Documenting the Quarantine ed. 2: Population Control

It’s true that all elective procedures are being canceled at hospitals, but Loverpants was able to meet the snippers that would render him a father no more this week. We feel this was a necessary measure taken for the public health of all. Because if there’s anything we should be minding during a pandemic, it’s population control. ::winks and points::

His recovery has been smooth so far, thanks for asking. ;)

Speaking of population control, I’m wondering if boarding school campus will be closed for the rest of the year. I will lament if the dining hall upon which I so mightily depend won’t resume until September. I will cry fat salty tears for the dining hall staff who are the bright sun of my every day.

It’s a Vanilla Sky kind of feeling on campus and I’m super bummed for all the 11th graders who were just beginning the kind of romances where knees grazing the bare fleshy knees of another person are major electric events that the body never ever forgets. I know the Zoomers are busy zooming their lives and flirtations now on all the platforms that live in their pocket computers, but man, sharing physical space with one’s peers when they are your whole world is everything when you’re 16.

Meanwhile at homebase, Lady M. and Little Man T. are actually being all-stars and occupying selves with ease. Lady M. had her guitar lesson via Zoom and she decreed that the sound of the guitar via online software was “very wack” and this gives me hope. Hope that just because something can be facilitated online that it’s not better or even easier.

I’m working really hard to bring my classes online, one assignment at a time. I’m grateful for the very realistic people who run my institution of higher learning because if they lived on another planet where classes should march forth like business as usual, I’d be super frustrated. Some of my students, who are being thrust into caretaking roles and forced to go without pay from hourly jobs, would probably just give up. And who could blame them? I’m taking deep breaths and long walks with Dog and trying to learn as much about composting via YouTube when I’m not syllabizzling.

We did order dinner via UberEats yesterday. I did this ostensibly because Little Man T. got a great report card, but it really came down to the fact that I had a taste for wings. They came from a place called “Wings and Tings.” If there’s anything I want to remember about quarantining, that’s got to be chief among them: that using our handheld clickity lookity box, we were able to send for the fried wings of wee chickens from a place whose very name is Jamaican phonemics.