Quarantine Day 7

Today was my dad’s 77th birthday! Little AoA and grandma baked a cake first thing this morning. I did my two hour screen free housework time storing away a drum set that was not going to be used anymore. I worked on some laundry and the kitchen too. My dad had ordered a day bed for our new extra room. One box arrived, but all the parts weren’t there. Apparently there were suppose to be two boxes delivered. My new rice cooker arrived today too. If the stores don’t start having bread, we may end up eating a lot of rice. Funny thing, about a month ago when I ordered groceries to pick up, they tripled my rice order, so there is a lot of rice! That was before the giant grocery store panic.

I had ordered a homemade beef pot pie for supper, from one of my friends. She is doing some baking to try and make ends meet. When I went to pick it up, my mom and Little AoA came along for the ride. I also stopped at a grocery store, leaving my riders in the car. I gathered just a few things, but when I got to the checkout, a store clerk told me I had too much bread! I had one pack of hamburger buns, and two loaves of bread for the 5 people in our home that I feed. The limit was two. I gave him one of my loaves of bread back. This is going to take a little getting use to! The people in line beside me had done the same thing. I held up my bag of flour and two boxes of cornbread mix, and suggested that we prepare to make our own bread! Actually, I was surprised to find flour, and as I suspected, there was no yeast.

There is still no toilet paper in our local stores.

(Not my picture)

In the evening, we had a virtual birthday party for my dad, using zoom. My sister and her family participated, and my 30 year old from the tiny house in the back yard. My 30 year old has isolated himself for about two full weeks now. He has even found a way to wash his clothes out in a sink to avoid coming in the main house. I offered to do his laundry in a “porch pick up” style, but he is good! His anxiety over the pandemic is about a step above mine. To me, whenever I go into a store now, my chest tightens with anxiety, and it is hard to breathe. Everyone looks like a Petri dish. To my son, the rest of the family also look like Petri dishes.

One surprising thing today was that teen son’s therapist would not do telehealth for his appointment today. I had called three times last week to ask about it, and was told to call this morning. I had to call three times over an hour before I got to speak with someone. They still weren’t sure if they were going to use telehealth. The receptionist said she would call me back by the end of the day….that didn’t happen.

The other interesting thing was that the supervised visit center closed for the foreseeable future. That was actually a relief, because it will not create an issue that can be used in court. I offered to have the supervised visits virtually with the supervisor if she wanted to. I feel like I did my part in trying to find a way for the kids to keep contact with the dad. All of the courts are shut down now, and I’m sure there will easily be a backlog when they reopen!

In our state and town, emergencies have been declared. There are now 6 confirmed cases in our county, and over 500 in our state. Major cities have ordered “safer at home” enforceable mandates. My town leaders do not have the authority to do that, so such an order would need to come from our state governor. He has seemed slow to respond to the pandemic, and I hope that he steps up before the worse hits.

I also heard this morning on our local news, a doctor from one of our big medical universities, say that Covid-19 can manifest as abdominal issues. I had to investigate! Two weeks ago, Little AoA had upper respiratory symptoms (ruled out flu), and almost a week later, my mom was having severe abdominal pain. Had it gone on another day, she may have ended up in a hospital. Her doctor adjusted her medications, and at least she is calmer now. The sad thing is, there would be no test for it. The only treatment until it is severe, is to treat the symptoms at home, and try to keep from spreading it. Now we just wait….praying that whatever it is doesn’t affect my dad, the most medically fragile member of our household.

If you don’t have to go out for essential needs or to work, just stay home! We can do this!