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Posts Tagged ‘pandemic’

Overdose

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on September 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

When is too much of a good thing bad for you? How does passion turn into obsession?

It turns out the Pumpkin is a pretty natural soccer player. I drove him to his soccer game over the weekend and listened to everyone calling his name. He was laser focused on the ball, charging the opposite team without fear. When he scored a goal my heart leapt for joy.

I told him that I used to coach his Uncle’s soccer team when the Rocker was his age. He looked up at me incredulously… Nana coached soccer? And I remembered those bright, crisp mornings filled with orange wedges and Gatorade.

We graduated to ice hockey and the Rocker finally found a sport he loved. All I had to do was get up before dawn and drive and sit in the stands and shiver. We traveled to ice rinks all over the state of NJ lugging his equipment in a huge duffel, just about the same size as his pre-adolescent body.

But one morning he didn’t suit up for the rink. I had to wake him with the news that his Uncle Dicky had died. Bob brought the Bride into his bedroom and we explained to them both that Daddy’s brother had been sick for a long time; he had a drug addiction.

Dicky had been a sweet uncle with an infectious smile. Sometimes he would disappear for months. The hardest part was telling Ada. It was a watershed moment for us, I believe that this was our family’s cautionary tale; this was the moment our children grew up.

I’ve been thinking about Dicky since I read that drug overdoses have increased exponentially since the start of the pandemic. And not just needle-in-the-arm street heroin – plain old pain pills. Synthetic oxycodone that strangely enough, one can buy online. I read that 4 out of 10 pills can be laced with fentanyl.

“The new CDC data show that deaths at least partially attributable to synthetic opioids likely increased by around 20,000 (54%) in 2020, while deaths involving cocaine (21%) and other psychostimulants like methamphetamine (46%) also rose dramatically. In 2015, synthetic opioids were involved in only 18 percent of all overdose deaths; in 2020, it appears to be more than 60 percent.”

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2021/drug-overdose-toll-2020-and-near-term-actions-addressing-it

A record high of 93,331 synthetic and prescription drug overdose deaths competed with 345,323 Covid 19 deaths in 2020. So naturally the media follows the pandemic, and after all the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma are old news. Today it’s all about ridiculous school board mask-mandate meetings, and poor Mark Milley…

It’s misleading to cite drug overdose deaths as the ninth leading cause of death in the US. And for some odd reason, ODs are not even listed in the CDC data. So I had Bob do some digging – it turns out the number ONE cause of death for young adults 25 – 44 is overdose. More than motor vehicle accidents and homicides (of which almost 90% involve guns). I’m sure you heard that murder rates were up last year by almost 30%! https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234

In short, we need to change our public policy around drugs, and yes guns too. Sure a pandemic is a public health emergency, but at some point it will end, right? At some point in the future we will have ‘the talk’ about addiction with the Grands and the ties that bind our family in sorrow, love and pain. But not now. Now is the time for apple cider, shin guards and soccer balls.

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No Small Acts

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on January 3, 2021| 4 Comments »

When my Son-in-Law came down with Covid this summer, a friend sent him a tee shirt. I could read the date 2020 on the front, but had to get a little too close to understand the imagery. He happily told me, “It’s a picture of a dumpster fire!”

He is a Critical Care doctor, and his friend is an ER doctor.

No one was prepared for a worldwide pandemic; I thought we should stock up on a two week supply of canned goods. Then the weeks just rolled on, like a snowball becoming an avalanche with millions infected. And in order to care for one another, we were told to wear a mask and stay home.

My husband Bob, the grandson of a tailor, converted a corner of our living room into a mask making operation. My kitchen island became a cutting station. We tore up tee shirts and ordered fun fabrics online – a Star Wars mask for our grandson, and a Scrabble mask for his sister.

Then he offered free masks to all our neighbors on Next Door. Kind friends donated fabric to the cause and we met new neighbors. He made special masks for children and masks to cover special hospital masks. Then a funny thing started happening.

Chris dropped off two ingenious mask holders to keep around our necks that her sister had made.

MaryAnn started a rotating book club, and later a traveling cocktail hour – in gardens, all socially distanced.

Ellen brought us peaches.

Linda hosted an Oktoberfest under her carport.

Sheila gave me a beautiful floral mask, Skip brought us cake, and Yoko baked us bread.

Berdelle hand delivered the most beautiful white iris when we lost Ada. It had  bloomed for a second time in her winter garden.

In the midst of a seemingly endless semi-quarantine, the words of my Nana came back to me: “Throw your bread out on the water and it will come back with jelly on it.” I didn’t know that one small act of kindness would come back with honey and maple cream too.

And because Time, this year, has had a way of meandering, slowing us down, chiseling away at our essence, I’ve come to believe that there is no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every single deliberate act – every loaf of sourdough bread, every delivery of a meal to an overwhelmed Covid ICU, or pizzas to the Bride’s ER, anytime we stop to talk to a neighbor walking her dog – becomes multiplied exponentially.

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Hot Spot

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2020| 4 Comments »

We live in a hot spot. Let’s face it, TN hospitals are starting to fill up with Covid-19 patients, and the number of infections has been growing. Temperatures hovering in the mid-90s haven’t helped – we can’t even have a socially distant lunch in the garden with the Bride because a) NES chopped down our neighbor’s trees leaving us with very little midday shade, and b) it’s just too damn hot!

This past week the Groom has been on call in the ICU, and the Bride has been working more shifts than usual in her ER. They are lucky to have employed a wonderful nanny who is available at all their odd working hours; if something ever happens to this delicate arrangement, I am ready to volunteer as tribute! The garage would continue to be their red decontamination zone, and I’d move into the guest room.

But so far, so good.

Even though my hot flashes are long gone, or should I say my series of self-immolations have stopped, I still manage to melt in the heat and humidity of a Southern summer. I turn bright red, sweat drips down my back, even my feet get clammy in sandals. Sunscreen burns my eyes and I twitch and wipe my neck and wonder aloud how anybody ever did summers without air-conditioning. I like a cold New England climate – it must be my Irish heritage.

The L’il Pumpkin agrees with me, he hates the heat too!

The Love Bug and the Bride take after their Father – the hotter the better. Once I tried hot yoga with my daughter and I thought I was going to die. Who in their right mind would love contorting themselves in 92-105 degree temperatures?

But last week we were all sick of staying at home, walking the dogs, Same. Old. Same. Old. And on a rare day off from the ER, the Bride decided we should all go to the Nashville Zoo. Since we are members, we knew they were limiting visitors, you’d have to get timed-entry tickets, everyone had to wear masks, there were hand sanitizers everywhere, and all their paths were one-way. When she told the kiddos they were so excited, the L’il Pumpkin said,

“You mean the REAL zoo, not the Zoom zoo?”  

It was a success! Yes, it was hot and humid but we were there in the morning and stayed six feet apart. Meandering through trees and hearing monkey cries made me feel like I was in a rain forest. We had packed juice boxes and string cheese and stopped for a rest after watching the lemurs swing and groom each other. The Andean bears were playing for our enjoyment and the kangaroos were chowing down. They put on quite a show.

It was almost as if the animals were happier with less people around?

I’d like to believe that we all want to care for one another, but we still see people not wearing masks, and bars are still open. No more pedal taverns though. I hope that Gov Lee issues a mask mandate and that everyone is taking steps to slow the progression of this virus, and that TN starts to cool off. That my daughter and her husband stay safe as they treat seriously ill patients.

Our heat dome became more tolerable for a few hours last week. Notice the tiger cooling off with his paws on the glass.

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Dear Martha

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2020| 1 Comment »

“Dear Martha:

“I just listened to your Insta video, or podcast, whatever. I always loved your columns in Oprah magazine. Unlike Dr Phil, who can be off-putting, your brand of self-help-psycho-babble resonated with me. But dear Dr Beck, this time you lost me.

“You lost me at meditating for an hour (OR MORE) every day. “‘I meditate for an hour every day,’ you said… even though you were unbearably “itchy” at first.

 “I’ve tried meditating for 10 minutes at a time. That is if the mail person doesn’t come to the door to regurgitate lots of paper through the slot onto the living room floor which causes Ms Bean to bark herself silly. She hates the mail invasion almost as much as she hates squirrels.  

“But I enjoyed listening to you this morning, because Bob was in the shower and because after all it was The Martha Beck talking in her Gathering (virtual) Room about “How to Hang in There When You Feel Like Giving Up!” https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/v=720387682089216&ref=watch_permalink”     Thanks for listening!

In a nutshell, Martha Beck talks about how every atom in the universe is in a constant push for growth. There’s a “push/pull” happening all the time; which made me think of Bob making sourdough bread. Two gorgeous loaves have just popped out of the oven. But I digress – Beck was talking about feeling overwhelmed in the middle of a pandemic. She had two solutions for us:

1) Let Go when there are a lot of expectations and competing forces in our lives. You don’t have to be in charge of everything all the time. Problems will be solved if we can stop and breathe – expand and contract our lungs. Great Grandma Ada would say in Yiddish, it will all press out.

2) Let Go of Yourself! Obviously the world will not be the same when this virus has run its course, and neither will we. If you used to ride the subway to work, maybe you stay home. Or ride your bike. But we must accept that our identity is fluid, or as Ada tells me, “Everyone is in crisis mode!” The tide is either coming or going.

Now to me, this all sounds nice, but it also sounds like giving up! What if somebody stole your car, and you don’t know whether your kid’s school is going to reopen next month. Or maybe your husband is working in the Covid ICU, and your nanny gets sick? It’s easy to be Zen-like, but somebody has to deal with the insurance and the nanny agencies.

My semi-quarantine world isn’t quite so complicated. Sometimes I’m competing with Bob for space in the kitchen – my zucchini bread vs his sourdough. And why does every Zoom exercise class I want to take, happen on Tuesdays? Overall, we can’t complain. My Covid/travel fantasy life is happy watching the PBS show “Escape to the Chateau.” https://thechateau.tv/ A couple with two young children buy and restore an 18th Century Chateau de la Motte Husson in France. They put in an elevator, and build a geodesic dome on their moat.

They’re eccentric Brits and I adore them! Angel loves taxidermy and collects stuffed, dead, wild animals and Dick can cook or fix just about anything. Who doesn’t love a good mid-to-later life crisis? When we built our VA mountain house, I thought that was IT for me. I’d moved South, something I thought I’d never do, we built our dream home and didn’t get divorced; I expected to leave that house feet first!

But here I am, finding my way in a city I love. Hosting a socially distant, bring-your-own cocktail party on a 90+ degree night for friends in the garden, because we all have to give up one identity, in order to grow into a future one.

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Reigning In

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2020| 3 Comments »

The rain has started, now the beach is just a memory.

All last week, I sounded like a stereotypical old person: “We didn’t have sunscreen when we were young;” or “We only had black and white TV, no Internet!” I could have told the Grands that I had to walk 10 miles uphill to school, but that would be a lie. I did have to get dressed up in a snowsuit, hat and gloves to wait for the school bus…with other kids … because parents hadn’t heard about random kidnappings yet. Before Climate Change.

No helicopter parents back in the day, I would just stand outside in my playpen watching the activity on our street in Victory Gardens, while Nell did her daily cleaning inside. Once I started school, I’d be shooed out the door after tearing off my Sacred Heart uniform, and hanging it up, to ride my bike renegade around the neighborhood. School was a dull, dreary day full of sitting at my desk with my hands crossed into a ball, gazing at the brick building across the street through the window.

Today Metro Nashville schools have decided to reopen in the Fall. But in true Trumpian fashion, they are passing the buck to the parents in this Time of Coronavirus. It’s up to each and every family, you have a choice – 1) send your child to school, or 2) continue learning online with a remote curriculum. The American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in – they want every child to get back to school!

“…the AAP argues that based on the nation’s experience this spring, remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. Social isolation, in turn, can breed serious social, emotional and health issues: “child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation.” Furthermore, these impacts will be visited more severely on Black and brown children, as well as low-income children and those with learning disabilities.”  https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall

Would you send your child to school if he had an auto-immune disease? Would you send your child to school if she had a grandparent living at home? Will the poor go back to school, while the wealthy buy their kids iPads and tutors?

We’ve all been socially isolated these last few months – 16 weeks to be exact. Bars and beaches are starting to close, again, because our infection rate is going up. For anyone paying attention this is not a surprise given our glorious lack of leadership. The rate of infection and hospital admissions and ultimately deaths are directly related to the rate of noncompliance with SOCIAL DISTANCING, MASKS and HAND WASHING.

Yesterday, the Bride went back to the ER, the Groom returned to his ICU, and we had our last day of unlimited hugs with the Grands. We brought yellow, Rainier cherries over to Great Grandma Ada and Hudson. The Love Bug put her hand on Ada’s through the glass – Hudson showed the L’il Pumpkin he had the same Star Wars pattern on the inside of his mask! We all made heart signs through the vestibule window. Our eyes were tearing up as we left.

We are back in the Land of Breaking News – grieving our collective losses, reigning in our emotions after hearing Mr T did nothing, absolutely nothing when he learned our soldiers had a Russian bounty on their heads. If SCOTUS allows us to see Mr T’s taxes, his adoration of Putin will become obvious. SCOTUS is on a roll!

We desperately need something to look forward to, baseball or ballet? Today at least will be a good day. T’ai Chi Tuesday has become Pilates Zoom Tuesday and I have a loaf of Bob’s sourdough sitting on the counter! And at least the rain is dampening the Saharan dust cloud.

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WFH

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I’m beginning to feel my age. Texting has changed our language, no longer can we write a complete sentence, we can barely complete a word. That baby isn’t adorable, he’s “adorb!” But what trips me up from time to time is the abundance of new acronyms! OTOH = on the other hand; IDK = I don’t know; YOLO = you only live once; WTF = what the ….heck?” It’s almost as if young people are creating their own cryptograms as a get-around for our generation.

Recently, I had to look up one of these – WFH! Short for “Working from home,” a very popular post these days! It is usually accompanied by a smiley face emoji with a wink. I immediately laughed at this particular acronym because as a woman of a certain age, I’ve always worked from home. Even when I was driving to a job as a pre-school teacher, I would come home to cooking, cleaning and the usual things it takes to run a household.

When I settled into writing for a newspaper, I always wrote in a corner of my dining room. When I was done, I’d email my copy in and walk into the kitchen and start dinner. Even Great Grandma Ada had her counseling office right next to her kitchen!

But today, our generation has raised some strong, post-feminist women who believe in an EQUAL partnership with their spouse. They make flow charts about who changes the sheets and does the laundry, who cooks and who cleans up the kitchen, who makes the list and shops. And all the quiet work of scheduling doctor’s appointments for the kids, or tracking their currently non-existent playdates and sports events.

In Nashville today, we have nearly 5,000 confirmed cases of Covid19,  – “IOW” – in other words, lots and lots of people are WFH.

Working from home means we see cats crawling across keyboards, dogs still bark at the mailman, one guy accidentally picks up his knee and we get to see his boxer shorts, we hear babies crying! During our virtual will planning session with our lawyer, her baby was inconsolable and I wondered, “Where’s your husband?”

So if you were wondering how the division of home labor stacks up, gender-wise, during our Corona Crisis, I’ve got just the podcast for you! NPR’s Terri Gross interviewed the author of “Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time,” Brigid Schulte. She tells us that even today, women, enlightened, smart, woke women are bearing the brunt of the housework. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/21/860091230/pandemic-makes-evident-grotesque-gender-inequality-in-household-work

“We’ve got this grand mythology (breadwinner vs homemaker model) that that’s really what a family should be,” she says. “We still think that one person should go out to work and be responsible for all of the work and earning and supporting the family. … And there should be … somebody always available at home to do the care and carework.”

But Schulte says that families aren’t monolithic and shouldn’t be treated as such. She says the pandemic has created an opportunity to start a dialogue about the distribution of household tasks.”

Schulte says that she had been carrying alot of radioactive anger around, feeling overwhelmed in her marriage. But she brought up the Notorious RBG, who once had a call from school to pick up her child, and she told the school secretary to call her husband, it was his turn! She said to treat your marriage and family almost like a business, you wouldn’t want your business to fail, right?

I saw a funny YouTube of a woman pleading to God NOT to make her teach math. I remember when the Bride first started homeschooling, I told her her husband is a natural teacher. In higher education it’s called being an “academic.” In fact, he gets awards for his research and teaching skills. Harmony prevailed when they figured out he could do some home-schooling when he wasn’t in the hospital, and she continues to enjoy cooking and baking bread. Sourdough bread.

When she’s not saving lives in her ER. Or teaching a Yoga Zoom class.

I have a feeling since our pandemic quarantine, lots of men around the world are waking up to the tireless domestic work it takes to run a household. The patience it takes to teach and nurture a child. Our L’il Pumpkin learned how to ride a two-wheeler during our lockdown. The Love Bug built a diorama of a fox for her last day of Zoom class.

Now’s the time to have that critical conversation with your loved one. Don’t keep picking up their socks and putting them in the hamper. Don’t hold grudges. If you’re both WFH, pick a day to do housework – Bob always vacuums, I always cook. He weeds the garden and has started doing the laundry, I do the bathrooms. We both sew masks. Don’t let underlying resentment eat away at your marriage.

OTOH we’ve started doing Pilates together, two mats on the floor and a Zoom class every Tuesday and Saturday. And it’s a wonderful thing.

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Hitting a Wall

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, tagged , , , , , on April 14, 2020| 4 Comments »

My kitchen looks like a sweatshop.

There’s the ironing board facing you across from the refrigerator, with its proud Rowenta iron sitting center stage. And a Singer sewing machine has replaced the French placemats at our dining table in this “open-concept” main living/eating room. Scraps of Bob’s Pati de St Barth old tee shirts are littering every available surface, waiting to be cut into straps for face masks… a relatively easy thing to make; like riding a bike for me.

In another life I used to quilt. I would make Log Cabin baby quilts and aprons with a Dresden plate pattern. I’d make Wedding Ring pillows in calico cotton. In another world on a mountain in New England, when my babies would nap I would sew.

But in this world, my daughter calls her Father to go over the protocol she will use for dressing in PPE for her upcoming shift. The Groom is On Call now, in the Covid ICU, following the same ritual of showering in their Red Zone before returning to his family, the same ritual that the Bride was using before Passover. She was just fitted today for her very own N95 mask, a month after our quarantine.

Weeks after a kind neighbor dropped off a few N95 masks for her – he had been in the construction industry.

But my daughter will still need cotton face masks, her colleagues will all need masks, to prolong the life of their surgical masks. Because in this great country, this administration has failed to provide the weapons for this war. In fact, we should all be wearing masks now if we must venture outside.

So instead of having a mental meltdown this past week, Bob and I are making masks!

There was one day that I didn’t bother to change out of my nightgown. One day when catastrophic thinking got the best of me. Nashville has been on lockdown for a month now; we’ve figured out how to use Shipt to get groceries delivered, we’ve mastered the art of Zooming, this “new normal” was almost becoming acceptable. Then, like many others lately, I hit a wall.

I could barely move.

This morning on Morning Joe, I listened to Norman Ornstein talk about his son Matthew, who struggled with mental illness for a decade before it claimed his life. Tonight on PBS, Ornstein’s documentary, “The Definition of Insanity,” will debut – it will tackle the stigma that still constricts our society around mental illness. The Catch 22 of trying to get our loved ones to take medication, only to have them stop and descend into psychosis, until they are hospitalized or jailed, and the cycle repeats itself.

“At age 24, Matthew had a sudden psychotic break, and that began a difficult decade-long journey for him and for his family and friends. … Matthew was particularly afflicted by one component of his illness: anosognosia, the inability of a person to recognize that he or she is ill. Since Matthew was over 18, neither family members nor professionals had any legal authority to get him treatment for the symptoms that kept him from living a stable life.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/opinion/how-to-help-save-the-mentally-ill-from-themselves.html

Whenever we do get back to “normal,” when we reopen the country, I’m sure we will see a spike in mental illness – it will have an inverse effect. As Corona admissions go down, the need for psychiatric beds will go up. Agoraphobia, “The abnormal fear of being in crowds, public places, or open areas, sometimes accompanied by anxiety attacks” will skyrocket. Maybe because my foster mother Nell never liked leaving the house, this is something I struggle with on a good day.

But not today. Today we will drive to see Great Grandma Ada and Hudson and Bob will sort their pills in a vestibule while I talk through the glass. Today we will drive-thru Krispy Kreme for donuts to deliver to the Grands. We will stand at the edge of their yard and talk for a little while. And we will continue to walk Ms Bean outside, carefully avoiding other people in the street.

Today we will make more face masks.

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A Fox in the City

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday, Bob was outside the front door doing some weeding. Our raised bed of vegetables is on the south side of the house, not within the confines of our fenced-in garden. I was stringing a few pearls together in my first pandemic necklace when I heard him yell, “Honey, come here, quick.”

He told me all about the fat and healthy red fox that had just strolled around the front corner of the house under a holly bush. They were an arm’s length away from each other. Of course Bob saw him (or her) the very second his hand was pulling up a weed – as they locked eyes I’m sure they were both shocked! The fox immediately took off across our not/so/busy street and around an apartment building.

Imagine that, in a city of a million and a half people, nature can still find a way.

This is day #13 of quarantine. I’ve stopped watching the White House Pressers about the Coronavirus, they only serve to bolster Mr T’s fragile ego. He is selling us a fool’s paradise, and I for one am not buying his lies.

But I am crossing off the days on my old-fashioned paper calendar, eager to put each day behind me. Luckily Ms Bean requires a slow-walk each and every day, sometimes three! And now that the sun has returned and Spring has arrived, these meditative walks are a kind of salvation.

They are a way to still the noises in my head, all the “what ifs” and “if onlys.” A stroll around the neighborhood tethered to Ms Bean keeps me here, grounded in the Present. This morning, the sun has come up and the temperature will climb to 80 degrees. The rain has stopped for now. And while drinking coffee and reading my online papers, I noticed a tiny headline: “Yale Happiness Course Takes Off.”

It seems that since December, this online course titled “The Science of Well Being” has enrolled 1.3 million people worldwide. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52055242

Now, when over half a million people around the world are infected with the Coronavirus, and everyone is isolating themselves to flatten the curve, and the Bride is donning her PPE and caring for patients in her ER, and the Groom is planning to make ICU beds appear all over his hospital, and we can’t visit Great Grandma Ada and Hudson, and we can’t hug the Love Bug or tickle L’il Pumpkin…

Now more than ever, I have to keep hope alive.

“People in these situations tend to either look backwards for solutions or ruminate about possible futures: Will I go back to work? Will I be able to afford getting sick? Can I support my family if they get sick?

“While both those abilities are very adaptive in solving immediate problems or challenges or an immediate threat, they’re very harmful in situations like the one we’re in the middle of where the threat is ambiguous, the duration is unknown.”

It’s important to mention that only here, in the US, are people worried about hospital bills. Only here, in our great country, would someone not seek emergency medical treatment because they are afraid it would bankrupt them.

While waiting for the spike of this curve, we have to keep hope alive. And one way to do it is to stay in the PRESENT. Mindfulness isn’t easy during a pandemic. I notice every little flower on my walks, every flowering vine that threatens to engulf a mailbox. I would usually bring my phone with me, to take pictures, but it’s better if I leave it at home and stay present.

CONNECTING WITH OTHERS is another way to support our sanity. We’ve been Facetiming with the Rocker and Aunt KiKi. They have dueling desks set up in their California home and have had Zoom conferences with colleagues. The Bride turned me onto Marco Polo, an APP that’s like video texting, and we’ve been having fun with friends just capturing a snippet of time each day. Steve sent us video of a huge hawk in his yard yesterday! And of course, we talk on the phone too.

Yesterday we walked around the Bride’s neighborhood looking for teddy bears in windows. It was so hard to stay ten feet apart, to not touch the children.

The third linchpin of well being is a daily PRACTICE of GRATITUDE. Bob and I have been doing this on a pretty regular basis before bed. I can’t watch the news at night these days, but I can recall small pleasures during the day, things that bring me joy. Sometimes it’s just the sound of Ms Bean snoring, or a tulip that popped up under the cherry tree. Sometimes it’s the young man who delivers a restaurant meal. We can always name three things we’re grateful for.

Like the red fox foraging under the holly.

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To Tell the Truth

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 13, 2020| 2 Comments »

I’m exhausted. And I’m experiencing a pretty high state of anxiety; I don’t want anyone else out there, reading this, to think that you are the only one. I tell my children, “I survived a tornado, so what’s a little virus gonna do?” Plenty, as it turns out:

My brother and sister were going to visit us this week, they cancelled; My son and his wife, plus our NY cousins were coming for the Bride’s seder, they cancelled; Dinner party, cancelled; This morning I’ll meet up with the Groom at the hospital after my PT to pick up the Love Bug because school was cancelled. The L’il Pumpkin’s school is in the hospital, should I be afraid?

It honestly terrifies me that the Bride sits at the front door to this pandemic. And she starts her early morning shift in the ER soon. She’s talked to Bob and the Groom about taking precautions because we all know the big wave is about to hit our country, flooding ill-equipped hospitals with seriously ill patients.

We don’t have enough tests, we don’t have enough ICU beds, we don’t have enough Ecmo machines to carry on the work of the heart and lungs.

And the Groom will have the most immuno-compromised, the most critically ill patients in his Medical ICU. Will he need a Hazmat suit? Vanderbilt is planning to screen people in their underground garage, at least they have a plan. Is my fear realistic?

Thousands of new cases across the world are being reported each day, and the true scale could be 10 times higher.

There are 1,323 confirmed cases in the US, 117 in Canada.

Thirty-eight people have died in the US due to the virus and one person has died in Canada.

Officials say risk remains low for the general US public, but is growing.

Mr T’s speech on Wednesday night only served to accelerate my anxiety, given on the same day the WHO called the Coronavirus, aka COVID-19, a pandemic. Europe has porous borders, banning everyone except British people makes NO damn sense. This disease is already here and it strikes randomly and with precision, like a tornado. Only 20% will become seriously ill, most of us will feel like we have the flu. Will they take my temperature when I visit the Great Grands?

Our country could have started preparing for this in November, but Mr T demands loyalty and supplication from his civil servants, and so he has gone about decimating the very structure that should have been in place. We elected him to disrupt the government, and look what we got! A reporter with the Rolling Stone says,

“…we lost both the top White House official in charge of pandemic response and his global health security team last May, and none of them were replaced. This is what it looks like once a government that was built ostensibly to serve the public is deconstructed and reformed to serve an autocrat in training wheels. It looks like a chief of staff claiming the press is only covering a pandemic that has spread to at least 56 nations because “they think this will bring down the president.” 

A virus is not political – COVID-19 will strike anyone at will. This bears repeating – it is not the media’s fault, the Coronavirus is not a hoax! When I get over this generalized feeling of doom and gloom, I’ll remember to be mad at the clown in the White House. Bob told me yesterday, “The problem in this country is lack of testing. In South Korea, for instance, almost 4000 people per million population have been tested. In the Netherlands, it is 350 per million population. In the United States it is five per million.” 

5 people per million.

I’m not sleeping, and if you’re having trouble sleeping, let’s make a hot steaming cup of Ginger Vanilla tea together and breathe.

My hands are sweating. Don’t worry if you have clammy hands too, because we don’t need to shake hands anymore anyway. We need to stay 6′ away from everyone.

I kept my appointment with my hair stylist yesterday, I missed it last Tuesday because, you remember, the tornado on Monday night. Bob told me if the hair stylist was sick to come home, and he meant it. But he was fine and we had a small dose of fun. He fixed my pale pink hair, now it’s a bright fuchsia!

To be perfectly honest, right after the tornado I had a bad headache and was congested. I thought my headache was because we had no power – so I had no coffee. Caffeine withdrawal can be brutal. I thought my congestion was because I’d been sweeping and cleaning up city sidewalks. Nothing like a disaster to mask the symptoms of a common cold.

The L’il Pumpkin had croup, and the Love Bug had a cough. I stayed away from Great Grandma Ada and Hudson.

And now I wonder, did we all have this virus? I didn’t run a fever and never even had a sore throat. Last week, being tested for Coronavirus didn’t cross my mind. But if I did, how long is it communicable? It would have been nice to know, but without a fever I probably wouldn’t have been tested even if I wanted one. Even if my doctor could get her hands on one.  I’ve been to the gym once, a few days ago, and I usually have to wait for Bob to finish after my workout. A guy sat across from me coughing, without covering his mouth in any way.

I wanted to smack him.

And I’m really not a violent person, I went to Catholic school. So let’s give ourselves a break and realize that we are all feeling somewhat unmoored and adrift at the moment. In this social contract we have to each other, let’s practice “social distancing.” I’m not going to a really cool concert in East on Sunday. Nicole Atkins, a friend of the Rocker’s is singing, and Norah Jones will be there. And the Heartbreakers, but maybe the Bride and Groom want to go?

Nope, Nicole just DMed me, the show has been cancelled.

I just wanted you to know you’re not alone out there. We’re all scared and needing a little TLC right about now. If you’re working from home, or your kids have been sent home from college, you’re lucky. Your livelihood doesn’t depend on tips or touring. If you have small children at home, try to treat this time like an adventure. Stress can take its toll on all of us.

This president started his term with a lie. Let’s stay #NashvilleStrong and keep it real. I’m always available via social, text and email. Let’s stay connected. Here we are doing arts and crafts last weekend in the stairwell – our safe place during the tornado.

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Prepping

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on March 2, 2020| 2 Comments »

The first case of Coronavirus is in New York. It’s in Florida. More than 3,000 have died around the world so far because of some bat droppings. I guess it’s time to start Doomsday Prepping; what would you need if you had to spend 2 weeks in quarantine? In your house… with your spouse… would you cook?… read a book?

OK Boomer Dr Seuss, I would need BOOKS! But thanks to my Parnassus mail delivery and an infinite supply on the iPad – which the Love Bug has told me many times I must give to her when I upgrade – reading a book will not be a problem. I’m currently reading Gish Jen’s The Resisters. It’s about a split society in the future that is run by a benevolent AI – the POC live in swampy areas and the “angel fair” live above sea level. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/05/802683530/the-resisters-could-use-a-little-more-resistance

MEDICINE. Bob tells me that lots of our drugs, surprise surprise, are made in China! So as that supply chain is impacted by the virus, we may want to front-load on our prescriptions. Since I mostly take vitamins and supplements a trip to our new Whole Foods on Broadway is in order – milk thistle for my psoriasis, and more fish oil in a smaller capsule size please. And speaking of fish…

PROTEIN. Canned protein would be good to stock up on, like tuna fish. Tuna fish sandwiches were my go-to lunch in high school accompanied by a nice bag of chips, before chips came in flavors. What is it with seaweed or crab flavored chips? I actually thought salt and vinegar went a bit too far. And don’t forget Spam for protein! Made in Minnesota and loaded with who knows what! The Bride said it was all over Hawaii but I’ve never even tasted it. And canned BEANS!

LIQUIDS. Water of course you can get out of your refrigerator filtered, or the faucet even. We don’t need to go buying jugs of water, unless you live in Michigan. But if you like a certain beverage, like Snapple iced tea, Gatorade, beer or wine or vodka now’s the time to visit your local market. I think it’s hysterical that TN has GOT to card anyone buying alcohol, I mean I remember feeling good when NJ would card me in my 30s, now it’s just a pain in the keister. Cashiers wait patiently while I try to pry my license out of my wallet with arthritic fingers .

DOG FOOD. Luckily we order Ms Bean’s kibble online, but after her GI upset around the holidays she is also getting a very special canned meat additive. It’s so special in fact, we have to purchase it at our Vet’s office. Hmmm, I wonder where that is made? Maybe a trip to Target is on order for her treats, biscuits and twisty rawhide bones. She has plenty of stuffed toys she drags over to us at dinnertime, dropping them at our feet and looking longingly into our eyes, as if to say, “You see, I killed this tiny thing for you, now won’t you please FEED ME!!!”

OTHER STUFF. We have plenty of frozen veggies, rice and spaghetti! If Bob’s not in the mood to make ravioli, my pantry is full of DeCecco pasta. Long ago I stopped buying Barilla for a political reason I’ve forgotten but I’m clinging to that conviction. In fact, last night we had the Grands for dinner because the Bride was working and the Groom has the flu (NOT coronavirus). I combined a spinach fusilli #34 with penne rigate #31 and it was a huge success. The Love Bug at first mentioned not being sure about green pasta, but I’m prepping her for St Patrick’s Day. https://www.dececco.com/us_us/recipes/

Here’s what we don’t need. We don’t need to panic or buy masks; even ER docs don’t wear masks. If a patient is febrile a nurse may slap a mask on them as soon as they enter the waiting room, but we all do not need to walk around like it’s Mardi Gras. Also don’t forget your neighbors. I just sent Bob out the other night with some good old fashioned Jewish chicken soup for our young friend who was down and out with the flu. If you were thinking of getting on an airplane right about now, I probably wouldn’t. But that’s a risk we each have to take.

Meanwhile people, wash your hands and pray for the Democrats! This is my famous chicken soup in the making – the secret is fresh parsley.

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