My mental health is poorly right now. Even though some quite nice things happened this week, I’ve been overwhelmed with anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, and general malaise. I finally hit my personal limit: It’s time to go home. I really appreciate that my in-laws have let us live up here with them for the last month, for our safety. I really do. But at some point, the need to be home – with Jason and Morrigan and my kitties and in my own home – starts to outweigh the need to be away from the pandemic spike in SA. I need to go home.

For those who feel a bit like me right now: If your mental health is at a point where you cannot bear to hear more about quarantine stuff, skip to the bottom of this post for a list of positives and highlights and Nice Things. We all need some of that right now!

-Friday, July 17th:
Local count: 27,525 (+478), 240 deaths. Texas had a jump of 15K cases, by far their highest daily increase. Official local health order put out today saying all schools need to be online-only at least through September 7th, with the possibility of being extended longer. Here in Wisconsin, my brother-in-law and his wife arrived for a weekend that involved a full extended-family gathering. Not exactly the thing you’re supposed to do during a pandemic, so I admit to being really worried about this, but it’s not my house, so there’s also nothing really I can do about it. At least it’s nice to see people again, and I know everyone is being super safe!

-Saturday, July 18th:
Local count: 28,633 (+1,108), 251 deaths. There actually isn’t much news to report today other than the gigantic total of new cases for the day. I have no idea when if ever this is going to get under control. We’re now two weeks out from the 4th of July, so we’ll see soon if people were careful or not. Up here, the whole family was together, kayaking and hanging out and generally having fun. And I have some good news: Natalie was feeling well enough to video-chat with me today, which is big improvement! Everyone seems to be getting better at her house, thank goodness!

(photo credit: Emmy)

-Sunday, July 19th:
Local count: 30,835 (+2,202), 257 deaths. That is not a backlogged number. That’s over 2k positive tests in the last 24 hours. It took us until May 17th, over two months, to reach that as our TOTAL cases, and now this. Our mayor’s facebook page tonight said, “With a sharp spike in identified cases over the last few days, it’s clear that our community didn’t take the Fourth of July weekend as seriously as we’d hoped.” This is what I’ve been dreading. Especially as this is only the beginning.

-Monday, July 20th:
Local count: 31,316 (+481), 262 deaths. New weekly indicator numbers are out: 22.9% positivity rate (slightly down), 16 days doubling rate (no change), and ~35% hospital admissions are covid-related (about the same). Children and teenagers now make up 1 in 7 cases (up from about 1 in 10).

-Tuesday, July 21st:
Local count: 31,867 (+551), 274 deaths. The numbers came out regarding children’s cases, showing that we’ve had 211 cases among infants under one year old. Oy. Additionally, the SA Symphony announced that it will cancel all its fall concerts and furlough all musicians and staff. It’s a decision that makes sense – they already did this for the spring concerts – but my stepmom is one of those furloughed musicians, so this hits home. // It was a tough day for me personally. I was jolted awake from dreams by a song (playing in my head, not aloud) from my teen years. With it came a severe presentiment that something was wrong with someone – not sure who – in my family. I’ve had a few presentiments like this in my life and they’re never good. The last time I was woken by a song interrupting my dreams was in 2014, the night my aunt passed away. Needless to say, I was quite scattered, anxious, and unproductive today. Too much coffee was consumed. (As far as I could find out, everyone was okay, though it took until evening to get that information.)

-Wednesday, July 22nd:
Local count: 33,555 (+1,688), 283 deaths. Bexar County Medical Society has come out and said they’re against in-person reopening of schools until the positivity rate is under 5% and there has been a persistent decline in cases for at least two weeks. Not sure they have any authority or say-so, but it’s nice to have another sane group advocating. As for us, we made the decision to leave this weekend or Monday to go back to Texas. Wish things had gotten safer instead of worse, but we need our family back together again.

-Thursday, July 23rd:
Local count: 34,633 (+1,078), 298 deaths. The county jail is current becoming overcrowded as the state STILL isn’t taking prisoners into the state system like they’re supposed to. This is creating an extra 300+ necessary beds at present and covid cases are picking up again due to the overcrowding there. Another new statistic came out as well today – 1 in 4 cases of people admitted to ICU for covid later pass away from it, as well as more than 40% of those on ventilators. Aaaand to make things even more fun, there’s a hurricane on the way to San Antonio!

We ended last week’s horrific numbers at 27,047 cases and 229 deaths. It was another big week, with a total of 7,586 new cases (daily average 1,084) and 69 more deaths. As you can see from the graph, this is fewer cases than reported last week. However, last week included about 5,000 backlogged cases. If those are removed, this is still trending upwards, with daily average higher than the last two weeks, and our weekly death number is our highest yet. Not nearly out of the woods.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
As I said in the beginning of this post, I’m struggling to keep my head in a good space right now. Here are the highlights that I tried to focus on this week.

• meeting my sis-in-law Emmy for the first time in person (she of the red hair in the photo near the top of this post)
• an afternoon kayaking adventure
• getting my second-best 5K time
• Natalie feeling well enough to video-chat with me!
• an actual cold front up here, beautiful temps like the 50s and 60s that I never experience in San Antonio July
• the most amazing homemade sour cherry pie (which I did not make, only enjoyed)
• an awesome new haircut
• Culver’s picnic with the boys and their grandparents
• watching my sister’s foster kitties untie her shoes !!!
• The read-along chapters for Rhythm of War (Nov release) have arrived! Every week will be another 1-2 chapters to read up until the book is released. This is my most-anticipated book of the year and I loved the read-along experience with the previous book – super excited that this has started!

I really hope y’all are faring better than me right now. By the time I see y’all in next week’s quarantine diaries, my family will be together again, hopefully without picking up covid along the way home.