A Coqui in Winterfell

Since early January the whole world has been watching with wariness the explosion of a new virus.  As a Puerto Rican, whose recent history involves seeing the slow-motion inefficient responses by the US and local governments to Irma/Maria and the Southern Puerto Rican quakes, all I could feel was dread.  Those disasters are fairly straight forward, we have lots of plans and policies that were ignored and not followed, so I came into this will little confidence that our government would react appropriately.  Yet daily life just didn't change a whole lot.   But things have been ramping up for the last few weeks.  My family has been in daily texting contact for the last few weeks, exchanging news updates, and preparation suggestions. We have been giving each other advice, and something very pointed encouragement to change plans.

As of yesterday everyone is in place where we plan to ride this out.  My father and his wife in their well-stocked apartment.  My mother and brother are hunkering down together, and my oldest is home from university in Long Island.  The last few weeks were stressful for both us as we waited to hear about whether their school would close or not.

We have a stocked up kitchen, plenty of books and movies to read and now school has been cancelled for me and my youngest. The only who will be leaving the house regularly is Chris, whose work as a Hospital chaplain is still ongoing and honestly just ramping up.

In a lot way the last few days have been invigorating, I was able to do something constructive and helpful at work (helping create a home learning resources page for my students).  We checked out lots and lots of books to our students on Friday as everyone sensed we might not be back on Monday.

I am trying to set up a good routine for us at home.  The kids and I looked through some library cookbooks for new recipes to try while we stay home. I've restarted my morning yoga, and we went for a walk yesterday and hope to do so again today. I started a new book (been reading too much news to read) and plan to take some part of each day to write.

here we go.