Monthly Archives: March 2020

Back to work

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It’s back-to-work Monday. For me, that means installing myself in the front bedroom, which serves triple duty as office and sometime family room, at the drafting table I inherited from my dad. I have a window next to me and usually a dog on the bed behind me. Life could be worse.

That’s how I feel about the world these days, too, and I hope it stays that way. More and more people are sheltering at home across the country, but not yet enough I fear. Yesterday during Church of the Informed Citizen services, I came across a site that provides state-by-state data models indicating best- and worst-case scenarios for battling COVID-19. It’s positively frightening. In most states, the “point-of-no-return” date for the state to take action that can prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed is sometime this week. That’s true even in a state as rural as Wyoming.

Once again, I’m thankful to live in a community and a state where this threat is being taken seriously. Being isolated isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s the right thing to do, and I’m glad our public officials have taken the approach they have. Even so I worry, especially about my own family. I know that’s normal, but normalcy doesn’t make it easier.

Making the best of it

It snowed here yesterday, as predicted. This is the Midwest, and snow in March isn’t unusual; I’m not going to complain about it. The day didn’t seem terribly cold, despite temperatures near freezing, and we spent plenty of it outdoors. But we didn’t actually break out the fire pit as planned.

Instead, because it was really wet, fluffy snow, I made miniature snowmen for my neighbors and anyone passing by. Three of them, all on my porch railing, one facing the sidewalk, and one facing each of my neighbors’ houses. Little snowmen make me happy; that’s all.

Goal setting

I did pretty well with the goals I set out for myself yesterday:

  • Photo of the day—check
  • Spaghetti carbonara—check (plus oatmeal cookies!)
  • Create something—check
  • Read—check
  • Laundry—check
  • Tidy table—check

Today is a workday, so I need to be more modest. Work aside, here’s what I’d like to manage:

  • Photo of the day
  • Read poetry
  • Dog walk (snow be damned)
  • Don’t eat too many cookies
  • Stretch goals: exercise walk; create; dinner at a normal hour

Photo of the day

It was a lovely snow. I took a few pictures.

Are we going stir crazy yet?

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Today’ is Illinois’ first full day of sheltering in place, my hometown’s fourth, and my own eighth. I’ve gone more than a week now without leaving my house and yard except to walk the sidewalks of my neighborhood. I’m a little bit stir crazy, but I’m okay.

I have big plans today: virtual Church of the Informed Citizen, via Skype, and a fire pit social at the edge of my front yard with my next-door neighbors. How will we manage the fire pit, you ask? The plan is: Fire in the center, two chairs on our side, two on theirs, always 6 feet apart. I think we can do it!

Goal setting

I think goal setting is probably a good idea while we’re all sheltering at home. I can easily get up in the morning and fritter away an entire day, so it helps to tell myself early in the day what I’d like to accomplish.

Here’s how yesterday’s goals tallied up for me at the end of the day.

  • Chicken pot pie—check
  • Dog walk—check
  • Exercise walk—nope, just with the dogs
  • Laundry—check
  • Place my seed order—check
  • Read—only at bedtime, but check
  • Create something—check
  • Photo of the day—check

I added the photo-a-day goal mid-day. Being cooped up in one place, I think challenging myself to take a photo that’s worth sharing each day might be a good way to keep from falling into a rut. I’m pretty good at ruts. I need the challenge.

Photo of the day

I over-achieved yesterday on the photography front. We walked past someone’s terrific sidewalk chalk art on our walk, and that’s the picture shown up top. Rolo got in on the action later by being too cute for words, twice. Here’s one of the results:

And then, of course, there was the chicken pot pie. Rarely can I resist the urge to take a photo of a pie that I’ve baked, be it savory or sweet. It’s not great photography, perhaps, but food porn really isn’t about the photography. I can assure you it was delicious, served with a side salad.

Yesterday’s creation: poem art

A while back—a long while back—I bought an old book of illustrated children’s stories to transform into something. I was thinking at the time of some sort of altered book, but that idea gave way to poetry at some point. Yesterday, I took a page of it, found a poem in it, and then looked for a picture to go along with it. The result: a teeny-tiny poem called “The growing darkness.” I had a lot of fun putting it together, I think largely because it made me work with my hands. Here it is:

The growing darkness, a poem by Kim Kishbaugh (c) 2020

I think next time I might start with a picture and find a poem specifically for it.

Goal setting

Here are today’s goals:

  • Photo of the day
  • Dinner from scratch, by me, probably spaghetti carbonara
  • Create something
  • Read
  • More laundry
  • A tidy table in my living room

Recommended: Cop shows that entertain

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A friend of mine recently crowdsourced a request for good police procedural shows to keep her entertained. This was before most of us had even heard the term “social distancing.” She’s a trailblazer. I’m a follower, and I love myself a good mystery or police procedural. So I’ve aggregated here the list of recommendations she received.

There are many shows on this list that I haven’t seen (hooray, more fun!) . So I’ve separated the ones I know and can recommend myself. You’re welcome. If you have other suggestions, throw them into the comments.

Let’s all stay entertained.

Cop shows and mysteries I’ve enjoyed

Here’s a book recommendation, too!
  • Longmire
  • River
  • Broadchurch
  • Shetland
  • Scott & Bailey
  • Giri/Haji
  • Comrade Detective
  • Endeavor
  • Foyle’s War
  • George Gently
  • Inspector Morse
  • The Blacklist
  • Harry Bosch
  • Miss Fisher Mysteries
  • Monk

Ones I haven’t seen

I can’t vouch for these personally, but friends of friends recommend them:

  • Luther
  • Mindhunter
  • Killing Eve
  • The Stranger (offered with the caveat that it takes a couple of episodes to establish itself, but is worth the wait)
  • Lincoln Rhyme
  • Hunters
  • The Killing
  • Unbelievable
  • Penny Dreadful
  • Paranoia
  • Vera
  • Brokenwood
  • My Life is Murder
  • Queens of Mystery

Podcasts

I haven’t listened to any mystery podcasts yet, but these recommendations made their way onto my friend’s list:

  • Dirty John
  • Doctor Death
  • Criminal
  • Casefile
  • The Drop Out

A few non-police recommendations

Again, I don’t know anything about these. They made their way into the crowdsourced recommendations despite not being (or so I understand) police or mystery shows:

  • Unbelievable
  • Ash vs. Evil Dead
  • Bodyguard
  • The Sinner
  • Black Mirror
  • Altered Carbon
  • Fleabag
  • You

Book recommendation

If you’re interested in the book recommendation, read more about about Girl Waits With Gun.

Signs of change

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I hope it’s not business as usual for anyone at this point, at least not anyone in North America. We need to change our behavior and follow advice on social distancing. I’m disheartened by my Twitter feed, where people say this isn’t happening where they live. Here in the Chicago suburbs—at least in my very left-leaning community—it definitely is.

A couple local signs of change:

  • A 30-in, 30-out policy at Trader Joe’s, with a line of people outside the door standing 6 feet apart. (Way to go Trader Joe’s!)
  • Increased quiet, with much less traffic on the busy street a block away
  • Seen while walking yesterday: Dad out biking with his two kids, all three bundled up against 40-degree temperatures

Shelter-in-place orders

Illinois’ governor issued a shelter-in-place order that takes effect at 5 p.m. today, extending across the entire state the restrictions ordered by my local community a couple days earlier. We join residents of California, New York and Connecticut, where similar (not identical) orders are in place. I expect more states will follow suit.

I hope it works. We’re all in this together, and we need to look out for each other. Those in low-risk groups may survive COVID-19 with only mild symptoms, but their grandparents and neighbors with disabilities face higher odds. My social distancing is less for my benefit than for those I would otherwise come in contact with who have elderly parents living with them or loved ones who are immune-compromised. I don’t know these people, but I care about them. So I stay in.

Today’s goals look like this:

  • Make the chicken pot pie that was supposed to be dinner last night before I got pulled into an urgent project for work.
  • Walk the dogs, and walk for exercise. (With my two old dogs, these are not the same thing.)
  • Do laundry.
  • Place my seed order.
  • Read.
  • Create…something.

That doesn’t feel very ambitious. Perhaps I should be concerned abut that. Is it a sign of social isolation that I don’t have higher goals for my day off?

I wonder how others are spending your increased time at home. Meditation? Yoga? DIY projects? I’d love to hear from you.

Midwestern spring

Meanwhile, the garden grows, on schedule, unworried about any coronavirus. My lilies are mad for spring, and the peonies are sending up shoots. One hyacinth is readying a bloom, and I’m wondering if the others are still hung over from winter or got carried off by squirrels to someone else’s yard. (The crocuses are nowhere to be seen.) My forsythia is covered in buds, holding its bright yellow beauty at bay, but not for long. Today’s high temperature is supposed to be just 1 degree above freezing, but that’s spring in the Midwest. We can take it.

Surprised by spring

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Somehow the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, passed right by without me noticing.

We had a late snow last year, but bulbs are tough. These tulips did alright.

These are extraordinary times indeed. Yesterday marked the start of spring, and I didn’t notice. I worked a very long day from home, my eleventh in a row (long explanation, related directly to COVID-19), took two short walks, worried about loved ones, and considered ways to bring friends together virtually to prevent—or, perhaps more realistically, mitigate—isolation. (I tucked “worried about loved ones” into the middle of that sentence, but honestly I did quite a lot of that, for the first time during this emergency.)

I did notice the green foliage of spring bulbs poking up from the earth in my front garden, and I consciously relished the 60-degree temperature in the evening. Coincidentally, I asked my husband to order the supplies he needs to build me a new raised garden bed. But I didn’t actually know spring had arrived. I’m a nature girl, a gardener, a child of rural America, and this is unusual for me. My mind was just…elsewhere. I won’t say I don’t know how this happened; I do. Still it surprises me and reminds me just how much our lives have changed in less than a month.

Here’s what woke me up to the vernal equinox: an article shared by a friend on Facebook highlighting virtual tours of gardens around the world, including Monet’s garden at Giverny. It provided me a lovely diversion this morning and has me thinking once again about that raised bed. I might take my camera out today to capture my nascent spring garden; meanwhile, the pics here are my garden in years past.

Sheltering in place

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What a difference a day makes. As of last night, I’m officially living under a shelter-at-home order. It’s not draconian. In fact, it’s pretty reflective of how my husband and I have been living since the end of last week: staying out of public places except to shop for necessities (food, pet food), not getting together with anyone but each other, walking the dogs but steering clear of others we come across while we’re out.

It feels different, though. My village government issued the shelter-in-place order yesterday evening after receiving notice of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the community. That was followed shortly (this morning) by news that two emergency room doctors at the hospital nearby also have the disease. None of this is surprising, and I’m not in a panic, but it adds a different perspective to the situation.

My typical day

Today was much like any other day this week: I brewed my morning coffee and then settled in for a day of work upstairs. I found a 20-minute window with no meetings or urgent work tasks before the rain arrived, and took a quick walk just to get a minimal amount of exercise. I already had sent the husband out to walk the dogs, knowing I probably wouldn’t be able to get away long enough to do that before the weather turned bad. I got on a conference call minutes after returning home, then worked straight through until 7 p.m.

This has been my pattern all week, except for the timing of the walk. It’s going to be my pattern through at least next week, and I have a feeling it won’t change for quite some time. I suspect this is the new normal. I’m to sure what to think of that, nor what to expect it to do to my psyche.

Seeking a new kind of social

Tank, right now

We’ve canceled travel plans to see family a few hours away at the end of the month, and I’m disappointed by that. It’s a trip I was looking forward to, and I realize I’ve no idea when it will be possible. So what to do instead?

For starters, I’ve asked the husband to research online gaming apps, to see whether we can find tabletop simulations for games we like to play with different groups. The family we would have seen on this canceled road trip plays dominoes and euchre; can we find online versions that will connect us with them in real-time for conversation? What about our friends locally? Can we pull together virtual game parties to continue sharing our lives with each other?

I expect I’ll do more texting and emailing with friends, too, but I want to hear their voices also. At the most local level possible, I’m hoping to coax my next-door neighbors (are you reading this, folks?) out onto our front porches for Friday or Saturday evening socials—but not this weekend, because the temperature is supposed to fall to near freezing.

And yet I’m grateful

I’m not complaining. I’m healthy so far, and so is my husband, though I’m waiting with baited breath for word from others I know who have symptoms of illness. Ultimately, I expect we all will know people who fall ill with COVID-19. I hope against hope that we won’t all know people who don’t survive.

Ultimately, I’m thankful for my community’s response. I’m thankful for the school districts that are canceling classes for the next month or even longer. I’m thankful for closed restaurants, shops, and museums. I’m thankful to my employer for making telecommuting possible, and for every other employer that’s doing the same.

I miss my library, but I’m thankful for governments and public institutions that are pausing their operations to keep people from gathering when they don’t need to. I’m also enormously thankful for those who are serving essential functions, whether from home or their regular workplace: the election officials who oversaw voting on Tuesday, the guy who answered my email last night when the village servers crashed just after they issued the shelter-at-home order, and the doctors and nurses and other workers who are keeping hospitals operating. And I’m thankful for every person who is actively social distancing or sheltering at home.

Yes, you. If you’re in the same situation I am, if you feel like your world is starting to close in on you because you hardly leave your house, but you’re doing it because you know it’s the right thing to do…thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I only hope that a month from now it looks like it was an over-reaction. I hope it works.

Today’s photo

Today’s photo is sidewalk art from my neighborhood, with a message from the artist: