CoronaQuarantine, Day 22
I feel like I had a kind of good day yesterday. Better than most have been, anyway. I got three phone calls in a row after work, and I had the next called interrupt the previous call-in-progress twice. I felt very popular. Dad called me first, and Gabriel called only minutes after Dad did. I was on the phone with Dad for 41 minutes, then called Gabriel back; I was on the phone with him for around 15 minutes, during which Danielle tried to call. I texted her back that I would call her back, which I did after being on FaceTime with Gabriel for just a couple of minutes at the end of his call so he could show me how he was on a rooftop that was next to but not above Tess's bedroom window. The call with Danielle was 33 minutes, so even though I was not on the phone with any one person for a huge amount of time, I was still on the phone with one of three different people for a basically uninterrupted stretch for an hour and a half.
Dad called because he had asked me a question about my Birth Week during our family Zoom metup on Wednesday, and felt like my answer had gotten talked over and I didn't get to fully answer. I actually did feel like I was able to answer adequately, but maybe Dad didn't get to hear it. So, we talked a while about my evolving thoughts about how I would approach my Birth Week, which I already assumed would not have any possibility of proceeding as planned or as normal. There had been news a couple of days ago that Washington State Governor Jay Inslee would extend the "stay at home" order at least another 30 days; this was made official just yesterday, extending it at least through May 4. Because they don't want to rescind it until new cases of COVID-19 are going down week to week instead of up, that totally makes sense to me and I am completely on board, dreary prospect for the next month as it may be. Even Dad agreed with this.
It does, of course, mean that not only does it make sense for my Birth Week not to proceed as planned at the time it was planned for, but it can't even happen legally. Last month I was hoping at the very least state parks would be open, but nope. As of right now we're looking at not even being able to stop working from home until May 4 at the soonest. I just hope the models are right and it can even happen that soon. Anyway, in talking to Dad, I still wasn't sure how I was going to deal with it, whether I would set aside another full week to reschedule all those park visits, or just scatter rescheduled park visits with "Birth Week regulars" throughout the rest of the year once things open up again. (I mean, assuming they ever do. They're bound to eventually, right?)
I got to thinking about all this much later yesterday evening, though, and I finally came to a more definitive conclusion than I had in mind during my phone call with Dad. I even went ahead and posted my revised plan to Facebook this morning, tagging everyone I had Birth Week plans with. (Dad does not have his own Facebook account, but I figured tagging Sherri would get the message to him.) I'm just going to go ahead and put exactly what I wrote there here as well:
"Stay at home" order extended through May 4, so . . . there goes my Birth Week, right? Sort of! I actually think I've figured out a compromise I can live with.
My theme this year was going to be Discovery Pass: Washington State Parks Tour. I think it still will be, just slightly altered: State Park Rain Checks. Everyone I planned to visit a state park with, I'll just do it at a later date this year, whenever works best for them.
But! I can still tether that to activity during the proper dates of my Birth Week (17th annual, this year). I insist on salvaging my *proper* Birth Week in some way, spending some time with all the same people if I can; I'll just do it virtually, just like we've been doing everything else in the absence of in-person hangouts. So, whichever day I already had scheduled for a given person for this year's Birth Week, I want to hop on a video call and we can eat dinner or have drinks together or something. And at the same time, we can make a tentative plan for a future date to visit the previously chosen state park. I did get a Discovery Pass this year after all, I don't want it to go to waste!
This will actually have a dual benefit for me. First, although I am still insisting on taking my actual birthday off of work, I will now be saving either most or all of the rest of those PTO hours—either in reserves in case I ever get sick, or, hopefully, to add to what I cash out at the end of the year to put in savings for our next trip to Australia in a couple years. Second, still doing *something* with all my "Birth Week regulars" during the proper dates . . . well, it will just make me feel a lot better. And I get what I want one way or another!
Now. This next bit, at least some of you are going to think is dumb as hell, but I don't care. YOU CAN DEAL. When I get on a video call with each person during my actual Birth Week, I think I'll get a screen shot of them holding up a dummy check they write out to me, not for a dollar value but for the name of the park we'll later go to! "Birth Week Rain Check." This way I still have a visual reference linking both my Birth Week proper to the later visits to parks in my photo albums, and that somehow soothes my little OCD heart.
I know none of this is especially important in the grand scheme of things, but it's still comforting to have things to look forward to. Especially the adaptive things we can still do during lockdown.
Dad and I still talked about a few other things, but most of our discussion of course still had to do with the pandemic. Sherri had tried to order products for delivery from Costco and every single thing she wanted it said they were out of. They decided to go to Costco on their own, and they actually had nearly everything they needed. They were limiting the number of people who could go in, though, and they wore gloves. Sherri posted about this to the 'Gramdma and Papa's Covid Page" Facebook group and that said they "had face protection with us," but I don't know if that means they were actually wearing masks or not. Dad told me they took off the gloves and used hand sanitizer as soon as they got back to the car, and that it was the easiest, least-crowded visit to Costco they had ever had.
I don't like that they went out shopping at all, honestly. But, they have been staying at home most of the time and the social distancing all of us have been practicing appears to be already making a difference. At least in Washington, where authorities had the sense to take action early. (The same goes for California, where the Bay Area was the first large cluster of counties in the entire U.S. to issue a "stay at home" order.) Again, this should have been done nationwide weeks ago, but it still hasn't because this country is being run by buffoons who are literally costing our nation thousands of lives.
Anyway! Even 41 minutes on the phone with Dad was a bit longer than I might have expected, but it was nice, and a good augment to the Zoom meetup the day before. The Zoom thing is a great resource, but it doesn't quite stand in perfectly for an in-person get-together, where smaller groups can break apart and visit amongst themselves. A group video chat means we all have to basically take turns commanding the attention of everyone in the room. So one-on-one calls are still good too.
When I got on the phone with Gabriel, we talked a little about how although I'm not doing bad per se, I'm still doing worse than normal: my default is typically that I'm doing great; now I vacillate between worry and just okay. It's a very different mode of being for me, but I still hesitate to consider it anything I need much in the way of sympathy or compassion for. Gabriel even tried to sum it up by saying "You're struggling," and I think even that's probably too strong a word, a bit misleading. I'm just lonely and bored! But mostly lonely—something Dad also strongly agreed with. He told me about picking up one of the many takeout orders they have ordered from the Shipwreck Café to support its new owners (having bought the business at the worst possible time, as it turns out—while Dad and Sherri sold it at the best possible time), and that he had stood and chatted with them for a few minutes the last time, and it hit him how much he missed just being able to talk to people. He has Sherri to talk to, of course, just as I do Shobhit. But we all need a variety of people in our lives.
Gabriel, for his part, is taking an incredibly hardline approach to any time he goes out. Tess is one of the few "vectors," as he calls it, in their life, as she continues to move back and forth halfway through the week between Stephanie's and his places. Stephanie still has patients at the acupuncture clinic she runs, making her another vector. Gabriel told me that even after they walk Lady, Lea's dog, each day, as soon as they come back inside they change their clothes, in addition to washing themselves. And what have I been doing? Sporadically spraying disinfectant cleaners on the counters, and washing my hands way more often than usual. And thanks to the aloe vera moisturizing soap being out of stock when I was last at Target, this new coconut ginger flavor soap I got in a refill bottle is seriously drying my skin, and I even started bleeding the other day. I've taken to handling the toilet with my feet just to avoid some instances of hand washing because my skin can't take it.
Gabriel said he likes to sit on that rooftop that's over Pagliacci Pizza but just next door to his apartment's bedroom windows, with his feet dangling over the edge. Some of the few people passing by will wave at him. One woman who looked like she may have been a journalist of some sort took his picture. I guess Tess occasionally hangs out there with him sometimes too. When I can visit him again I want to go out there just to see it.
So I got off the phone with him and called Danielle back. She's been sending me stats of positive cases at Valley Medical Center where she works pretty regularly. Yesterday they were at 37 positive cases with 8 people under investigation (PUI); as of this morning it was 41 positives plus 6 PUI—and 23 employees positive. I asked for clarification and those 23 employees are not part of that 41 number of positive patients! Jesus fuck, that makes me worry about Danielle herself. I suppose I should note, as this occurred to me as I was writing this, that not all positives require hospitalization—only a small percentage. So those positive employees are not all on their death beds. It's still very, very bad though, because any employee who tests positive obviously can't be working, and we need health care workers now more than ever. Once again, we're looking at a full month of April where things are going to get way worse before they start to get better. It's unnerving. And one of my best friends is a nurse.
As for the rest of my evening? Shobhit and I made pasta for dinner, which I started helping him with while still on the phone with Danielle. We watched this week's Modern Family. I went to bed kind of early.
I can't remember the last time I was outside. Well, both yesterday and the day before I did go out onto the balcony briefly. I can't remember the last time I left the Braeburn Condos premises. It would have to be when we last went shopping anywhere. It must have been Monday. So no, it wasn't shopping . . . that was the day I took the bus to the office and back to exchange paperwork. I'm going to go back again after work today, but Shobhit stayed home from work again (he's worried about his slightly sore throat but otherwise seems fine; he's trying to decide whether to make a pie out of the pears we have left) so I'll have access to the car. There should be either nobody or hardly anybody when I get into the office briefly, but hopefully there are still some of the chocolate bar samples left that Scott emailed us all about yesterday telling us to take if we go there. There's one last Unreal sample candy bar from earlier that I hope to be able to snatch as well. If nothing else I'll take a couple of mini peanut butter cups from the jar at the front desk.
[posted 12:23 pm]