How are you and yours doing so far? If you can answer, “As well as can be expected,” that’s good enough. If you can answer, “Fine,” that’s even better. If you have to answer, “Well, we’re not feeling so hot,” we’re going to worry about you and hope that you get the care that you need.
Laura and I are doing fine. We’re entering our fourth week of lockdown with no end in sight. We do go out for drives occasionally and have twice ordered food items online and stopped at the respective stores, while on those drives, for curbside loading.
For groceries, it’s less complicated. We order our food through Instacart. A couple of hours later, our stuff shows up. At least most of it does. We’ve ordered brown sugar, cheese, and a couple of other items that for whatever reason didn’t show up. That’s OK. We’re glad to get what we get. We’ve had three deliveries now and are pretty well stocked up, at least for now.
I’ve just seen a video about the need to sanitize/sterilize the items one brings into one’s home after shopping. A wake-up call. We’re going to much more militant about doing that.
Interested? Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmoBI5m2_uw
We’re serious about staying in, so we do miss talking with our pals. One way we’re getting around that is with phone calls – and, even better, apps like Facetime.
But this sort of thing is useful for more than just schmoozing with pals. I had my first experience with Zoom, the online meeting app, last week. This was for an appointment with a physician. That also worked surprisingly well. Laura uses Zoom to talk to her pals. It’s a cool deal.
The reality, for me, is that since we’ve been here, I’ve been a bit of a hermit. The only difference now is that now I’m a bit more of a hermit, which suits me just fine. I pick my guitar and banjo and I do a great deal of reading – nice to have books on my iPad, nice to get the important ones in hardcopy.
Laura has had to lay off from golf, which is not optimal for her, but she spends a lot of time pursuing online art classes, which she greatly enjoys.
We’ve been streaming movies, which up to now we’ve done infrequently. We usually just stick to our favorites – Masterpiece Theater and such. At least there is no shortage of stuff to watch, thanks to Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Some of our friends apparently are not taking this as seriously as we are. I’m not going to lecture anybody, but this does worry me. If we’re 60 years old or older, we’re supposed to isolate. I hope everyone gets that message.
I have noticed a couple of things during this isolation that interest me. One is that my dreamlife is really crazy. Nothing exotic, mind you, just weird. For instance, trying to rider a tiny motorcycle too small for a small child. Weird. Also, I get a bit disoriented and lose track of time, both micro and macro. I forget, for instance, which day of the week it is – oh, today is the day I’m supposed to put the rubbish bins out? Oh, today is one of the days I cook dinner? It’s good that Laura reminds me of this stuff.
Things here in Central Oregon aren’t too bad. So far, we’ve had 36 cases of the virus here in Deschutes County, with no deaths. Part of that, I think, is that social distancing is environmental. This is farm and ranch country, so there’s very little population density; social distancing is how folks live.
What density there is, is in the Bend/Redmond metro area, which has a population of about 197,500. Both towns are pretty much shut down, as you might imagine. Good for public health, terrible for the economic health of businesses and workers.
One thing that’s nice for us is that it looks like the weather will warm up a bit as the next week passes. It’s been surprisingly cold and damp here for the last few weeks so sitting out on the deck hasn’t been possible. We’re looking for that to change because it’s nice out there – yes, and very private – and because we so enjoy watching the birds congregate around the feeders in the yard just below the deck.
Food for the birds? As with supplies for the cats, not a problem: Order online, it gets delivered.
What none of us can know is this: How long can this last? How long will the supply chains upon which we rely for supplies stay full? What happens when agricultural workers and truck drivers and store folks get sick?
And in the longer run, what happens when we get deeply into election season? How will this awful mess affect the democratic process that we all are counting on?
Stay tuned, I guess.
-JFT
Comments