Category: corona diary

  • Corona Diary: Work

    SIP Day 41, wearing a green striped top and tan linen crops, writing from the living room couch; 73 degrees outside today

    It is very rare that I’ve ever written about work on my blog and I am not sure that I plan to change that in the future. But it seemed right to mention a few things today.

    I enjoy my work as an IT Director for Chapman University and I take it very seriously. I wouldn’t say that I am a workaholic but others sometimes observe to me that I work a lot. My work is not hard, but it is consuming and I like to do it well. Also, I feel what I do is important and that I can make a difference and that drives some of my persistence about work-related tasks.

    My role in the past six weeks has been particularly challenging due to moving the faculty from teaching face-to-face to teaching online. It has given me more than enough to do to fill the days at home and has caused the days to slide by incredibly quickly. I start the day on camera with a Teams meeting in my home office and often find myself sitting in that same chair eight hours later after back-to-back meetings. Many weekends I am also sitting in that same chair doing grading, class prep, or solving work-related problems.

    During S-I-P Stijn has also been working while at home and the two of us are generally on opposite ends of the house in Zoom/Teams calls. We meet for lunch and occasionally bump into each other while using the restroom or getting a drink of water. It’s great to get to eat in the garden together nearly everyday, but this also means that work is an ever-present part of nearly every waking hour because work happens in my own living space. So as much as I enjoy the short commute and lunch hour with my spouse, I will relish the moment when I can, once, again, leave my work “at the office” and come home.

  • Corona Diary: Voice

    SIP Day 40, wearing a grey cotton tshirt dress (so cozy), writing from my home office; 75 degrees outside today

    I feel that I am talking so much more than I used to when I was working in person, on campus. Perhaps it is because it seems so much easier to call a colleague through Teams or Zoom than it does to fire off an email. Perhaps because I’m craving the satisfaction of hearing a voice on the other end of the line rather than seeing another email message piling up in my inbox.

    In normal times I almost-never call my friends or family on the phone. That has changed so much. Now most days I call someone after work or after dinner. And the weekend is full of calls and online meetings with the folks that I care about.

    In normal times when I get home from work I typically want a few hours where I don’t talk to anybody. I want to stop hearing the sound of my own voice for awhile.

  • Corona Diary: Growth

    SIP Day 39, wearing a navy blue cotton top and cropped chinos, writing from my home office; 83 degrees outside today

    We planted corn 2 weeks ago and the stalks are now about 3″ high. Watching the seeds emerge and grow taller every day has been a good way to mark time.

  • Corona Diary: Mary Monday

    SIP Day 38, wearing a navy blue cotton sundress, writing from my home office; 80 degrees outside today

    Many years ago, when I was an avid blogger, I would share or link to poetry on Mondays. I can’t remember exactly how this began, but it came from my love of Mary Oliver’s poetry and so I called this weekly feature “Mary Monday.”

    Since I began blogging two decades ago, I have all-but-lapsed the past few years, posting only once or twice per year, when I used to post twice per day (generally one text post, one photo post). It feels right to pick up this practice again now, if only in some small effort to document my daily tasks/thoughts/work/reveries. Also, in the past 10 years WordPress has changed significantly, and it seems a worthy project to teach myself how to use the new editor.

    Previous Mary Monday posts

    So true to the roots of Mary Monday, you might consider spending some time with poet Mary Oliver today, being interviewed about her craft, and specifically, about her mornings:

    And below is a bit of a Mary Oliver poem that resonates specifically with me, as she seems to be imagining herself becoming a fish or a mermaid, or remembering some past primordial self where she was a creature of the water:

    An excerpt from The Sea, by Mary Oliver

    Stroke by
    stroke my
    body remembers that life and cries for
    the lost parts of itself–
    fins, gills
    opening like flowers into
    the flesh–my legs
    want to lock and become
    one muscle, I swear I know
    just what the blue-gray scales
    shingling
    the rest of me would
    feel like!

  • Corona Diary: SundayFunday(?)

    SIP Day 37, wearing an olive tank top & black cotton shorts, writing from my home office; 87 degrees

    Today’s tasks:

    • grade papers and students’ creative projects
    • wash laundry
    • mow the grass around the garden beds
    • exercise (ab roller, pushups, foam roller massaging)
    • set up fancy webcam on external monitor

    Things I did for fun today:

    • had a quiet cup of tea on the back porch
    • listened to some favorite Stromae songs
    • took a 15 minute drive around the neighborhood to admire everyone’s front yards
    • watched youtube videos of animals riding roombas and toy trains
    • napped on the floor of my office (after exercising)

    Things I have not done in a very long time:

    • worn shoes
    • worn clothing that requires dry cleaning
    • paddled an outrigger canoe

  • Corona Diary

    Today is Day Number 36 of California’s “Shelter-in-Place” order. For most of those 36 days I have been preoccupied with work tasks related to aiding our faculty in moving from face-to-face instruction to online instruction. Thus far, very few people in my social circle have been directly impacted by COVID-19.

    Our world is small. Our bedroom, our backyard, the hours spent looking at my computer screen in my office. I Zoom several hours per day. I run all of my calls and chats through Microsoft Teams. I check in with my kids via text message and cellphone calls a few times each week. My eldest is living with my Mom in Utah and my youngest is living in Washington D.C. with her toothless cat.Some days I am afraid, some days I am bored. Some days I want to eat something other than the groceries we have delivered via Instacart.

    Today’s projects included planting dill, basil, and tarragon that we grew from seed, in our herb garden. I also folded some laundry, mopped the kitchen floor, and finished reading The Parable of the Sower. Ironically, it’s the first novel I’ve been able to start and finish since S-I-P. My attention span has been so short and novels haven’t been able to hold my interest. Next, I plan to read through the stack of books that I bought from a charming little bookshop we discovered in Avila Beach, when we went to Central California in early March (which now feels a lifetime ago).