QUARANTINE SHORTS

To be fair, I'm not officially quarantined. 
At least not at the start. We've just been 
strongly advised to practice social distancing.

I will keep adding to this collection of shorts until I run out of days to write or words to say. It's hard to know which will come first. 

• Surreal, the way the guidance counselor and I had to switch gears in one minute from a forward-moving session of calming and reassuring sixth grade questions surrounding COVID-19 to the abrupt reality that the governor mandated a shutdown of schools all over our county.  One hour.  We had one hour at the end of that school day to scramble. One hour to take in our surroundings, dig in our heels, and brace for a sudden and complete stop which lands us in a place we’ve never before been. 

The fam minus Carol in a simpler time.  This was around 1966.

• On Saturday morning, I told my parents via text that I no longer want them going out in public.  What is this strange new land where I start telling my 81 and 85 year-old parents where they can and can’t go? These role reversals feel very unnatural. It began weeks ago when I started suggesting they not take the idyllic cruise on which they'd planned to admire tulips in Amsterdam. When Mom told me they'd cancelled the cruise, I found I could breathe again.  Hadn't realized I'd stopped.  Stress feels like that sometimes.  And my Mom doesn't give in easily.  I believe her first response to my concern was something like, "You have to die from something...."  My mother is a rolling stone and my father will not be happy to miss his tee time. But I hope they stay put...and at least somewhat content.  Communing with their fat cats and facing each new headline with the reassuringly comedic relief of living with each other. They do laugh.  A lot. 

• I read something written by a professor of pathology who has experience in coronavirus research.  Among other recommendations, he extolled the viral-blocking virtues of zinc lozenges. I went immediately to the nearest pharmacy only to discover that everyone else within a ten mile radius has now also become familiar with this concept.  Including the third-party sellers on Amazon who are unbelievably gouging consumers at a rate of $46 plus shipping for 24 citrus and elderberry lozenges.  Really, friends?  I do not wish ill will, but some people clearly need to experience the sensation of one of their own overpriced zinc lozenges temporarily lodged in their throats.
  
  
  

• Went grocery shopping for my parents today and felt like a crazy person at the Perkasie Landis Supermarket, filling up gallon jugs at the filtered water station.  I had a whole shopping cart full of them.  You wonder where I got my anxious and over-the-top tendencies?  My father had marked them all, caps and jugs with matching Sharpie marker numbers because apparently not all lids fit securely on all jugs.  I was sorely tempted to sing Jack and Jill at the top of my lungs to complete the look of lunacy.  And to keep everyone at least six feet away.  Some shady-looking shoppers LIKE THE GUY IN THE PAINTING MASK were driving their carts brazenly into my personal space.

• There has got to be some sane middle ground between foolish (albeit blissful) ignorance and listening to every news briefing and podcast.  I’ve been devouring each new article on county, state, CDC and Johns Hopkins sites as soon as they become available. Obsessively watching the number of cases ticking up. It is mesmerizing, like watching fish swim...though these fish have teeth like piranhas and I am actually starting to drive myself crazy. Boundaries for self-preservation are going to become necessary soon. Thank the Lord I gave up Facebook for Lent. I’m guessing there isn’t much in the way of edification going on over there.

• The very nature of school nursing means seeing hordes of coughing, feverish small people every day.  I wash my hands more times than I can count and my skin is always raw with inevitable cracks by February. This C-19 hand-washing feels different.  The skin effects of the general panic associated with a novel coronavirus isn’t something easily neutralized by a squirt of Aveeno lotion.

• I’ve got a stack of DVDs on my fireplace.  I started with the nonsense of Date Night, moved on to the magic that was Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey in Enchanted, and today...in honor of our friend, Tom Hanks (and what we all hope will be his complete recuperation), I gave myself a good cry watching Sleepless in Seattle.  I will not rest until I’ve completed the entire pile.  I sure hope the final term of this social isolation is not so lengthy it causes me to resort to titles like Edward Scissorhands.  Chop-chop, friends.  Let's flatten the curve.  

• I try to give myself some new focal point for each day.  Taking one day at a time is really helpful.  This morning it was working on a project with some coworkers (while maintaining at least a six foot space between us). We assembled art kits for the early childhood students at our school. Tasks like counting out ten Popsicle sticks and trying to make sure each brand new eight crayon allocation did not contain too many blues and not enough yellows. Repetitive crayon hues might seem immaterial in light of the bigger picture, but concentrating on these small details is really helpful for me. Soon parents and small people arrived at our makeshift drive-through where clean, freshly-packed bags of new art supplies were handed into car windows by smiling (and gloved) people. My favorite part was watching the children's faces as they spied and then began waving to their teachers with obvious delight.  Lemonade with lemons.  That's the order of the day.

• The idea of sitting around reading books is so lovely until you’re mandated by the governor to do it. Social isolation is increasingly difficult and it feels to me as though the world’s loose ends are flapping wildly.

We extroverts and control-freaks are 
NOT OKAY.

• When a high point of the day is receiving news from a friend that the fresh produce section at her market held nothing but two lonely bags of okra, times are strange. 

CLICK FOR A RECIPE IN CASE YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THIS TERRIBLE POSITION

• I was certain it was Thursday until mid morning when my still-working husband informed me it is, in fact, Friday. This epiphany came around the same time I was so absorbed by the mind-numbing identical hues of a frustrating jigsaw puzzle, it took the smoke detector to alert me of the near-flames condition of my sourdough toast. I ate those burnt shingles like penance. But in a shocking display of actually giving up and seizing the moment for something I can actually CONTROL, I boxed up that blasted unfinished puzzle. I don’t need a bunch of cardboard pieces strewn about my dining room table adding to my increasing bouts of despondency. There's no way around it. I’m admittedly pathetic today. Tomorrow will be better because it has to be. It’s apparently Saturday so at least it won't just be me and the cat.

• My kids are entirely too far away.  Virginia and Texas feel like another continent at a time like this.  Had a ZOOM session with roughly ten members of my family this evening and if nothing else, some of us are getting more technically savvy. Right about the time the final two participants joined the jumbled conversation (which felt something like sitting at the Thanksgiving table sans stuffing), my parents tapped the “leave meeting” at the top of Mom’s iPad because it was time for JEOPARDY. Priorities, folks! Retirees know the benefits of structure in a daily schedule. 

Jim and I got out of the house for a bit this morning.

Fear not, we followed Montgomery County rules.

Note the best part of social distancing - NO MAKEUP

I did not interact with people not of my household.  

I did, however:

• Try not to step on the tiny spring flowers pushing up in the grass.  
• Feel the sunshine on my face.  
• Run my hands over the wonderfully fragrant pine tree brooms extended to me in the breeze by a generous tree. 
• Appreciate the restoring sound of water running over rocks.

The rain had dampened the grass so it was all 

a little dicey in my best sneakers.  

But well worth the trip. 

It was good therapy.  

Being outside is an important reminder that God is in control even when everything feels uncertain.  

The sun is still shining.  
The earth is still turning.  
We are still his people.   

• My hair stylist is a perfectionist.  For over thirty years she has done her best to subdue my unruly auburn locks.  As evidenced by the appreciation my husband always (and only) expresses when I return from an appointment with Kathy, she is much more particular about what's going on atop my head than I could ever be.  From time to time (in what I would call emergency situations) I have resorted to cutting my own hair.  This has NEVER ended well and predictably results in a firm rebuke from Kathy (as she attempts to repair the damage done).  She sent me a spontaneous text message today which freaks me out more than food hoarders and people who fail to recognize personal space ever could.  She said (and I quote):   "I give you permission to trim your bangs."  I am positively horrified it has come to this. 

• Movement is incredibly helpful.  I've appreciated walking circles around my neighborhood, perhaps more than ever.  Because it is without doubt the most adorable thing I have seen this week, please enjoy my friends, Owen and Wyatt from Hubbard, Oregon as they maintain their excellent physiques by focusing on some yoga during this time of social isolation.  

"But (Pooh) couldn't sleep.  The more he tried to sleep the more he couldn't.  He tried counting sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps.  And that was worse.  Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight for a pot of Pooh's honey, and eating it all.  For some minutes he lay there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, "Very good honey this, I don't know 

when I've tasted better," 

Pooh could bear it no longer." - A.A. Milne

Life can feel completely overwhelming in the middle of the night. I don't think I'm alone when I admit how customary rational thinking often escapes me in the dark.  It should come as no surprise that most women of a certain age (ahem) have moved beyond the luxury of a decent night's sleep.  When sleep doesn't come, the mind is a wizard at conjuring horrific plots out of tiny scraps of worry and insecurity. Pandemics are ripe for conjuring.  And counting sheep has never worked for me.  I've often turned to prayer...interceding for pretty much everyone in my life (and depending how long the insomnia persists, those I've not yet met....)  Perhaps I should try counting Heffalumps.  

On Tuesday night, I think my cumulative sleep hours averaged somewhere in the neighborhood of two. And during those two hours, I was apparently lost in downtown Chicago, accompanied by the person who makes me the most uncomfortable in real life.  I had miles to walk, and I wasn't wearing shoes.  Not ideal.  

As I labor to sleep and listen to my husband's breathing, my rational brain sends signals of thankfulness that he is recharging.  I love him beyond words. Concurrently, my emotional brain rises from the bench for cross-examination and counters with an almost overwhelming desire to smack aforementioned loved husband with one of my pillows. The ease with which his eyelids close and the immediacy of his release from current reality to a place of dreams is enviable. Meanwhile, I'm tossing, turning, obsessively reviewing checklists, and putting the finishing touches on worst-case-scenarios in my mind. 

The lack of sleep was not helpful yesterday as I attempted to think clearly with almost no rest for my mind or body. 

But today is a new day.

I was granted almost ten generous hours of sleep last night and it has made all the difference in my perspective this morning. I can almost hear my Heavenly Father saying, "GO TO SLEEP woman. You're driving us all crazy!" I suspect he sent my overworked guardian angels to bonk me over the head with a lovingly but forcefully-administered hefty dose of some top-drawer melatonin. A celestial concoction no doubt made from clouds and some of the honey stolen by the Heffalump.

• Remaining a good distance from people who don't live in one's household is working well for some people.  We've got an optimistic introvert and a wallowing extrovert over here.  Jim reports he is doing "just peachy" in this new reality.  Though he doesn't in any way appreciate being told what to do, he boasts he has successfully practiced social distancing his entire life.  My husband wondered aloud what things in our world might permanently change after the worst threat of the virus has passed.  His cheery pondering yesterday went something like this:  "Hey! Maybe less people will try to hug me after this!"  HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.

Friends, Madds and Jackson Scialanca, who are much
more photogenic than any pajama-ed or
pantless quarantined persons at the Shelly house. 

• It has become perfectly acceptable to exist without ever changing out of one's pajamas.  Even more...Walmart (arguably the bane of reasonable society) reported this morning they are selling an inconceivable number of tops when compared to bottoms.  So it appears...pants have also become optional.   When we get back to business as usual, we are going to suffer the realization that our elastic (or missing) waistbands and our ready access to refrigerators and cookie jars has too long shielded us from the ability to discern our own burgeoning circumferences.  

• Day 21 of the hostage situation and I'm settling into a rhythm.  I've been trying to wake up at the usual time and tend to my school work as best I can from home.  My afternoons are for jigsaw puzzles, writing, and working my way through the towering stack of DVDs.  Yesterday I watched Jane Eyre with the mysterious William Hurt and OH HECK.  Let me just say...we are feeling sorry for ourselves but life has never been without complication.  Yesterday, my mother resuscitated her sewing skills and pulled out the machine to create some fabric masks for me. When I was a child, she made extravagant Haute Couture for my Barbie dolls.  She reports she doesn't know HOW she managed that because the struggle was apparently real with the masks.  I can appreciate this because at 58 my fingers are already becoming contrary to functional dexterity.  Another 23 years is not going to improve the situation. 

• Impressive coughing this morning.  I was chopping celery for perhaps my favorite recipe while my sous chef, Jim was chopping the mushrooms.  Deciding it would be necessary to make myself some comfort food today, we were getting a head-start on the chopping and would finish up the rather complicated recipe after our ZOOM Sunday school class in a bit. While  I was barking away into my elbow and stepping back from the counter, I reassured my husband.  "It's not COVID! It's a celery leaf."  Can't help myself from shoving those anemic little celery hearts into my mouth as I chop.  A persistent habit, well established in my near 60 decades.  As always, Jim was unflappable.  "I wasn't worried." Of course he wasn't. Or at least not that a worry he would EVER admit. In fact, my youngest and I always launch into a full-on panic when in the midst of crisis my husband says, "It's all good...."  That's when we know we are all in deep yogurt.  I intend to double this recipe today and deliver the other batch to my friend's porch.  She adores this vegetarian meatloaf as much as I do. It's just like the real thing sans beautiful blinking cow. If you want to cook up some lentils and chop ingredients until you are blue in the face, you can make it too! Click link below. 

FAVORITE vegetarian comfort food

Sunday School class via the ZOOM app has been a marvelous way to center myself these last weeks. 

• Sunshine is so helpful.  We have had a run of dreary rainy days this week and the constant dripping and blustery winds have been wearing on the soul. The sun made an appearance today and we took advantage of it by taking a short walk along Frick's Trail.  Staying far enough away from others who had ventured out was a little trickier than one would think.  A large mud puddle (read murky LAKE) forced us off the main pathway and onto a rather arduous obstacle course of large branches and fallen trees over a threatening sea of mud.  The whole exercise felt more like a world championship log rolling contest than an innocent spring walk the woods.  The mud bowl caused a bit of a bottleneck on the trail, particularly when we got stuck behind a family of unmasked people with small wobbly legs.  Thousands of small yellow flowers made my rather inept crossing over the muddy sludge well worthwhile.  

• There are so many anxiety-producing words in the news these days. That fine line between staying informed and becoming saturated with discouragement seems more elusive this week. So I've taken matters into my own hands and at least for this morning, I'm choosing to get my news updates from the birds in my neighborhood.  They have a lot to say today. 

My sweet friend, Donna used to say, "I'm picking up the manna where it falls."  It's sustaining advice for all of us.  Sometimes you just need to go out and find the good.  

• Adding an unexpected wrinkle to the pages of this Stephen King novel we are apparently now living, today's forecast includes flooding and wind gusts around 55-65 mph.  Oh...and maybe a stray tornado.  So I tried to make light of the situation (as my coping mechanisms insist I do) and posted that I am awaiting the frogs and locusts. Facebook friend, Kim was swift to point out that East Africa is anticipating a second, larger wave of the worst locust outbreak seen in seven decades.  I can't even.  Neither will we delve too far into conversation about the earthquake this weekend near Mammoth Lake, CA. It only registered a 5.2.    When I arrived downstairs this morning and looked out my back window, Lake Shelly (known more commonly as my back yard) was shivering under the descent of fresh raindrops...its muddy infuriating surface rising well above what remains of our questionable assemblage of grass.  We really need to find a solution to the drainage problem out there.  Or invest in a bridge and some snorkeling equipment.   To my credit, I had Raisin Bran and almond milk for breakfast, rather than the homemade chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting which my stress level was convincingly demanding.  Look at me...dealing with anxiety like a BOSS.  

Please note the mourning dove, enjoying her early morning lakeside perch.

• Yesterday was a terrible day.  For no good reason.  I have so much to be grateful for.  Yet I spent the day wallowing.  Poor Jim returned home from his 11+ hour day at the office to find me in my pitiful state and did his best, to no avail. At the hour for sleep (I'm using the term loosely), I stuffed my palpitations and negativity tightly in my fists and tucked us all under the Sherpa blanket, ensuring that even when horizontal, I can sabotage God's best for me. Dr. Valerie Arkoosh (Montgomery County's rock-star Chair of Commissioners) has reminded me almost daily during her press briefings that it is "Okay to NOT be okay." She doesn't mention how long this should last.... God tells me it is okay to be weak sometimes too.  And at approximately 2 am, he sometimes comes to cover me (read douse me) in his blessed peace.   Today feels markedly more manageable.  And looking back, I can really appreciate some of the good things of yesterday which I failed to truly cherish in the moment.  I've been turning to art and poetry these last weeks, finding solace and inspiration.  Friend, Juanita shared this writing by Morgan Harper Nichols, which fed my core when I let it seep in this morning.  

Another rather amazing thing which has transpired...tomorrow will mark five consecutive weeks during which I have cooked dinner every single night.  36 years of marriage and this is an achievement I've never before come near.  Last night was a delicious lentil stew, the recipe for which I'm sharing, to spread the love. 

Turkey Sausage, Kale and Lentil Stew

4 cups steamed lentils (buy them ready to go at Trader Joe's)

6 cups vegetable or chicken broth

2 cups baby kale, chopped (also ready to go at TJ's-I promise this is not an advertisement)

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1+ cups diced carrots

1/2 cup diced celery

1 small-medium yellow onion, chopped

1 loop turkey kielbasa or turkey smoked sausage, coined and halved

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp cracked red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp ground thyme

1/4 tsp onion powder

Saute carrots, onion and celery with a little olive oil until onion is translucent.  Add broth, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.  Add kale and simmer another 10 minutes.  Add lentils, sausage and spices and simmer another 15 minutes.  Thicken with about 1/4 cup flour mixed with a little water and cook until desired consistency.  Stir in parsley and serve. 

I understand I need to feel all the feels associated with this strange situation. We are all grieving. But I cannot allow myself to get stuck there.  Here are the things I'm striving for each day when I'm not wasting my time pouting: 

1) I'm learning to live with the questions.

2) I'm finding rhythm in my days while recognizing for the first time in my life that productivity does not always indicate forward motion.

3) I'm learning to simultaneously hold grief and joy. This is really hard work for me.

4) I'm learning to be present in the moment.

5) I'm learning to trust. 

Pig pen is the image that comes to mind for me when I think about yesterday as compared to today.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still showering.... Yesterday I was in a cynical cloud of my own making.  Gloom and doom.  A perfect recipe for disaster.  

 A self-imposed cage in which it was difficult to breathe.  

Fear and anxiety were the ingredients which made up the dust swirling around me. Sometimes it is hard to just get a grip, get on one's knees, and hand it all over to the one who counts our hairs and knows our hearts.  I've got news for you, he is well aware of our shortcomings too, and still he tells us to "fear not."  

For the Lord our God goes with us, wherever we go. 

Or in this case, wherever we don't go.   

All that suffocating dust?  Let it go.  

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling." 

Psalm 46:1-3