2020 Journal
Blog
Trying to Stay
Sane During a Pandemic
Since the pandemic surprised us last February, the Missus
and I have tried to be careful to avoid getting dead. It hasn’t been easy; the
instructions about being careful have changed several times over the past ten
months such that a body hardly knows what to do. I recall that our intrepid
Governor, the lady who isn’t afraid of anyone or anything, was one of the
earliest to require a complete lockdown in the early spring. It was kind of a
novelty at first and it didn’t seem too difficult to give up church, restaurants,
and large gatherings in favor of masks, social distancing and staying home.
Then things got a little better and she unlocked the state and things went back
to being more normal, although we missed seeing professional sports on TV, we
consoled ourselves with regular visits to our gym.
For most of the summer the incidence of COVID 19 in our
county remained at 23 poor souls who had somehow contracted the disease. The
number of 23 stayed the same, week after week until fall. Now, things are much,
much worse and we have well over 700 county residents who have been afflicted and
the total number is increasing on a daily basis. Our church family also
suffered from a mini-outbreak of COVID that resulted in death of an active
member.
Currently, we are in a semi-lockdown mode with restrictions
only on all the things I like to do: the gym is closed, pickleball not allowed,
no gatherings other than those who live together and no bars or restaurants are
open for dine-in service. In other words, we are advised to stay home and order
groceries.
The medical community has reported that many of us have
reported stress during the pandemic because of all the limitations on our
activities. Perhaps it is all this stress that seems to have affected some
Michiganders severely, provoking them into planning outrageous acts like
kidnapping our Governor and assembling in front of the State Capitol carrying
semi-automatic rifles and demanding entrance into the legislature. Apparently,
these overstressed citizens seem to think their efforts with guns will solve
our pandemic problems. Hey, what do I know? We are a gun-carrying state and
carrying guns seemed to help in 1776 as they are quick to point out.
The Missus and I have tried to avoid this level of stress by
keeping ourselves busy. She has the fulfilling hobby of quilting to keep her
occupied and I have been trying to learn to write. With our restaurants closed
she has also spent a lot of time in the kitchen and I have spent a lot of time
eating. We had Thanksgiving dinner alone and Christmas is looking to be the
same. Despite our solitude, Marjorie made us a typical Thanksgiving feast with
a 16-pound turkey, oyster dressing, Blue Hubbard Squash, fresh orange and
cranberry relish, and the not-to-be-forgotten green bean casserole with
home-made onion rings plus mashed potatoes and gravy. After pigging out on all
those dishes that I am fond of, (everything) I still made room for her Fruits
of the Forest pie. We ate the dinner on turkey day, the day after, and remnants
of the turkey for I don’t know how long (I’m trying to forget the leftover
turkey that remains in our freezer.)
I hope I have avoided being overstressed by keeping busy. For
my part, I’ve played about a thousand games of Solitaire on my computer. Not
just any game – I only play the super easy version – the one I can win about
every three times, to help reduce my stress level, you understand.
The Missus and I also decided to occupy the long hours at
home, alone, by playing games. In our basement, we have a long-neglected ‘games
cabinet’ that has been the home of all manner of games acquired over the years,
but especially children’s games that we point to whenever we have visiting
children. To give you the sense of our cabinet, you should know that one of the
most important games that takes up space on a top shelf is the one for children,
Pretty Pretty Princess.
We decided to clean out the cabinet and begin the chore of
finding all the loose pieces of all the games by actually playing each game. We
began with Scrabble. Our intended chore of clean-up of the entire cabinet has
been temporarily suspended since we had so much fun playing several games of
Scrabble, followed by Sorry, then Chinese Checkers and other similar games.
This diversion has had some unintended consequences as we
have been forced to learn how to play at least two of the games that we came
across. Both were fun to learn, especially Dutch Blitz and Cribbage. Both are
card games, and both have a long history of use by different cultures than our
own. I have learned that some of those people from other cultures are in fact,
smarter than me.
In addition to playing Solitaire, I have read several books
that I wouldn’t have read otherwise, and I can recommend Barack Obama’s new
book, ”A Promised Land” and a prize-winning book about migration
of Blacks from the south to the north over a fifty-year period, “The
Warmth of Other Suns”.
So far as we know, both Marjorie and I have avoided being overstressed
by loneliness and the remarkable changes in our lifestyle. This, despite the
stress of the restrictions resulting from the pandemic and the terrible
partisan politics in America where politicians and their followers seem to hate
those citizens who favor the other party, whichever it happens to be. This
doesn’t seem to affect me too much, although I am profoundly saddened by our
citizenry who seem to have lost their way and fallen into the clutches of a political
party.
But not everything has turned out badly.
On one Saturday night that I remember vividly, the evening
when the Missus and I enjoyed our dinner from McDonald’s take-out, eating our
burgers in the car, I dribbled both catsup and hamburger grease on my clean
pants and jacket that I had worn especially for occasion of a dinner out. Since
I wash, dry and iron my clothes myself, I was especially stressed by the
happening and I immediately blamed the spill on McDonald’s. After I arrived
home, I decided to enjoy a cocktail as solace for my soiled clothes. During
preparation of the drink, I happened to note that the vodka bottle was nearly
empty. To avoid having a nearly empty bottle on the shelf of my otherwise tidy
liquor cabinet, I decided on the spur of the moment to empty the entire
contents of the bottle in my favorite tall glass. Thus prepared, I went to the
fridge’ for the prepared mix that would render a wonderful concoction known as
a Bloody Mary. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I discovered that I was
able to empty the entire remaining contents of the Bloody Mary bottle into my
tall glass. I had to suppress a smile at my good fortune in removing two empty
bottles from the liquor cabinet and the fridge’ in one evening! Clearly it was
a lucky evening for me.
Maybe the stress from this pandemic isn’t so bad after all.
