Looking for That Silver Lining
02/04/20 07:30
Good morning, world! Where are we this morning? How many more people have died of this coronavirus thing worldwide? Can you think of a worse way to start the fucking day? Where and who do we turn to for relief of any kind? You won't find it on the television. That's panic city 24-7. I'll probably tune into my usual radio talk shows at least at the start to see if I can gauge a tenor one way or the other as to what is going to drive the news cycle today.
Maybe I can lean on a pleasant distraction of some kind to get me through the day. I just don't know what that would be. I'd like to think that my darling wife might provide some comic relief but that is unlikely given that she thinks that the apocalypse is now upon us. She was in tears last night for no apparent reason although she made some reference to having read a disturbing account of this or that in one or more liberal rags she looks at every day.
"You've got to stop looking at that shit", I told her. They are all about telling you how the world is coming to an end and how Trump caused it all by not doing something soon enough when the rest of the world saw it coming and took what little measures that they thought we appropriate to save lives. I can't even go for a drive with Nancy these days without her insisting that we not listen to the news on the radio.
Like I said, we need a little more sunshine with our apocalypse. A shimmer of hope, a sliver of optimism, a silver lining on which to hang our hats, a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it's a drug that they haven't found yet, an old drug that is effective in combating this new virus, a toxic but effective cocktail that intubated patients can take intravenously, a politician who tells us that they've found a medication and there are enough doses to go around, or maybe just a priest with a promise of everlasting love from the big guy up there.
Just when you think that having each other is enough you find out that it isn't. What do you do then? You can't help someone be strong if they don't have it in them from the start. Maybe this is where I put on my Superman cape and swoop in with muscles bulging to rescue my damsel in distress. Do I have it in me to even start down that road? I need to fucking man-up and the time is now. Hoo-rah!
Lest I get too carried away with all of this self-analysis I have to admit that a lot of what were feeling might be due to Nancy now being home all the time. She no longer goes into work and I'm not accustomed to having her around all the time so I'm adjusting too. She is by her own admission a "worker bee" and does best when she has a treadmill to get on every day. A hamster cage might be a more appropriate description. When you take away the cage, the hamster becomes disoriented, disillusioned, and it just doesn't end well.
I noticed that Nancy slept in yesterday morning and she got out of bed later than usual. She warned me last night that she would likely do the same this morning as she had nothing in particular that would have her get out of bed any earlier. That is the very definition of depression. It's a rainy, damp, and very raw early Spring morning here on the seacoast so I would hope she is turning over, looking out the window by the bed into the misty murkiness, and just turning over and pulling the covers over her head for all the right reasons.
The latest from Mrs G over at Riverwoods is that they are discontinuing their once-a-month housekeeping services. What else did she tell us last night? Oh, right. They are also no longer providing transportation to the local supermarket for residents who want to do a little grocery shopping for items not available in the stores within the confines of the independent living facility. Like I said in an earlier post of mine: Her small world keeps getting smaller. We can't even drive by and wave to her from the roadway outside her first floor unit.
There are just too many stories about nursing homes and other facilities nationwide where the virus got in somehow and took its toll on the residents leaving death and destruction in its wake. There are only so many precautions that you can take but at the end of the day it only takes one instance of the virus taking hold to do the damage that it is want to do.
But Mrs G is surprisingly chipper in the face of it all although I can't be sure if the happy face we're hearing is for the benefit of her children while she suffers silently in abject terror of what this all may mean. Maybe more to the point, she has likely endured far worse more in her near ninety years so maybe we shouldn't be worried about her state of mind. I think what we're hearing is true and we should take what we can from those conversations the things that we want and need to hear that are in and of themselves reassuring and maybe even a little inspiring.
I told Nancy that there wasn't any reason why we couldn't do some shopping for her if necessary and we could just drop her groceries off at the entrance to the facility. We could but should we is the question. Is it worth putting our lives at risk so Mrs G can have her favorite bottle of wine or her favorite loaf of bread? Would she want to see us putting ourselves in harms way for these unnecessary niceties?
She did not seem to be too concerned as she discussed same so it left me wondering if she wasn't somehow missing the bigger picture. Living in confined quarters as she does, and no longer listening to the news of the day hour in and hour out, you can see how insulating yourself from the outside word can color your view of things. So much so, in fact, that reaching otherwise reasonable conclusions once armed with the facts is no longer possible.
You want that sort of isolation for your loved ones in a time of crisis but it cannot come at a cost to your own personal health and well being. There may be alternatives worth considering such as grocery delivery or ordering and picking without going into the store where every passerby is a potential vector of transmission. You don't know who is and who is not shedding the virus at any given moment so the very act of stepping off your front porch and into the fray can trigger a cornucopia of potentially dire and deadly consequences.
Maybe we'll take a drive today to points north where the incidence of the virus is less than were we to travel south to the state of Massachusetts. When the incidence of the virus is determined by the number of tests taken, maybe we're taking unnecessary risks when we assume what we assume. Maybe the state of Maine just tests fewer people or has fewer tests which would invariably produce fewer positive test results. Should we invite Evan? He might enjoy getting out of town as well.
Did I mention that yesterday was Evan's one-year anniversary at his place in Exeter? Nancy thinks that he was a little dissapointed that we didn't do more to celebrate the anniversary. Maybe she could have made a cake for the family. Maybe we could have bought him a little something. It isn't like Nancy not to think of that sort of thing so that should tell us something about her state of mind these days.
Nancy noticed something about Sirius radio and their offer of six weeks of free streaming to anyone interested. Well, that was just the bees knees as far as Evan was concerned. He signed on, signed up, and that boy was off and running. I maybe underestimated just how much he would have liked the streaming on his phone but got up to speed pretty quickly once I saw how he methodically and purposefully moved through the steps required to make it all happen. It's a reminder to all of us just how capable he is just when you think he isn't.
One little virus related story which I found interesting was about the two cruise ships sitting off the coast of Florida that Florida didn't want docking in Florida because they had Covid-19 patients aboard. Just how many they didn't know but it was one too many as far as the governor of Florida was concerned. He had enough on his hands to manage the crisis as it was not to mention the additional burden that the hospitals might face with god only knows how many patients from the boat walking assisted or unassisted into the emergency rooms in Southern Florida.
To make matters worse, many of the patients on board the cruise ships were American citizens so you would think they would be accommodated no matter what. You would be wrong. The governors allegiance ends at the states shores or so it seems and I would wholeheartedly agree with that position. When you have limited resources to begin with you do what you can for those in your immediate care and not a person more. Fuck em. If they want go on a cruise that's fine. Just don't expect any special treatment once you get off that gangplank assuming you're allowed to get off that gangplank.
The same goes for the illegal aliens who are pissing and moaning that they are not going to be getting one of the $1,200 checks that will be going out to every American citizen as a result of this pandemic in which we find ourselves mired. Fuck em. Trump was asked why that was the case at last night's presser by one of the leftist stooges in the press and he said something about putting "Americans" first. Goddamn right. That is precisely why we hired this man to be our president. If they didn't understand what he meant when he talked about "America First", they surely do now.
I do think cooler heads will prevail in the cruise ship situation. They will find a way to accommodate at a minimum the American citizens for better or worse. Trump was on the phone to DeSantis and they were trying to work it all out. When Trump gets involved things tend to work out for the better so when it comes to those ailing and not ailing aboard the cruise ships I say the following: Godspeed.
Maybe I can lean on a pleasant distraction of some kind to get me through the day. I just don't know what that would be. I'd like to think that my darling wife might provide some comic relief but that is unlikely given that she thinks that the apocalypse is now upon us. She was in tears last night for no apparent reason although she made some reference to having read a disturbing account of this or that in one or more liberal rags she looks at every day.
"You've got to stop looking at that shit", I told her. They are all about telling you how the world is coming to an end and how Trump caused it all by not doing something soon enough when the rest of the world saw it coming and took what little measures that they thought we appropriate to save lives. I can't even go for a drive with Nancy these days without her insisting that we not listen to the news on the radio.
Like I said, we need a little more sunshine with our apocalypse. A shimmer of hope, a sliver of optimism, a silver lining on which to hang our hats, a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it's a drug that they haven't found yet, an old drug that is effective in combating this new virus, a toxic but effective cocktail that intubated patients can take intravenously, a politician who tells us that they've found a medication and there are enough doses to go around, or maybe just a priest with a promise of everlasting love from the big guy up there.
Just when you think that having each other is enough you find out that it isn't. What do you do then? You can't help someone be strong if they don't have it in them from the start. Maybe this is where I put on my Superman cape and swoop in with muscles bulging to rescue my damsel in distress. Do I have it in me to even start down that road? I need to fucking man-up and the time is now. Hoo-rah!
Lest I get too carried away with all of this self-analysis I have to admit that a lot of what were feeling might be due to Nancy now being home all the time. She no longer goes into work and I'm not accustomed to having her around all the time so I'm adjusting too. She is by her own admission a "worker bee" and does best when she has a treadmill to get on every day. A hamster cage might be a more appropriate description. When you take away the cage, the hamster becomes disoriented, disillusioned, and it just doesn't end well.
I noticed that Nancy slept in yesterday morning and she got out of bed later than usual. She warned me last night that she would likely do the same this morning as she had nothing in particular that would have her get out of bed any earlier. That is the very definition of depression. It's a rainy, damp, and very raw early Spring morning here on the seacoast so I would hope she is turning over, looking out the window by the bed into the misty murkiness, and just turning over and pulling the covers over her head for all the right reasons.
The latest from Mrs G over at Riverwoods is that they are discontinuing their once-a-month housekeeping services. What else did she tell us last night? Oh, right. They are also no longer providing transportation to the local supermarket for residents who want to do a little grocery shopping for items not available in the stores within the confines of the independent living facility. Like I said in an earlier post of mine: Her small world keeps getting smaller. We can't even drive by and wave to her from the roadway outside her first floor unit.
There are just too many stories about nursing homes and other facilities nationwide where the virus got in somehow and took its toll on the residents leaving death and destruction in its wake. There are only so many precautions that you can take but at the end of the day it only takes one instance of the virus taking hold to do the damage that it is want to do.
But Mrs G is surprisingly chipper in the face of it all although I can't be sure if the happy face we're hearing is for the benefit of her children while she suffers silently in abject terror of what this all may mean. Maybe more to the point, she has likely endured far worse more in her near ninety years so maybe we shouldn't be worried about her state of mind. I think what we're hearing is true and we should take what we can from those conversations the things that we want and need to hear that are in and of themselves reassuring and maybe even a little inspiring.
I told Nancy that there wasn't any reason why we couldn't do some shopping for her if necessary and we could just drop her groceries off at the entrance to the facility. We could but should we is the question. Is it worth putting our lives at risk so Mrs G can have her favorite bottle of wine or her favorite loaf of bread? Would she want to see us putting ourselves in harms way for these unnecessary niceties?
She did not seem to be too concerned as she discussed same so it left me wondering if she wasn't somehow missing the bigger picture. Living in confined quarters as she does, and no longer listening to the news of the day hour in and hour out, you can see how insulating yourself from the outside word can color your view of things. So much so, in fact, that reaching otherwise reasonable conclusions once armed with the facts is no longer possible.
You want that sort of isolation for your loved ones in a time of crisis but it cannot come at a cost to your own personal health and well being. There may be alternatives worth considering such as grocery delivery or ordering and picking without going into the store where every passerby is a potential vector of transmission. You don't know who is and who is not shedding the virus at any given moment so the very act of stepping off your front porch and into the fray can trigger a cornucopia of potentially dire and deadly consequences.
Maybe we'll take a drive today to points north where the incidence of the virus is less than were we to travel south to the state of Massachusetts. When the incidence of the virus is determined by the number of tests taken, maybe we're taking unnecessary risks when we assume what we assume. Maybe the state of Maine just tests fewer people or has fewer tests which would invariably produce fewer positive test results. Should we invite Evan? He might enjoy getting out of town as well.
Did I mention that yesterday was Evan's one-year anniversary at his place in Exeter? Nancy thinks that he was a little dissapointed that we didn't do more to celebrate the anniversary. Maybe she could have made a cake for the family. Maybe we could have bought him a little something. It isn't like Nancy not to think of that sort of thing so that should tell us something about her state of mind these days.
Nancy noticed something about Sirius radio and their offer of six weeks of free streaming to anyone interested. Well, that was just the bees knees as far as Evan was concerned. He signed on, signed up, and that boy was off and running. I maybe underestimated just how much he would have liked the streaming on his phone but got up to speed pretty quickly once I saw how he methodically and purposefully moved through the steps required to make it all happen. It's a reminder to all of us just how capable he is just when you think he isn't.
One little virus related story which I found interesting was about the two cruise ships sitting off the coast of Florida that Florida didn't want docking in Florida because they had Covid-19 patients aboard. Just how many they didn't know but it was one too many as far as the governor of Florida was concerned. He had enough on his hands to manage the crisis as it was not to mention the additional burden that the hospitals might face with god only knows how many patients from the boat walking assisted or unassisted into the emergency rooms in Southern Florida.
To make matters worse, many of the patients on board the cruise ships were American citizens so you would think they would be accommodated no matter what. You would be wrong. The governors allegiance ends at the states shores or so it seems and I would wholeheartedly agree with that position. When you have limited resources to begin with you do what you can for those in your immediate care and not a person more. Fuck em. If they want go on a cruise that's fine. Just don't expect any special treatment once you get off that gangplank assuming you're allowed to get off that gangplank.
The same goes for the illegal aliens who are pissing and moaning that they are not going to be getting one of the $1,200 checks that will be going out to every American citizen as a result of this pandemic in which we find ourselves mired. Fuck em. Trump was asked why that was the case at last night's presser by one of the leftist stooges in the press and he said something about putting "Americans" first. Goddamn right. That is precisely why we hired this man to be our president. If they didn't understand what he meant when he talked about "America First", they surely do now.
I do think cooler heads will prevail in the cruise ship situation. They will find a way to accommodate at a minimum the American citizens for better or worse. Trump was on the phone to DeSantis and they were trying to work it all out. When Trump gets involved things tend to work out for the better so when it comes to those ailing and not ailing aboard the cruise ships I say the following: Godspeed.