I’m a planner by nature so I’m directing any anxiety about the current situation to our logistics. The boys are off school for at least two weeks. DS2’s college extended spring break so he just extended his visit with our families in the south. He’ll fly home in a week. I’m hoping that travel is safer then with international flights discontinued. He also connects in Charlotte rather than one of the mega-airports. If his college makes a decision to complete the semester virtually and travel becomes more restricted, I suppose he could stay there. DS1’s current job is customer-facing so I do worry about that although it’s not in a big city. Fortunately, my job with the exception of occasional travel being canceled isn’t impacted much. I’m most productive working from the home office and that’s the typical work day for me. I will need to creatively replan some projects that have tasks normally done at the customer site though.

This weekend I’m cleaning. Our house is grubby most of the time. Women who value a pristine home environment would be appalled by our place. But with a crew of boys I learned years ago that I would be a ball of stress if I insisted on keeping the place like a showroom. Usually my cleaning efforts are focused on keeping dishes and clothes caught up with an occasional vacuuming. But this weekend I’m dusting, wiping, scrubbing, and disinfecting door knobs and light switches.

We’ve never had an emergency food stash despite the fact that we live far enough north that a snowstorm could potentially force us to be homebound without power. We once lost power but the snow wasn’t too deep to get out and we moved to a hotel for a couple of days. Every year I say that I’ll make one before the winter arrives and I don’t. Laziness I guess. Knowing that we could be forced to stay home for a month or more, we created a stash now. It includes an extra round of household items we purchase every couple of months – garbage bags, laundry & dishwashing detergents, and pet food. And some healthy food that can keep awhile – rice, beans, applesauce, figs, peanut butter, mixed nuts, carrots, onions, potatoes, and one box of Girl Scout cookies so we don’t feel deprived. I also ordered some organic coconut milk powder. Really I think we’d be healthier is we were forced to fast a couple of days or eat beans & rice only! I’m not saying that I hope it comes to that though.

In addition to the food stash, I created a small cash stash. That’s another thing I’ve always intended to establish. Eventually I’d like to have a month’s basic expenses in cash. Maybe I’ll consider that as a goal next year.

To prepare ourselves for exposure to the virus which may be inevitable, we’re all taking vitamins and an anti-viral herb each day. Last week I also ordered replacement filters for the Berkey water filter.

Since we’re hunkering down, I’d like to plan what to do with boys during their time off. Maybe working on scout merit badges with DS4. Or having a game night. I’ll check out our game cabinet and see if we have all the Monopoly pieces.