I wanted to ask what precautions you were taking to avoid the virus, but I guess maybe those didn’t work so well?
Congress members from far away — people like me, who take two plane rides, three airports, and I’m in two Ubers — I mean, that’s a lot of contact in the day, plus the time zones and the exhaustion. The vote that we took two weeks ago was in the middle of the night, like, 1 in the morning. So it’s important to try to take care of yourself in the same way that we’re asking everyone to do right now, while you’re trying to do your job.
You’re a single mom with three kids. What does self-quarantining look like in your house?
For the first couple of days, it looked like a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and my kids shouting at me through the door. Once my boyfriend got here, I just kept the bedroom door closed. And he would come in, bring a tray of food, and leave.
But it’s hard. That’s the perspective of single moms and single dads and what self-quarantine is going to mean for them. It is something I haven’t heard a lot of talk about. I got sick on Thursday night. I had a little bit of a cold before that, but by Thursday night I felt really terrible. And I called the doctor on the nurse’s line on Friday morning and they told me to isolate in my room. Don’t leave your room, have someone bring you food. And I said, “Well, I can’t do that. I’m a single mom. There’s no one to get the food. There’s no one.” And the nurse was great. She’s like, “OK, then what we’re going to do is we’re going to pretend your children all have symptoms too,” and so the whole household is self-quarantined.
You have a big job. You also have the kids. Walk me through what your day looks like now.
The school district has done a great job, but it was overwhelming. I have three kids in three different grades. At one point, I wrote to my kid’s school principal, and I said, “So sorry to bother you, but could you ask that the teachers put what grade level they’re talking about in these emails?” I don’t even know which student they’re talking about.
Because I’m in California time, the second I wake up, I am already three hours behind in many ways, in catching up with what’s happening in D.C. I spend most of my day on the phone, especially these last few days. I’m averaging between five and seven hours of conference calls a day.
Wow. Really?
Yeah, for example, yesterday, I talked to a company that has a drug in the trial pipeline that might be useful for Covid, and so we wanted to send that along to the right government authorities for them to review. I had a call with religious leaders, talking with them both about their work in getting their members to participate in the census, but also about what this pandemic and shelter-in-place order is meaning for our faith communities, particularly with things like Passover and Ramadan coming up. Press interviews to try to explain things to people. I just had a call with some labor leaders this morning, talking with them about what’s going on with their members. Some of those workers — and I’m talking a lot about doctors and nurses and their protective equipment, which is incredibly important — but grocery store workers, pharmacy workers, they need personal protective equipment too.