Prepping for Coronavirus; Schools and Families Brace for Impact -- Apt. 11D 3/13/20

Apt. 11D
Laura McKenna's Publications and Posts

March 13, 2020 2019

Hi all!

I've been at work since 5am if you count the time when I reached over for my cell phone and started RT-ing tweets. If you believe that only ass-in-the-chair-in-front-of-a-computer time counts, then I started work at 7am. Since y'all are going to be working at home for the foreseeable future, you're going to have to rethink definitions of "work." It begins whenever your brain turns on.

As a professional neurotic, I started freaking out and blogging about this virus ten days ago. Sometimes, we crazy-people aren't so crazy. Just think about THAT.

In the past ten days, I've gone to the supermarket at least ten times. Today, Jonah and I scored the motherlode of toilet paper, so we can poop without worry for quite a long time. I restocked my pantry and here's how I did it. I sterilized my house, my electronics, and the returning college kid. I filled up my cars with gas and got money out from the ATM.

Work-wise, I finished off an article that has nothing to do with the virus, just to get it off my desk. Not sure about publication date for that one. I've been writing op-eds all day. One on special ed kids and this virus will be in USA Today next week. I have two more that I will finish off tonight, after I finish filling you in on the gossip.

Next week, I'm going to have two kids getting educated from home, while Steve and I work full time. How will this work? Will our wifi survive the onslaught on the bandwidth? I. Just. Don't. Know. Actually, that's the topic of the next essay.

Because I specialize in education policy that's the first thing I write about, but it isn't our country's biggest problems. What's going to be the impact on our government, if our leaders get sick? We all know that our 401K plans are in dumpster, but is this temporary? How much pain are we see?

Now that my kids are home, and I finished all the chores to prepare us for life in the igloo, I can concentrate on everybody else. I'll be spreading info on Twitter all day. I'll be writing for publications as long as the editors will tolerate me. I'll be badgering my folks not to leave the house and not letting my college kid go on a jaunt to Alaska to visit his roommate. (Despite that glitch on his spring break plans, Jonah wasn't terribly sad about all this drama during midterm week.)

I'm going to ramp up my newsletter, because I think everybody will need information and entertainment in the next couple of weeks.

Stay healthy, people! Laura

Scenes Before the Disaster

I've written quite a bit about preparations for Coronavirus on the blog. Start here and work forward.

ICYMI

Before things totally went into the crapper, we had a lovely trip into NYC, where we went to an antique book fair and ate some awesome food. I wrote about it on the blog.

On the blog, we had a really great chat about Democratic moderates.

Want to do something totally mindless that has nothing to do with work or the virus? Look at a nice interior decorating instagram page. Read some gossip on the Royal family. Keep the economy moving by shopping online. Going forward, I'm going to have way more suggestions for fun stuff, because we're going to have to keep our sense of humor in the midst of this nightmare.