Quarantine!

My son started coughing on Wednesday night, and my daughter joined him on Thursday morning. I've taken everybody's temperature about fifty times since then, and none of us have had a fever. As of Friday evening, the cough seems to have disappeared, but regardless, we're quarantined for two weeks. No more going out, except in our garden. (Thank god we have a garden.)

As a family, we're pretty susceptible to coughs, so I'll wait and see rather than worry about Covid-19. My immediate concern was the food situation. It's all but impossible to get a Tesco delivery slot these days and the only one we have is for next Saturday. Like the rest of the country, I've been trying to buy a little extra and build up a two week supply of food, but (again, like the rest of the country) I've not been able to do that for everything.

So my brain spent most of yesterday ruminating on how much food is in the pantry and freaking out over how often the kids eat. My son is eleven and a bottomless pit. My nine year old daughter is only marginally better. Our most common conversation yesterday was:

"Mum, can I have a snack?"
"Are you sure?"

Aside from starting the kids on the path to an eating disorder, I worked out a list of potential meals we could make with what we had in and another list of the most useful foods we needed more of. Today, one of the village volunteers picked up what she could during her own Tesco trip and dropped it off on our doorstep. Kindness of strangers! I've only got to know a handful of people in the village, but I think this experience is going to introduce me to many more.

The kids and I may need to get flexible about what constitutes a meal, but thanks to our new friend, we're not going to starve between now and the next food delivery. In that vein, dinner tonight was apple crumble, to celebrate the start of the Easter Holidays. No more school work! Woo! Spring break! Wooo! Quarantine for 90% of it! ... woo?

As I understand the rules, anybody displaying symptoms has to self-isolate for seven days or until their symptoms clear up. Anybody in their household needs to be quarantined for two weeks to be sure they also don't develop symptoms. Ironically, this means the kids will be free to leave the house next weekend, while I'll have to wait another week.

Yet we're upbeat. The cough was never bad enough to slow them down, and we spent a good chunk of the past two afternoons outside, gardening and playing . A good chunk of the morning and evening has been spent playing with Animal Crossing, working together to develop our island.

There have certainly been arguments along the way, but what I'm really noticing and appreciating is just how ready we are to play with each other. My daughter's been playing the Duck Song on Alexa almost non-stop: Yesterday, she began it for the hundredth time, we all groaned... then launched into a dance and sing-along, right the way through.

Despite the ongoing restrictions, it hasn't been this easy to be happy for a long time.

Happiness in the moment is only our sliver of perspective in this crisis, and we're privileged to have that perspective. There are a million different pandemic stories going on around the world, and the overall story is a lot scarier and more painful than our individual thread. But there are happy moments out there for us all. If I can make a wish for the rest of the world, it's that you find your own small joys in the near future. If I can make a suggestion for the rest of the world, it's that you don't look for it by asking Alexa to play the Duck Song.