And like that it was 2020

Dear Family,

I'm starting up blogging again. These are crazy times and I just feel the need to journal lately to help process what is going on and also to remember all the great moments.

It's a cool night, it's late, almost 2300. I've been working on school work since noon. Where I'm sitting on the couch there's a nice cross breeze as we've opened up the house to let in the Spring air. Toys are everywhere because I forgot to make Kit pick them up and Maggie is prowling around searching for spiders and affection. I can't smell anything thanks to a cold I've somehow managed to pick up while quarantined at home for the last two weeks, but I imagine it smells like the BBQ chicken and sweet potatoes that Chance made for dinner. I'm waiting on my cough medicine to take hold so I don't keep Chance up all night. It's a perfect time to reflect on the day :) 

I had a really nice day today. Chance and I woke up early to have coffee together. The munchkin woke up about an hour later and she and I had breakfast of cheerios and raspberries and then went outside. It was a beautiful and warm day if not a bit windy and we did our rounds in the "gardens" and looked at all the flowering trees around the yard. We collected acorns and rocks. She rode her "bike" and I wheeled her around in her car. Then we went back inside for snack time and afterwards I decided to introduce the Easter Egg hunt! I was going to wait until Easter, but she's so cooped up that I caved and I'm so glad that I did. She was so darn cute carrying her little white and teal basket around looking for eggs I'd hidden in plain sight around the living room. She liked it so much, in fact, that she carried it around the rest of the day until bedtime showing Chance and I her eggs.

Chance tele-worked til about noon and then I got to sign on. We recently bought (and he built) a computer so that we could work from home more easily with two big screens. It's awesome! I'm so glad because my projects have so much referencing that it's hard to do it all on one tiny laptap screen. It took all day but I finished two projects that are due this week, one in statistics and one in qualitative research methods. I'm actually finding that this stats class isn't too bad, he's structured it so that you basically are just doing projects the entire semester which is really effective for learning the material. As for qualitative methods, that's probably my favorite class (aside from health policy) and I think I will likely complete a qualitative research project for my dissertation.

Anyway, in other news, the Governor of Virginia put out an Executive Order today that everyone is supposed to stay at home. That's what we've been doing anyway, but it definitely adds a layer of unease that's been building. I now know 4 people with COVID. It's obviously more likely that I would because most of my friends are nurses and nurses are currently working without proper PPE to protect them against the virus. It's so hard to concentrate on anything knowing what is going on. I was also notified yesterday that I may be called up to Active Duty again as President Trump has called for up to one million IRR soldiers to be reactivated to help with the COVID mission. As I understand it, I believe the IRR soldiers will backfill the positions left vacant by Active Duty personnel as they mobilize to hotspots in the US. I read that 14,000 have volunteered already! I personally am going to wait for orders rather than volunteer, as it would be very difficult for Chance and Kit if I left and also because if I leave now then this entire semesters worth of work will be forfeit. I did write my program director, however, and she is getting in touch will my professors to see if I can front load some assignments and still get credit for the courses in the event I am suddenly activated. There's only a month left and I really don't see any professor saying no to that. We'll see. I anticipated being called up a few weeks ago when all this was ramping up and so my Army bag is already packed. ;)

I have so much more to say but it's bedtime and I've got to hit it hard tomorrow.