Category: Pandemic Diary

Posted on
by

Sign saying Open for Takeout on the sidewalk

I’ve been seeing a lot of these signs in front of restaurants when I go walking in the neighborhood. Most restaurants in the area seem to be trying to keep going as all-takeout/delivery, at least for now. A couple of small chains have closed some locations and are continuing to operate take-out from others. The county “Safer at Home” order has been extended through May 15, so I guess we’ll see how many places can weather that long.

Restaraunt take-out window with sign: Food and Beer To GoThough I’ve got to say, I’m still not used to restaurants being able to offer beer to go.

Most people have been really good at maintaining social distancing while out. The group in the distance seemed to all be one family.

Except for runners. Runners passing me from behind, where I can’t see them to move out of the way myself, have a 50/50 track record of detouring around vs. just zooming past me at a distance of a foot. Maybe they think they can outrun the virus, but if they’re the ones who have it (asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic), it certainly doesn’t help the people they’re rushing past.

Posted on
by

I find myself thinking about Sam’s speech a lot. About how in the stories that really matter, people faced overwhelming darkness, and had a lot of chances to stop, but they kept going.

Geek Mom’s A Reminder About Story Middles was written before the coronavirus pandemic hit the US, but it’s even more important now: When things look bleak, if you think of yourself as being in the middle of the story, you know it can get better. And that can help you keep going.

Posted on
by

Bulk bins at the supermarket with pre-measured plastic bags of grains in them.

I braved the grocery store last week. It was a bit nerve-wracking after weeks of avoiding people for safety reasons. But it was also interesting to see what was still low and what had been restocked since my last grocery trip a few weeks earlier.

Pasta was almost totally gone. Pasta sauce was really low, actually. Produce was still available. Meat, eggs, dairy and bread were back, but flour was still missing. I was glad to see that alternative flours and pastas – gluten-free options, almond flour, cauliflower pasta, etc – were still available, and that people who didn’t need the specialized options weren’t just snapping them up because they could.

It was also interesting to see how the store handled the bulk bins. It’s going to be a long time before I feel comfortable with a buffet, or self-serve yogurt, or anything of that sort. (I doubt I’m the only one – if this doesn’t finish off Souplantation, they may have to make major changes.) What Sprouts did was to pre-bag measured amounts in each bin. Yeah, you can’t get exactly the amount you need, but it’s still a lot less packaging than something in a box, and there’s less risk of contamination with other shoppers reaching into the bin with the same scoop (or worse, just their hands).

Posted on
by

As of today, it’s been a full month since I last set foot in the office. I went home Friday night, did a zillion errands Saturday, went for a photowalk on Sunday, and got slammed by the flu Sunday night.

By the time I was over the flu, Los Angeles and California were shutting down as much as possible to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.

I’ve been lucky. I have a job that I can do remotely, health insurance and sick leave, and an employer who prepared for shifting the entire company from an office to remote work. We’re all in reasonably good health so far. We’re living in an area that hasn’t been hit hard (yet), and it’s still possible to at least get outside for a walk in the neighborhood.

But it’s still wearing.

Balancing staying informed with not obsessing over the news (because so much of it is bad). Worrying about other people you know. About whether resources will be there for them (or for you) if and when it hits. Trying to home-school on short notice. Trying to help a kid with his own anxieties when you’re barely managing your own. All the extra hand-washing and disinfecting. Wondering which staples you will and won’t be able to restock. How risky is that grocery trip? Spending your time cooped up with a few people, then going out and finding that your social anxiety has latched onto the social distancing guidelines and is screaming “I told you you needed to stay away from people!” whenever you walk past someone, even with the recommended 6-foot distance between you.

And of course the ever-present fear that the next cough, the next weird symptom, will signal the first of us to catch the disease. And from there, whether we’ll be able to get tested or not. Whether each of us will get a “mild” case or one requiring a hospital stay, or a ventillator. Whether there will be any hospital beds or ventillators available if we do need them.

And it’s almost certainly going to be all of us, because we just don’t have the space to isolate one of us at home. My remote work setup is in the living room, plugged into my own PC’s monitor, because that’s where I have room for it. We don’t have a spare room to isolate just one of us for two weeks.

It’s a constant hum of anxiety. I wouldn’t even call it background noise, it’s more like a dissonant musical score that breaks into the foreground for maximum discomfort. And I know it’s going to be like this for months, unless we do catch covid-19 early on. Which I don’t want to happen, but if we all recover, it’ll be such a relief to be able to relax all the precautions for however long immunity lasts.

I posted a while back that I think a lot about Sam’s speech in Lord of the Rings about how in the dark parts of the middle of the stories that matter, the people in those stories are the ones who choose to keep going, because there’s something good at the other end worth persevering for. But I saw someone post another reference the other day, to Pippin talking about how he doesn’t want to be in a battle, but waiting on the edge of one that he knows is coming, but can’t stop, is almost worse.