Quarantine-while

 Stephen Colbert has had a segment on The Late Show called "Quarantine-while" that over the last several months has taken the place of "Meanwhile".....a short humorous roundup of news that may have escaped notice with so many big stories to report on. Here's a recent one: 

Meanwhile....I'm quarantining in my house for the next day or two pending results of the Covid test I had this morning. 

As an allergy sufferer I'm prone to a ticklish cough in my throat that usually doesn't concern me. Along with the occasional runny nose, sneezing, and puffy eyes first thing in the morning, it's just part of my baseline. I've had that kind of cough for a couple of days now, but have felt fine. Then this morning I woke up with actual congestion in my chest and some very slight wheezing when I breathe deeply. That's not a normal part of allergies. 

Although I feel okay otherwise, I called the school nurse and asked her opinion. Our school (as well as the district as a whole) has rising positive case numbers as well as a huge wave of students and staff who have been exposed to someone with the virus and must stay at home until they're tested. Our state, like much of the country, is suddenly experiencing record-setting case spikes and our hospitals are becoming overwhelmed. Out of an abundance of caution, the nurse and I decided that it would be best if I got a test and quarantined at home for a day or two in the meantime. The district has a testing agreement with MUSC here in Florence (one of our two major hospitals) and I was able to get a drive-up Covid swab for free.

The test was quick and easy, and except for the swab making my nose burn for the 10 seconds they had to leave it stuck up there it wasn't even very uncomfortable. What is uncomfortable is waiting for the results. I really don't think I have it, as I've been very careful about social distancing, handwashing, and mask wearing plus I don't feel very bad at all. No fever, no loss of taste or smell, no other indication of anything weird except possibly some extra tiredness and feeling chilled (despite warm clothes and normally running more hot than cold) very recently. 

I really hope this isn't Covid! More even than for myself I worry about giving it to my husband. We both have pre-existing conditions (mild asthma for me, a cancer history for him) so neither of us can really afford to catch it. I'll be isolating myself in the house as much as possible until the results come in, which should be in 24 to 48 hours. 

Meanwhile (quarantine-while!) I'm going to try to relax and enjoy the time at home since I feel okay. I'm re-starting a book I liked but never finished some years ago called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and cooking a crockpot full of pinto beans for our supper tonight. The weather has turned cold and I've been enjoying sitting by the fire in the evenings, with the Christmas tree lit. Hopefully this dreaded virus hasn't infiltrated our home--talk about spoiling the holidays! Wish us luck.

Earth Day ramblings

In the midst of all the bad news right now, I find comfort in the fact that all over the Earth, air pollution and carbon emissions are the lowest they've been in decades. To see stunning side by side photographs of the skyline of major cities around the world pre- and during the Covid 19 pandemic check out this link. If only people could learn from this and modify their behavior upon the return to "normal" life! I don't have much faith in that, though. People never do seem to learn, do they?

Our state Governor McMaster announced today that schools will be closed for the remainder of the school year. I'm not surprised, and it's the right decision to make. I expected to feel sad about it, but I've already felt that way in the last few weeks and have mostly gotten over it. Hopefully things will be safer in late July when teachers and staff are set to go back and begin a new school year. If someone had told me at the beginning of the year that I wouldn't work for over 4 months, I wouldn't have been able to imagine why (short of getting fired or something). I'm thankful to still have my regular salary coming to me. I'm also thrilled to say that our Superintendent pushed a vote through the school board to give every single employee in our district a $1000 bonus at the end of this month! That was a nice surprise and will certainly come in handy! Gregg isn't working much at all and we're still waiting on our $2400 stimulus payment to come through.

A few more odds and ends to finish off this post.

I went to the grocery store last night on one of my infrequent trips, and since I've started wearing a mask, I thought I ought to take a selfie of it for the archives:

While shopping a few minutes later, I saw toilet paper for the first time in 6 weeks!!! Score!

The only reason I found toilet paper was I hit the timing perfectly: a truck had just arrived and it was getting put out when I walked past the aisle. I'm sure the small shipment of it that they got was sold out within 20 minutes!

The week after Easter, I had a leftover ham bone with a lot of meat left on it. I decided to make ham and vegetable soup in the crock pot for freezing in meal sized portions.

I felt like I deserved a damn Housewife of the Year award when the last of that deliciousness was sealed away in Tupperware and frozen. My husband was thrilled with me for being so frugal--not only did I use the leftover hambone, but I had a half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables taking up space in the freezer and several cans of plum tomatoes sitting in the back of the pantry, too, so no additional money had to be spent. Now we have three nice suppers in the freezer made entirely of leftovers! I've been doing so much cooking from scratch lately that all the quick, convenience, and junk food on offer at the grocery store yesterday didn't look appealing at all. Homemade is so much better, and cheaper, and in a lot of cases it's probably healthier too (although granted I've gone through quite a bit of real butter lately).

We're hoping to learn to live with less waste than we have in the past after the danger from this virus is over, more frugally, and with less excess. I truly want to make this time mean something in my life going forward and I'd like to do better in a lot of ways. More about this later.

And one last thing that I should mention, as it's Earth Day plus all over the world the skies are clearer than usual: tonight the Lyrid meteor shower peaks! The best viewing is always predawn, but even if you don't get up early, all night long you're real likely to see shooting stars if you'll only look. Think of all the wishes you can make!

Have a good night, my friends.

Passing the days

On Saturday I texted the science teacher from my school who keeps bees and chickens, asking her if any eggs and honey were available. She answered with an emphatic "yes" and told me to meet her at the school, since she was headed out there to plant some stuff in our pollinator garden. I was able to score two containers of honey and two dozen of the prettiest eggs you ever saw:

Look at those colors, like Easter eggs. 

I made a loaf of banana nut bread and chocolate chip pumpkin bread with them. You can see the bananas and walnuts on the edge of the top picture. Marco hung out on my shoulder and helped. He also insisted on having some walnuts before I folded them into the batter:

Do you see his eyes closed in bliss as he munches them? :)

I also made fabulous omelets for dinner the other night. You just can't beat fresh eggs.

So, how are you doing? We seem to be settling down into the new normal for now. Since we're both finally almost over whatever illnesses we've had, we've started working on various projects around the house to keep our minds occupied. I did our taxes the other day which is always a relief. We cleaned the trim on our house, which had algae in some spots. Yesterday we undertook a big project in the front yard. We have a line of crepe myrtle trees beside the house, which had a border all around them of concrete "stones" and weed-smothering black netting put down when the trees were planted. The stones were sinking into the ground, the netting had a thick layer of dirt on top which was growing copious weeds, and overall it wasn't very nice to look at. We decided to remove the stones and stack them in the back yard for future use in flower beds I'm planning, and to remove the netting altogether. We had no idea what a labor intensive project that was going to be! The stones are connected in 3s and they're very heavy, and there's a LOT of them. It took us almost three hours to get them moved, and then getting up the black netting material was difficult because of all the heavy soil and weed roots that had settled on top. But three hours later, we were done and very proud of our efforts! Now we'll be able to mow in between the trees and it should look much neater. And I have lots of border stones for use elsewhere. As we were sitting on the front steps resting from our labors, a pair of bluebirds showed up and started hopping through the fresh soil we had uncovered, looking for bugs. We took that as a good omen.

Keeping busy seems to be the best way for me to cope with this pandemic. Being outside in the fresh air and sunshine is like a tonic after so many anxious hours watching the news or sitting in front of the computer reading the news. And the dogs think everything is just fine and dandy these days! They love our new routine of being home all the time, catering to their every whim. We've been going on plenty of walks around the neighborhood, and of course sitting on the back porch with them in the evenings. If only things weren't so scary out in the wider world, this would be like a treat. We've never had so much time off together to spend at home, and except for being afraid of the virus we're starting to enjoy spending so much time together. I do miss my friends, though. I've tried to text/call/message most of them from time to time just to check in but it's not like seeing them in person, hugging them, and being together. I was chatting with Marla the other day on Facebook manager and she sent me a couple of sweet pictures of little Carsen. I'll finish up this post with them, because they're cheerful. Take care everyone.

Standing up in her "big girl" bed that she's now sleeping in. 

Fingerpainting with her mommy to pass the time.

Just catching up

We're hanging in there here at Casa de Quarantine. How are you managing? Are you stir crazy yet?

I've gone up to my school to answer phones a couple of times. The principal emailed out a schedule for two people per day to answer phones, and said that if we were uncomfortable coming to the school to do it, we could download an app on our phones that would let us do it from home. I chose to go to the school; it's only a mile and a half away, there's only a handful of people up there at any one time (either the principal or the assistant principals, a custodian or two, and the two office staff and/or counselors scheduled for phone duty) and it feels good to leave the house for a few hours.

Gregg is going up to the pet store three days per week, two hours prior to opening, so that he can do water changes on the aquarium system, care for the fish, and make sure all the equipment is functioning properly. One of his tank maintenance jobs is still happening, at the mayor's office, and he goes there on Wednesday nights for two hours. That's it for us as far as work goes. We're adjusting to being at home a lot. I've made a big list of  household projects to complete while we're here, but we haven't started it yet. The main reason is that I've been sick. My bad allergy symptoms have lessened some, but I developed a cough to go along with it and it scares me. It's not a dry cough, at least (which is a symptom of the dreaded virus) but a wet, productive cough. And I still have no fever which is a good sign. I wish I'd start feeling better, though. This whole situation is depressing enough without being sick.

There's not a whole lot to say, so here are a couple of pictures I took last week.

Fresh fruit salad for dessert the other night:



Ginger sharing my lunch of tuna salad on Saltine crackers:



Marco enjoying some outside time on the back porch:



And finally, blooming in my yard:

Take care of yourselves, and we'll talk again soon.

These are strange days.

Saturday morning, mid March 2020. Is it just me, or does everything feel off-kilter and bizarre today? I never thought words like "quarantine" and "pandemic" would apply to my life, and not only that, but become so regularly spoken as to start to seem commonplace! These are strange days we're living in, my friends.

When I went to my dental appointment Wednesday morning, I was sniffling a bit from my normal allergies. Sniffling, sneezing, and watery eyes (especially in the morning) is totally normal for me. Normal or not, I was very conscious of the sideways looks I got from the other patients in the lounge area while I tired to surpress a couple of sneezes. I don't blame them, but I was glad to get called back to the exam room. (Turns out the tooth seems to be fine, and no need for a root canal--hallelujah!--the muscles in my jaw are basically still strained and inflamed from holding my mouth open for over two hours.) I noticed there was hand sanitizer everywhere: three or four bottles in the lounge, bottles on the exam room counters, and several at the main desk in the lobby. That seems to be the case everywhere right now.

Our school district seems to be preparing everyone, the teachers, parents and students, for taking instruction online from home. All students were issued laptops at the beginning of the year and those without internet access received services to remedy that. The technology department sent technicians out Friday afternoon with boxes of repaired and/or replaced laptops for students who needed them. A series of emails and letters have been going out explaining how everything will work "in the event" we have to close schools. I think it's a matter of "when" not "if" at this time. It seems likely that they're shooting for Monday or Tuesday to be the last day before going online. One big concern is feeding kids who get free breakfast and/or lunch, but arrangements have been made for our food services to report to work for a few hours each day and prepare plenty of food for students and their families who need to come and get it. Again, I don't think they're making all these provisions for nothing. The Superintendent must really think we're going to have to shut down for a while. Luckily, I should continue to get paid if that happens.

Gregg is not so lucky. Yesterday morning he went to one of the three nursing homes where he services aquariums, and got turned around at the door. All (all) visitors are banned for 30 days by order of South Carolina DHEC. Which is the right thing to do, of course, but those three nursing home jobs are over a quarter of his monthly salary.....and schools with aquariums are another small chunk of income, and he has two hospital aquariums which of course he also won't be allowed to service...…..all told, we're talking over half his salary. He's probably going to lose even more than that for a while, too. He's more at risk from this virus than the average person and we intend to be super careful. We're planning to self isolate at home as much as possible until this thing blows over. We have plenty of supplies, for us and the animals. As long as we don't get sick, being at home won't be any real hardship for us. Anyone else who can say the same should be doing it, too. Maybe if most of the population will be as diligent as possible, the spread of this virus can still be contained.

A great idea I heard was about supporting your local economy during these trying times. Everyone is afraid of the economic ramifications, and rightly so. Those who can afford it can still spend money at local businesses....on gift certificates to be used later on when we're over the hump. They could be purchased online or over the phone to avoid going out, and that would get some much needed cash flowing in your area. Another good idea would be to donate money to food banks to help your neighbors who are missing paychecks that are sorely needed. We need to do what we can to support our communities while (paradoxically) staying as far away from each other as possible! Crazy.

And one more thing: having a good supply of necessities on hand is smart, but hoarding them is a real asshole move. Lots of folks can't afford to buy in huge quantities, and when they're legitimately running out of things they can't get what they need because some jerk decided they wanted to have 500 roles of toilet paper on hand. Speaking of which, here's the TP aisle at my neighborhood Food Lion as of 5pm yesterday:

And on a less serious note, a related funny I saw this morning. It's still good to have a laugh now and then....

Hang in there, take care of yourselves, wash your hands, think about your neighbors and what they might need, and try not to panic. After all, this is the outcome we're hoping for:

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