Today is 9/13/2020 and it’s been 26 weeks or 6 months since schools closed, events and sports were canceled, and we were on the brink of a complete shut down on outside life as we know it.

I now have a full supply of masks, face shields for the kids, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and rice but sanitizing wipes are still hard to get. In the Bay Area, salons and movie theaters are not open yet, restaurants are only open for outdoor dining, schools are all online, and the kids are used to wearing a mask when we go out now. We JUST started going back to Aquatech for swim lessons two weeks ago but they have very strict rules.

The kids started remote learning on 8/27/21 and they are much more organized and demanding this school year.

On top of all that’s happened, we now have a flurry of wildfires everywhere we turn. The air quality has been unhealthy for the past 4 weeks so even going outside has been shut down for us.

On Wednesday (9/9/2020), the sky was an eerie orange color and it felt like the middle of the night at 11am.

Fortunately, we are all still healthy and well. The extended family and our friends are all well too. Work has been busy but it’s not COVID-related.

What’s on the horizon for us in the next 6 months? I have no idea but I’m prepared to keep the kids at home for school and we probably won’t see the Hawaiian islands this year. Disneyland hasn’t even opened yet so we likely won’t be there for Christmas Eve this year as well. Birthdays have come and there are more to come. We’ve been lucky to have a family down south to help expand out bubble for our sanity so the holidays should still be festive for us.

On to the next month!

It’s 8/16/2020 and what a summer we have had. We just completed our 5th month of SIP and the pandemic is still going.

I flew back down to SoCal one last time and then we drove back up with a minivan filled to the brim with stuff we had bought from Costco down there along with the bike, 5 crates of old documents, and our belongings.

The family is back together again and we are just under two weeks away from the first day of school. The first day of school was supposed to be tomorrow (8/17) and I had taken the day off. I kept the day off and plan to get the house and family situated.

As of last month, California has to start school online because our numbers are not good enough. KK will start 3rd grade and Peanut starts Kindergarten. We don’t know what the schedule will look like and it’s hard to make any plans without that information. In the coming week, we will be picking up supplies from school and getting their yearbook photos taken from the car. It’s weird but that’s how they’re doing it this year.

It’s been nice to have the kids and husband back. The house feels “alive” again. Unfortunately, there are wildfires burning in at least 5 counties around us and the air quality is so bad that the kids can’t go outside to play. However, it seems they are happy to be back at home with their own toys and sleeping in their own beds too. As soon as they got back, they went straight upstairs to their rooms and started setting up.

Work has been the usual but I’m getting a little stressed about how I’m going to manage remote learning and keep my job. We will just have to wait until I have more information before I can make any decisions.

It’s June 14, 2020 and we just finished our 3rd month of Shelter-In-Place.

The official last day of school was on May 29th (over a week early), Peanut had a drive-by promotion ceremony on June 3rd, and I had taken the week of June 8-12 off for a possible camping trip that never got planned because of the pandemic.

So, we drove down to Cerritos on June 6th and instead of driving back up the following weekend, I flew home alone.

It was nice to finally be able to combine our family bubbles. The kids now have 4 different houses to visit and stay. They also have 4 cousins to play with! Johnny has a giant backyard complete with bounce house/water slide, my parents have a house filled with toys and a backyard to explore, Jason and Jia have a playroom and pool that never closed during SIP, and Jes’ parents have a brand new home with room for everyone to sleep. This is the best set-up ever…aside from it being 400 miles away from where I have to go to work.

My experience on Southwest Airlines was pretty good. The flight was so empty and everyone was able to spread out. We all had masks on and they boarded only 10 passengers at a time. I felt safe but was still a little anxious. The security line has almost no one waiting and the restaurants and bars are all closed. I caught the bus home and luckily didn’t have to wait too long. This is going to be an interesting summer. What am I going to do with all the extra time??

Wow, it’s been two months (9 weeks actually). I can hardly remember what has happened these past 4 weeks. The days are blurring and would probably be worse if I wasn’t going to work on a regular basis.

I’ve been able to work from home 2 out of 4 of my work days and it’s been helpful but challenging at the same time. Jes bought me a widescreen monitor for the desk upstairs and set up my laptop so I had dual screens for work.

The kids are in somewhat of a schedule now:

Between 7-8am: They wake up and hang out together on their iPads until Jes wakes up.

8:30am: Breakfast (they get some good meals nowadays – bacon, eggs, waffles sometimes)

9:30am: KK’s Classroom Zoom Meeting / Peanut on his laptop doing some math games

10:00am: KK either has Music (on Mondays) or free time to play with Peanut

11:00am: Office Hours with Ms. Bliss (her teacher). Some days she reads to them, some days it’s a small group lesson

12:00pm: Lunch

1:00pm: Play Time

2:00pm: Yu Ying (Mandarin online school) and Peanut takes a nap

3:30pm: KK is done and Peanut generally wakes up by then.

The rest of the day is spent watching tv and/or playing.

5:00pm: I come home (on Mondays and Tuesday) and the kids go outside to ride bikes, scooters, and skateboards. I park the van outside and they use the garage as a play area.

It’s April 15th and it has been over a month since KK’s school closed and will be one month on Friday that we’ve officially been living under the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order (started on 3/17). It’s also Tax Day and the deadline has been extended. Our taxes were prepared in February so the packets have been sitting around collecting dust while we put off mailing them in.

So far, the kids and Jes have adjusted to a new routine. They have been doing pretty well without me. Outside of their regular Zoom meetings for school, they have been enjoying life without all the shuttling around to various classes and activities. They have rekindled their love for playdough and sand and our patio is getting much more attention lately.

Sadly, their idea of a good time nowadays is taking a ride in the car to pick up boba drinks and drinking them in the car on the way home. They haven’t been out in public aside from bike rides and runs around the neighborhood last past month. I’d say they haven’t left Alameda for over a month!

It was also Easter this past Sunday and instead of having our usual neighborhood egg hunt, the kids and I went outside and drew eggs all over the sidewalks for others to fine later as they walked by. We didn’t dye eggs due to the shortage at our stores. We did, however, manage to do egg hunts in the house with the plastic eggs that we’ve accumulated over the past couple years.

Luckily, my feet are no longer hurting and I was back to running just in time for this pandemic. Now that the gym is closed, all I can do is run or do some HIIT videos at home. It’s been fun running with Brother on the phone too.

At work just last week (4/07), everyone in my department was issued laptops and given permission to temporarily work from home. I had my first day of working from home on 4/8, had 4/9 off as usual, and then worked from home on 4/10. That meant I had been home away from the hospital and office for 5 straight days. That was the longest stretch I’ve had since this all started. By Sunday, I was a little stir crazy and not used to being home all the time.

Going back to the office on Monday was pretty eerie. By then, everyone had migrated to their homes (even the ones that initially said they wanted to stay in the office). I was literally the only one from my department in our 2nd floor treatment area. I wasn’t needed in the hospital so I hid in my office and worked. At lunch, I got antsy so I took a walk. It gets pretty lonely when it’s so quiet in a normally bustling part of my life.

At this point, the government has recommended universal masking so I took my handmade cloth mask that was donated to our department and wore it outside to pick up lunch and also to shop at Trader Joe’s after work. I’ve always hated wearing masks for work and now I have to do in my life outside of work.

We had planned for a surge by now but so far we have “flattened the curve” so much that we anticipate the surge will be closer to end of April/beginning of May. Schools are officially closed for the rest of the 2019/2020 school year and I have no idea whether or not kids will be able to go to Summer Camps by June.

P.S. We finally got some toilet paper from Costco. Jes was lucky enough to see it in stock online and ordered a pack.