April 28, 2020 Tuesday - Dispactches from SIP - Socially Distanced Birthday

Carol hosted a Socially Distanced Birthday Gathering for our friend Gail. Three of us sitting outside on a shaded patio, 8 feet apart, no hugs, no shared cake with candles to blow out.  Some slices of delicious banana bread and large strawberries on paper plates. We each brought our own beverage -- coffee or iced tea. The day was warm and sunny; the shade welcome. The birthday presents were a sign of the times:  a bar of lovely yet strong soap, chocolates for sustenance, a bottle of lovely wine and a hand-sewn mask, made from a sassy pattern, fit to wear out to a party. Should that ever happen.

Hooray for New Zealand — they’ve declared  the end of community spread of coronavirus. Yahooiee! A tiny bright light at the end of a long and treacherous tunnel! They did it by severe  and early lockdown, lots of tests, two week quarantine for anyone coming into the country - all the things the scientists say to do - and few of which we did, due to our ill-prepared President who wanted this to just go away - and still wants it just to disappear, with out much effort on his part, it seems to me.  Well, it's not gonna just go away and we're not returning to any sort of normal.

There's no going back -- just forward into an irrevocably altered world, at least for the foreseeable future.

April 27, 2020 - Exhaustion in the Time of Coronavirus - Dipataches from SIP

I'm so pooped - and yet I'm doing pretty close to zilch all day long. Not teaching, barely writing, sometimes knitting. Can't focus on reading. My brain seems beat up. Walking, at times, is about the only thing I'm capable of.

It doesn't seem right, though, this tiredness, given the lack of activity or duties.  I mean, all I'm required to do is Stay Home. And yet most everyone I talk to reports this same sense of exhaustion. Sure, everything takes longer  - washing hands, standing in lines to get into stores, sense of rushing through any kind of shopping in order to minimize contacts, unpacking and wiping off groceries and delivered items.  All the washing and wiping of door handles and counters and light switches. The anxiety itself wears on us, too, I think, burning up mental energy.

But Kella Hanna-Wayne thinks it's even more subtle than that. In her article Why Does Everything Feel So Hard Right Now? she writes that being unable to reliably predict the future adds its own burden to our brain and psyche, draining our energy. Even more importantly, all our automatic-pilot sort of routines are gone, the things we did without thinking too much, our habits that allowed us to save mental energy for other tasks.  Routine things like going to the store are no longer simple. Our mornings are no longer dictated by the same automatic pattern of rise, shower, eat, commute to work. We aren't getting the kids ready for daycare - even if we are WFH, it hardly matters what we wear, when we get up, if the kids ever get out of their jammies. We have to think about everything again  - when to get up, how to procure supplies, where we can actually walk. We have to come up with new patterns and routines, almost daily, as the restrictions and requirements shift quickly.

 No doubt by the time this is over, the new behaviors will be routine and we'll have to re-learn new patterns.  I'm tired just thinking about it.




https://medium.com/invisible-illness/why-does-everything-feel-so-hard-right-now-if-nothing-is-wrong-e16230a99a80

March 24,Dispatches from SIP, First Week: A Fugitive Spring:

In an odd fugitive spring, an odd, topsy-turvey kind of day with rain and sun in almost equal measure. 

It's been a full week of Shelter in Place. We have hunkered down. We have ordered groceries and supplies online. We've gone out to storea as infrequently as possible. We are stocking up on basics - flour, rice, sugar, coffee, beer.  We make dinner every night and eat it together, because, well, what else do we have to do? Who else do we have to see?

This was a day of two walks out on the marsh, one in the morning wet and windy, the other in the evening with high puffy clouds, deep bright slant of sun and only a touch of rain. We live out in an odd corner of the world, a kind of a backwater, a bit forgotten, without much foot traffic or visitors. We had only just moved here about six months ago, not long before the fires and outages that ravaged Northern California again.  Although I miss my old town of Petaluma dearly,  I now appreciate this sense of distance, tucked out at the end of East San Rafael. While we have plenty of neighbors and most are around for most of the day, we sure do keep our physical distance.

I think about the kids, no longer in daycare, no longer in school, no longer going through the dance of socialization, of friendship, of physical playtime together.  What is this like for a four-year-old, a five -year-old?

It reminds me of those summers when I was four and five and polio was alive in the world. There was a kind of terror that underlay almost any sickness. Especially in the summer. One girl in my kindergarten class wore braces as a result of polio; those of us sitting by her would loosen and tighten the little wing nuts by her knees that allowed her to sit or stand. Spasms would rocket through her legs sometimes and she'd claw at the braces, in tears. She was only five, too.

I remember the delirious freedom associated with the polio vaccine. It wasn't just the sugar cubes it was administered with. It was being able to swim again in the ponds and streams, because the bacterium was most often contracted in water.  My mother was in tears, bowing in gratitude for the scientists who had worked so hard to find this cure; we had escaped, we were protected, we would live.

It was reported today that it had taken 67 days to reach 100,000 cases of COVID-19 in the world - and only 4 days to go from 200,000 to 300,000 cases. Not all, of course, are deadly, and for sure not all have been counted. By tomorrow morning, March 25, we will have surpassed 400,000 cases*,  present in 175 out 195 countries. By April 1, I imagine we'll have racked up a million cases world wide.  And this President seems to think we should all get back to work in early April, because, you know, the economy sucks and business is flagging. Never mind that every advisor with a medical background or brains in their head has told him that relaxing our safeguards now would allow the virus to run wild and ransack the population. That in fact, our economy would suffer far more in the long run, taking even longer to recover.

All this President can think about is getting re-elected. The loss of civilian lives in this war against the virus is just collateral damage to him. If he pursues this plan of action, we will have an even longer and more protracted slow-down of the economy as communities sicken and collapse, as hospitals fail to keep up with the onslaught of the desperately sick.

 If he pursues this plan of action, I think it behooves the legislators in Washington to enact The 25th Amendment  and remove him from office for recklessly endangering the lives of the citizens of this country.  For willfully and recklessly endangering the lives of doctors and nurses fighting this pandemic when he refused to take this seriously when he was first informed about it in January. For  causing deaths of civilians by thoughtlessly promoting cures that don't work and dismissing practices that do in his woefully ignorant tweeting, his reckless, rambling press meetings full of misinformation and downright lies.

Personally, I wonder if he has lost his mind.

Meanwhile, we take our walks, we relish our meals, we crack bad jokes. Because we can. For now.

*UPDATE:  Global numbers for reported number of cases of COVID-19 surpassed 400,000 before midnight of March 24th. 
 

March 20, 2020 Friday - Dipatches from SIP

First Day of Spring, the Equinox.
This may be spring, but it doesn't feel quite like it. The hills are green, yes, and the pear tree has put out its first little leaf and bud. Pears will be in our future. That we can predict.

Nor does it feel equal or stable or balanced. I have a knitting project that I've started at least three times, and ripped out the beginning because it never looks right, its lopsided, its too big, too small. I think this is more about the knitter than the knitting.

The lack of medical supplies and personal protective equipment for medical staff, is to my mind, absolutely criminal. The Federal Government should release whatever stockpiles they have to support the front lines in this battle against the virus.

Can't even tell you how many appeals for face masks I've seen on NextDoor or from personal friends who work in hospitals or offices. It's overwhelming. Anyone who has them leftover from the fires are sending them to the nearest hospitals.

And now here's the idea of DIY sewing masks for our medical workers. Well, it's something I can do. It reminds me of folks in previous wars making bandages for the front line.  I think I've found a pattern that looks at least a little bit effective.  I've got the cotton and a machine. So off I go. I'll post my results as soon as I get something decent.