This is a crazy, crazy time. There’s no other way to say it. So far, we’re all healthy and safe here. Hopefully, it stays that way. I’m struggling with writing this week. On the one hand, we’re in a pretty serious mess and I don’t want to do anything to lessen the gravity of this situation, or make people think that this can’t be taken seriously. On the other hand, humor is how I cope, and I’ve been having to do a lot of coping lately, so making light of a situation that is far beyond my control is just what I do.

So, let me start by saying that I know that this shutdown of normal life is causing a lot of problems for a lot of people, not to mention the devastating effects of the illness on individuals. I have friends who are small-business owners, and they are stressed beyond belief.

I know a lot of families worrying about having necessities available to them in the upcoming weeks. Just having the tension of the unknown hanging over our heads all the time is stressful. Right now, I feel like we need to put economic considerations aside, though. What is most important is that we come through this with our health. If we have that, we can do whatever it takes to get back on our feet.

That being said, I’ve learned a few things about how to survive a quarantine. First, I highly recommend getting yourself an old house that has lots of projects that you’ve been putting off for months. Then, get yourself a puppy. That’s it. You won’t need toilet paper or five years’ worth of canned goods. These two things will keep you so busy, you won’t have time to use the facilities or eat. Boredom and toilet paper problems solved.

I know I should be worried about how much my kids are learning or keeping up with school, and I’m sure we’re going to get to a point where I start to get a little more nervous about that. For now, though, I have been more than happy to let them start learning more about how a household operates. Mornings are always busiest for me, so I have no problem letting the kids sleep in. However, when they come rumbling down, starving and expecting a full-course meal, I put them to work with a recipe book and some supplies.

I also warned them that they needed to eat whatever they made, no matter how it tasted, because we were trying to conserve food. E served up the best buttermilk pancakes that I’ve ever had. I have been fighting with the stove since we moved. E somehow managed to hit it right and made the most perfectly golden pancakes we’ve had in months. Since then, I’ve turned most of the cooking over to the kids.

In other areas, we have not been so fortunate. The WH and I had planned to take a week’s vacation later this spring to try to knock out a bunch of projects. We’re trying to look at this unplanned shutdown as time to get some of those things done so that when this is all over, we can actually vacation with our vacation time. In the interest of killing two birds with one paintbrush, I lined up some merit badge home repair projects for the boys. Add to that 10 gallons of paint, a few wire brushes, and the downstairs and the outside summer furniture would have a complete makeover.

I was determined to make the boys paint an entire hallway, from start to finish, on their own. Previously they’d helped, but usually only covering large areas that didn’t need any finesse at all. This time they had to spackle cracks, cut in corners, and leave the area looking semi-presentable. I wish I could tell you that that story had a happy ending, but when I spent most of the next day sanding over paint drips and scraping dried paint off the floor, other walls, light fixtures and everything in between, we all decided that this wasn’t their calling in life.

But now, I had a big stick to hold over their head. “If you don’t want to do (fill in the blank with a miscellaneous chore), you can always go back to painting!” I’ve gotten several loads of laundry and dishes put away, the kitchen cleaned a few times, and a lot of outside chores done with that little nugget. G has even started rebuilding parts of the chicken coop to avoid painting. I hate to break it to him, but once all those repairs are made, he’s going to be finishing the entire coop with a nice even coat of paint.

On top of that, we’ve been getting out for lots of hikes and bike rides. E finally learned how to ride her two-wheel bike, just in time for family bike rides to be a thing. Keeping the dog exercised is another good way to make sure we don’t lounge too long on the couch. Not going to lie, we do spend a fair amount of time relaxing. Reading books, catching up with some movies we missed over the busy holiday season, and just spending some time hanging out on social media. It keeps us in touch with the outside world in a safe way and breaks up the monotony of the five of us holed up here together.

One thing we aren’t doing is dwelling on all the things that we are missing out on. While we’ve been trying to navigate the fine line between “this is serious,” and not freaking the kids out completely, we sat them down early on and explained how things are. Sure, there are a lot of things that we are missing out on, and we could let ourselves get sad about them.

This has been a good lesson in controlling the things we can control and letting go of the things that we can’t. Instead, we’ve talked about plans we have for later this summer, when, thanks to some of the work we’ve been able to knock out now, we will have more time for fun things.

We’ve talked about how much we are not going to miss taking the PSSAs this year. We’ve talked about how great technology is that lets us tour faraway places, and keep in touch with friends regularly. For now, we’re trying to focus on the silver linings, instead of the clouds. We have a lot more to be thankful for than to complain about.

For me, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m managing being a mom, being an employee and being a homemaker reasonably well. It’s unlikely (I hope!) that I will ever get this opportunity again, so I’m going to enjoy the parts of it that I can, and do my best to keep an even keel the rest of the time. When this is all over, I can’t wait to have friends over to my made-over house to play with my well-trained dog!

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.