Staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic: Day 2

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Mommy was told that she's working from home during the three-week shelter-in-place period. Anna's classes have been transitioned to online delivery. Biboy's office is currently testing the effectiveness of working from home for IT staff. Gabriel's day care has closed temporarily. Daddy and Barbara have been called to work during this period; Barbara's on on-call basis (which means she only goes to the Superior Court in Alameda if her judge has a case), as I understand it while Daddy's supposed to report to work because his profession is categorised as essential services. Val is working from home in Los Baños too, with meetings with staff happening over Skype in the meantime. 

Me? I'm still working from home, except that I have an officemate now (Mommy) and I am now her onsite tech support. Same old; same old... somewhat.

As far as I'm concerned, there's not much of a difference in my daily routine, except that I have not attended barre classes the past two days. Open Barre Studio owner Andrea King has started delivering classes online through Zoom but I'm trying to get my data processing and analyses finished before this week ends (because I'm now down to my final seven weeks, if I go all the way to 40 weeks with this pregnancy); hence, I'll be back on the virtual exercise route next week, the same time I start prepping my go-bag and reviewing the child birth resources that the hospital has provided. 

What I do know is that it's tough to concentrate on preparing to become a new mom while working eight hours (even if I do work remotely); looking for new job opportunities (and/or new clients) because my consultancy contract ends with the delivery of the outputs I'm working on right now; and dealing with concerns about COVID-19. At my last OBGYN appointment, I've been told that I'm part of the at-risk population (including senior citizens): I shouldn't go out to public places and I should continue to practice good personal hygiene (washing my hands often) just to keep me from catching the virus. I'm not stressed out so much because I understand a bit more about epidemics and viruses (I wanted to be an epidemiologist when I was younger but ended up being a microbiologist-food scientist-sensory science specialist-data analyst). However, I am highly concerned at how fast this virus is spreading and killing the most susceptible of its victims... without effective mitigation measures in place, this disease will easily overwhelm the public health infrastructures of many countries all over the world.



Number of new cases in California that I plot down daily using the data from https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testing-by-state-chart-of-new-cases/
(This graph updates each time I add new values)

So just imagine my disbelief watching news coverage of people partying in different cities outside the San Francisco Bay Area, just as the county I'm living in (and five others) are hunkering down to weather this health storm.

On my down time (because barre's been erased from my calendar for the next few days), I've been reading manuals and trying on a few of the things that Val and I had gotten for the baby last week. So far, I've tested the Hatch night light and the Moby wrap baby carrier.


The Hatch was easy enough to set up. But I need a lot of practice to figure out how to wear the baby wrap. I was considering the Baby K'tan but I realised that I'd be the only one who could use it. The Moby wrap is much more flexible, albeit the hassle of putting it on. I'm looking forward to Val's arrival (after the COVID-19 pandemic has ended; international flights from Manila are restricted during the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine) because, aside from him meeting our baby, he can also teach me how to use the kanga (a traditional African baby wrap).

Break time over. Back to number-crunching!

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