Contact, Contacts

This Stay at Home stuff just DRAGS on and on. I mean, I suppose we could start going out more, but, like many people, we don't really feel safe enough yet. Watching other states' infection rates surge, and our own state's infection rate creep back upward, the best strategy seems to be avoid contact with others. We wear masks, we wash hands, we socially distance. And we DO stay (mostly) at home. But it's really getting old. I try to tell myself this is a stamina competition, because, really, the only way I can muster any enthusiasm is by making it a competition.

There are a few reasons I've ventured out lately and most of them have to do with my aunt and her medical needs. That means I've been to the hospital and a few doctor's offices. I have to steel myself a bit before I go; I try to remember that these medical places are the last places that want to be identified as a location having an outbreak. In theory, they should be more cautious and more safe than the grocery store. In practice, I don't know...sometimes, I feel like these medical places are so desperate to resume business that seeing patients is a risk they take merely for the income.

Case in point for useless appointments - the one I had with my ophthalmologist, who refused to issue me a new contact lens prescription. It had been three years since my last contact lens prescription. (I wear my glasses a lot.) But last year, I'd gotten a new eyeglass prescription. You would think that they could have written a new contact lens prescription based on the glasses. But no, they needed me to come in for a contact lens fitting. And to test my vision. AGAIN. And after lots of fogging up of the their eye testing machine (because that happens when you wear a mask), and dilated pupils, and trying on contacts that were the wrong prescription but the right diameter, and yada-yada, they discovered SURPRISE! my eye balls are the same size they were three years ago and SURPRISE! my eyesight is the same as last year. I was pretty furious by the time I left, because it was all such a lot of unnecessary exposure, as much for the people working in the office as for myself.

I would have continued wearing my glasses indefinitely, were it not for the fact that I thought I should start running. I feel determined to keep running, just so I can say I did something worthwhile while avoiding people. Anyways: one day I went running with neither glasses (which are just inconvenient) nor contacts (because I was trying to save the few pairs I had left). Then I tripped and fell while running. Unlike my kids, I discovered it took my two-score-and-three-year-old body WEEKS to heal. I was reminded that I am old enough to be cautious about injury. AND I should probably wear some sort of prescriptive vision correction, lest I trip and make contact with the pavement again.

Random Stuff Happening Under Stay at Home Orders

Using Zoom or FaceTime:

• One kid went on a backyard campout.
• We attended a wedding.
• Fritz presented to his colleagues in Germany.
• One kid had a grill cookout.
• We played Settlers of Catan.

We've been using Costco/Instacart for deliveries. we discovered that Costco is letting Instacart shoppers enter the store and complete their shopping outside of normal business hours – which,  I think, is good. I know it's unlikely, but I do wish grocery stores would close to the general public and convert to parking lot pickup and delivery. Or maybe just half of the grocery stores. It would be so much safer for everyone, and probably a hell of a lot more efficient.

I'm gaining weight. I've decided that now is not the time to fuss over food (or losing weight). So I'm trying to keep focused on simply Eat Mostly Healthy, Get Some Exercise Everyday. The End. (But we are at the point of Needing Bigger Sized Clothing. Ugh.)

Trixie and I have been running together in the morning. Historically, I am miserable running with other people. I like to run ONLY when it is Alone Time. But Trixie, at 6 years old, had proven to be a pretty good running partner for my out-of-shape self. And she's actually into it, which is something I could never ignite in either of her older brothers. 

A funny story - Noah - age 13 - got a smart phone. (Honestly, I don't know how we'd be sane in the current situation without giving the kid his own phone).  When he got the phone, he set up Siri with voice commands. And...in the course of the last 5 weeks, Siri has stopped responding his "Hey Siri!"  Noah's Siri only now responses to Mattias - age 10. Hello, adolescent voice change. Guess AI hasn't figured out that one yet.

Double Hump

One of my confidants told me this weekend that she saw a family in masks walk past her house on the street. And she grew quite annoyed by their masks, until she was pierced by the desire to yell at them to take off their masks and breathe some fresh air!

I thought about this comment for a long time afterwards. It seemed that the comments revealed less about the choice of the family to wear mask and more about her desire for the pandemic to be over, or her frustration with the stay at home orders, or her own weariness of feeling protected to the point of trapped. I believe we are all getting weary of staying at home.

And it doesn't help that so many things don't work right now. If you wanted to be tested for covid-19, you probably couldn't be. If you need some protective equipment or toilet paper, you can't get it. If you thought you were going to get a relief payment from the federal government, you probably didn't. If you applied for a small business loan, you most likely heard nothing. If one of your family members was hospitalized, you may have very little idea of how they are doing. If you want to work, you maybe can't.

Words are meaningless if they are not backed up by action. There are lots of words from the federal government, but no actions.

My brother shrugs his shoulders and says to me over the phone, from thousands of miles away, "It is what it is."

No. I tell him. It is what we've let it become. Stop contributing to this self-fulfilling prophecy of helplessness.

I watched the protests unfold this weekend and I struggled with my own sense of frustration and helplessness. But the scary reality that we are all about to face in the US is how little we have done to really address this virus over the last month of staying at home. Sure, we stayed home. But it wasn't enough. We didn't really do that hard work over the course of the last month to get us out of this mess. That means: we didn't do enough testing, we didn't set up isolation health centers, we didn't figure out how to ramp up our in-country supply production/manufacturing, we didn't make enough plans to phase back into opening society safely, we didn't teach people (apparently) enough about the importance of masks. (And by the way, DOING that type of preparation provides jobs for people and helps the economy a lot more than throwing money at airlines, cruise ships and hotels.) But now, everybody is antsy and angry and the pathetic actions by the federal government have made the situation worse than necessary.

Here's what happened to the death rates in my hometown when we eased restrictions too soon, 101 years ago: