Stay at Home, Stay Healthy

Washington has issued "Stay Home, Stay Healthy" orders, which is a very wishy-washy way of issuing a shelter in place order.  When WA closed the schools, March 17th was my son's last day, my work allowed us to start working from home.  They were actually encouraging it the week before, but once the schools were closed, my office pretty much told us to go home and do what we can from home. 

I work with mentally ill adults, so I am also considered an "essential employee" but thankfully I can do most of my work at home.  I also work with two separate municipal courts (municipal is the city, I didn't know that before I started my current job), and when court is in session for my clients I am supposed to be there.  So even though I was told to work from home, it was understood that once a week I would have to venture out and go to court.  Well, early last week one of my courts canceled all my court hearings until May 5th and then last Friday the second court canceled all my hearings until May as well.  So, I truly am a shut in now. Well, not really, I still go grocery shopping, and I do go for my daily runs outside.  So far WA's governor has encouraged outdoor exercise as long as we are maintaining 6 feet from others.

My treadmill remade as a standing desk.  The desk is
a leaf from my dining table. 

Yesterday I had to go to my office.  Two of my program's participants were scheduled to graduate this last Tuesday and sadly because of this stupid virus, they are not going to get any sort of celebration or acknowledgement in court that they completed the program.  I wanted them to still get some recognition, so I bought them gift cards to mail to them.  That meant I had to venture out to my office and then to a store to get the cards.  I ended up going to three different stores because I couldn't find what I wanted.  And let me tell you, people do not follow this stay at home order.  I was so disappointed at Walmart, there were so many people there, and not just in the grocery section, but throughout the store.  Target was amazing.  They had lines on the ground that people were actually abiding by, had every other register closed and the clerk wiped everything down before letting me come to the register.  I was very impressed.  Walmart and Safeway (a grocery store, I don't know if it's a national chain) were not so great. 

Maddox has been "homeschooling" since March 19th.  I have been very impressed with the Mt. Vernon's system.  The governor ordered on a Friday for the schools to close the following Tuesday.  Over the weekend, Maddox's school set up an online classroom, got together all the ridiculous amounts of websites that he uses on at school with his usernames and passwords.  His teacher sent home a mass amount of books at Maddox's reading level (he's at a lower reading level than his peers) and she puts out a new video everyday with the days suggested assignments and one of the teachers at the school reads a book.  It is very impressive how they got this all set up in a short amount of time.  We've had 4 video chats with his teacher in the last 2 weeks.  I'm just very, very impressed.