Isolation Interlude

How crazy is the world right now? It’s almost a sincere question because I am trying to keep my head down and not look at the news because I’m trying to preserve my sanity. Some stuff still gets through and a lot of it is depressing and enraging and horrifying in the extreme. I don’t hide from the news all the time, just when I need a break.

I’ve been reading a book called Mark of the Demon; by Diana Rowland and I’m really enjoying it. I ordered the next couple of paperbacks in the series because I had a Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m reading tons of other stuff, The Color of Law; by Richard Rothstein, The Witch must Die; by Sheldon Cashdan, plus many more and I’m still waiting for my copy of So You Want to Talk About Race; by Ijeoma Oluo. But Mark of the Demon is my escape read at the moment so it’s getting gobbled up in a hurry.

The other ways I’m distracting myself from reality are working on a project that may or may not be anything at all, work and the Summer reading preparation that is swallowing me whole, replacing instacart shopping because gods, does instacart SUCK. We had good luck with them for a few months but when they fail they fail BIG. Wasted my entire day dealing with it and I’m DONE. We did the curbside pick-up at Hannaford’s for the first time today, it went well so I’m hopeful. It was also way cheaper! We grabbed the farmshare on the way home so the fridge is full to bursting and I will be committing acts of vegetable preparation and loads of cooking in the next few days.

My roses have gone ballistic! I harvested at least 150 blossoms this morning. At this rate I will have enough for tea all year long. I just need another couple of harvests like that. Since we finally have rain, the mint should start going crazy too. Yay! I need a lot of mint to keep me in tea through the winter. I still possess exactly zero apple trees though and that is sad. I bet they take forever to get established and get going too. I’ll have to look into it. I am not good at growing plants for food. I do okay with house plants but I’ve been frustrated for decades at my inability to get even the hardiest herbs to grow. But I DO have mint now. It’s a ray of hope that I am determined to capitalize on. The golden raspberries look like they will do well this year, as do the wild blackberries. What can I say? Little dreams keep me going through the dark times.

Everything else is continuing on as normal. We’ve got 4 or 5 RPGs going at the moment so that keeps us busy. The kids are all staggering along doing their best to keep occupied and sane too. I look forward to a day when we can do regular stuff like run out and get yummy soft-serve ice cream, or stop by a store to pick up that one thing we forgot, or maybe get haircuts or something. It’s so weird right now and it seems even weirder with people rushing to get back to normal. I hope things will start truly improving soon but I don’t know. I keep dreaming of tornadoes.

Daily Slice of Dystopia

May you live in interesting times. That statement is allegedly a Chinese curse and I have to say that times have gotten well past “interesting.” The Covid-19 pandemic is coming under control in many places but it is still raging across the US. A few states seem to currently be experiencing less new case but others are seeing rates skyrocket. Things are supposedly getting better in my state so the governor is saying certain places can open up in certain ways but these phases of reopening are much too short. We aren’t giving each phase enough time to see the actual impact on number of cases before starting the next phase. I think we are headed for disaster. We may get there more slowly than some places, but disaster is the destination.

I have 3 grown children living at home unable to go out and look for jobs because of the risk of exposure to the virus. They are all on the Autism spectrum and the older 2 have always had trouble finding work, my middle child has literally never been employed except for work-study at the local community college, the oldest has been hired in restaurant and by a pharmacy chain in the past. At this point neither has worked since March. I came up with an idea so they could do some work over the summer that would save us money and gain them a useful skill: they can scrape and paint our house, or at least most of it. They are going to watch youtube videos to learn how and start at the back of the house for practice. We’ll get all the supplies, of course, and pay them a small stipend because it just wouldn’t be at all fair otherwise. I’m hoping that learning the skills and having the experience will give them both a boost in the confidence dept. and that having an income of some sort again will lift their spirits. It would be epic if either of them could go on to get work as a house painter. Anyway, that’s my scheme for the girls.

Our son has had a short gig as a paid intern for a few weeks the last 2 summers that has been amazing for him. My husband had been asking for an intern to take care of the returned student laptops each Spring. It is low-level work that includes physical cleaning, sticker removal, etc, checking them in, sorting out and shipping the ones that need to be repaired, and cleaning them out of all user information. It’s something that can be learned with maybe an hour of training and not something the Director of IT should be doing, especially when his workload is through the roof. So 2 years ago his immediate boss was suddenly on board and suggested our son could do it as he had just turned 16 and wouldn’t it be a cool experience for him? Heck, yeah! Our lad enjoyed it very much and has been shockingly good at not spending the money he’s earned. Unfortunately, they are balking at hiring anyone to do it this year. It’s insane, my husband is drowning in work, his assistant is drowning in work, and the internship is minimum wage. Further, we have all the stuff here already and having the lad do the work keeps us safe as much as is possible. Hopefully they will decide to let the kid do the work.

Meanwhile, I am back to work, and my husband is basically being told that he will have to work on campus when they reopen in the Fall. That right there is assuming a lot. It’s assumes we won’t be back in lockdown by the Fall, that there won’t be massive travel restrictions to and from the US, etc etc. It sucks that they are asking to come back to campus. He is seriously at risk for the virus, it is an international school, and he has proven conclusively that over 90% of his job can be handled remotely… except during certain brief spans of time that require him to accept of return physical objects on a frequent basis. I am furious that they told him “even if there were positive cases of Covid-19 on campus” he “should definitely still be on campus.” It is lovely that have agreed to go ahead and install all the protections he has asked for in his office, and agreed to all the procedures he has insisted on for no direct contact with staff or students, but then they tell him he will still have to go to offices and classrooms to fix projectors, printers, and other things. !!! So, he’s protected in his office (which is right by a direct entry/exit point to outside) but then he’s supposed to just walk through halls to rooms with staff and students in them? What sense does that make??? He suggested they hire a temporary IT intern to handle these things because they are very low-level anyway and he will be going nuts in the Fall trying to finish the database conversion on top of all the usual stuff (WAY too much stuff) he has to do. They suggested they could buy him a HAZMAT suit. Utter insanity.

Everyone is tired of the restrictions, everyone is tired of face masks, handwashing, social distancing, and all of it. It sucks. But is all very necessary to try to stop what is shaping up to be a horrifying tidal wave of horrific illness and utterly miserable Death. Everywhere I go I see people without masks, not that I am out and about, I’m talking about driving to work, the drive thru at the pharmacy, dropping off our household trash, and gassing the car. There are way too many people not taking this seriously. And my state is one of the better ones for this sort of thing! We are going to see number of infections rising in the next few weeks and I am going to stay home again no matter what the governor recommends even if it means I lose my job. I am not bringing this damned thing home.

Dystopia is here. This is where we are. We have a virus on the rampage and even though we are tired, bored and completely over it, the virus isn’t. It is not tired at all and it is spreading at every chance it gets. Even people with very mild cases of it are at risk for some extreme complications for a long time after the infection has faded. This thing is no joke and if you think herd immunity is some kind of answer I suggest you research the ‘black death,’ the Bubonic Plague that ravaged Europe all those centuries ago, that is what herd immunity looks like. Relying on herd immunity without a vaccine is UGLY and it reflects the utter and abject failure of the leadership of this nation to protect its citizens. They knew for months this was coming and did nothing. Now they are literally asking and expecting the American people to die for their mistakes to save the economy, to make economic numbers look better so the monster in chief can get re-elected. It’s all a fucking game to him and to his ultra-rich cronies and they view the rest of us as disposable pawns.

Not Digging Phasing Back to “Normal”

We’re easing back into the work routine, it’s going fairly well, despite one abusive patron already, during my second shift back. Keep it on the road lady, I haven’t used the system or tried to locate a book or dvd in months! Oof. I have caught up with making all the flyers I need to and am working on assembling materials for the take-home crafts, and packets of information for the contests I’ll be running and things like that. I’m learning all the new protocols, all the new procedures, etc, even as we wait to phase most of it out whenever that happens. I’m enjoying being back in the building, being among the books, getting to casually chat with a coworker, even at a distance and through our masks. I’ve got my new materials budget starting next month, it’s been slashed, but I will make do. I’ll hunt for what bargains there are to be had, solicit more donations of gently used books, etc. That’s all good. And yet I am still contemplating quitting my dream job.

I get stressed out having to go there, stressed by the extra steps we need to go through to track curbside pick up, stressed trying to talk on a phone through a mask, while the phone slips against the mask as I try to use the computer, stressed by all the cleaning, the cleaners make my skin peel, the gloves make my hands wildly sweaty and uncomfortable, I’m just very stressed by work right now and by the pace at which people are rushing to “get back to normal” without adequate time between steps to see what impact the lifting of restrictions will have on virus spread. They are just going to create a new surge of this horrible virus and we are all going to be forced to quarantine again. 😦

Stress is a big factor in my negative feelings toward working, but it isn’t the only factor. I got used to a new, softer rhythm of life, I have been able to be a better wife, better mother, better pet-mom, vastly more prolific artist, and despite all the stress of the pandemic a generally happier person in a bunch of ways. I had more time to read, more time to learn new things, I liked it. Normalcy kind of sucks. Being stressed, rushing places, having to plan dinner for my family and a stupid, sad separate dinner for myself. (usually a couple of granola bars and some water for me. bleh) Not working allowed me to reach out, online of course, and keep up with my friends more, connect in new, untried ways that have turned out to be hella cool. I feel more of a sense of community with all my friends than I did when we were all rushing out to jobs all the time, driving kids around, constantly running errands and busy, busy, busy! Not that I was idle at home, I mean now I am cause it’s a billion degrees out, but I was painting, writing, working from home, cooking a lot, reading, planning, dreaming, just living. And it was good.

We’ve been lucky, we’ve been able to continue to work from home through this nightmare, we have been getting paid when others have been laid off temporarily or permanently, lost their insurance and suffered hunger while not being able to pay their bills. We have friends who are struggling through this and it’s just so stressful. We help where we can but I wish we could do more. I want to fix all the problems and it sucks that I can’t, that I have to choose where I feel like we can make the best impact at any given time. When the virus comes roaring back and we are all forced to go back home I think it might be worse the second time around. Folks that lost jobs will probably still be out of work and how are they supposed to eat and live if our damn government doesn’t support its citizens? Doesn’t ban evictions and suspend the machinery of rent and mortgage collection and tell the greedy utilities they aren’t allowed to shut people off? If our government was more functional we would have universal health care, a strong safety net, and much else that the rest of the civilized world already has. We need to fix that!

Blogging for Sanity

I can’t believe what I am seeing in the world, in my country, in my neighborhood. We’ve got a global pandemic of a disease that is just a shocking nightmare, millions, upon millions of people out of work with no income and no health insurance, no freaking FOOD, and since the safety net’s been gutted there is almost nothing there to catch them. Food banks are screaming, crying, and begging for help to try and meet the need to keep families from starving to death in the richest country in the history of the planet… while billionaires are having to find extra help so they count all the profit they’ve made while hundreds of thousands of Americans die. Aside from not having the money for food, people can’t pay their rent/mortgage, they can’t pay their electric bills, or their car insurance, and the list goes on.

Some of these threats are more immediate than others, deadly disease and hunger/malnutrition are clearly top threats, but if you lose your home how TF are you supposed to protect yourself from the virus? We are all sick and tired of being shut up at home. I want to go out to a nice meal I didn’t cook and don’t have to clean up after, I want my kid to get their blood-work done, I want us all to see the dentist, we were supposed to go in April, I want to be able to go swimming, to have the kids come into the library for programs, etc, etc. But the virus is NOT tired, the virus is fine, it is out there feeling energetic and virulent, eager to infect everyone. It is a perfect storm of a virus:

Highly Infectious
Long Incubation
Asymptomatic Transmission
Horribly Miserable for those who get a “bad case” of it
Multiple, awful issues connected to it like multiple organ failure, severe clotting, etc.
Having “Recovered” may still mean you need a lung transplant even if you were healthy before you got it, dying of a heart attack even if you were healthy before, dying just when it looked like you were about to recover. Most of these can happen even to people with mild or NO symptoms.

But somehow a whole bunch of people have decided they are just “over” this whole virus kerfuffle and are just going to traipse back out to have their hair and nails done, get massages, eat at restaurants, go to bars, go to parties, etc, etc. I 100% get the people who are desperate to get back to work because they have bills they can’t pay or are facing hunger, they are weighing the risk of disease against eating, having shelter and water, medication, etc. They are not being stupid they are desperate. They shouldn’t be in that position. Our government should have responded to the threat of this pandemic sooner and provided clear, medicine and science-based leadership. Yes it would have been nice if China had been more honest and not downplayed the threat but if I, a geekly housewife/part-time teen librarian and mom, could hear the news coming out of China and see the videos of workers in hazmat suits spraying the streets down and know that it wasn’t adding up. If I, with my limited information, and limited resources could see the threat coming and start preparing in January, which I did, I think our government could have, and bloody well should have, seen it coming and fricking prepared.

They are giving away tax cuts to BILLIONAIRES while Americans go hungry, WTF? They should be taxing the wealthy more so they can support everyday people who need money to pay for food and rent so our country can freaking SURVIVE this crisis. They could and should be pushing through a completely socialized medical system Right Now, covering everything. They are LYING when they say it would be too expensive, the prices we, as Americans pay for health services and medicines are inflated often by orders of magnitude. That’s part of the deal of single-payer health care, the government helps set the prices of everything. That’s why ambulance rides all over Europe cost an average of $30-50 while we pay upwards of $2,000 for the exact same thing.

But instead of doing anything sane like all of that, they have decided that instead of dealing with the situation, instead of protecting the American population, they are just going to send everyone back out there and hope not too many people die. But that is a lie. How can they pretend to care how many people die while actively inflaming their extremist supporters not to wear masks? While claiming the news, and scientists, and liberals are hyping the whole thing up just hurt the President? While the President and his cronies wander around without masks on? Holding big rallies with no social distancing? It seems like they don’t care at all if it spreads, or if millions die. What do they care about? Money. Money for them, money for billionaires, more and more and more money while people are dying. And people of color are dying at a higher rate while police seem to kill them in broad daylight without consequences. And Native Americans are dying too. I have heard the infection rates on reservations are appalling. How can this be 2020 if Black Lives Matter is a controversial statement?

And yet, here we go, pushing everything to go back to normal so infection rates can rise and spike and our hospitals can be overwhelmed and we can experience a truly nightmarish situation. I am back to work now, in a closed building, with a million precautions in place. I am lucky, lucky, lucky that my boss, and the trustees, and the town are taking this virus so seriously, and yet I am still terrified because getting this virus is not an option. I cannot bring this thing home to my family, to my severely asthmatic husband, to my daughter with damage to her heart. I am still considering quitting my dream job because once the doors open at all we can say patrons have to wear masks all we want but how are we supposed to enforce it? I wish everyone would just show compassion for others and wear the damn masks. I hope that right now we are changing the world and ending the extreme racial inequity in the United States and around the world. I hope that we can fix things. I hope my country can survive this time of multiple, horrible disasters. I’m not exactly sure what the alternative looks like but I know it’s something I do not want to see.

The Meh, the Good, & the Work to be Done

My first day back at work was demoralizing. I don’t remember how to do anything and there are new procedures for EVERYTHING. I feel like an idiot. Checking items back in now has so many steps and I’m not even talking about the quarantining and cleaning. Since there is no interlibrary loaning going on now we have to check in each item, cancel any transits that come up, turn on check in modifiers and re-check-in. Then we need to turn off the check in modifiers and scan the next item. It really slows things down. We are also not even half-way through with the deep cleaning of the entire library and need to keep up with that. We are each supposed to complete one task from the list per shift so I cleaned the staff freezer last night. We have a whole new list of procedures for curbside pick-up that includes a spreadsheet that confuses the heck out of me and delivery as well. Last night was a lot and I felt overwhelmed. I love this job, I love this job, I love this job. I also have real concerns about when the doors open and being exposed to the virus that sometimes necessitates lung transplants in formerly healthy people. #wanttostayhome

In better news apparently the U.S. Supreme Court opted to protect LGBTQ workers from being fired for being themselves. YAY! That is awesome. I mean, so much more work to be done to create a truly free and equal society for all people, but it’s good to see some decent decisions being made these days. I am also really heartened by seeing the turn-out for Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter rallies. We need to keep this going and make real change happen. We need to fix everything that’s broken and make things truly great for all of us.

I’m trying to sort through my own programming/attitudes/beliefs/etc, and learn how to become a real ally for all marginalized people right now. It’s a little overwhelming when I think of it that way, actually, so I’m trying to figure out one step, then a next step, learning how to listen, how to put my feelings in their place so I can keep listening when things get uncomfortable. Right now I’m mostly doing a lot of reading and watching videos and things. I know I will make mistakes I’d just prefer not to storm out there like some giant water buffalo making every mistake.

We all need to do whatever we can to support justice and equality for all. I thought I understood how bad things were for Black Americans but I am finding out that what I know was a fraction of what has been going on. I’m sure I don’t even have the full picture yet, may never be able to fully comprehend how entrenched, institutionalized racism impacts and has been impacting non-white communities, even so I can learn to help, to work for a better world, a just world where people are all treated fairly and with actual human respect.

104 days of isolation. I’m not ready to go back.

20,000 new cases in the U.S. every day… again, and I have to start back to work today. I am an animal undergoing stress. We have been so careful and have been waiting this out as best we can and now I am supposed to go back to work and raise our risk of exposure when it isn’t safe at all. I’ll be in the library with one coworker, always the same coworker for every shift, with lots of protocols and precautions in place. It’s good, it’ll be fine, it’s ok. No patrons will be allowed in but we are supposed to manage curbside pick-up for people. It’ll be ok.

I’m freaked out mostly because I see so many people out there without masks. They walk up and down my street in groups, they jog, bicycle, and walk their dogs. People like my mother have been having “socially distanced” gatherings all along, rejected their masks because they didn’t feel like they could get enough air, and still say they have “zero exposure.” I trust almost no one who assures me they haven’t been exposed. People are just way too casual about this virus and believe, without actual proof, way too many things about it. Much of my husband’s family just believes that Vitamin D will keep them from getting it, tons of people are assuming it will die down in the summer and are behaving accordingly. I’m not saying they are wrong I am saying we don’t know so we should not rush out there and risk being filled with regret.

In all seriousness I do not think there is an upper limit to the number of times I am going to have to answer the same damn questions for my mother. “Is hubby back to work yet?” Answer: No. He will not consider going back until September. “Are the kids getting out to see their friends or looking for jobs?” Answer: No. They will not consider doing so until at least September. I also hear about (from my mother) everything everyone else is comfortable doing now. Mom sees her friends “with social distance,” my sister had her in-laws over, this or that place is open for business, her friend did X, Y, or Z. Well, they can all go ahead and do that, that is up to them, that is what they are doing, I will do what I feel is wise. Does she think I am going suddenly say; “oh so-and-so is doing that? Sign me up! That changes Everything!” I get exhausted dealing with her for over 10 minutes these days.

So, I am going back to work today. Stressed, with a headache, but, and I am dead serious about this, without a bra. I cannot begin to express how awesome it is to have gone 3 MONTHS without wearing one of those torture devices and I am not going back. I will find a way. Masks are uncomfortable but at least they serve to help protect me from an actual threat, I will wear a mask without complaint. Let me add that I totally get that some women like bras, I assume, or need them because they serve an actual function for them. To quote a badass babe; “That’s not me.” My boobs are not of sufficient magnitude to warrant outside support. That said, I think I need to find some sort of substitute to hide certain, mercurial little aspects of said boobs, but I am determined to get that sorted.

Belatedly I am realizing that there are a number of logistical problems I need to sort out before I can go to work today: (yes, I am sitting here blogging instead of jumping on those problems)

I need an outfit I can decently wear without a bra that isn’t basically pajamas.
I need to make or figure out something for dinner that someone else can make without too much risk-factor.
I need to figure out some sort of dinner for myself that I can bring to work.
I have to remember/figure out all the things I need to bring with me to work so I can get stuff done once I get there.
I have to hope I can still drive in the dark.
I forgot to call and get my car looked at for what is hopefully a muffler problem and
I need to get my oil changed.

Usually making lists calms me down. This one is not helping.

I have more questions… &… money stuff.

Here we are on what I can only assume, based on what it feels like, is day One Million of the apocalypse, and I find myself pondering in circles again. I have to go back to work soon and it’s already feeling way too “back to normal” for my lizard brain which is still informing me forcefully that the emergency is still going despite appearances. I am not ready, and much as I love my job, I don’t know if I ever really will be. On to some questions I can’t answer!

When will it be safe for my daughters to go find jobs again? I cannot freaking imagine.
Why am I so jumpy? I’ve barely seen anyone outside my little family in about.. 400 years (?) so how am I not calmer?
How can I still not be finding time to play board games?
How come a guy can come mow the lawn, pull some weeds and chop down a few bushes and somehow the yard is double the size it was?
How did I get such an awesome husband? Seriously, he GETS me and still wants to hang out with me. Crazy.
It isn’t 5:00 yet and the leftovers of a bottle of Pinot Grigio have me tipsy, since it’s the apocalypse this is 100% ok.. or no?
What ale is best with breakfast? asking for a friend. (it’s me)
How can I have this much anxiety???
Why is my dog so stinky? I thought they cleaned themselves like cats, no?
Why does my hippie fort calm me down so much? what the hell is up with that? I walk in and in minutes I’m a happier, calmer, way more relaxed version of me. I don’t get it. It’s like 30 yards from the house!
What am I going to make for dinner tonight? Oh yeah? What about TOMORROW????? And repeat because this one never ever ends and I don’t know WTF to do anymore. *deep breath* I’ll think of something. I am shockingly resourceful.

Money: So, just before the pandemic hit our tenant told us she was pregnant and moving out. So, I think her last month was February and the apartment has been empty since then. We charge a fairly low rent for our area, made to seem even lower because it includes everything except phone, internet, cable and that. We cover heat, electricity, and hot water. The heat and hot water are oil/steam/whatever, but none of that has gone down without a tenant, really, and yet with us not going anywhere, or ordering food in much at all, we’re making slight but noticeable gains. (???) It’s weird. But then I mention it to my husband and he’s says we haven’t been spending $240/month on gas for the cars. What the hell? I never thought about how MUCH that added up to! We have cut back quite a bit on meals out, I’d say we’re at maybe 2Xs/month (delivered) down from 1 or 2 Xs/week at about $50-$100 each thoughtless time.

Shopping: I no longer shop extreme bargains as a matter of course. I don’t shop really at all, I have no number to add to this, but I will say that ordering online makes me more thoughtful, more deliberate. I feel anxious out in public and I think it makes me rush into decisions. That may mean I was more impulsive in spending, just wanting to get it over with to get back home. I am carefully curating lists for myself for things that will actually add value to my existence that I will need to shop for, find free or whatever once some level of safety from mad viruses returns. This pandemic has shown me that I can actually comfortably do a real shopping ban and I intend to do just that, I mean, I’m sort of already in one, mostly, anyway.

Yeah, so, I need to think about what kind of goal we might set, because not having one has just left us adrift doing what seems cool at the moment, and that is just Not Cool. If we don’t get clear about what it is that we want how can we ever get it? What are your goals? What are you working towards? What do you want out of life? Feel free to answer in the comments, I am also asking myself.

Birthday in Quarantine

Today our youngest turns 18. Wow. We’re here. This is where we are. We’ll have cake, ice cream, root beer, and pizza brought from far away since it must be Special Pizza. My husband will drive about 90 minutes round trip to have a Chicago Fire pizza popped in the trunk for our lad. We have a handful of small presents, a sweatshirt, a couple of books, and some expansions for a card game he has. The plan is to game tonight with our one virtual guest, a friend to all the kids who we include in our family games. I feel really bad that he won’t get any of the cake and pizza and such. That just seems monumentally lame.

We’ll be running Pathfinder Age of Ashes and I think we’re finishing the second module tonight, with any luck. It’ll be fun but it’s a weird birthday with no one coming over. I’m sure my mother will be upset that she can’t come, it’s one of the things she does, she shows up to important events with food and gifts. Normally, this kid would invite a few friends from school and they would play games and goof around. This year, and such a big year, he’s stuck with an immediate family party. I want so much more for him. But this is what we have.

He chuckled when I said I was afraid his birthday might be a bit lackluster. He said something like; “Gee, I don’t know why you can’t get me everything I could want in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. It’ll be fine! ” I might have previously had moments where I was afraid we might have spoiled the lad, not anymore, he’s so incredibly kind. Happy Birthday to my sweet, sweet son. I wish for you a happy, healthy, wonderful life in a peaceful, healing world.

More Bad News

So, we played games with our ailing friend’s girlfriend online last night, in an attempt to cheer and/or distract her, and found out she is ill with Covid-19 too. She’s barely eating, sleeping a ton, and “is fine” unless she stands up. If she stands up she gets short of breath. She insists she’s fine, nowhere near as bad as our friend, and she laughed when we said we were going to text her more often to make sure she’s still alright. She said other people are already doing that, like her mother, she laughed and said; “I’m afraid one morning I’ll sleep till 11:00 and wake up to paramedics breaking the door down.” We said we’ll try not to be too jumpy about it but we will be checking on her.

Also yesterday, I got an email from my boss that said in part that we might be returning to work as early as June 8th. I don’t like that at all. I think we’re going to see a spike in Covid cases shortly after that date and I don’t want to break isolation just so I can get exposed and bring this thing home to my family. This thing was scary enough before when our immediate connection to it was confined to a few elderly relatives (our relatives and friend’s relatives). Now it has actually put a friend of ours in the hospital and made another friend (his GF) ill enough to be concerning. She’s alone with their cats, under quarantine, unable to see the man she loves while he is very ill and hospitalized. All we can do is try to spend time with her online and check in and try to make sure she’s hydrating and eating. I wish I could do more to help. Gods, I hope they will both be ok.

We need to be grown ups and we need real Leadership.

We’re bombarded by news from all sides all the time. When I was a kid news was non-alarmist. It was actually neutral. You could turn on the news and the reporters would make their report without drawing many, or any, conclusions. They generally didn’t takes sides, didn’t use sarcasm or other ploys to undercut one side of an issue or the other, and just reported facts as they understood them. There were weather segments, sports segments, human interest stories, reports on political things, like bills going through the house or senate, reports on campaigns and such, but it was all handled in a pretty grown-up way, neutral. If a big-ass storm was coming they said so, looked at projections and passed along whatever warnings or advisories were coming through official sources. Somewhere along the line ratings became the all important thing, I suspect capitalism is behind it, rich men bought news stations and wanted to get more and more money, maybe there were shareholders who wanted the same thing.

So now we come to today and the news cycle is 24/7 and everyone from everywhere is desperate for ratings and we have the insanity of alarmist headlines, misleading BS being shoveled day and night. We stress out about threats both real and imagined. Everyone is so overwhelmed and confused that they don’t know what to believe. We’ve all heard weird conflicting stories that something like Kale, or milk, or toothpaste, causes cancer and then we’ll hear down the road that it actually prevents cancer, or that yoga will both cause and prevent migraines. Then we get walloped with a global pandemic. Actual medical experts are telling us to stay away from each other because symptomless people can spread this, and this virus is a BEAST. Covid-19 is an insidious, treacherous, murderous, monster of a virus. Some people have it and don’t get sick, that is, they don’t develop a fever, cough, shortness of breath, and don’t wind up on a ventilator fighting for their lives. Or they have a super mild case, hardly felt a thing. But, well, a few things:

This thing is Contagious. Really quite contagious, and there are people who get it, suffer almost unimaginably, suffer it all essentially alone, and DIE.
Some of the people who don’t get sick initially are suffering a massively aggressive clotting condition that is causing murderous strokes in people way younger than usually get them, needing amputations because of these clots.
Some of those symptomless people, as well as people who manage to survive through a near fatal bout of it, go on to suffer organ failure, heart attacks, and so on.
Some of the people dying of this are children. Seemingly healthy children who might have some symptoms, but not alarming ones, who develop a terrifying syndrome involving inflammation of or around their vital organs. Some of these kids are dying.

When we are being asked to stay home, it isn’t about our “freedom” it isn’t about that at all, it’s about public health and safety. If you are a parent, caretaker of children, other people, pets, or even plants, please imagine there is a viable threat to that being or beings that you care about. Let’s imagine this theoretical threat is something outside and that the best and safest thing to do is to stay inside the house until the threat is over. There is some toxin in the air, do you leave your kids out playing in the yard? Do you leave your dog outside in their run? It’s a plant devouring insect swarm, do you leave plants in pots out on the unenclosed porch? No, because you are not a monster. So you bring the kids inside despite the fact that they want to stay outside. Are you “restricting their freedom?” Technically, by definition, but what a wrong-headed way to frame the situation. You are saving their lives. You are “restricting their freedom” as much as a lifeguard restricts someone’s freedom to drown while being dragged out to sea by the undertow.

We really all need to look at this whole situation like grown ups. We are adults, hopefully compassionate, empathetic adults, so that we can see that even if we might not feel under direct threat from this virus, even if we imagine our immune system would kick Covid-19’s scrawny ass, we understand that there are a lot of people who aren’t that lucky. There are people with conditions that suppress their immune systems, are obese, elderly, have lung issues, or are otherwise vulnerable to this thing cannot afford to get this. We need to protect them by curtailing our behavior. I know there are people, loads and loads of people who have lost their jobs because of this shut down. They are in trouble now, they are suffering and it is very, very real, but the answer is not reopening the country. Because we are here right now, with the infection rate still climbing, we cannot go out and mingle, that will just cause another massive spike and another shutdown of everything. Not to mention all the suffering and dying it will bring to many of those who get infected. We need a massive, measured, thoughtful response from our government. We need proper, comprehensive support for all who have lost jobs, we need proper support and protection for medical professionals, PPE, we need housing protection for all who can’t pay mortgages and rent, we need food distribution so people are not going hungry, and on and on. To those who immediately want to say: “How will we pay for it? Seriously? HOW? Do you know how much money that is????” I want you to think about the word “Emergency.”

When there is an emergency, you do what you have to do to get through it, and you worry about how much it costs after the emergency has passed. Think about a bad accident. Someone is badly injured, losing blood, you go to the ER and worry about how that gets paid for later. The most important thing is to preserve life, stop the bleeding, repair the damage. You deal with the cost later because it is an Emergency. A less immediate example, my husband and I saw this pandemic coming. That is, we started hearing about this weird virus in Wuhan in January and we thought of the H1N1 flu, SARS, etc. As we started to hear it was spreading we thought, huh, I wonder if China will be able to contain this? What if it starts spreading to other countries? As we started to hear it was “all under control” but saw China quarantining cities, provinces etc, quick-building 1,000 bed hospitals, sending folks in HASMAT gear to disinfect the streets… we started to think this virus was definitely going to spread, that is was quite dangerous, and that my husband is pretty vulnerable to it. In case this became an emergency I more than doubled my grocery budget. This is not something we could afford. It ate away at our savings quite quickly and that made me feel uneasy, of course, but I told myself if we ended up sticking things out at home I’d be glad I’d done it. If the virus hadn’t come here then we could always just eat the food, use the daily supplies, and cut our food budget in the future as we did so. Our government should be bending over backwards to protect the lives of its citizens. Our lives should be the first priority and money should be something we worry about later. Yep, the bill will come due and we will have to deal with it, but the alternative is utterly unthinkable.