We’re retired stay-at-home types anyway, so for us the plague has been extremely inconvenient at worst. We consider ourselves VERY fortunate.
One infection in our extended circle of family/friends (since recovered fully). One distantly-related death (82 years old, New Jersey).
ThelmaLou, show Mary Lou this latest article about the Skagit County Washington choir where 54 of 61 at one practice got sick and 2 died: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/health/coronavirus-choir.html
Hope the new haircut & color was a success!
Several choir members have shared the sad story about that choir. Chilling!
Cut and color turned out great. Both of us masked the whole time. I held mine over my nose and mouth. It was so nice to be able to talk to someone in person. Having her wash my hair was sublime.
Thursday I’m going for broke and getting a pedicure. It’s a tiny, neighborhood salon.
Is anyone else experiencing physical [del]symptoms[/del] indicators of prolonged, low-level stress? Your or your lockdown-mates? I’m talking about digestive issues, loss of appetite (or eating WAY too much), drinking too much, sleep problems, headaches, etc. Not bad enough to make you run out and get tested, but disruptive, unpleasant, and making it hard to find moments let alone hours of peace during these crazy times.
My stomach has been upset for several days. I’m making some great homemade food but the other day I ate what I thought was a normal portion and felt bloated and crampy for at least 24 hours (sorry if that’s TMI-- I left out the good parts). I have since eaten more of that particular food and do okay if I eat only a little so I don’t think it was the food itself. I’m making a point of drinking plenty of water, but sometimes even water makes me feel stuffed and full. I wake up with a headache, which usually goes away during my 7:00 am walk. My sleep is even crappier than usual, which explains why I was on the board at 4:00 am today. :rolleyes:
I do meditate every day, using either Calm.com or Headspace, and that keeps the worry demons at bay for a while. The recognition that I will not be able to be around people or resume the few modest activities that I enjoyed (singing in two choirs) for the foreseeable future fills me with despondency at times. And no one’s shoulder to cry on. I know I have it better than many, many other people-- I don’t claim to be uniquely cursed-- but today it’s getting to me…
Who’s feeling this way, too?
P.S. My toes look *darling *after my pedicure. This and the shampoo the other day are the first time anyone has touched me in two months.
I found out the virus is in my mother’s assisted living center. It’s not on her floor, it’s in “memory wing” one floor up in a different part of a very big building.
Yikes. Sorry.
Once I got past the symptoms that put me IN quarantine (mild flu-like, never had a temp above 99-ish), quarantine wasn’t as bad as working in a bank call center with 10x normal call volume and the callers ranging from moronic to nasty even more intensely than usual. I’ve been having assorted digestive-tract woes, insomnia’s worse than my “normal”, I’m tired most of the time, and headaches were distressingly normal before the lockdown (gotta get new glasses once we have vision coverage again and DH is able to drive me to that appointment). Definitely crankier than my baseline the last week or two, I can blame that on work hassles.
I now just talked to my brother (I’m 2000 miles away) and everyone on my mother’s floor tested negative. So, so far so good. 
How am I personally affected by the coronavirus?
Like most folks, I’m not getting out much. When the weather is good, my wife and I drive to a nearby park to go for a walk, but other than that, we don’t much venture past our mailbox. We’re getting groceries delivered, so we really haven’t crossed paths with other people since mid-March. Haven’t bought gas for our cars since then either, and still don’t need to.
The biggest effect is on my dad, living in an assisted-living facility. They are in the middle of a COVID outbreak, with ten deaths there so far and many more cases. There has been at least one case in his hallway. Since March, no outside visitors allowed, all residents are being fed in their rooms instead of the dining room (no menu, you get what they bring you and if you’re last on their delivery route your food might not be so warm when it arrives), no big group gatherings, and social distancing makes it hard for residents to communicate with each other, since many speak with a faint voice and most of them are hearing-impaired. It’s been very hard on morale. Dad used to tend to keep phone conversations relatively brief, but lately he’s offering more topics and also lingering during those inevitable lulls, hoping that the conversation can be carried on a little bit longer.
I’m hoping I get to see him in person again someday, but I’m having serious doubts lately.
Everyone told to stay home unless necessary, and avoid all non-essential travel.
My city is the 7th-worst-hit place in the world. IN THE WORLD.
We have a lot of deaths, especially in seniors’ homes.
It’s depressing and terrifying.
Smoking pot and skipping school used to get you in a lot of trouble. Now weed’s legal and schools are closed. Damn kids today are living the dream, dagnabbit!
My county has had very few confirmed corona cases, so our governor has scaled things back a bit. We can now enter beer distributors, where before they had to take orders outside. Also, masks are now suggested rather than required in certain situations.
I stopped to buy some beer, so of course I wore my mask. Another guy was not wearing a mask. After he was gone, I took my purchase to the cashier, who was masked and behind plexiglass. I paid for my purchase, and she help up a notecard on which she’d drawn a happy face and written, “thank you for wearing a mask.” We smiled (with our eyes).
If seatbelt laws were changed, such that they were suggested instead of required, there would be people driving around without seatbelts, I guess.
Doc is recommending comfort care only.
i just wish we could be there with her when she goes. But that’s just not possible.
nm
Really sorry, RT Firefly. What a hard situation.
Definitely sleep issues. I had largely vanquished some long-standing insomnia after seeing a sleep specialist a few years ago, but it’s now back, big-time. (It’s of the “wake up somewhere between 2 am and 4 am” variety, not the inability to fall asleep at night.) Part of it may still be concussion leftovers - I am still not able to spend more than a couple of hours at a shot on a computer, and if I do, I get almost dizzy and need to go lie down and crash out for a while.
I find that getting outside and doing anything at all to distract myself is very helpful, or barring that, occupying myself with something that doesn’t involve constant news exposure. I made a tile backsplash in our kitchen (which looks pretty damn good, if I may say so, considering I have never done anything remotely like that!) , and our garden this year is going to be absolutely insane, which has the dual practical value of producing food so we will need fewer grocery deliveries.
With any luck, it will stop raining one of these days, and I will be able to go for a bike ride. I find that very relaxing. If not, maybe I will finally touch up the paint in the bathroom. Need to find some other projects that require focus, but not an intellectual kind of focus…maybe some more really elaborate cooking projects?
Ironically, my dog woke me up at 3 am and I’ve been up ever since. Couldn’t fall back to sleep. In half an hour it will be light enough for my morning walk.
If you can manage a picture of your backsplash, I’d love to see it.
The weather here has been absolutely perfect-- 60-ish in the morning, although it’s approaching 90 by afternoon, but with bright blue sky, all the trees leafed out, birds singing. If it were raining, my mood would be way down in the dumps. Right now my back yard is lush and green (no lawn, just trees and a wooden deck with an umbrella table), and the scent from flowering jasmine is intoxicating. I’m dreading winter when it will be chilly, rainy, gray skies, trees all bare. I have one of those “happy lights” that I use in the winter time.
the cluster i know was a church choir, with a few church members. they got infected the week of march 15th- 22nd. a handful ended up in hospital, and by Friday the 27th one was in icu on a vent. thankfully no one died in the cluster, and the one in icu was released from hospital on may 9th. one of the few happy releases from icu.
i’m glad you were able to get some pampering.
Seeking opinions:
Is there any reason to believe air travel will be any safer in the months ahead, or is it already as safe/unsafe as it’s ever going to be? (airlines are sterilizing quite thoroughly; not so sure about airports though)