students do all day; he works in a program for troubled youth. I need to have my space and not have to deal with background noise; I work in a shared space where there are constant interruptions. So being trapped in a small room together, the only warm spot in the house today, was tough.

The TV was on and I was listening to music to drown it out; I was still distracted by the music, but I also like to visit and share. My husband wanted to be in his man cave. It will take a lot of patience to stay positive while we are home together. It’s not like summer vacation, when we can forget about school for awhile (which we rarely do). And I can’t work in the garden yet. There is more rain coming on the heels of this storm. The mild springlike weather we had a week ago is already a fading memory. I will need a project besides school work and social media, so I began this journal. Thank you for joining me!