Saturday, March 28, 2020

Waiting for the first shoe to drop

It all developed so slowly. It's hard to put a day on when the real impact of the global pandemic hit me. This thing we all refuse to call COVID19 (4 syllables) and instead call the coronavirus (6 syllables) came like the slowest tsunami ever, and we haven't even seen its full crest.



Back at the end of January I got a call for a last minute trip to Chicago for work. I scrambled to get packed and ready, not too hard because for this job I've been there so many times I know what's expected. All black clothes for work, warm stuff for outside, but not too warm because I spend most of the time inside the vast McCormick Center which is connected by corridors to my hotel. Five nights of luxury broken up by brutally long working days and a couple chances to see my friend Roxy and visit the Romanian congregation in Skokie.




The day before my trip a young friend who was following the story emerging from Wuhan China asked me if I was afraid to fly, especially to Chicago, where there was a case of this new virus. No, not afraid to fly, not afraid of Chicago, just afraid I'd miss my 4:30 am wake-up call if I was sleeping "deaf-side up." We contemplated buying an Apple watch with a buzzer so I could rest easier. Ran out of time for that, instead I set my phone alarm for 4:30, 4:31, 4:32, 4:33 and so forth. I found out the hotel still does wake up calls too.




There were some really bad technical difficulties with the test which I can't go into. Suffice it to say we worked the longest day I've ever worked (5:30 am - 11:30 pm) with the most disappointing results. We were being careful with hygiene because it was flu season, but nothing special. Little did I know when I flew home, that was going to be my last flight for a long time. I sat by a young man coming back to his brother's funeral from suicide. A most draining and gut-wrenching conversation filled the majority of the trip home. I arrived back completely spent in every way.




The next Monday I had jury duty selection and was forced to sit by a young woman who was coughing and hacking and snorting and sniffling in my limited breathing space. I tried looking for another seat, but I couldn't and had to sit by the hacker. Sure enough, four days later on a conference with my husband in Santa Rosa, I got a doozy of a cold. Fever, sore throat, upper respiratory infection big time. I ended up with double pink eye and an ear ache, with feeling like I'd been run over by a semi. It took me very long to recover. In the midst of the fog of this virus, I could sense that this mystery virus in China wasn't just in China anymore. It was spreading. My calls in to my doctor for the pink eye and earache were met with many questions about where I had traveled and did I have a dry cough. The answers were Chicago, that blasted courthouse, Santa Rosa and bed, and not a dry cough, mine was a bit wet.




With each half week came more and more bad news, more and more people were getting "it" (one syllable) as we now all call COVID19. Photos arrived from our friend in Seattle who works at Costco of people racing down the aisle to hoard toilet paper. The news was filled with TP, sanitizer wipes, paper towels and death in rest homes. And we thought the craziness had peaked.




The rest of the dates are getting jumbled. We began to rethink the whole "kiss, hug, kiss again, shake every single hand of every single person" at our Romanian meetings, filled with the most kissy-huggy-shaky-handy group of friends you've ever experienced. I started washing my hands more, way more, especially since I had recently been so sick. Then I just started refusing to kiss, and introduced the fist bump and then the toe kick. Then we had our last physical meeting on March 7. We thought it would be for 2 weeks. It's now been 3 weeks and will most likely go on this way for months.


How are we keeping our unity? First we watched streamed talks and meetings from Romania. But then we got direction that we were still to meet as a congregation, but on Zoom. I had never heard of Zoom before. Now it's a regular part of my vocabulary. We have Zoom meetings with our congregation, and it's simply adorable to see these older immigrants taking to this great technology on their ipads and iphones. We are learning how to mute, stop video, raise our hands, upload a nice photo and we're memorizing everyone's pictures hanging above their sofas. But most of all we are staying united, encouraged, upbuilt and connected. Zoom is the best invention of our times. Let's all give a big sanitized gloved hand for Zoom.


About the time I was completely over my cold from February, and in the middle of making marmalade, my husband told me he had a sore throat, wasn't feeling well and was going out to the trailer to self-quarantine. My heart sunk, every muscle in my body began to tingle and I wanted to just curl up into a ball and cry. But I had marmalade bubbling in pots and I had to deal with it. By the time they were in their jars I had calmed down. My thinking process went from total dread to "This isn't a death sentence, this isn't Ebola, he will be OK, and worst case scenario I have stellar examples of friends who have faced the worst of the worst of losing a mate and they are still functioning as beautiful giving people who have true purpose in life". From now on, when I get some bad news, I'm going to make marmalade, because the process got me from an emotional fetal position to standing tall and positive by the time the lids make it on the jars.


During all of this, in addition to Ernst self-isolating in our trailer, we had no bathroom except for the one in the pool house and the one in the trailer. A leaky toilet had led to a stained floor which led to pulling it up to investigate which led to discovering mold which led to finding out it was really bad to tear up a bathroom during a pandemic. "Boo hoo, poor me, no inside toilet!" Again, an attitude adjustment was in order, as I walked out in the dark with my flashlight to use the loo. "Jessica, this is all some people have or know or experience their whole life. Buck up and deal with it." I should have made some more marmalade. Finally after 12 long days the dad of one of Ernst's students agreed to come and put in our new floor. Yippee for floor guys who also set toilets! We were flushing again by the time Ernst was better.


In amongst the growing tragedy this epidemic (now pandemic) has wrought, life goes on. Never did I think San Francisco would order a lockdown of its citizens. "Those poor people!" I thought. Then a few days later my county, Sacramento, got a similar directive. It seemed so drastic, so scary, so unbelievable.


Then we just got used to staying at home. We had enough food, we never hoarded, we just prepared. My motto is "We aren't preppers, we are preparers." We basically lived on beans and rice before this started, the only hard part is getting the amounts of fresh produce we consume. We signed up for a farm box delivery, can't wait to see what it contains.


Our days consist of eating real meals together at our table, spending lots of time with our dog, Zooming with our congregation, getting more stuff done around the house than I ever thought possible and trying not to look at the news while still staying informed. At this writing, we don't know anyone personally who has it, and I hope that stays the case until the experts nail down the best "drug cocktail" to hit this with.


We are eating extremely healthy, our goal is to keep our inflammation down and our blood flowing freely through every artery, vein and the tiniest of capillaries in our bodies. I'm not going to binge eat junk food, even vegan junk food, right before what might be my body's most important fight ever, surviving COVID19. We continue to eat a low added fats, whole-food plant-based diet heavy on the greens and vegetables. Since I'm only working the morning shift on weekends at my school district job I have so much time to mindfully plan meals around the food we have. I'm quickly learning how to enhance frozen vegetables to make our fresh last longer.


Our biggest question now is did Ernst get a very mild version of the virus? He said the back of his throat was a color he had never seen it, it was purple. And his tonsils looked very odd too, with ominous streaks of veins coming off them. Of course we can't know, they aren't going to waste a precious test on someone who only had mild symptoms. It just would ease my mine to know this guy who has survived so many health scares got through this one with just a week of self-imposed isolation.


Without that knowledge, we are just staying home as much as humanly possible, staying connected with our friends and while taking precautions, knowing the picture is much bigger than our little home, our little home with the big backyard and the modest supply of toilet paper. So if you run out of legumes, we can share. But don't come knocking at our door for TP, all we'll hand you is package of frozen collard greens.


Until next time...Stay safe, Stay smart and Stay HOME.








Stay connected

Stay strong

Stay kind

Stay clean

Stay healthy

Stay protected (from paint)

Stay bright

Stay sane (dryer balls in dog food?)

Stay determined to eat the food you already bought

Stay realistic



Stay spicy

Stay masked when necessary

Stay exercised



Stay busy

Stay hopeful we will soon be back with our friends


Stay home!









Sunday, March 1, 2020

Marching Onward!


February 2020 will go down in my history as a very, very bad month. I would say I want a do-over, but that sounds too painful, so I'm moving onward and upward. March 1st never sounded so good.

February started with me still reeling from the end of January, which had me going on a very last minute work trip to Chicago. I had two days to prepare, but I've been there many times before so that part wasn't daunting. The daunting part was that usually I travel there with either my husband or with a set of close friends who also work the same exam as I do. This time I was on my own. Staying at a fancy pants hotel all by yourself is a bit pathetic.

The work situation ended up being horridly disaster-ridden. I can't even divulge what happened, just a technology fail of epic proportions. The only good thing about the trip was seeing my friends in the Romanian congregation in Skokie. There's never a lack of new and fun places to visit in Chicago, and my friends were kind enough to come pick me up at my lonely hotel and drive me around town to explore all the vegan options, which seem endless.

That trip took a lot out of me, so I started February off dragging. A few days in I had to drag myself to jury duty where I was forced to sit next to an obviously ill woman who was hacking and coughing the whole time. As interesting as the jury selection process was, and as funny as the judge was, my overwhelming memory of the experience was thinking "She'd better not get me sick, she'd better not get me sick." Sure enough, a few days later, while at a conference in Santa Rosa with my husband, I got sick.

For the next two and a half weeks I was a walking medical dictionary for every possible symptom of a head cold. Fever, headache, double viral pink eye, earache, sore throat, coughing - the list went on and on. About this time the whole Coronavirus thing was picking up speed, and my call in to my doctor about the pink eye was met with "Have you been to any affected areas lately?" Chicago, a jury selection room in Sacramento and Santa Rosa, that was it. It was a doozy of a cold, but I could happily conclude it was of the most common variety. Hot tea, lemon, honey, some Jagermeister and Netflix got me through.

So what else happened in this most dreadful month? Oh, just a trip to the ER for my husband, who passed out after a bout of possible Norovirus. Yep, while I was still so sick, my husband gave me the scare of a lifetime (which can be added to all the other scares of a lifetime he's given me) and had me on the phone with 911 one morning as his BP dropped to a frightening level. The dispatcher asked me how old he was. I'm sure she could have used a ballpark number, but I couldn't remember exactly and when I asked him. that's the point where he completely blacked out. I was screaming "How OLD are you?" so loud, I cringe in embarrassment still. That dispatcher must have thought we needed some serious help, because very soon our living room was filled with paramedics. By this time he woke up, we both knew how old he was and the rest of the morning was spent in the ER finding out he was and is in great shape.

So what else happened? Somewhere in there I gave a talk in Romanian, I didn't cough once but definitely not my best effort. On the plumbing front, our toilet is leaking, which will most likely need a new bathroom floor. The backyard spigot was jealous of all the attention and leaked even more than the toilet. We started a carport/solar panel structure that had Ernst and I completely disagreeing on HOW HIGH we were going to make it (I wanted sensible, he wanted close to the moon. I missed a bunch of work because of being sick and then ended the month proctoring an eventful California Bar Exam. So much drama, and that's not including the total weirdness of people taking the bar exam in surgical masks! Is it proper etiquette to ask "Hey, is that mask for your protection or mine?"

Those were the highlights of February 2020. The weather was glorious, as it often is when one is sick, but glorious in a way that screams "we need rain, please skies, drop some rain because I don't want to water the yard with double pink eye." We got a drizzle the evening of February 29th, which was hopefully a glimpse of a wetter March? We are only one day into this clean new month, and I'm liking it already. A friend asked me to sew up a little project for her niece, and it was the most productive thing I've done in weeks and weeks. I'm getting jazzed about when the real spring hits, excited about some upcoming trips we have planned (Chicago's in there again) and just getting back to feeling good again. March, let's do this!

A rice sock holder and two Bag Buddies.
Yes, I did something besides cough and hack!