11:00am — I calmed down a bit this weekend. I’ve been on overdrive for the past 14 days. Longer, if you include Ian’s medical emergency that happened in the beginning of the month.
I still had a ton of stuff do around the house, but I wasn’t totally stressed out about getting something published. My USA Today article about the impact of the school closures on kids with disabilities came out on Saturday morning and is continuing to do really well.
Every day, I give thanks that Ian’s health emergency happened before things got nasty. My uncle in Florida is in the hospital in ICU all by himself. The family can’t visit him. My cousin, Jenn, is getting chemo and is extremely immune compromised. They’re suffering alone and vulnerable. I worry about them every day.
On Sunday, Steve and Jonah brought all his college crap home. They did two trips back and forth with two cars. Now, I’m organizing space in the basement to make room for a mattress, box spring, dresser, desk, microwave, and all the other crap that he won’t need until he gets another apartment sometime down the line. He was slated to move into a dorm next fall, but who knows what will happen.
This mess isn’t going to be wrapped up in a tidy little bow in another week, as much as our president would like that. We’re looking at months of destruction to our economy and way of life.
I drove around this weekend just to get out of the house. I passed people lining up to get into Whole Foods, jogging along the side of the road, kicking a soccer ball on an empty school field. How many of them will be sick in another week or two? We’re all walking time bombs.
A disaster with a long tail is going to have a major impact on a whole generation of kids. How many are never going to go back to college this fall? How many will lose friends and family members? How will life in an economic tailspin impact them? Will they become compulsive hoarders, like our grandparents, stockpiling cans of beans and toilet paper in the basement?
I sat Jonah down this weekend and asked him how he was doing. Boys need to be asked directly how they feel about things, because they tend to swallow up their emotions.
Jonah said that he was missing his friends enormously. He was sad for other friends that would miss graduation and other milestone celebrations. He’s been chatting almost constantly with friends through social media, but being stuck in his parents’ house isn’t a fun time. Today is his first day of online college education.
I’m most worried about Ian. In some ways, he’s well prepared for life on a computer, because he excels with anything that deals with technology. For him, the problem isn’t math problems on Khan Academy, but the fact that he’s separated from real people and from structure. He’s in mourning.
After talking to Ian’s teachers today, we’re all agreed that they will check in him once a day for the continuity and social contact. He doesn’t have any friends, so he really needs to keep contact with teachers ,and for Steve and I to make sure that we talk long walks with conversations every day. We can’t let him lock himself in his brain.
I need to take a break from this make hard boiled eggs for egg salad sandwiches for lunch. The grind of prepping three meals a day is already tiresome. Back later.
Apt. 11d 
Yes to the long haul. In a crisis, We might set up expectations that just can’t be maintained over long periods of time. We’re lucky in our family that we enjoy spending time together, but I have to work towards helping everyone find other ways of interacting, too, that are still sufficiently distant. Also need to figure out which risks we are willing to take, if this is a long term state (i.e. how often do we go to the grocery store, how do we feel about take out, . . . .).
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I was just reading a friend’s Facebook post. Her daughter is in Beijing and has been in isolation for 2 months. But the other day she took a photo of the sky from her window. She said it was the first time she had seen blue sky in Beijing in the past 2 years she has lived there.
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With Ian’s emergency, you were already carrying some trauma load. It’s okay to eat toast and canned soup a bit. 🙂 I really appreciate the updates.
At my house, I got sick last Friday with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 but didn’t get tested. My 75 year old MIL is sick now, so we’re worried. I’m going to try to get her tested today but in Ontario the criteria are still fairly strict, hoping that needle moves soon. We’ve been home since I got a fever. My kids have coughs. So very worrying. The government response has been pretty strong, but in Canada we have fewer critical care beds than the US. That said, we may have an easier time mobilizing some things because it’s single-payer. We’ll see. Plants are retooling but it’s hard to train medical staff quickly.
I work in Martial Arts, so our business is closed, no work for me, and it’s unlikely we’ll be back to where we were two weeks ago for 2-3 years…if then. Hopefully once there’s a vaccine. I’d switched from digital media because I wanted a bricks and mortar job, ha ha ha. As a family we’re fine and will be for a year or more, but I won’t be getting a new kitchen, and I’m feeling stressed about having to make another career change at a really tough time. Even more I’m concerned for my staff. Many of them will be fine but we are a place who can employ people with challenges, and people who have only graduated from high school, and those are the ones I worry about the most.
My boss is being very generous with pay especially since he just lost his entire business and has big family responsibilities. I do want to let people know that when it comes to small business, part of the calculus we have to do is trying to keep enough money to start up again. If we lose our locations, it’s expensive to put floors in etc. We won’t have cash coming in as fast as we need to pay our staff at that time. I feel differently for big corporations, but please be kind to your local business owners. I’ve seen some shaming on social media and while I’m sure there are people being lousy, the margins in a small shop just don’t account for floating payroll for months without serious government help.
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Hope you don’t get too sick! Please let us know how you’re doing soon.
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Good so far. I’m feeling much better and my MIL is holding her own. Without testing we really have no idea. Sigh.
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I’m sending best wishes for semblance of balance in your lives. One thing we did when our daughter came home from college is rent a storage unit for all her stuff. You’d be amazed at what you can fit into an 8×10 or 5×7 space with a high ceiling, and it makes our basement much more tolerable without stacking all the extra furniture. It’s less than $100/month and worth every penny. Our house is small and three adults and a large dog tend to take up more space than we think—-luckily, our daughter has an office to go to, even under our county’s stay at home order. That also reduces the strain on all of us. Good luck!
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I’m sending best wishes for semblance of balance in your lives. One thing we did when our daughter came home from college is rent a storage unit for all her stuff. You’d be amazed at what you can fit into an 8×10 or 5×7 space with a high ceiling, and it makes our basement much more tolerable without stacking all the extra furniture. It’s less than $100/month and worth every penny. Our house is small and three adults and a large dog tend to take up more space than we think—-luckily, our daughter has an office to go to, even under our county’s stay at home order. That also reduces the strain on all of us. Good luck!
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Instacart hiring contract positions: https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1242168268103843842 That’s good.
BIL has to be tested. Someone at the school where he works (he’s a SRO) tested positive. His sister and BIL are already being tested because they are #COVIDIOTS and have symptoms, and also my sister (his wife) should absolutely not get sick because stage 4 BC. 😦 I’m handling quarantine life well, but sometimes I just sit here and wonder which of my family members is going to die because of this. 😦
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I’m glad I didn’t go hog wild on decluttering furniture, as we now need tables and desks for everyone to place their computers. My daughter has been moving stuff around in the basement to create workspace.
I’ve baked 7 loaves of bread. Thank heavens I didn’t get rid of the bread machine, which is the first item on any list of “appliances to declutter.” Of course, the local supermarket’s had very little flour on the shelves, which makes baking bread perhaps a limited-time activity, at least until people have restocked their kitchens.
We’re trying to limit trips to the grocery store, though. It helps to have younger people to send to the store, but as I read online, they’re at risk for this thing too.
I am profoundly thankful for the internet.
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Cranberry said, “I’m glad I didn’t go hog wild on decluttering furniture, as we now need tables and desks for everyone to place their computers.”
This is going to be a real blow to minimalism as a movement.
A lot of minimalism is premised on the idea that you should get rid of it because of course you can go out and get another one if you really need it–which isn’t necessarily so.
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Hah we’ve been searching the whole house for a jump rope and a cocktail shaker that I know we have. BTW the cocktail shaker is currently for mocktails.
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bj said, “Hah we’ve been searching the whole house for a jump rope and a cocktail shaker that I know we have. BTW the cocktail shaker is currently for mocktails.”
I’ve been on quite the Amazon spree the past few weeks. One of my better purchases was a couple of playground-style beaded jump ropes. The 9th grader has used them a number of times.
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Have not yet baked bread. When I do, it might mean we have jumped some kind of shark.
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bj said, “Have not yet baked bread. When I do, it might mean we have jumped some kind of shark.”
Speaking of jumping sharks or crossing rubicons or whatever, here are two things happening at our house:
–My husband has just ordered clippers to do at-home haircuts for himself (and if all goes well) for the 9th grader when the time comes–I couldn’t talk him into a last minute haircut. As I was telling the 9th grader (who currently looks fine), at some point the 9th grader is going to go beyond “boy band hair” and get to “island castaway” hair, so it’s nice to have the option of buzzing it. (We girls are going to just grow it out if we can’t safely go to a salon.)
–After a visit to the store this morning that involved a cougher in front of me and a cougher behind me while I was standing in line to get into the store, our family is about to start using homemade t-shirt masks for the grocery store. My husband is planning on starting production tonight. (There’s actual research that says that homemade masks can work pretty well. Not as well as the real thing, but a LOT better than nothing.)
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If you have a spare vacuum cleaner bag, I hear that they can be very effective.
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Bonus:
–Two masks made, one two-ply t-shirt, one two-ply t-shirt/microfiber cloth. Pretty good, actually.
–Husband also 3D-printed some faucet cover levers for a heavily-used bathroom with awkward old-school faucets. We can now turn the water on and off with a nudge, as opposed to having to grip it with dirty hands.
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cool on 3-d printing faucet covers.
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Anonymous said, “cool on 3-d printing faucet covers”
Thanks! The faucets work SO much better (and are so much more hygienic) with the covers. Husband printed a number of spares so that we can swap them out and toss the dirty ones in the dishwasher to clean them.
We just got shelter-in-place orders as of last night–but the list of exceptions is so long that it’s got to be virtually unenforceable.
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If they’re his design he should sell them on Amazon. I know lots of people who would appreciate them.
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My sourdough starter passed the float test, so I have sourdough raising.
Tonight, we had a neighborhood quarantine happy hour. The neighbor that organized it measured and put out bistros sets. He did 8 feet away, rather than 6 and everyone brought their own drinks. It was nice.
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That’s fun!
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A friend’s kid home from college just live streamed a bass concert from his home quarantine room. This group of kids is just so talented.
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So what is the thing you wish you’d bought more of? In my neighborhood, it’s dish washer detergent, because the dishwasher is running every day.
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Tulip said, “So what is the thing you wish you’d bought more of? In my neighborhood, it’s dish washer detergent, because the dishwasher is running every day.”
What I’ve noticed is shortage creep, where it feels like more and more categories of things are running short and things that get substituted for shortage items are running out, too. For example, liquid dish soap is virtually nonexistent right now–which makes sense because it’s a reasonable substitute for liquid hand soap. (I can’t explain why powdered dish detergent is gone, though.)
We have what seems like an ever-growing list of quantity-limited items.
On the other hand, I saw paper towels in the store at 3PM today, which was AMAZING, and may be a sign of things turning the corner in terms of supply. (Single rolls and one roll per customer.)
There are a lot of things where I understand that people are genuinely needing more than previously (more home food for home cooking and more soap and cleaning supplies for more scrupulous home and personal hygiene), but I’m hoping for a correction, where supply and demand start being a bit more proportionate. I wish I knew how long the weird shopping situation was going to last–I’ve never seen anything like it in the US.
But pack to your question: I haven’t run out yet, but I wish I had another box of dishwasher detergent and two or three more refill-sized containers of liquid soap and maybe three more containers of disinfectant wipes. And we’ll probably want flour soon, too.
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Yeah. Us too. I’m going to have to hunt and gather for dishwasher pods this morning. I have about five days left and the shelves are wiped out in supermarkets around here. I’m going to have to get lucky to find more.
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Flour. Bleach wipes. Another folding card table. Tylenol. Frozen uncooked chicken pieces.
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And I would have bought face masks. I should have bought face masks, when we said to each other, “you know, we don’t have any face masks.” But I hesitated, and was lost.
Not that I think it would stop the virus (hi, Tulip!) It’s more to reassure other people, if we reach the time that everyone out shopping is regarded as potentially infected.
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Cranberry said, “And I would have bought face masks. I should have bought face masks, when we said to each other, “you know, we don’t have any face masks.” But I hesitated, and was lost.
Not that I think it would stop the virus (hi, Tulip!) It’s more to reassure other people, if we reach the time that everyone out shopping is regarded as potentially infected.”
It’s not too late. We’re getting shipped masks from Amazon and Ali Express that I believe we placed a couple weeks ago (?). The latter may be just dust masks–husband is going to have a look under the microscope and compare the porosity of the commercial masks to that of our two homemade masks. (Husband is all sewed-out–it was a bear of a job doing just the two homemade masks.) I believe Etsy also has homemade masks.
I picked up a couple packs of elastic about a week ago. I’m not sure what the situation is there now, but husband says that online, the coronavirus profiteers have gotten into elastic now.
My take is that it’s worthwhile to place a single order for masks now, even if it’s only arriving next month. You never know, and there might easily be a situation where your entire household has to go to some location with a lot of people (medical facility, emergency evacuation, etc.).
After this, I’m never going to go below a certain level of TP, paper towels, soap and cleaning supplies at home ever again if I can help it.
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