Things are Changing!

I have never lived through a pandemic, nor has anyone else that is alive today. Things change every day. What started as a virus from China that we heard about in January, became a complete shut down of and cancelling of everything! It started with no large gatherings of 50 or more people then 10. Then March Madness was going to be played without spectators...then it was cancelled, and then the NBA, and MLB...then, Schools...Sports...Walmart home office...non essential businesses...races including Bentonville Half and Boston...spring break...Erin's graduation...we are shut down in our houses with immediate family...Hours of businesses are different and Walmart is not open 24 hours anymore so they can close and restock items. At the beginning of this, people started panic buying groceries and for some reason...toilet paper. There was a toilet paper shortage from all the hoarding! We are mostly buying groceries online and picking them up or being shipped to avoid crowds in the stores. The point of this is to "flatten the curve" so we don't overwhelm the healthcare supplies (which we did run out of PPE) and ICU bed and ventilators. Daily we listen to the governor with updates and the President has a press conference every night. We are lucky that Arkansas is not hit that hard, yet. Places like New York, New Orleans, New Jersey and Detroit are bad. New York City has refrigerated semi trucks parked outside hospitals to serve as overflow morgues. Older people and those with underlying medical issues are the hardest hit. We are desperately working on a vaccine, but they are telling us it will be another 18-20 months...so we are learning from home with AMI (Alternate Method of Instruction) in which the kids at our school are sitting at their chrome books from 7:55 to 2:48 and going through each period just like they would during a real school day...it's a lot and with John working from home, the internet is struggling to keep up. We put the girls in one class, but could not for language arts because they different 5th grade have different teachers...so they end up with a weird schedule where they follow some of 5S and some of 5Y and specials get all mixed up. They particularly don't love sharing a chrome book, but it has helped to keep them all together for most of the school day. The economy has taken a huge hit, stocks are down and so many people are unemployed because of everything that is shut down! It looks like 8-12 weeks of this, so hopefully sometime in May...and we are hoping there isn't another spike in the fall/winter and we go on lockdown again. It has been a weird few weeks and every times we think we figure things out, something changes!