May 9, 2020

Eventually, I discovered the CNN channel on my smart tv app, the NBC 24-hour channel and the various live broadcasts on YouTube. That settled, I continued to work from home with the same hours and workload as I had before the lock-down. As editors/publishers of legal Code and ordinances for various municipalities, we were deemed essential very early on. With all of the changing legislation coming out of various levels of government on a daily basis, our workflow really didn’t see a slow-down.

I have to say, the company I work for did an excellent job of keeping everyone in touch and supplied with equipment to handle the change in procedure. The company designed and implemented full-scale virus curbing and mitigating procedures more than two weeks before March 13th. The 13th was simply the Friday that everyone began voluntarily working from home. With all of the careful procedural adjustments that were made, it was only in the last two weeks that we, as a company, have had any cases of Covid. Two of our team members tested positive a few days apart after exposure unrelated to the company. As we have been practicing intense distancing and surface sterilization, we have not logged any person-to-person spread, as yet, that I am aware of. With the reopening of many non-essential businesses in this last week, we are waiting with the rest of the city, state, nation to see if we are indeed approaching the end of the crisis, or if this is just the first wave.

At home, my son, along with every other student in the country, began distance learning for his high school classes. He and I participated in homeschooling when he was much younger, and he absolutely hated it. He is a very social person and the interaction he gets from classmates makes up an important majority of his school experience. Keeping up with school work has been a reluctant but achievable challenge. He normally lives with his father across town, mostly in order to attend a specific school. During the lock-down, he has been with me. Our days together, side-by-side, me on my computer doing day-job work and he on his computer completing assignments, have become like a substitute classroom/office. Each of us have been the other’s companion. We have only chafed at the constant closeness a couple of times, and for that there exists bedrooms and doors.

My husband continued to work outside the house as a printshop employee for a national chain. Each day he came home with tales of the outside as he went through sanitization routines. His job was slower to respond with appropriate measures, but they did respond and he has stayed safe and well.

Together, in order to break from the routine and confinement of the house, we three have utilized our kayaks and fishing gear. We are not the best fishers. In two months, we have caught three fish. While the fish count is low, we enjoyed every moment of it. During one particular outing, I discovered the biggest alligator I have ever seen. According to the internet, it is half-again bigger than the biggest ever recorded. Unfortunately, I was too busy paddling for my life to take any pictures, so there is no evidence of its size or existence. We intend to attempt to find it again at some point and get pictures. Right now the river is swollen and unsafe for gator spying.

WIP

61,807 WORD COUNT/ 15,285 WORDS WRITTEN

This is not my normal pace. The challenge of finding and utilizing writing time was tricky. Eventually I shifted my work hours later in the day by a couple of hours to more closely match the work hours of my family. That allowed me to write during the hours of the morning when I was awake and they were still quietly and blissfully asleep. Still, some mornings are harder than others and it has not been consistent. At this point in the book, I have brought all of the current story players together and introduced the action of the palace intrigue. I am hoping to wrap up this plot arc within the month and be able to move the book into second draft in the first week of June.

Website

SocMed

Personally, I am not finding the social distancing terribly isolating as far as interpersonal connections. The thing that really had me going for a while was the lack of easily accessible and reliably accurate news reporting. I don’t claim it is any more reliable or accurate now. I just feel less stressed by it. I supposed we can all get used to pretty much anything if we deal with it long enough.