I've lost track of time again but at least I'm going the right way

Last Friday, our governor extended the stay-at-home order for our state through May 15. It was not a surprise, since the models are predicting peak covid-19 cases here will occur in the next few weeks. I was actually in an online meeting, talking about the possibility, when the press conference was happening. Our area has not had an overwhelming number of cases yet, something like 1300 positive tests (but not everyone is being tested, of course) and "only" 33 deaths, so that's good since we're in the second-largest city in the state. Our largest city is being slammed, by all accounts, and is the third hottest area in the whole country now.

The new order allows some businesses to reopen soon, and permits people to golf and use their boats as long as they stay a safe distance apart. Face coverings are now required in public places (but BAM reports not everyone is complying at the grocery store he visits). I started wearing a mask for my morning walks and I'm the only person doing it. It might be unnecessary since I don't usually meet more than three or four other people at the park.

About a month ago, BAM and I were walking there early one Saturday morning and we came across a man in normal clothes (not uniformed) who was spray-painting arrows and one-way signs on the path to direct people travelling the loop all in the same direction. In some places the trail is only about a meter and a half wide, and it's raised over some streams and wetlands so people can't really keep two meters apart when passing each other. We kind of raised our eyebrows, but the arrows pointed in the direction we normally go, so no big deal. We still don't know if the man was a Parks & Rec employee or just a neighborhood vigilante. A few weeks later, a couple of plastic signs appeared at the ends of the trail that cuts through the loop, asking people to only cross in one direction. Again, it was my normal direction, so NBD. It seemed to me that people continued traveling both directions. Last week one day an older couple watching birds (they had binoculars) turned to tell me I was going the wrong way. And then I met two women who said they were confused by the arrows on the path. The next day the arrows were (mostly) painted over. I passed a man wearing a face mask and mittens who didn't speak but stepped off the trail into the grass and gestured emphatically at me. It dawned on me that something had changed. Maybe I was the one going the wrong way!

I was actually pretty upset by this thought. Angry. I have learned (slowly, over 40+ years) that my first reaction to loss of control in a situation is usually anger. Maybe that means I'm a bad person, maybe this is true for everyone but most people hide it better or get over it faster than I do. After being angry all day, I walked the loop in my usual direction the next morning, feeling defiant but also kind of frightened that I was breaking some rule I hadn't been aware of. This all made me feel so bad that the following day I walked the other direction, and I went on the part of the loop that I normally skip because it passes through the parking lot (playground, picnic area, ball field, and therefore more people). Sure enough, there was a big "Do Not Enter" sign posted and a small plastic arrow sign that asked people to go one way - opposite to my original direction. If it wasn't a global pandemic, I would complain to the P&R department that they can't just put up one sign in the parking lot and expect everyone to know what they're supposed to do. I enter the park through a fence at the end of my street and there are no signs at all around the rest of the trail. Anyway, now I'm walking the "correct" direction which requires going through the parking lot, and I'm maybe meeting fewer people on the trail itself. I don't feel particularly self-righteous when I do meet someone going the "wrong" way, I just pass quickly as I always did.

In other news, my colleagues at school are starting to get agitated about next fall semester. It seems like every conversation I've had lately has eventually come around to the topic. Honestly, I don't want to think about fall semester yet. Today is the last "official" day of spring semester classes, final exams start tomorrow, and I still have much to do. I don't have the brain to problem-solve what might or might not happen, when it will happen, or what I'll do about it if it happens. I really, really just want to get back into bed and stay there until I can retire. I am desperately counting the hours until finals are over, all the assignments are graded, and I can shut down for a week or so. I feel this way every year, so I know it's not even pandemic-related, I'm just too tired to deal with any more crap. This morning there was an "emergency" faculty vote by email on something stupid and then an energetic message chain suggesting all faculty taking a course on best practices for online teaching over the summer, just in case. Finally I couldn't take any more of that and I posted that I thought everyone should calm down and back off for a few weeks.

I hate that my fall classes might be online. I hate teaching online. I especially hate the thought of not doing labs next fall, or substituting some crappy online simulation or kitchen experiments. I can't bear the disappointment right now, maybe later, but not now.

Third Week of Forever

Thursday (April 9), our Governor ("That Woman From Michigan"), extended the Stay-At-Home order for the State until April 30. I was not optimistic about the original order's end date of April 13, but having confirmation was disappointing. I am glad my State is one of the ones taking the pandemic seriously. I am sad that I have three more weeks of staying home to endure. The extended order also closed more businesses (garden centers, for example) and set restrictions on the number of people allowed inside grocery stores at one time (based on the size of the store). This makes sense, but increases the difficulty of regular people's lives still more.

The early part of last week I started feeling almost comfortable with my current situation. I certainly have plenty of work to do and most days I can distract myself for eight or nine hours by concentrating on work. Things have settled into a routine. I know, of course, that routine is a trap that makes the next change feel worse, but I can't keep the paranoia going nonstop.

I spent most of Saturday sewing masks. I cut up an old cotton bedsheet and used strips of old t-shirt for ties. I made the rectangular, pleated kind. The first one took an hour because I had to relearn how to use my sewing machine: how to thread the needle, what all the knobs do, then the bobbin ran out after two seams and I had to relearn how to wind a new one (with a different color thread because why would matching thread matter?). I don't have a good straightedge or measuring tape so my cuts are wobbly and uneven, which makes some of the seams wobbly. I couldn't be bothered to iron anything flat. I got it done, and I made a total of seven masks. If the government declares masks mandatory, then we have enough for a few trips to the store each before we need to launder them all. After the photo was taken, I decided to hand sew little red hearts (cut out of a red t-shirt) on the front, so we can tell more easily which side is "out" and "up."

This week is full of work for classes, and suddenly a lot of online meetings, and my job organizing the annual research symposium and summer research programs (which are all going forward, but with distancing/online) has taken at least half my hours every day. Everything is slow because it has to be communicated through email and I'm having to recreate from scratch materials I either don't have access to or never needed for in-person. We only have about two more weeks of the semester and I oscillate between feeling relief that my class responsibilities are nearly over and fear that something worse will happen after that.

Easter Sunday BAM had to be at work by 7 a.m. so I went for a walk in our neighborhood park right after breakfast. It was much better than our usual after-dinner walks because there were hardly any people there and I got to see a lot more deer, rabbits, birds, and other wildlife. I decided to try to walk after breakfast every day, and so far I've managed that. Monday it was cold and raining lightly. Tuesday there were snow flurries. Today it is honestly snowing. I saw sixteen deer and three humans today, and that's perfect. 

I'm feeling completely antisocial. People are just too awful to deal with. My FB feed is horrible today; I posted a photo of the snow and got off there as quickly as I could. My colleagues (some of them) are too much. They share news and all of it is bad and scary. Our college president sent an email to all of us yesterday, assuring us that everyone will continue to be paid through the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30. After that, we don't know, of course. The worst catastrophizer in my department started talking about "what if we have to teach fall courses online too" at yesterday's online meeting and it made me just want to quit. I don't have the energy to contemplate "what ifs" right now. 

I'm trying to stay cheerful and keep up with my classes. I'm trying to give my students as much empathy and understanding as I can. I'm trying, but I don't feel like it's helping at all and I'm questioning what am I doing? Does any of this matter? Will it go on forever? What if I get sick? What if BAM gets sick, or my parents, or someone else in the family, or some of our friends? I just can't think about those things, so I'm going to get another cup of tea and attempt to finish something for class before lunch.

A Second Week

The second week of working from home, all online classes, went better than the first. I evolved a pretty solid schedule and was able to concentrate most of the day. I found that if I got out of bed on time, even though that remains difficult every day, then I was up and could get on with things. Our governor ("That Woman From Michigan") closed the public schools for the rest of the academic year, and we are waiting to find out if the stay-at-home order will be extended. The curve here is still going up, rapidly.

My phone recovered after a couple of days. Best theory is that it did an automatic download of a pile of podcasts that took up a lot of space and that's what swallowed the battery charge. I deleted some of them and listened to some others and things seem to be okay now.

I mailed the packages to my students, no without additional drama. I dug around in our storage closet and found some Priority boxes that fit. The post office website sold me postage that I printed out and taped to the boxes, and last Sunday after dinner I drove them over to our post office (about a mile away) thinking to leave them in the package drop box, but it was full or jammed or something so that didn't work. There weren't any other people there, which was good. I came home and scheduled a home pick up for Monday morning instead and that went perfectly. Should have just done that from the beginning. All but one of the students reported receiving the packages during the week. The remaining student is one of those still stuck in the dorms, nowhere else to go. I've emailed our mail room twice asking for help with no response. I asked the student to walk over there on Friday and haven't heard back from him yet. So, I'm kind of frustrated. I guess I post instructions for the kits this week and keep trying to resolve that one student's delivery in the meantime. Worst case scenario: I could take my own kit and drive it to campus and leave it somewhere for the student to collect, like the front porch of his dorm or something. Let's hope I don't have to do that because then I'll be without the materials myself.

On Wednesday after lunch I suddenly noticed that the traffic noise from outside was missing, but I thought I could hear someone shouting. My attic only has two small windows, on opposite ends of the house, but I got up and looked out. There were a bunch of police cars across the (usually busy) road, and a clump of officers pointing guns at a man who was kneeling on the sidewalk with his hands behind his head. He was the one shouting, mostly curses. I don't know who he was or what happened before that point, but after they handcuffed him and stood him up, they walked him over to a police car and put him in the back - he was cursing loudly the whole time - and then he started coughing loudly. Some of the officers put on masks and gloves, but not all of them.

The officers walked all around the house on the corner, with rifles, and checked all the bushes. They went to the house next door and knocked on the door several times but there was no answer. They went into that house's garage through an unlocked side door and checked all around the exterior. Finally most of them put the guns away, so I guess they were looking for additional people hiding? At that time, they unblocked the road and traffic started driving past again. An ambulance eventually showed up, no lights or sirens. The police took the guy in cuffs out of the police car and loaded him into the back of the ambulance. He wasn't shouting anymore. After what seemed like a really long time, and various EMT people and officers getting in and coming out again, the ambulance left. Then the rest of the police left.

This is the only photo I took.

Otherwise, I was home all week. I only left the house to walk in the park a few times. BAM is still working about three days a week, and he said that place feels pretty normal except the staff wipe down all the surfaces with a bleach solution so often that the whole interior smells like bleach. We did not go to the grocery at all today (Sunday is our usual shopping day) because we have plenty of food for this week. We will run out of milk, bananas, and fresh fruit midweek, but BAM will stop at the grocery on his way home from work Wednesday and top us off.

I notice that I'm doing okay mentally most of the time, but occasionally I'm struck by fear and dread. I try not to read too much news, because all the COVID-19 news is so awful and terrifying. I have a physical reaction. I get tunnel vision and a roaring in my ears, almost like the pressure of a tornado. It becomes hard to breathe and I am frozen in place until I consciously focus on something totally different. I can't even list the things that have set it off, because I start getting that feeling again, just remembering. My emotional support sheet helps. I don't understand why but it doesn't matter.

I really enjoyed Queen Elizabeth's address this afternoon because it was so calm and encouraging. She's a woman who knows something about crises, and I feel if she says we're going to get through this, we are.