Cabin fever
Our county 'Shelter-in-place' order has been extended through May 3 (the previous order would have ended April 7) . Schools are closed until May 1, but rumour has it there will be an official announcement cancelling school for the rest of the year. I don't understand why we have these end dates at all - are they based on actual evidence? Or is it just psychological - to give people the feeling there is light at the end of the tunnel. And it is so confusing - the Governor has issued an indefinite stay-at-home order. One would think the orders from Governor of California would outweigh the County order, but why then does the County issue new orders? I read somewhere, can't find where now, that if the guidelines are confusing or have conflicts, people are less likely to adhere to them.
The new order from the county is actually very clear - it specifically bans going to any public recreational facility (parks, tennis courts, playgrounds, etc.), it limits any kind of game that involves sharing a ball to members within a household, it bans most construction, and it requires essential businesses to set up strict social distancing protocols by April 3 if they want to stay open.
On the home front, I've been compiling a list of all the safety guidelines for inside the home. If I were to follow all the advice this is what the day would look like:
1. Get up and clean all the door-knobs, light switches, backs of chairs, cupboard handles in the house because you forgot to do it last night.
2. Clean phones, iPads, and computers, for same reason as above.
3. Sew a face mask. Or try this (we did - ingenious but couldn't get it to stay on! Wrong type of hair ties. Or wrong type of ears!)
4. Disinfect shopping delivery, packages, and mail.
5. Check the food delivery slots, check the contents of the fridge and cupboards, lecture kids about wasting food.
6. Cook amazing 'pantry meals' - apparently our pantry is meant to be stocked with an abundance of fresh eggs, pancetta, fresh herbs, anchovies, parmesan... have these people actually been to grocery stores lately?! We keep hearing about how there is plenty of food, nobody needs to worry, but the fact is the stores are pretty messed up at the moment and online ordering is kind of a joke. This advice was a bit more realistic.
7. Meditate, breathe, and practice loving kindness so that I can be thankful for the fact that our online order delivery tonight contained some actual edible items amongst the downright surreal substitutions. In place of ramen, rice milk, and bananas we got Saran wrap (cling film), Aveeno ultra-moisturising bath milk, and five grapefruit. I guess there is some logic to that last substitution. I am thankful, I really am!
8. Exercise outside, and the CDC now seems to be leaning towards us all wearing the result of #3 when going out.
9. Stay informed without obsessively checking the news every half hour. Read the range of new protocols and advice for how to live under lockdown, contrast, compare and ward of anxiety by alternating #7 and #8.
10. Round off the day with a repeat of #1 and #2, except too tired so leave until morning, maybe...
I mentioned at dinner the other night that given the egg crisis it would be awesome if we had some chickens, and that I would look into it. ThingTwo now asks every day when our baby chicks are arriving. I googled to see if keeping chickens was even a possibility in our town and apparently there is 'no mention of chickens in the Saratoga municipal code'. It sounds like a line out of a Monty Python sketch. "Am I to understand correctly, sir, that there is no mention of chickens in the municipal code? Not even a comment, an acknowledgement, a throw-away remark? Perhaps the merest of footnotes?"
Anyway, I think no mention means that chickens are ok? It turns out there are several local farms that do sell chicks, and in the old days would run chicken-care classes for first-timers, but alas
they are currently sold out.
Chickens aside, it is a little hard to fathom the numbers from today's White House briefing. The death toll in the US is currently at 4000, but the President was talking about the models predicting a total of 100,000 - 240,000. These are war-like numbers. Just hard to make sense of at the moment.
The new order from the county is actually very clear - it specifically bans going to any public recreational facility (parks, tennis courts, playgrounds, etc.), it limits any kind of game that involves sharing a ball to members within a household, it bans most construction, and it requires essential businesses to set up strict social distancing protocols by April 3 if they want to stay open.
On the home front, I've been compiling a list of all the safety guidelines for inside the home. If I were to follow all the advice this is what the day would look like:
1. Get up and clean all the door-knobs, light switches, backs of chairs, cupboard handles in the house because you forgot to do it last night.
2. Clean phones, iPads, and computers, for same reason as above.
3. Sew a face mask. Or try this (we did - ingenious but couldn't get it to stay on! Wrong type of hair ties. Or wrong type of ears!)
4. Disinfect shopping delivery, packages, and mail.
5. Check the food delivery slots, check the contents of the fridge and cupboards, lecture kids about wasting food.
6. Cook amazing 'pantry meals' - apparently our pantry is meant to be stocked with an abundance of fresh eggs, pancetta, fresh herbs, anchovies, parmesan... have these people actually been to grocery stores lately?! We keep hearing about how there is plenty of food, nobody needs to worry, but the fact is the stores are pretty messed up at the moment and online ordering is kind of a joke. This advice was a bit more realistic.
7. Meditate, breathe, and practice loving kindness so that I can be thankful for the fact that our online order delivery tonight contained some actual edible items amongst the downright surreal substitutions. In place of ramen, rice milk, and bananas we got Saran wrap (cling film), Aveeno ultra-moisturising bath milk, and five grapefruit. I guess there is some logic to that last substitution. I am thankful, I really am!
8. Exercise outside, and the CDC now seems to be leaning towards us all wearing the result of #3 when going out.
9. Stay informed without obsessively checking the news every half hour. Read the range of new protocols and advice for how to live under lockdown, contrast, compare and ward of anxiety by alternating #7 and #8.
10. Round off the day with a repeat of #1 and #2, except too tired so leave until morning, maybe...
I mentioned at dinner the other night that given the egg crisis it would be awesome if we had some chickens, and that I would look into it. ThingTwo now asks every day when our baby chicks are arriving. I googled to see if keeping chickens was even a possibility in our town and apparently there is 'no mention of chickens in the Saratoga municipal code'. It sounds like a line out of a Monty Python sketch. "Am I to understand correctly, sir, that there is no mention of chickens in the municipal code? Not even a comment, an acknowledgement, a throw-away remark? Perhaps the merest of footnotes?" Anyway, I think no mention means that chickens are ok? It turns out there are several local farms that do sell chicks, and in the old days would run chicken-care classes for first-timers, but alas
they are currently sold out.
Chickens aside, it is a little hard to fathom the numbers from today's White House briefing. The death toll in the US is currently at 4000, but the President was talking about the models predicting a total of 100,000 - 240,000. These are war-like numbers. Just hard to make sense of at the moment.
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