Pandemic Diary, Day 31

Today marks the end of the first month of the pandemic. My little world remains pretty stable. Within my wider circle of acquaintances, a few people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, but everyone seems to have somewhat mild symptoms and is recovering. This is good, and I hope it stays this way.

I have been trying to write something here all day. I want to document this. I think that matters. But I also do not know what to say. So much of my life feels “normal”. I am working from home, but I am still working. Some of the issues I am dealing with are different, but not really. 

C is self-quarantining. His doctor says he needs to do this until he goes 72 hours without coughing. This is not because anyone thinks it is probable that he has the virus, but because he does not qualify for testing, so we cannot rule it out entirely. So, caution. Caution is how we get through this, as a family, as a city, state, region, and country. At the same time, he has spent so much time unemployed over the last decade that really, him going to work felt more out of the ordinary than this does.

Starting today, D now only has to go into work for 4 hours a day (to receive packages and then ship them back out to the homes of whoever needs them). So she is home more, but she closes herself in her room, so there is no big difference there.

Again, the biggest difference in my life is how many walks the dogs are getting. And so, I do not know exactly what to document. We are natural homebodies. We have been playing D&D via Roll20 for three years or so now. Really, the biggest change in my life is that I am not going over to JB’s house for dinner on Wednesday nights. Well, that and I no longer spend 2.5 hours a day commuting. But mostly that means I am not reading as much.

I continue to be grateful that I live in the Seattle area. Being able to choose where you live is a privilege in and of itself. But we also have some privileges based on where we live. Washington state and the Seattle area have responded to the outbreak quite well. We do seem to be flattening the curve. And I do not have members of local government calling for the elderly or immunocompromised to sacrifice themselves in the name of the economy. 

I have made it almost all the way through the Overly Sarcastic Productions Youtube videos. Soon, I will have to figure out something else to listen to while I work. And that is seriously the most exciting part of my day.

So yeah, that is about it from here. Some days, I will find my thoughts and actions amusing enough that I will do the daily timed diaries. Somedays, I will not. And some days, I will crave brownies, but I will not choose to make a trip to the grocery store just for brownie mix.  That is life. Boring. Uninteresting. And that is a good thing.