The Zen Leaf

Oh y’all, I can’t tell you how sad I am that I’m still needing to track this stuff on a weekly basis. It has gotten so bad that I’ve changed back to my original daily format, because my little sectional summaries just aren’t big enough to hold all of what’s happening. San Antonio is going backwards, no control, skyrocketing toward a terrifying threshold that will leave us vulnerable and exposed. Right now, I’m in a relatively safe space with my two younger children, but I’m still following all this stuff in San Antonio, where the rest of my family, plus extended family and so many friends, are in danger.

Anyway: 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, June 26th:
Local count: 8857 (+405), 105 deaths. It was a bit of a shocker day. The governor finally took some minor action, closing down bars across the state and cutting restaurant capacity from 75% to 50%. He also made the first overtures toward giving authority back to local areas with regards to their covid plans, though I don’t know how far that will actually extend. They did decide not to open pools this week as originally planned, and are limiting gatherings in city parks to 10. Then out of nowhere, the head of our Metro Health department resigned. We don’t have reasons, though statements released do say it was her decision, without pressure from Metro Health. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was too tired, frustrated, or angry to continue under our current circumstances. The last time she appeared on the daily brief, she was in tears asking people to wear masks please. // At home, we made the decision for Laurence, Ambrose, and me to travel to WI, and began to prep for that trip. Sadly, we heard that another 14 employees from HEB tested positive, and for the first time, one of those was from our local HEB. So we’re taking even more precautions than before. Today’s photo is of bold lipstick, a form of personal empowerment because I do not handle sudden changes in plans very well and I needed bolstering!

-Saturday, June 27th:
Local count: 9652 (+795), 107 deaths. Alert came out over our phones at 7pm warning us all to stay home due to the covid health emergency. We’ve all known things were getting bad again, but this is skyrocketing. And people have started the whole hoarding thing again, so HEB has started limiting toilet paper and paper good purchases again. Oh, people. You won’t wear masks but you’ll buy ten years’ worth of toilet paper. Sigh. In any case, we made the very quick decision to move the Wisconsin trip up from Monday to Sunday. Everything was in chaos.

-Sunday, June 28th:
Local count: 10,147 (+495), 109 deaths. We’ve officially passed the 10k mark for cases. I spent the day traveling north with my two younger boys, making it to Olathe, KS for our first day. Various news stories out of San Antonio included several museums in SA closing and more food-hoarding (sigh). Personal experience on the road led me to realize that while we have a major anti-mask situation in SA, it’s nothing compared to a lot of places. We stopped one place for gas in Oklahoma, and there were two other people wearing masks besides us. Employees had noses and parts of their mouths exposed. In Kansas, the employees didn’t even bother with masks, and we were literally the only masked folks everywhere we went. And frankly, in a hotel or service situation, if you’re not wearing a mask in the middle of a pandemic, I’m a bit offended. Clearly, you don’t care about the customers enough to keep them safe from you, and that doesn’t say much for your service skills. Ugh. Also, I’m disturbed by the number of businesses capitalizing on pandemic rhetoric. “Flatten your curves” weight loss. “We practice high deductible distancing” lenders. Just no.

-Monday, June 29th:
Local count: 10,797 (+650), 109 deaths. So much news today on both a city-level and personal-level. In San Antonio, so many industries are getting rapidly expanding numbers of cases (HEB, the police, the fire department and paramedics, a resurgence at the jail, the Air Force basic trainees, staff and children at county juvenile facilities…) We got new data showing our doubling rate has dropped to 11 days, and our positivity rate is now over 20%. One in every four people admitted into the hospitals are for covid, and the number of patients is starting to outpace the number of available beds. In some hospitals, there are people waiting in lines at the ER for beds to open up. Meanwhile, there is some good news, too. USAA (where Jason works) says that none of their employees will come back into the office until 2021 at very earliest. Many school districts, including ours, has closed all summer strength and conditioning camps for sports, plus city library facilities that operate out of school district buildings. San Antonio became the first city to begin using oral swabs for covid-testing, which allow for less contact between people. And the governor got the Prumpster to extend federal funding for covid testing in TX.

That’s just the local news. On a personal level, this was a very difficult day. Jason called me when we were about two hours away from our destination in Wisconsin. Morrigan had suddenly come down with a bad cough and a 102 fever. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been worrying, especially with all the Saharan dust in the air. But then there was covid. They went to urgent care, where they were told to wait in the car (in 100+ degree temps) in the parking lot until Morrigan was called in, which could be up to five hours later. Oy. He ended up getting called in only two hours later, but still. They took a swab and apparently had some rapid response tests, because fifteen minutes later they told him that he was negative. But they also said to quarantine for 10 days just in case it was a false negative (20% chance). So up in the north of the country, we are also quarantining very carefully for at least 10 days. Just in case. I’m really glad the test was negative, even if there’s a possibility of being wrong. I can’t tell you just how awful it felt to simultaneously be driving toward family members potentially carrying covid AND being thousands of miles away from my child who might have covid. This is the nightmare right now.

-Tuesday, June 30th:
Local count: 12,065 (+1268), 110 deaths. We reached 1000 cases in San Antonio on April 19th, 5.5 weeks after our first case arrived, and today we had more than that number in a single day. It took us until April 27th to get to a total case number as high as our day was today. Oy. So the city decided to make all businesses ask people health questions on entering, as well as taking customer temps. I don’t think that’ll work well, but hey. The governor was supposed to make an announcement today but postponed it (for the second time). Let’s all hope it’s good news. In the meantime, I continue to worry from up north, where I wore a mask pretty much all day, because safety. (See their attitude up here in today’s picture.) Morrigan is still sick, and honestly, Jason and I have been discussing the feasibility of him going back to work at all while using our car and living in our house. It’s just not safe for any of us, and we have more than one person to think about. He doesn’t NEED the money.

-Wednesday, July 1st:
Local count: 12,504 (+439), 111 deaths. The city rolled back the questioning/temp checks for businesses, because it was pointed out that the plan was absolutely unfeasible (yup). Instead, they have to display a list of covid-symptoms, which seems pointless. Everyone knows what they are by now! Meanwhile, the governor is still postponing his announcement that was supposed to come days ago, and Texas as a state surged up another 7000 cases. We’ve been told point-blank that San Antonio is on a steeper curve than Italy was in the worst of times. // It was another difficult personal day. My good friend Natalie, who moved to San Antonio with her husband last summer to help take care of her father (cancer), had to call EMS to take her father to the hospital with covid symptoms. He tested positive. With several underlying conditions and being in his 80s, there’s a good chance he won’t make it through this. Additionally, while her test came back negative, we have yet to hear about her husband’s (he has symptoms), and neither her mother nor her severely autistic brother have been able to get appointments to be tested despite being symptomatic also. It feels so helpless to be so far away from people I love who are suffering, and to know that even if I was still in SA, I couldn’t do anything to help her family right now. (pic is me and Nat in the spring of 1996)

-Thursday, July 2nd:
Local count: 12,878 (+374), 115 deaths. Hallelujah, the governor FINALLY put in a mandatory mask order in all TX counties with at least 20 cases (nearly all of them). Texas surged up another 8k cases after the 7k yesterday. A bunch of city and hospital officials in SA did a midday brief to discuss the timeline of this, and how the surge began happening exactly two weeks after Memorial Day. They’re (rightly) concerned because this weekend is Independence Day weekend and has the potential to cause another spike. But all the parks are being closed by the city, and outdoor gatherings are limited to 10, and now people have to wear masks, so please oh please let there not be another spike. Our hospitals are already near capacity. // One of my “friends” decided to argue with me that I have no right to be concerned about San Antonio anymore because I’ve left. WTF? Bye, lady! Morrigan has officially been furloughed by Taco Bell, allowed to come back whenever the covid situation is safe (they didn’t want him to resign as originally planned). He also got new guidelines from the housing department at KU, because they’re still planning to open to students in August, with a hybrid situation depending on individual teachers/classes. Natalie’s brother finally got his covid test, though no one has results yet, and she may need to get retested because she’s starting to get symptoms. It’s a mess.

Graphs above are daily and weekly cases/deaths since March 13th. This is where we’re at. 4426 cases this week – daily average now 632 – and 11 deaths. June wrapped up with a total of 9235 of our 12065 cases (June 30th), a full 77% of our numbers. It’s insane, and I’m scared to death for all my friends and family, and feel simultaneously relieved and guilty to be so far away.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
I spent several days either traveling or preparing to travel early in the week and didn’t really keep track of things in that time. But I’ve been trying to look at those nice things since then!

• HEB had masks for sale, so we could stock up for splitting the family into two different states, plus then my sis-in-law made me the one pictured above!
• Old Dutch dill pickle chips, as well as other touchstones of being in the north again (Perkins, Culvers, Pizza Ranch, etc)
• Jason made us gf lemon chocolate chip muffins for our trip
• we made it safely to WI, and then got to see my in-laws and my sis-in-law, plus all the puppies!
• fresh strawberries from my MIL’s garden
• my sis-in-law made me a couple great bags from one of my favorite fabrics ever!
• a giant tree branch broke off a tree here, but thankfully missed my car by about two feet !!!
• absolutely beautiful orange-and purple lilies, and night sky petunias, and so many other flowers/plants I don’t usually see in TX
• I read an amazing book (The Empire of Dreams by Rae Carson)
• the RLGS podcast called out my name for patreon subscriptions, and argued about how it was pronounced (neither option was correct – my name is just weird!)
• started my new GGS program, plus I got to go out running for what feels like the first time in ages!

How has your week gone?

We have officially passed the 100th day since COVID19 came to the San Antonio community (March 13th). In the beginning, we did well. Recently, not so much. Sigh.

It’s been a particularly difficult week for me personally, as I’ll discuss below in my “this week at home” section. Mostly, this involves having to go back into full(ish) lockdown measures for safety’s sake, even as too many folks in the city go around as if covid doesn’t exist.

Again: 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!

This week in numbers
Another record-breaking week. As expected. We started out with 5550 cases and 92 deaths, and continued the trend of exponentially increased numbers:

• Friday, June 19th: 5962, 96 deaths (+412)
• Saturday, June 20th: 6344, 96 deaths (+382)
• Sunday, June 21st: 6882, 97 deaths (+538) – a new daily record high
• Monday, June 22nd: 7156, 97 deaths (+274)
• Tuesday, June 23rd: 7467, 100 deaths (+311)
• Wednesday, June 24th: 7814, 104 deaths (+347)
• Thursday, June 25th: 8452, 104 deaths (+638) – now this is a new daily record high

So that gives us 2902 new cases this week – daily average now 415 – with 12 new deaths. Hospitals were up to 628 patients last night (a month ago, they were below 90), while 202 are in ICU and 94 are on ventilators (more than our previous total hospital admissions). It is bad, bad, bad.

Keep in mind this is one county – not a full state (Texas is getting about 5500 cases daily now, and has far more total cases as a state than most countries in the world) and not even a fraction of the US as a whole. One county/city. It’s BAD. So bad, in fact, that one of our health authorities came straight out and said we’re currently running on the worst-case-scenario formerly predicted by statistics models back in March. The one that predicts we’ll have over 100k cases in SA by the end of August.

This week in San Antonio
We were really doing so well compared to other urban areas around the country. We really were. But at the beginning of this week, we were named 4th highest hot spot in the US, and that moved to 3rd highest by Wednesday. Other cities around TX are actually putting San Antonio up as a health travel warning. It’s not just us – Austin, Dallas, and Houston are doing just as badly – but again, our local officials’ hands are virtually tied. The governor came out this week and scolded Texas. Bad Texans! We shouldn’t have high numbers! If we don’t get better, he’ll have to do something about this! (While refusing to do something now, while refusing to mandate masks, ironically, because “Texas is too big to have a statewide order because each area is unique in their situation,” though each area isn’t allowed to mandate them either…) The most he’s doing is yanking alcohol permits from bars for 30 days if they are reported for violations. Oh, and he says we’re “pausing” the reopening of Texas, even though he’s already opened ALL businesses and there’s nothing left to pause! Literally, that’s it. Great leadership!

No one should be surprised. Hell, Prump decided to defund Texas’ covid tests this week (along with other hotbed states) because the high numbers are making him look bad. This is REALLY not the time to have a narcissistic a-hole who doesn’t care about lives in charge. But there you go. He really thinks less testing will “improve” the situation, or at least, will improve his “ratings.” Meanwhile, we have cases breaking out all over: the blood bank, food bank, dozens of HEB employees (70 in June alone so far), and who knows about businesses that refuse to report! Seriously, I read some stats this week on our situation: a quarter of all our covid deaths have been in the last two weeks alone, and in the same time period, hospitalizations have gone up 600%!

So we do what we can. The governor allowed one tiny new privilege to local communities: the ability to limit gatherings to 100 people. Of course, this restriction has so many exemptions (churches, amusement parks, pools, childcare, camps, sports, zoos, rodeos, carnivals, etc etc) that the ONLY things I believe that are ACTUALLY restricted are 5Ks/etc and protests. Go figure. (Btw, amusement parks actually opened here this week, claiming they had a lot of “safety measures” in place…but really, do you think they’re going to sanitize rides between each go, while hundreds of people wait packed in lines, most of them not wearing masks? No thank you!!) And of course, the new masks-in-businesses order went through this week. This has led to more violence, including the county judge (who initially went up against the governor re: masks) being assaulted at a local Lowes when he tried to intervene between a belligerent maskless customer and the employee being bullied. (The attacker turned himself in a day later and was only given a misdemeanor charge at the judge’s request.)

Last but not least, we have a unique circumstance arriving in San Antonio this week. Every year, the Saharan dust storms travel across the ocean and reach the Gulf shores. For several weeks, the air quality goes down sharply, and people are subjected to all sorts of breathing problems. We’ve already been warned that the Saharan dust can cause symptoms similar to those of covid, but there’s really no way to tell exactly what’s the source of your symptoms without a test. That’s going to put even more strain on a testing system that’s already booked a week in advance and which the Prumpster has now defunded… Plus, now we hear that the dust is thicker than has ever been recorded. Because 2020, right?

This week at home
I didn’t know, when I went on a 3-mile rainy hike with a group of four other ladies on Friday, that it would be my last group hike. I had six more scheduled for the last 1.5 weeks of June. But we all discussed the situation in town here, and decided not to schedule any new hikes in July. And then decided a day later to cancel the rest for June, too. The previous two weeks of hiking had been marvelous and a great way to re-connect with people again. And now, because people are acting like babies here (refusing masks, not social distancing, hosting big gatherings, etc), we’ve lost this physical and mental lifeline once again.

This has compounded on me personally because my exercise is being impacted in so many other ways. It’s now too hot to run outdoors morning or evening, and gyms are one of the worst spots for covid-spread, so Laurence and I have stopped going there, too. It’s making my anxiety worse, and my mental health is low this week. It doesn’t help that Morrigan is out there working in fast food 40 hours a week, and I have no idea how well he’s scrubbing up when he gets home at 2:30 in the morning. He’s in that age where he doesn’t really take this as seriously as he should, and of course there are four others in this house that may be affected. And now we’ve heard that there’s a possibility that Ambrose’s chosen community college may not open to students this fall. He’s already said that if that’s the case, he’s not going to do online school, but he’ll take a gap year instead. Online school is pretty much his worst nightmare. And since he didn’t get a job when Morrigan did, we’re reluctant to send him out to work, doubling our potential exposure rate. It’s a mess, and I’m not coping terribly well this week.

To complicate and worsen it all, Morrigan found out that his scholarship is not being renewed for next semester because he slagged off in his classes for the last few months. (I’ve so far resisted the urge to say, “I told you so.”) But because he has the luck of the gods and always has, he has the option to change his worse grades to pass/fail this semester because of the covid/online issue, and after that, his improved GPA will reinstate his scholarship. I just hope that he actually learns his lesson this time!! Also, while Ash’s energy and weight is up a bit, I noticed a few days back that his tongue has gone yellowish, indicating that he’s getting jaundiced again. He’s probably not drinking enough and will need another IV or subcutaneous fluids. Poor baby. It’s just been a mess here at home this week.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
I need these more than ever right now:

• hiking in the rain! (Even if it was my last group hike for awhile)
• awesome new outfit from Torrid, plus some new exercise tanks and capris from Lane Bryant and Superfit Hero
• signing up for a year of personal coaching through Girls Gone Strong
• cats on catnip (ha!)
• one of the nearby Red Robin restaurants reopened for curbside pickup – they’d been closed since quarantine began, even after allowed to open, and I’ve been craving their fries so badly!
• Jason and I went on a hike Wednesday evening, and it was a weird one where not a single person besides us were wearing masks, and we saw a woman jogging in shorts and a regular (frilly, lacy, sparkly) bra; a man with one hand wrapped up so much it was larger than a boxing glove; a man using a golf club as a walking stick; and a wild vole, which I didn’t even know we had in Texas!
• the trailer is out for the new season of Unsolved Mysteries coming in July!

How are all of you? Tell me good news, if you have it!

It’s been a Week, y’all.

This might even apply to me at this point (sigh): 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!

This week in numbers
We began the week at 3840 cases after a record high of 822 new cases in Week 13. We’ve also seen 82 deaths so far here in San Antonio. This week:

• Friday, June 12th: 4012, 84 deaths (+172)
• Saturday, June 13th: 4242, 88 deaths (+230)
• Sunday, June 14th: 4393, 88 deaths (+151)
• Monday, June 15th: 4437, 89 deaths (+44)
• Tuesday, June 16th: 4876, 89 deaths (+439) !!!!!
• Wednesday, June 17th:5142, 90 deaths (+266)
• Thursday, June 18th: 5550, 92 deaths (+408)

Oh jeez. We had 1710 total new cases this week – that’s more than double our record number of cases last week (822), which was nearly double the previous record (435 – less than one DAY this week!) – and 10 new deaths. Literally the last 2.5 weeks of our spike has been a full HALF the number of our total cases since March 13th. Sigh.

And it gets worse. Our hospitalizations are up to 267 (formerly stable around 80), with a doubling in ICU and ventilator cases. The numbers are going up daily. Our positivity rate is up to 10% of tests, and our case doubling rate is dropping fast. All REALLY bad signs.

This week in San Antonio
As you can see, our city is in crisis. Things are getting so much worse. Every day I see more and more news stories about businesses shutting down due to outbreaks among their employees, and especially stories about various HEB employees around the city getting sick. HEB is our main grocery here, and they have been INCREDIBLE from the very beginning of this pandemic. They already had protocols in place from years back, and within days of our first case, they had their employees protected by masks, gloves, and plastic screens, plus markers on the floor for social distancing and limits on products that were being hoarded. I mentioned two weeks ago that the store has finally given up making masks mandatory for customers because of the trouble so many folks were causing (mostly white male folks, I’ll add). Far too many people have stopped wearing masks there, and as a result, the number of cases among HEB employees have gone from one every now and then to at least a dozen per week (33 of 57 local stores with at least one case as of 6/15, almost all of them in the last two weeks!). It’s shocking how inconsiderate people can be!!

(the last two weeks makes the rest of our pandemic look insignificant!)

So with all this spike stuff going on, there’s been a flurry of mask-related politics happening here. First, our county judge begged the governor to allow cities the freedom to make masks mandatory. The governor responded that he believes in “individual responsibility” – aka “no.” Texas (not just SA) spent another few days with record-breaking numbers of new cases, hospitalizations, and daily deaths, at which point the San Antonio mayor, along with eight other mayors around TX, again wrote to the governor asking him to let us mandate locally. Response was another big fat NO. In fact, on Tuesday, the governor came out and told the state that we shouldn’t worry about covid despite this spike because the situation is “under control” and there is “abundant hospital capacity” to treat us as we get dangerously ill.

At this point, our county judge decided to exploit a loophole in the governor’s mandate, and put through an emergency order requiring all businesses in our county to require masks for customers. If you want to stay open, you must require masks, within five days of the order. HEB immediately complied – I think they were relieved to have something legal on their side – and then we just waited for the governor’s response. Texas is one of the top states in the nation for outbreaks at the moment, but so far Abbott has just been sitting back and letting the virus get on with killing us. Imagine my surprise and delight when he said he wouldn’t fight our new emergency order. Perhaps he just needed a way to save face while letting us do what we NEED to do. Either way, masks are in again, hallelujah!

Other notable local news this week:

• libraries opened for contactless curbside service on Tuesday, yay!
• all 4th of July firework displays and parades have been officially cancelled
• both Texas NFL teams now have multiple players with covid, not long after they started group practices (you think?)
• the governor announced that all public schools will resume as normal with no need for masks or general precautions in the fall, oy…

This week at home
My calendar is starting to look a lot like pre-quarantine. I have a dozen hikes scheduled for June (including three that I’m hosting!), multiple medical appointments for the family, Gavroche’s surgery, Father’s Day, family and friend socially-distanced hangouts, Morrigan’s work schedule (for car purposes), and a few online gatherings. It’s a bit nerve-racking to be going to so many places and to have so much exposure to people, especially with the spike we’re having here. But the thing is, it’s possible to do these things and stay six feet away from people and keep a mask on when you have to be closer. (You can even take 6ft-apart selfies, like these photos!) On hikes, I wear one of my Buff masks around my neck and pull it up any time someone is passing the opposite direction, or if the trail gets narrow and we have to be closer together than we like. It’s not comfortable to wear a mask around my neck in the heat, but I’m determined to do my part to keep everyone safe, and so is the rest of my hiking group! I wish everyone was doing the same!

(this is how you pandemic-hike!)

And beyond events and appointments, so much is happening at home right now: Gavroche is recovering well from his surgery this week. I’ve been working on a frickin’ kidney stone. (It’s my second, and this time hasn’t landed me in the ER with a swollen kidney at least! No one in my family has ever had a kidney stone, so why is this on me? I have a feeling it has to do with my antidepressant, because both times I’ve had one it was a few months after starting this particular medication at this same dosage.) Laurence has been going to the gym regularly to using the exercise bikes. I covid-cut my hair rather than risking a visit to the salon. Morrigan had his annual vision appointment to update his eye prescription. My sister Julia had a bike accident and ended up in the ER, but thankfully she only ended up spraining her wrist rather than fracturing it like they thought (and hopefully neither she nor my dad and stepmom ended up catching covid in the ER!). My sister Becky got a second batch of foster kittens. New neighbors are moving into the house next to us.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
Gotta find the positives. Gotta find the positives.

• I hosted my first hike and it was awesome!
• my covid haircut (ie DIY haircut) came out really nice
• my sister Aaren adopted one of my sister Becky’s foster kittens, so we’ll get to watch her as she grows up!
• my first test of agoraphobia came over the weekend when I drove myself 40 mins south to an unknown location to attend a leadership hike, and it was soooo worth it and I’m soooo glad I was able to do this!
• finally got to pick up my library holds!
• great new pride tank top activewear from Torrid arrived

Please tell me you are all doing better than we are and that your governors aren’t absolute idiots like Abbott…