Day 0 – Thursday March 12, 2020

I went to work all week for a couple reasons.  First, since my wife Jeanne’s company had sent their employees home she had been working from home.  Our house is well set up for one of us to work from home but not both of us.  And second, I like going to the office.  Even though many (most?) of my meetings are virtual meetings using video calls, I prefer to be out of the house.

Each day during the week there were fewer people on the train, fewer people on the street and fewer people at the office.  It felt like one of those horror movies where people disappear but no one acknowledges that things are different.

By mid-day Thursday I was hearing from more and more people that the office would be close the following week.  I decided that it would be my last day in the office.  And that’s why I think of it as Day 0 – it was my last day with my normal routine.

Around 4pm Jeanne saw the news that Belmont schools were closing for 2 weeks.  Along with the superintendents of neighboring towns, they were not waiting for the state to act and they were closing schools.  We received the official email at 5pm that schools would be closed effective immediately through March 27th.

I told people at work that I would not be back until April which seemed dramatic and crazy.  It was strange to think that life was going to pause like this but it was clear that this was the situation and we were going to have to get used to it (quickly).

The girls asked about playdates and getting together with friends, and our sense was that if they weren’t supposed to be in groups at school that they probably shouldn’t get together outside of school either.  It wasn’t like a vacation day or a snow day; this was different, very different.

Here is the first closure notice from the school:
2020-03-12 School Closure Notice

Prediction of the day:

• On Monday I had told the girls that I didn’t think they would end up missing school for this, by today I was saying they wouldn’t be back in school for at least a month

 

Cute puppy photo of the day:

• One person who was clearly going to benefit from this is our puppy Daisy who joined our family two weeks ago and is going to be spoiled by the attention of having everyone home.