DAY 5

hi it is Peyton I will be starting the blog again

today I would like to talk about why I can not see my bff

I can not see her cause her mom works at a old people home. It is stupid so I am hunting for a place to rent. It is fun. shout out to my bff. #miss you. So I am really bored and if this is for the rest of the school year I am going go crazy and flip out. bye

Trying to stick to a schedule is not working well.  A two or three hour school day is sufficient, then you have a whole bunch of time to fill before you can put them to bed and have a minute to yourself. I am reminding myself that the whole world is our classroom. I should have remembered this from when I home schooled my older kids many years ago.

We went for a walk to the post office, partly to get out of the house and exercise, partly because I actually needed to mail a letter and putting it in my mailbox with the flag up seemed too easy. We saw several other people out walking. The coffee shop and Dairy Queen were open, but not much else. I took pictures of signs posted in doorways announcing store closings. The girls asked why I was doing this and I explained that we were witnessing history and it is important to document the things we see, hear and feel. I let them know that in 50 or 100 years their grandchildren will be reading about the things that are happening right now, and we are a part of it. I encouraged them to write every day and to save their journals.

The post office was open for business, but we used the outside mailbox. There is a funeral home across the street from the post office, which got me wondering how people will handle a funeral if a loved one dies during this time. I imagine many memorial services being postponed until a later date. We are invited to a wedding in May and I began to wonder if this will affect that in any way. I suspect that the ripples traveling out into the future will be felt for a very long time.

When we came home we decided to set up a tent in the back yard so the girls could play outside in the fresh air. They had fun setting it up, but in the end they did not have a chance to play together for long. I am so saddened by the ways that this isolation is affecting children. They do not fully understand our reasons for the social distancing. How can they when many adults do not? While we were out walking the girls picked up a real estate magazine and started looking at houses. After her friend left, Miss Nine began looking online for apartments to rent. She found one in Flint for $400 a month. I can only imagine the neighborhood. I advised her that she would also have to pay for utilities, food, and many other things. This did not faze her. She began to calculate what she thought that would cost. She informed me that she could live on $60 worth of groceries a month. I'd like to see that!

At bedtime Miss Nine told me that we all have to realize that a global crisis in happening and do everything we can to help each other through it. She is a wise little soul.