3.25.2020
Sheltering in Place
Day Six
Our bathrooms are very clean!
This in itself is not unusual; the fact that I cleaned them is worthy of a screaming, two-deck, page-one headline like this:
”Seventy One Year Old Discovers Lysol
Porcelain Shines As Pandemic Spreads”
This is a bit silly but self-quarantine begats silliness. And it quietly encourages us to do things at home that do not come naturally. Like cleaning toilets.
For the record, I am a modern man, not a Neanderthal. I do my share of home and farm chores everyday: laundry, dishes, some cooking, vacuuming, bed making. OK, perhaps not bed making. I am bad at that one; breaking the “last one up makes the bed rule” quite regularly.
We have settled into a shelter-in-place routine that is not so different from life before quarantine. We do farm chores, read, cook, text, write and email with our boys and their families. We rail at the president during his daily briefing and watch in horror as the numbers grow exponentially especially in New York City where our second son and his girlfriend are in quarantine.
My wife did a zoom meeting last night with her Steiner-group pals.We both exercise daily, usually taking hour-long, three-mile walks across the fields or on along the gravel road to our house. It snowed 10 inches two days ago so there was lots of shoveling to do. She does yoga; I work out my thumbs on the clicker scouring streaming sites for a show that is not depressing.
We are not playing tennis, the one big hole in our lives as we hide from the virus.
Meanwhile, we are healthy, no sign of the virus yet. Quarantine is working. My Molloy cousin in Minnesota texted me today that she and her husband had contracted and recovered from Covid-19 earlier this year. It took a month to recover. It was not fun. Be safe Jennifer and Tim.
Meanwhile, a word about this blog and family. My adult sons are taking their revenge. I have always been a grammar Nazi and a stickler for accuracy. I preached: Be precise. Be accurate. Be brief. If one of them said “Me and Zach played soccer today” they would be sternly corrected. Or worse!
So sons number two and four have been all over me about the last blog posting. Covid-19 is not a form of the flu, they both wrote in separate text messages. And stop calling it a bug, they wrote, bug is urban slang for AIDS.
“They are smug little bug-gers!” Not so little, they are in their 30s and have been taught well.
For the record I know Covid-19 is not a form of the flu. It is a virus, like the common cold, the Spanish flu, the bird flu, polio and the other pathogens discussed in this blog. I had been hoping to make the point that these insidious diseases have been attacking our family for a century. They got the point.
But they are right, Covid-19 is a virus, not the flu and I will not call it that anymore.
The bug however will remain in my blogging lexicon. To my generation, if it was the bug, it was the common cold. Note the use of the definitive article “the.” A bug was a virus or bacteria that laid you low. Note the use of the indefinite article “a.”
“Bug” meaning AIDS was popularized by “Bubbles, the can’t-quite-get-straight, lovable, drug addict in all five seasons of “The Wire,” the best show ever to air on television.
Bug does mean AIDS in the hip, urban neighborhoods where my boys reside but I live in the aw-shucks boonies so bug, meaning virus, will continue to appear in my blog.
Boys one, dad one!
There is little good news anywhere. But there are some good news stories.
The Times reported today that the large wakes and funerals that are a huge part of tradition in Ireland have been halted by the virus. But some resourceful Irish have found a work around. After a funeral mass that only the family attended, an entire Kerry village stood silently, solemnly and respectfully along the side of the road as the funeral procession made its way slowly to the cemetery. The mourners stood at least six-feet apart all along the route.
More in a couple of days.
Stay home!
Be safe!
Sheltering in Place
Day Six
Our bathrooms are very clean!
This in itself is not unusual; the fact that I cleaned them is worthy of a screaming, two-deck, page-one headline like this:
”Seventy One Year Old Discovers Lysol
Porcelain Shines As Pandemic Spreads”
This is a bit silly but self-quarantine begats silliness. And it quietly encourages us to do things at home that do not come naturally. Like cleaning toilets.
For the record, I am a modern man, not a Neanderthal. I do my share of home and farm chores everyday: laundry, dishes, some cooking, vacuuming, bed making. OK, perhaps not bed making. I am bad at that one; breaking the “last one up makes the bed rule” quite regularly.
We have settled into a shelter-in-place routine that is not so different from life before quarantine. We do farm chores, read, cook, text, write and email with our boys and their families. We rail at the president during his daily briefing and watch in horror as the numbers grow exponentially especially in New York City where our second son and his girlfriend are in quarantine.
My wife did a zoom meeting last night with her Steiner-group pals.We both exercise daily, usually taking hour-long, three-mile walks across the fields or on along the gravel road to our house. It snowed 10 inches two days ago so there was lots of shoveling to do. She does yoga; I work out my thumbs on the clicker scouring streaming sites for a show that is not depressing.
We are not playing tennis, the one big hole in our lives as we hide from the virus.
Meanwhile, we are healthy, no sign of the virus yet. Quarantine is working. My Molloy cousin in Minnesota texted me today that she and her husband had contracted and recovered from Covid-19 earlier this year. It took a month to recover. It was not fun. Be safe Jennifer and Tim.
Meanwhile, a word about this blog and family. My adult sons are taking their revenge. I have always been a grammar Nazi and a stickler for accuracy. I preached: Be precise. Be accurate. Be brief. If one of them said “Me and Zach played soccer today” they would be sternly corrected. Or worse!
So sons number two and four have been all over me about the last blog posting. Covid-19 is not a form of the flu, they both wrote in separate text messages. And stop calling it a bug, they wrote, bug is urban slang for AIDS.
“They are smug little bug-gers!” Not so little, they are in their 30s and have been taught well.
For the record I know Covid-19 is not a form of the flu. It is a virus, like the common cold, the Spanish flu, the bird flu, polio and the other pathogens discussed in this blog. I had been hoping to make the point that these insidious diseases have been attacking our family for a century. They got the point.
But they are right, Covid-19 is a virus, not the flu and I will not call it that anymore.
The bug however will remain in my blogging lexicon. To my generation, if it was the bug, it was the common cold. Note the use of the definitive article “the.” A bug was a virus or bacteria that laid you low. Note the use of the indefinite article “a.”
“Bug” meaning AIDS was popularized by “Bubbles, the can’t-quite-get-straight, lovable, drug addict in all five seasons of “The Wire,” the best show ever to air on television.
Bug does mean AIDS in the hip, urban neighborhoods where my boys reside but I live in the aw-shucks boonies so bug, meaning virus, will continue to appear in my blog.
Boys one, dad one!
There is little good news anywhere. But there are some good news stories.
The Times reported today that the large wakes and funerals that are a huge part of tradition in Ireland have been halted by the virus. But some resourceful Irish have found a work around. After a funeral mass that only the family attended, an entire Kerry village stood silently, solemnly and respectfully along the side of the road as the funeral procession made its way slowly to the cemetery. The mourners stood at least six-feet apart all along the route.
More in a couple of days.
Stay home!
Be safe!
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