March 2020 – Welcome to Third Age Thoughts

Cower in place 16: extra-vehicular activity

– In which Dorn ventures out of the house again.

faced death! That claim might have had more punch it we weren’t all of us facing death from invisible microbes every day now.

My particular death-defying feat today was to go back to the grocery store. I’m in that high-risk group known as “old”, and Kathleen is immuno-compromised to boot, so going out isn’t just risking spread in general, it’s facing bad consequences for us if we don’t do it right.

My curbside grocery pickup yesterday was a success, as I mentioned (here). Yesterday from the safety of my vehicle, with virtually no contact between me and anything in the outside world, I had managed to score almost all of our most vital grocery supplies.

“Almost” is the key word. One thing that Safeway could not supply was frozen green beans, which Archie eats every day as part of a healthy (for him) lifestyle. Last night we tried giving Archie a different green vegetable for supper as an experiment, but it resulted in serious discomfort to him (and to anyone else in the same room). So green beans it is!

Minimal-risk options for getting some were weighed and discarded as impossible, which left only one real path forward. Giant Food had frozen beans, but their version of curbside delivery had more or less collapsed from all the unpredictable shortages. But, they said, store patronage was pretty light right now, so I could come shop in person if I wanted.

Some rapid risk-assessment/risk-management calculations were in order. Risks varied by the hour: the later in the day I went, the more likely they would run out of beans, and the more people there would likely be in the store.

Waiting longer seemed only to increase the danger: each day the number of local cases of coronavirus went up, and they will probably keep going up (and even accelerating) for longer than our meager bean supplies will last. If I am going to go out in person, I should go out right now!

“I can’t put my arms down!”
(from **A Christmas Story**)

We did a quick check for other essential items I could get, consistent with the plan to spend as little time in the Red Zone (the store) as possible.

I suited up in layers (so I could strip off the outer layer outdoors when I got home and still be decent), got a hat and a face mask we had saved from a doctor’s office visit a month ago, grabbed my home-made hand sanitizer, and practiced some dry run germ avoidance and field decontamination moves. Then I set out for town.

Prince Frederick was different even from what I saw yesterday (not surprising, as yesterday there was no statewide lockdown order and today there is one). The store parking lot, probably filled on the lighter-than-average side yesterday, was definitely emptier today.

I saw maybe a dozen people in the store, and of these, I saw two people in face masks, one staffer and one customer (two customers if you count me). Yesterday, there were no masks. I predict the face mask is a fashion trend that will catch on big here—at least as big as the supply can support, especially as more and more people figure out that those countries with face-mask-wearing cultures are doing much better against the virus:

https://www.maskssavelives.org/static/Adjustments.plist.jpg — (From https://www.maskssavelives.org/)

Our Giant has those hand-held scan guns so you can clock your purchases as you put them in your bag. This always seemed to me at best a minimal time-saver, but today it was the reason I elected to shop at Giant. It allowed me to assure no one at the store had contact with my stuff after I picked it off the aisle.

I got my frozen beans (yay! Still there! I grabbed six bags), then did my quick circumnavigation for the other almost-as-essentials on the list. I mostly avoided the temptation to do any browsing, but I confess I did throw a carton of non-essential ice cream into the bag while I was in the freezer aisle.

I checked out without going near anyone (easy to do at the self-checkout because I was already scanned and bagged), and made my escape. It was pretty nerve-wracking, but I felt I was in as much control as I could be, most of the time. When the need arises, I could see doing this again!

    HOARD-O-METER:

                   Velveeta    
    
               Toilet paper    

                     Coffee    
    
                   Broccoli    
    
              Green peppers    
    
                       Milk    

         Frozen green beans    

                  Twizzlers

Thanks! May your hoard-o-meter be showing all green,
Dorn
3/30/2020

Cower in place 15: first contact

– in which Dorn visits the outside world.

oday is Monday, which means it’s time to go into the big city of Prince Frederick and pick up our curbside delivery of groceries. I’ve got all my Personal Protective Equipment, and a plan in place to avoid all interchange of molecules with store staff, or, well, anyone. The groceries will go in the back of the pickup, loaded by a store loader, while I supervise by phone from the cab with the windows rolled up and the ventilation turned off.

On the drive up, I wondered what I would see in town? Martial law? Smoking ruins? Flying cars and jetpacks? I felt a little like I was channeling Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day: if the streets were bare except for the occasional masked and gloved figure furtively rushing on some unavoidable errand, then six more long weeks of viral winter await. If, on the other hand, the streets were full of clusters of people going about their business without a care in the world, then (I could deduce) we are not practicing our physical distancing or taking other precautions to “flatten the curve”, and the covid tsunami will come fast and hard, and then be over (for the survivors) more quickly. Neither scenario seemed very attractive, but I was hoping for the first one.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRKgzHjTbveDNoPB4XVMxR4IcBKdP-y4GJEoog_FLOOXIgKb_TU&usqp=CAU

But things looked almost the same as they always look in Prince Frederick. The restaurants and stores that were closed were dark, true, with only one or two cars in the lot, but the open stores—the Walmarts, the Safeways—seemed as busy as they ever are on a Monday mid-morning.

I didn’t see a single person with a mask or gloves on going into or out of the stores, although I also didn’t see any groups of more than two people standing within six feet of each other. If I weren’t watching for it, I don’t think I’d have noticed any difference from a normal Monday.

The normalcy of it all reminded me of one of those shows where the hero spends the whole show in the bomb shelter expecting there to be nothing left of the world outside, then at the end he goes out, and everything is all fine. Surely that was the plot of some Twilight Zone episode!

Once in the Safeway parking lot, surrounded by strolling shoppers in ones and twos, I was surprised to feel suddenly pulled by a strong desire to behave as if this were just an ordinary plague-free Monday. Maybe just pop in the store and pick up the few things I didn’t remember to put into the order, or help the young clerk load my bags into the truck. I didn’t actually think this was a good idea, and didn’t actually do it, but the feeling was still there, strong. That herd instinct’ll sure creep up on you, won’t it.

So I stayed in the car, and the young lady came out an put several bags of groceries in the back, we waved through the window-glass, and I was off. The second I was out of sight of all those shoppers acting like we weren’t in a covid-lockdown, the herd instinct evaporated and I was my old skeert self again.

Recipe Roulette | random recipe finder, what should I cook for dinner?

I was curious to see which groceries I had actually received, and which they were out of, or put limitations on. It felt kind of like having one of those scratch-off cards that promises every one’s a winner, but you don’t know if you’ll just be a normal winner of a 25¢ off coupon, or a big winner of everything your heart desired.

At home, after the required sterilization procedures of myself and my produce, I took stock. I made out pretty good—I got almost all the fresh fruit and veggies on our list. Only a few important items were missing, which we weren’t yet out of. All in all, the hunting expedition seemed a success.

Of course, we won’t really know for five to ten days, when it becomes clear whether I dodged all the virus germs during my time out.

* * *

Our pup is celebrating a birthday! Archie turned 14 human years old yesterday, which, depending on how you calculate it, makes him the equivalent of somewhere between 73 and 98 dog-years old. I tried out different dog-year formulas on Archie (here), and decided I liked best the one that makes him 73. That seems about right for his current energy level and attitude about life—he’s starting to get cranky and unwilling to listen to helpful suggestions about what he should do and not do (kind of like me, who is also in that age ballpark). Happy birthday Archie!

    HOARD-O-METER:

                   Velveeta    
    
               Toilet paper    

                     Coffee    
    
                   Broccoli    
    
              Green peppers    
    
                       Milk    

                  Chocolate    

                  Twizzlers

Thanks,
Dorn
3/30/2020

Cower in place 14: social distance

– in which Dorn asks, how did we come to this?

Rated P for preachy.

A friend of mine announced today that he was tired of all the political vitriol he was getting every day on Facebook, and was cutting loose those of his FBFs (Face Book Friends) from whom he was getting it. I was glad to hear that I was not one of the to-be-unfriended, even though our political beliefs are pretty much opposite, but still it made me a bit sad.

One of our country’s problems today is this huge rift that’s developed between people who identify as ‘red’, and people who identify as ‘blue’ (there are plenty of other group names that people call themselves, and even more that they call those who don’t agree with them). There’s always been a distance between them, of course, or they wouldn’t have identified into two groups in the first place.

But lately it seems to have gotten so bad that our country’s social, political, and emergency response systems can’t even work right any more. This is partly due, I’m sure, to the stakes involved: whether you think the other side is malevolently playing down the danger of the coronavirus for political gains, or you think they are malevolently playing up its danger for the same reason, the results could still literally be fatal to you or a loved one.

And Facebook can show us at our worst. The phenomenon where people who are normally polite and thoughtful transform into attack dogs when on FB reminds me of nothing so much as road rage, and perhaps stems from the same reasons in human psychology. Here’s a bit of a 1950 Disney short about mild-mannered Mr. Walker, who transforms into a demon when behind the wheel:

The dysfunctional way political discussions play out on Facebook (and don’t even get me started on trolls, bots, info-mongers and foreign interference!) has become so bad that I’ve been tempted several times to drop out of it myself, even though it’s my most effective communication line to far-flung friends and family, as well as being the pretty much the only way I publicize this blog.

Still, I’m sad that my friend is taking his step, because it means that he will lose a means of communication with those of his friends that differ from him politically, and it seems that could widen the rift even further.

Public health announcements have started to replace the phrase “social distancing” with “physical distancing”. That’s more accurate, of course; it’s the physical separation that reduces the risk of coronavirus transfer.

Social distancing is a better description of what’s happening in our country and the world, both in person and online, when we dismiss those who disagree with us as not worthy of our attention and respect.

And this kind of social distancing a Bad Thing, I believe, not just for our country, but for each of us to have those corrosive feelings running rampant inside. So stop it! And if you don’t agree with me, I hate you and you should eat worms and die. (Just a little political extremist humor there to lighten the mood.)

Thanks for listening, I just had to get that off my chest.
Dorn
3/29/2020

Cower in place 13: adaptation

– Dorn’s isolation journal day 13 (3/28/2020).

This morning we heard a sound that transported us back to better times: a knock on the door! (Remember those?)

“Oh, wonderful!” we thought. “One of our neighbors has come by with some free home-made pastries and champagne, like in those other magical neighborhoods that other people describe in their self-isolation journals!” (YOU know who you are!)

It was our neighbors all right, but they were just stopping by to tell us that my car window was open, and I should close it before the rain starts. What they didn’t know was that I hadn’t touched my car in days, since before the last big rainstorm. Any damage they thought they were preventing had already happened. Good thing we’re all now trapped in our own houses and the very concept of transportation to some other location is now obsolete, or I’d be pissed!

* * *

We’re starting to adapt to the new normal, I think. For the first week or two, I remember the start I would feel every time I realized “there’s a way that I could do that without coming into contact with anyone!” Now, it’s almost natural.

We canceled all our in-person doctor visits, and interact with them by phone or on their internet Patient portals. We haven’t tried a video-consult yet, but it will be just a small leap.

We’ve been getting our medicines from a mail-order pharmacy for years now (our insurance mandates it), but just yesterday we received our first mail-order supply of dog medicine for Archie. I had canceled my periodic run over to the vet and just had them arrange to mail it.

When we think of restaurant food now, we think of take out. Some of our favorite restaurants seem to be shuttered for the duration (at least, they aren’t answering the phone. We haven’t been there in person to see, of course), but some still do curbside service.

For those restaurants who still open, we have our decontamination protocol down pat now. For those that are closed, well, we just try to make it ourselves, or do without (often, these two options amount to the same thing, in the end).

We’ve tried our hand at ordering our groceries online for curbside delivery from Safeway. The ordering part seemed to work fine, although they are so busy that we couldn’t schedule our actual pickup until next Monday. I guess that’s a good thing, their workers are still working and not on unemployment. And I imagine it’s easier to keep safe protocols in a store when there aren’t all those customers underfoot.

We started the last roll in our normal cache of toilet paper this morning. Soon we’ll be dipping into our apocalypse stash of Brand X (“now extra shreddy!”) toilet paper, which I picked up a few weeks ago in one of our last shopping excursions, back when the rumors of vanishing toilet paper were just starting. But before that happens, we can enjoy the gift-wrapped roll left at our house at some point last week when we weren’t looking, by good neighbor and local hero M—. You see, our neighborhood can be magical and Mr-Rogers-y too!

Here’s a toilet paper hoarding joke from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

* * * *

We got a post-card today from our relations visiting our ancestral Norwegian home. (Strictly speaking we got it yesterday, but we give all our mail a 24-hour quarantine before reading it.) It was mailed from Norway several weeks ago, but it took so long to get here that all the travelers have since returned and completed their 14-day quarantine before we ever saw the card. Welcome back! (One of those travelers is co-blogger Lona, who didn’t have blog-posting access from her quarantine site, which is why she’s been so quiet.)

* * *

Big shout-out to Kathleen and to ex-work friend Elizabeth (ex-work, not ex-friend) for passing on this wonderful song, about staying indoors and defeating the coronavirus. I think that’s something we could all get behind. Here’s the link, but be warned it’s Not Safe For Work. It uses raunchy language and some dirty words, as you can deduce from the title, which is also the song’s refrain: “Stay the F**k at Home”.

Thanks,
Dorn
3/28/2020

Day 12   Day 11   
Day 10   Day 9   Day 8   Day 7   Day 6   
Day 5   Day 4   Day 3   Day 2   Day 1

Cower in place 12: Norsk

– Dorn’s isolation journal day 12 (3/27/2020).

ccasionally Kathleen gets to worrying a bit about how this whole virus thing is going to affect us, or our kids, or our retirement, and has trouble sleeping. But last night she slept well. She sometimes asks me to wake her up in the morning—a sort of “pay it forward” for Archie waking me up to go on pre-dawn walkies—but this morning I just couldn’t, she was snoring so peacefully.

I told Kathleen about this after she woke up, and she was curious. “How do I snore?” You can’t be married for 41 years without picking up a few tricks, so I told her, “like an angel.”

She observed that I snore in all sorts of different ways—“like a rainbow”, she says. Sometimes I snore like the three stooges.

(For those of you too young to remember or care, the Three Stooges snored like this: “SNOO‑OO‑OORT wee‑be‑be‑be-be‑be‑be‑be‑beep”. The Three Stooges were an afternoon TV staple when I was young, mostly enjoyed because they were STRICTLY FORBIDDEN by Mom, who rarely forbade anything. She banned them because their humor consisted chiefly of hitting and otherwise damaging each other, which she was afraid would give us kids ideas.)

Other times, Kathleen says, I snore like a Norwegian pig. She is referring to this joke, which we learned from brother-in-law Chris, who attributes it to Garrison Keillor.

Ole goes into town of a Saturday night. Much later he stumbles home, completely lit. In the dark, he misses his own house and wanders into his neighbor’s pig pen, where he finds his neighbor’s prize pig lying peacefully asleep. It’s a cold night, so Ole snuggles up next to him, and listens happily to his contented snoring. After a while, it occurs to Ole that it sounds like the pig is snoring in Swedish. The longer he listens, the more he becomes convinced that that pig is really talking, in Swedish, in his sleep. Finally his curiosity can stand it no longer and he jabs him in the belly and demands, “Är du svensk?”. The pig rolls over and grunts sleepily, “NOOOOOORSSSK!”

The Norwegian pig joke constitutes a rich branch of Scandinavian literature. Here’s another, from my ex-boss Leon:

Danish guy went to visit his Norwegian cousin who was a farmer. The cousin was showing him around the farm and the Dane was amazed at how healthy and plump all the pigs looked. The Dane asked what his secret was and the cousin said he’d show him. He took him and one of the pigs out to his apple orchard, picked up the pig and held it up to where it could reach the apples, which it ate happily. Wow, said the Dane, I understand now, but doesn’t that take a lot of time? Sure, said his cousin, but what’s time to a pig?

I am a firm believer in the Liebniz’s principle of online plenitude, which states that everything that can exist, must exist on the internet. Armed with this faith, I set out to find the website of Norwegian pig jokes. Oddly enough, I could not. There was a page devoted to pig jokes, and plenty of pages for Norwegian jokes, but none dedicated specifically to jokes that combined these two principles of humor. This only shows, I believe, how far our search engines have to evolve before they can reveal to us All Knowledge. The truth is out there!

All of the many Norwegian joke pages, it seemed, included a version of the same pig joke, which indicates to me that this joke is perhaps the archetype of all N/p jokes. (Please note: I am a proud descendant of Norwegians, and am therefore legally entitled to make jokes like these):

A Norwegian, a Swede and a Dane made a bet about who could stay the longest in a stinky pig barn. They all went in at the same time. After only two minutes the Dane came running out. Five minutes later the Swede stumbled out the door. After ten minutes, all the pigs ran out.

I feel like I had best quit now. Thanks for reading,
Dorn
3/27/2020

Day 11   
Day 10   Day 9   Day 8   Day 7   Day 6   
Day 5   Day 4   Day 3   Day 2   Day 1