March 17th has various celebratory meanings in our house. It’s our dog, Saki(‘s) birthday; it’s our very good and lovely friend Pat’s birthday, and it’s the day we drink green beer, or some approximation thereof.
Pat turned 83 this year. She lives with her long-time partner Fid (actual name: Phyllis) who is seven years her senior. If I ever live to be as old as they are, I hope I have half of their energy. These two are just amazing people and we’re so lucky and blessed to have them in our lives. But, given their advanced age and our new reality, my birthday present to Pat this year was to hit up a grocery store and pick up some perishables for them. Oh, and some booze, of course.
I won’t lie: I was scared. Worried that by entering a grocery store I was breathing in the virus and exposing myself, and thus my family to this scourge. I wore gloves. I tried to not touch my face. I took time and care, got just the things I wanted, and booked out of there. I sanitized, sorted my items from theirs, and dropped them off, along with some of our supply of cleaning products, face masks, gloves, etc. And tp.
The store was better than I expected, but worse than I had ever seen it. It’s weird to be limited to 1 doz eggs, 1 lb of bacon, etc. My parents lived through WWII rationing in London and it spilled over into our lives, my brother’s and mine, just through terminology and habits. What will we learn and carry forward from this?
We learned today that the CA public schools may be closed for the rest of the school year. We have no idea what the long term effects of this truncated learning period will be. I mean, we’re trying the homeschooling thing, but Dylan goes to a rigorous, private school. There’s no WAY us parents can remotely replace the amazing teachers and curriculum these kids normally have.
The hospitals here haven’t yet begun to experience the surge of patients that we know is coming. The hospital that Tiff works at eliminated all elective surgeries today, which I’m glad for, but I know some of these “elective” cases are due to pain and trauma. “Elective” just means they didn’t enter through the ER, not that they aren’t urgent.
Guess we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.