and weirdly calm

We got an e-mail late yesterday afternoon. No, no official word of closure, but a bit of advice to students and faculty to "take books and instructional materials with you when you leave for Spring Break" which tells me they are CONSIDERING it and may do it after break. (I hope they have some good way of contacting students if the plan is for them not to come back, and arrangements are made for the dorm people who are just staying here)

I've decided: gonna post my remaining powerpoints tomorrow morning (when I have time) and make the rest of the online homework for the class that does them. After break, another class has a short paper due but I think people can either e-mail them to me or post them to the class' webpage. I give an exam in my intro class but I could either push that back a bit (if we were only going to close for a week) or make an online version.

My ecology students in lab yesterday, I could tell some of them were a little nervous. I told them on the way back into town (it was a field lab) that we'd manage, I'd figure out what we needed to do. (I'm glad that we just took an exam in there. The third exam, which is heavily life-tables/population growth? If I had to do it online, I could do it as almost like a computational homework assignment and make multiple versions of the data they would have to work with to discourage sharing....)

And I also realized something this morning: I have probably already made the hardest snap-decision of my life, all of this is nothing compared to that. I remembered how, back at the end of July, when my mom and I went to the funeral home the second time, and they asked her if she wanted them to cremate my dad in the clothes he had on, or take them off, wash them, and give them back to her, and she looked at me, and I could see in her face that in that moment, that was one decision too many, she could not make it, and I had to step up, even though I too was grieving and shocked. And I did. I decided on the basis of my dad's sense of dignity (and also my no-desire to drive back there to pick the clothes up) and told him to cremate my dad in them.

And if I could make that decision, I can figure out how to cope with taking my classes online if I have to. It's going to not be fun, I'm going to miss doing labs with the students if it comes to that, I'm probably going to have to quickly figure out how to audio-record myself and post those audios, or, failing that, type up some notes (I wish I now had speech-to-text capability on this laptop).

It will not be perfect but I don't think anyone can expect perfect now.

Yes, I will make it through this, but I wish I didn't have to. I am very, very, very ready for things to be boring instead of "interesting" for a long time.

I've also decided to cancel going to Sherman for anything over spring break; I will do what shopping I can in town, probably early in the day before many people are out, and just rely on the fact that I have an enormous yarn/fabric stash I can start working on. I do need a few cosmetic things soon, but I can mail order those from Ulta.

My mom is staying home except for quick trips to the grocery, also at uncrowded times. Hopefully she will be OK, at least until some vaccine/reliable treatment comes out.