All about me

Greetings! I am Paige (I’m not, all names have been changed because the internet is searchable and forever), a 40-something writer married to a really great guy Cal, our two children: Thaddeus, age 11 in 5th grade, and Poppy, age 8 in 3rd grade, our beagle Lou, and our 3 rats: RJ, Cocoa, and Pippin. Those are our rats’ real names. I’m all about protecting privacy but I don’t feel like our rats are any immediate danger.

We normally live in sunny Southern California until this crazy COVID-19 thing hit. At first things seemed fine (extra playdates!) and then it all started getting really serious. I have a heart condition which puts me at a slightly moderate risk, and since we’re all practicing social distancing (mark my words: this will be 2020’s phrase of the year) at which point we decided to retreat to snowy Southern California–to our little cabin in a Small Mountain Community (SMC) in the local SoCal mountains. We made the switch for a few reasons–one, to avoid germs, obviously. The kids can play in the snow on our semi-spacious porch without coming into contact with anyone. But also it’s a different mental environment. Things have always been calmer and more easygoing at the cabin. And it’s not a constant reminder of the playdates we aren’t having. I don’t know how long we’ll be up here. We don’t have a washing machine or a local grocery store, so one of us is either going to need to pop home to resupply or go to the Larger Mountain Community (LMC). We’ll play it by ear.

The children are lovely. Thaddeus has had a great deal of difficulty in public school for the last few years, so out of desperation, we pulled him out of school in December and became accidental homeschoolers. He was going to a homeschool academy (basically school) a few days a week but ha! that’s closed too, so now we’re full time homeschoolers. I need to do my own curriculum for the extent of the quarantine. Fair warning, I’m not very good at this.

Poppy is a model student, much to our surprise. She loves her public school. She believes her teacher should give more tests. She is an absolute hurricane at home. Her enthusiasm cannot be contained. She does not do well staying inside. Her school has moved to an online instruction model that is actually going remarkably well so far given that the school only decided to close 4 days ago.

Cal has the distinct advantage of already working from home! Therefore, he does not spend the first 30 minutes of every meeting working out the technical issues on his end. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? The only one we can hear and see is Cal. Take that, all those companies cutting working at home. Cal does a great deal of weight-lifting with the kids but he does, you know, need to work during the day. He is currently downstairs.

This COVID-19 thing has triggered my anxiety and all kinds of worry. I don’t like uncertainty. I’m sure we’ll talk a lot more about it. Feel free to send me a message and subscribe to my blog. I’m working on getting social media set up.

Okay, it’s been 5 minutes. Let’s check the news and see how else our entire universe has changed.

Thanks for reading. ~Paige