We have met the enemy and it is squalor

I am ok. You?

When you spend a lot of time at home (especially in multi-person households) it is easy to let everything go to hell. You have to figure things get grubbier than usual. The only other experience that compares for me is getting cooped up during a major snow storm but it’s a lukewarm comparison. I am keeping up. The stuff I’m avoiding: Stacked dishes in the sink, a funky ambience in the bathroom, piles of papers gathering, overflowing trashcans, unmade beds, loads of unwashed laundry. Living in squalor would just make it all worse.😐

I consider myself fortunate, well, in a number of ways, but in no small part because HOME is pretty much my favorite place. I absolutely love being outdoors in nature (and need to be) but I don’t want to live there. Being at home isn’t a huge change for me. Over the years, particularly during the time I’ve had this blog, I have really worked to make Home a good place to be.

It happened that my everyday food stockpiling coincided with the quarantining/pandemic. By happenstance I bought a lot of food in January and February. But for that I’d be a lot more anxious. Last March I blogged What does Colette eat? , a list of all the food I had on-hand. Why? I made the list for myself, in part so I could keep track of what I needed to buy at any given time but shared it because I thought it might be interesting or helpful. Last week I made a new list. It”s handwritten and not blog-ready but it is very similar.

I’m not a big fan of groups in the best of times (generally preferring the company of one other person at a time) so there again I am not struggling greatly but my connection to people, to humanity, is writ large. I feel very connected to other people; to other bloggers, to people across the U.S., to people around the world. Never have I felt in my decades, such a sense that to some degree or another, we are all experiencing the same thing. I am also thinking about all the people I’ve known and cared about. This doesn’t mean I want to “reach out” or anything like that; it’s just thinking and remembering.

I really feel for people in worse circumstances. I am impressed by all those whose jobs put them at risk. I’m sure they are frightened but still they continue their work. It was a small thing but I put a hand-written THANK YOU on the door when trash & recycling collectors came on their regular schedule. Think of how it would be if people weren’t still filling these and other roles (of many stripes) either out of sickness or fear.

The people who were nice before are still being nice and the people who were jerks are still being jerks.

I saw on on TV that people were putting up Christmas lights to cheer up their neighborhoods which I thought was charming (I guess so long as it doesn’t tax the power grid 😢). I put lights out too.

On a community Facebook group someone posted about putting teddy bears in the window for children to see (I don’t know if that’s everywhere). I don’t have a teddy bear (just two small stuffed animals whose fur might suffer from condensation 😯) so I collected a few friends to display. (My boy Gumby was previously seen here demonstrating tricks I do at the playground.)

At times I tear up watching the news. The news about the postponed Olympics made me cry outright. Not because I think that’s worse than thousands dead and sickened but maybe because it shows just how big this is combined with a long-standing emotional response to the Games – I’m not sure.  When emotions are running high it’s hard to know what will trip them, even obscure or seemingly unrelated things. Anyone who’s gone through raw grief will likely recognize that phenomena as true.

My father’s parents (long dead) were from northern Italy and came to the U.S. as young adults, only to later return to Italy with their first four children, including my father, only to again come to the U.S. but despite being half-Italian, I claim no true connection to the region, which has been so hard hit by the virus. I honestly don’t know how to think about it. There is this: you keep hearing about all these old people dying (in Italy and elsewhere) and there can be a tendency to think, well, they’re OLD. But old people have had plenty of time to touch many lives, they probably have friends, children, grandchildren, maybe great grandchildren. They leave behind people who will mourn them, who wouldn’t want a demise like this virus for them but a peaceful, family-gathered, or “quietly dying in their sleep” end. I relate from that view.

Is it weird or what to see VP Pence looking and acting more presidential than the president?!

I take comfort from certain leaders and certain people in the public eye. I have been surprised that TMZ is striking the right note for me, a mix of information, genuine emotion, humor and even a little dishing.  I enjoy Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest together. Before this I didn’t habitually watch their morning show, Live With Kelly and Ryan, and had very little interest in their interviews but liked the first ten or so minutes of the show where they banter and share news, personal and otherwise, when I happened to catch it. Now that they are respectively self-quaranteened and doing the show, I find them and the show very relatable, including the celebrity interviews. Maybe it’s because I believe the affection between them? I find the Dr Phil show very formulaic (and pandering to ratings with its content ) and usually avoid it but the man himself has been compelling since I first saw him long ago. He says things that help me, going way back. I still have notes I took after Sep 11, 2001 about the suggestions and advice he had for people on how to cope. Anyway, he’s gone to a podcast style of his daily TV show and I expect to watch. He makes sense and has a crackerjack mind.

It is always so interesting who comes into the spotlight at crisis points. That Dr Fauci is rocking it. So are some governors including mine. Regular people online make a big difference too if only to distract us with humor. I am grateful to all.

I am here on the blog to distract myself in part, and hopefully to offer a little distraction. If all goes well I expect to be blogging more. I think it’ll help me. I want the connection. I think I will write about the typical topics I do, deliberately. I don’t want to focus only on the virus and its effects. I hope that is okay.

We are requested to stay home where I am but not yet ordered to.  My work has little contact with people and I can stay 6′ away so I can work some which is good on several fronts. The numbers of infection are still rising. I just don’t want to get sick but I felt that before. All winter I was working to not get the flu.

I would say I have a low grade level of agitation.

People are cooking & baking at home, they say. I was already doing that and am just trying to keep up good habits. Even so, I crave foods I wasn’t going to be having anyway, whether because they are too expensive – a huge plate of steamed shellfish – or not a usual thing I let myself eat – bags of chips and candy.😐

There are not bombs falling on my community or soldiers in the streets.  It IS scary but not the scariest, not at all. Perspective. Isn’t that what everything, always, is about?

There wll be scholars writing about this time for years to come. There will be crackpots ranting. There will be movies. It will be taught or mentioned in school curriculums. The worldwide pandemic of 2020.

Remember a few weeks ago? The impeachment, Harry and Meghan, the Australian wildfires? I haven’t heard a peep about any of them. Gone. (Although the absurd Kanye/Kim/Taylor thing got renewed steam in the last day or so. Way to rise to the occasion!😕)

I feel badly for the kids missing proms and graduations – I remember what a big deal everything associated with school and my friends was to me when I was in their place – and love that some jurisdictions promise to do these events for them later.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to have real problems or concerns now that are in addition to the pandemic fears, people with cancer or advanced stages of diseases.  They have to fear/wonder if they will still get the treatment and medications they need and if they will contract the virus further compromising their original illnesses.

Illness and disease have been wiping out populations for a very long time. I think that we’re taken aback that it can still happen independent of how prosperous or technologically advanced a society is. Money and advances will help but they can’t prevent every bad bit of business that comes along. We grow so accustomed to our structures and routines in western countries, so assured in our worlds. Events like weather and pandemics are equal opportunity.

Challenging myself at the playground

In the post about my Kinda, sorta resolutions for 2019 I said I’d like to challenge myself intellectually and physically. I’m off to a good start on both endeavors and wanted to tell you just a bit about pushing myself physically. As I said previously I think many people increasingly limit themselves as they age in no small part because they’re afraid of getting hurt, leading to a long recovery time, if they ever fully recover at all. It’s a fine line to walk; challenging yourself beyond your comfort vs over-doing it and being very sorry.

For a long time there were a couple things I’d do at playgrounds when I’d be going by but due to either injuries or having taxed myself elsewhere, I hadn’t done any of them in years. With the passing of time, I wasn’t even sure if I could do them any more.

There’s a skinny pole leading to a platform at one playground and, if no one else was there, I used to climb the pole occasionally and step over to the platform. I can’t tell you I liked it but I did think it was good for me. It was kind of a point of pride that I could do it. (I’d never once seen anyone else climb it, not even kids, although that doesn’t mean no one did.)

The first time I (re)attempted the climb in January, I found, to my surprise, I went up fairly easily. The next time I went back, for whatever reason, it seemed harder. When I went last weekend I took along a tape measure so I could tell you how high the platform is (I could only guess). It’s 6.5 feet, so not all that high. I again climbed up the pole but I can’t tell you it’s easy for me; I have to psyche myself up a little: “C’mon, you can do this.”

At other playgrounds I had a few things I did on the bars that were fun for me. In January I went to one of these playgrounds and was again happy to find that I could still do them. On this day, after climbing the pole (and getting the photo) I went to another playground that has old-fashioned equipment and a couple sets of bars both of which I like.

The thing I always loved doing on a playground with similar bars was, on a low one, grabbing it with both hands and jumping up to where my mid-section hit the bar, and then, leaning forward, flipping my feet over my head, landing on my feet facing on forward on the other side of the bar, letting go of the bar as I did so.

Let me demonstrate with the help of my able assistant, Gumby.

Another woman blogger recently wrote about attempting a chin-up or pull-up. Her post made me wonder if I could do that. It wasn’t ever a feat I was in the habit of doing – had I done one ever? – so I had no idea if I was capable. I tried one on the highest bar of the trio above and no way, no how was it happening.😐 I tried once with my hands over the bar and once with them under and it made no difference. I was able to raise myself a little but nowhere near accomplishing a chin-up. I was disappointed; on the other hand, it’s not like a skill I knew I had and lost. I’m not sure what it would take to accomplish this but I tend to think it would be by first getting stronger doing other upper body exercise. That is, I don’t think merely trying repeatedly to do a chin-up would be enough.

I went to another low bar (one I think is just a tad lower) for this other trick, namely hanging by my knees only. I grabbed hold of the bar and kind of walked up the side pole in order to get my legs over the bar. What I particularly like to do is choose a bar at a height where I can hang by my knees and place my hands on the ground so that I can, with the help of gravity, swing my legs off the bar over my head ultimately landing on my feet, or more accurately, on my feet and hands before standing up straight. I have to say there’s a moment of fear when I let go of the bar, even knowing the ground is close.

Let’s bring Gumby back for a demo.

While I was there and had the place to myself, I tried one last thing on the monkey bars (do they still call them that?) The idea is to grab them with your hands and swing across, hand over hand. Well, on this set of 8 bars, I was able to go across but I didn’t swing madly and instead took them one by one. I think it’d be easier to swing hand over hand if the bars were higher off the ground and I had the space to get a “jump” start – that’s kind of how I remember doing it when I was a kid.