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Cower in place 8: old man worry

– Dorn’s self-isolation journal day 8 (3/23/2020).

oday is a cold, wet, dreary day, and I find my mind turning to all the things I could be worried about. They say it helps to talk about it, so here goes. (I assume that means it helps ME to talk about it. I’m not so sure this will help YOU, gentle reader, so feel free to skip this whole post. I’ll probably be more chipper tomorrow.).

Over and above the new-normal everyday worry of me or Kathleen getting sick…

(1) Archie is running low on his pills. He’s about 75 dog-years old (as I calculated here), and takes almost as many pills as the humans in the family. The prescription has been waiting for him for about a week, but I’m not ready to go out yet and pick it up—I feel like I should wait until I have a lot of things I have to do out there before I brave the Dangerous Outer World.xxx

(2) I also didn’t drop off my Dad’s malfunctioning hearing aids at the repair place because of the same fears, despite my promise to do so. Instead, I just mailed them in, and forced the postman to assume my risk. Will they get there all in one piece?

(3) Our daughter and granddaughters arrived home last night from what felt to us like a suicidal Wyoming-to-Michigan road trip. She says they are all fine, and were extra careful for the entire trip. I’m relieved they got home safely, but I have set my mental counter to “day 1”, and for the next two weeks I’ll wait for periodic updates on how they’re feeling. Stressful!

(4) On Friday, NOAA reported that an employee at the building I used to work in had identified positive for the Covid-19 virus. He or she was last in the building two days before testing positive. On Saturday NOAA announced mandatory telework for all eligible employees in light of the situation. I don’t know who it is, or where in the building, or if this affects anyone I know there. It’s been over a year since I worked there, but I feel a kind of survivor’s guilt for clearing out well before the threat hit.

* * *

That’s enough for now, I think. Thank you for listening to me count off my worries, you’re true friend (not like all those who DIDN’T read this post, they’re just fair-weather friends and we heap scorn in their general direction). Now I feel better.

As a reward of sorts, here’s Bing Crosby singing “Count Your Blessings” from the rather corny, rather camp movie White Christmas (1954), which was obviously made to cash in on the continued popularity of an earlier (and better) Bing Crosby flick, Holiday Inn (1942).

And as a reward for listening to that, here’s “I Put a Spell on You”, by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Thanks,
Dorn
3/23/2020

Day 7   Day 6   
Day 5   Day 4   Day 3   Day 2   Day 1

Cower in place 7: good intentions

– Dorn’s self-isolation journal day 7 (3/22/2020).

t’s getting harder to think of anything funny to write about each day. We’re pretty well stocked up, we’ve canceled all our upcoming doctor’s and other appointments, and are resigned to spending days or weeks here if needed. (We haven’t traveled anywhere dangerous lately, so this isn’t a quarantine that ends in 14 days. Our isolation is open-ended.)

Cabin fever is starting to set in, and from our window we watch the sporadic cars drive to the world beyond Long Beach Drive with envy, and not a little curiosity. What is so urgent that it’s forcing them to face the contagion of the big city? Medicines, food, just the need for physical proximity to other humans? But I’ve got to maintain my Safe Distance, so I don’t even have an opportunity wave them down and ask them. Especially without pants on. (Thanks for that coping tip, Scott!)

Our news comes from the TV and the internet, and they only seem to report on one topic now: the coronavirus. The news seems more dire each day. Even beyond the medical issues, this is going to have a terrible economic effect, especially among people who don’t have an adequate safety net.

We feel we should help, but how? Keep patronizing local places of work, maybe, so the businesses don’t have to lay off people, or worse, go under? But that’s near impossible when those workplaces are closing precisely because we must all social-distance! The same thoughts must be occurring to a lot of people, because internet stories on how you can help, even if fully quarantined, have started to pop up. Here’s one.

https://forge.medium.com/what-you-can-actually-do-to-help-right-now-91afb961cdca

* * *

Fortunately (for this post), I checked in with my Dad this morning. He’s doing fine, but wanted to ask if he had missed Easter. He and I were both still plugged in enough to know today was Sunday, but beyond that I couldn’t help him. I suggested that if it really was Easter today, the TV would stop talking about the virus long enough to mention it, so it probably hadn’t happened yet.

I confessed that I couldn’t be sure, because my trips to the grocery store had become so rare that I couldn’t assess whether the jelly bean stocks had all been depleted, or if the remainder had gone on 75%-off sale yet. So not only did I not have any jelly beans, but I couldn’t gauge exactly where we were in the canonical cycle. He said that he had a huge store of jelly beans, of just the kind he liked best (jet black!).

“Hoarder!” I cried.
“No, no, it wasn’t me!” he pleaded. “My granddaughter A— bought them for me! SHE’S the hoarder!”

(note to self: don’t tell my Dad about any crimes I plan on committing.)

* * *

    HOARD-O-METER:

               Good intentions    

                  Toilet paper    

                        Coffee    
    
                       Pickles    
    
      Concrete helpful actions    

                   Jelly beans    

                      Velveeta

Thanks,
Dorn
3/22/2020

Day 6   
Day 5   Day 4   Day 3   Day 2   Day 1

Cower in place 6: blue

– Dorn’s isolation journal day 6 (3/21/2020).

e had to let someone we didn’t know into our house! We had a broken window that needed repair. It’s funny how something that used to be so everyday can now send a frisson of panic through my body. But only for a moment. We were pretty sure that Steve from the window repair shop was taking his virus precautions seriously, because he wouldn’t come in until he was satisfied that neither Kathleen nor I had left the country recently. Good for him! Just the same, we kept our distance, and when he was done, we washed the windowsill and doorknobs.

* * *

Kathleen’s iPhone battery chose yesterday to die. The phone still works fine, it just has to stay plugged into the charger. But even though we, and the phone, are currently home-bound, this made me uneasy. It just seems like especially now, it doesn’t feel safe to be without a fully functioning cell phone, amiright? After some panicky phone calls (seems every local phone store is closed for the virus!), I finally arranged for a replacement to be mailed out, stat.

We had had the hint of a start of a plan to go see the cherry blossoms in DC this morning—get us out of the house while not forcing us to have any physical contact with anyone. But we couldn’t, not today, because we had to wait for the replacement phone to show up.

The new phone just now arrived at 5pm. The UPS guy skedaddled after dropping it on our porch, not even waiting for the signature they said would be required. After I brought in and opened the mailing box, I remembered to wash my hands before tackling the inner box (which I assume was packed at the factory months ago so, corona-free).

The DC cherry trees will have to wait. But Kathleen got some gorgeous shots of one the cherry trees down our street here in full bloom.

* * *

We made some pickles a couple of weeks ago that we have been enjoying. As I finished up one bottle of them, I reflected that it may be a long while before I go to the grocery store again for something as non-urgent as cucumbers. I tried to savor that last pickle, knowing that it could be summer before I have another.

Deja vu! or something. I bet our pioneer ancestors had felt that same way many times in Marches past, when their preserves stock was dwindling and summer harvest was still months away. I felt a moment of solidarity with them, and then a longer moment of embarrassment at comparing the hardship I was going through (which was almost none, really) with what they experienced. Every action is a lesson!

* * *

I decided to pass the time by coloring my hair blue again. Only this time, I can do it more easily, because of the imposed social isolation. I don’t have to physically dye my hair, I can just virtually dye it—by telling everyone that my hair is blue. Since we are socially self-quarantining, who’s to know I’m wrong? I believe this technique of describing one’s person inaccurately was perfected during the rise of the Dating App.

So anyway I’ve virtually dyed my hair blue again, and given myself a virtual mohawk to boot. Here’s proof:

Thanks,
Dorn
3/21/2020

Day 5 Day 4 Day 3 Day 2 Day 1

Cower in place 5: noticing

– Dorn’s self-isolation journal, day 5 (3/20/2020).

Public Service Announcement

Kathleen and I try to keep these posts upbeat, but the coronavirus is no joke! 

It’s up to all of us to keep the rate of spread of the virus slower than the capacity of our hospitals to treat it. As a headline in today’s Washington Post put it, “Fate of outbreak in hands of 328 million” (that’s us!).

Please: If you absolutely have to go out, stay 6 to 10′ from others, and wash your hands obses­sively, and do what health profes­sionals and experts tell us to do.  

And if you don’t absolutely have to go out, don’t!

The social distancing imposed by the virus has left us with plenty of time for the three W’s (Waiting, Watching, and of course Washing). We’ve started to notice things….

We’ve noticed, for example, that the shrubbery bushes out front that form a barrier and no-parking enforcer between our yard and the street are starting to show dead brown branches. We can’t really tell what caused them. It could be that I gave them an over-aggressive trim last time in a vain effort to make them look like boxwoods (although “aggressive” is not an adjective often used in the context of me doing house- or yard-work). Or it might be that the fumes from the cars and delivery vans that pass by are slowly asphyxiating the bushes. Or maybe some plant disease, or maybe just old age, or maybe the fact that each of the shrubs has grown about twice as tall and three times as wide as the label said they were intended to grow.

Whatever the cause, we now have to think of what to do about the problem. Prune the dead spots and hope the living ones will fill in the holes? Uproot all the bushes, and start afresh with new plants? Something in between? Just put up a fence? When we need a break from worrying about issues of medical and economic health of us and our loved ones, we re-invigorate by arguing about what to do about the bushes.

* * *

I also noticed for the first time a delightful anachronism in Stella Gibbons’s comic novel Cold Comfort Farm (which I raved about here). This book was written in 1932 and the action seems to take place around 1920. The book is not in any way futuristic or science-fictiony: as I mentioned, it’s a silly comedy of class and manners mashed up with a tame gothic horror novel. It’s like P. G. Wodehouse tried to imitate Jane Austen channeling the Brontë sisters.

But there’s this one single encounter exactly halfway through (page 163 of 326), when the heroine Flora is talking with her quasi-boyfriend Claud. At first it seems like a phone call, but it becomes apparent that they are actually videochatting:

“Squalid or not,” said the small, clear voice of Flora, fifty miles away (for she thought she would answer his letter by telephone, as she was in a hurry to get the affair arranged), “he is all we can find, unless we have that Mr. Mybug I told you about.” 
Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora’s fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine’s future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials. 

What in the world is going on here? They didn’t even have television in 1920, or even 1932. Did they?

Well, it turns out they did. Television was invented in the late 1920s, and by the early 1930s there were demonstrations of videotelephone “booths” at various world expositions and in post offices. I’ll bet Stella Gibbons attended one of the expositions, and was so enthralled with the modern technology that she slipped it into her book! Aren’t people clever?

Source: Wikipedia article “Videotelephony”

* * *

It’s a blistering hot day today (well, for March—it’s 80° outside). More folks are starting the exodus from their homes/quarantine cells down to the beach. The percentage of them that appear to be practicing social distancing, while greater than zero, does not fill one with confidence.

* * *

HOARD-O-METER:

    Toilet paper              

    Coffee                    
    
    Library books             
    
    Dishwashing soap          
    
    Root beer                 

    Velveeta

Thanks,
Dorn
3/20/2020

Day 4 Day 3 Day 2 Day 1

Next move

When I came back from Norway in the midst of the pandemic I was a little struck by how prescient the painting that I had left on my easel now seems (below). Aren’t we in a complicated situation with a Corvid, er, COVID, now where it’s hard to figure out the next move?

The best advice I saw today was from a children’s book by Charles Mackesy where a boy and a horse are apparently lost in a wood.
“I can’t see a way through”, said the boy.
“Can you see your next step?”
“Yes”
“Just take that,” said the horse.

My next step is ten more days of quarantine. I’m hoping we can all find our next steps through the pandemic and Everyone can stay healthy!

Please take the social distancing seriously.

-Lona