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.
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