Sunday Coffee – Top Ten Things I Miss

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Thistle

It’s been almost six weeks since COVID19 hit San Antonio, almost five weeks since Morrigan returned home from Kansas and the city went to shelter-at-home protocols. We’ve been fortunate as a family in terms of finances, job security, our kids’ abilities to school-from-home, etc. The one major illness that hit us so far, the one that worried us, turned out not to be COVID19 after Jason’s test results came through. San Antonio has done really well implementing protection orders here and current models predict that we’ll reach our peak sometime in the next month (late April to mid-May). The model for Texas generally estimates April 29th, but of course even after we hit our peak, it’ll be some time before restrictions are lifted** and life can be resumed more normally.

On Tuesday, I had a day of mourning. I’ve watched other people have these days over the last week, as the number of days trapped at home snowball and we all reach moments of personal crisis. During my heart-heavy day, I missed all these little things: being able to go to the grocery store to pick up something we’ve unexpectedly run out of; meeting up with folks to exercise; bumping into friends at stores or the library and hanging out for a bit; not debating whether or not to wear a mask if I plan to take a walk around the neighborhood for some exercise and fresh air. Etc. I made a “top ten things I miss from pre-quarantine” list that day, and here it is. In no particular order, I miss:

  1. the library!!!!! I miss my local library, my second home. I miss the librarians and other employees there. I miss browsing for books and movies, and picking up stacks of hold books, and seeing what events are forthcoming. I’m also sad that I didn’t get to begin volunteering there like I’d planned.
  2. hiking with friends – or more generally, exercising and get-togethers with my hiking group. They have made me so happy, and I’m relieved to be seeing folks via Zoom events and Marco Polo, but those hikes and walks and dinner dates were the best, and I can’t wait until they’re back in my life.
  3. coffee dates – I have a couple friends I used to meet with for iced coffee in the afternoon, about once every week or two. I’ve been able to have facetime coffee dates in exchange, but it really isn’t the same!
  4. having the house to myself while everyone is at work/school – This is a HUGE one! I’m transported back to the early days of being a stay at home mom, when my job becomes 24/7 because everyone is home 24/7. And while it’s not the same having three teenagers vs having three toddlers full time, there are a lot of similarities: chaos and mess and illogical arguments and the assumption that Mom will clean up after everything…I go through this every summer break, and I’m definitely mourning that “summer break” will be at least five months long this year.
  5. my chiropractor and massage therapist – I desperately need both an adjustment and a massage (or three)
  6. grocery shopping without masks and shortages – The last time I went grocery shopping was on March 12th, the day before our first case here, and when shortages were already beginning. The last time I’ve visited the grocery store (for the pharmacy) was on March 16th. Since then, Jason has been our designated grocery shopper (the stores have asked to have one designated person per household for social distancing protocols). I can’t pop down to HEB for an item we’ve run low on or weren’t able to buy due to shortages. In fact, I can’t pop down to ANY indoor location other than my house. I haven’t been inside any building except  my home for the last however-many weeks.
  7. Alamo Drafthouse – In March, I received a free movie ticket to use that month for my birthday, but of course, businesses shuttered their doors midway through the month. I don’t really mourn the free ticket I lost – I’d rather be able to support this local business monetarily – but I miss that experience of going to Drafthouse with family or friends, ordering a meal or joining one of their quote-along parties. I didn’t go to the theatre often, but I really enjoyed the opportunity.
  8. seeing my extended family – The last time I saw anyone in my family (outside my household) was on March 15th, when my dad, stepmom, and half-sister came over for Laurence’s birthday party. My mom was unable to make it because she was still recovering from some kind of flu she never had tested, and we didn’t want to risk the rest of us catching it. The last time I saw most members of my family was in mid-February, when my cousin got married, or at Christmas.
  9. non-virtual 5Ks – Just not a fan of the virtual format, and I miss the excitement and camaraderie and fun of real 5Ks.
  10. exploring new-to-me places – On March 8th, five days before our first case, I went to a state park that I’d never been to before for a six-mile hike. Afterwards, a friend and I went to brunch at a restaurant neither of us had been to. Both places were awesome. Over the previous few months, thanks to my hiking group, I’d been able to visit so many different parks and hiking trails that I’d never been to before. I was discovering so many things about this city that I’d never known. And so many more were planned, all canceled now. Dinners and hikes and karaoke nights and so much more.

On a more general note, I miss being able to plan for the future. Whether that’s planning for a vacation, or the possibility of going to school in the fall like I’d hoped, or even whether or not Ambrose will be able to start college at normal time in August – I’d just like to be able to think about the future without wondering when/if COVID19 will be a factor.

I asked Jason and the boys what they missed most from pre-quarantine. Morrigan said that he missed being able to go out with friends, and not living at home. Ambrose said he missed real school as opposed to online school (which he learned that he really dislikes back when we lived in Wisconsin!). Laurence misses his theatre class, rehearsals, theatre friends, his theatre director, etc. Jason misses being able to go for walks wherever at the spur of the moment.

What is it that you’re missing most from life pre-quarantine?

**written before our overzealous governor decided that this week, before we’ve even reached our peak, is the week when we should begin opening things up again…

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 5

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Thistle

Okay. Before I begin this post, I need to have a little rant. This is copied from my social media, so I apologize if you’ve seen it more than once.

I’ve seen too many people lately suggesting we fight COVID19 through “herd immunity.” This makes me very angry for two reasons. First, we know so little about this disease that we don’t even know if “herd immunity” will work. We don’t know if the antibodies our bodies create fighting it will be sufficient to prevent multiple infections, nor do we know its mutation vectors yet. Second, “herd immunity” relies on exposing everyone to the disease and letting a certain percentage of the population die. Frankly, I don’t want friends and family members to die due to this kind of stupidity, and I don’t think anyone else would, either. The whole point of social distancing and shelter-at-home orders are to keep everyone from getting this damn disease all at the same time, because if everyone gets it at once, our health care system won’t be able to care for them. Flattening the curve means that we all get exposed gradually in a way our hospitals and health staff can handle. So stop suggesting that “herd immunity” is a plausible, non-catastrophic solution!!

Repeating: 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, April 10th
Local count: 665, 24 deaths, 92 recovered. The two new deaths today are both from the nursing home outbreak, taking their total to 12 of our 24 deaths. We also had our first confirmed case in the county jail today, which is really worrying. At home: With Jason’s negative test results back, I was able to leave the house today and go for a run. It felt soooo nice to get out and move my body after five days inside and with no exercise. Plus, the honeysuckle is in bloom! <– Jason continues to improve and hasn’t had a fever in two days. He didn’t need any kind of Tylenol/etc today either.

–Saturday, April 11th
Local count: 723, 27 deaths (14 from nursing home outbreak), 119 recovered. I woke up – at 4:40, no less – and had body aches all over. Insomnia dulled my brain, and anxiety had me freaking out…until I remembered that I went out running for the first time in over a week yesterday. Of course my body is stiff and sore. (insert face palm and eye roll here) Otherwise, it was a fairly uneventful day.

–Sunday, April 12th
Local count: 772, 30 deaths (15 NH), 135 recovered. The morning started with another 4:40 wakeup, ugh. After three large cups of coffee, we began our Easter celebrations. The boys did an egg hunt indoors, and then a cascarone fight out in the front yard. We got to Polo the entire thing for the family to see, which was nice. Unfortunately, around noon, things got really bad. My grandmother was rushed to the ER for what appeared to be a series of strokes, and due to COVID19 protocols, no one could stay with her. My mom went out to stay with my grandpa, who lacks the capacity to care for himself since his hospitalization last summer. The local (small town) hospital couldn’t find anything wrong in brain scans or bloodwork, so my grandma was transferred to San Antonio for further tests. This is incredibly worrisome for all the regular reasons, plus no one can stay with her, plus she might come in contact with COVID19 (and is a very vulnerable member of the population).

–Monday, April 13th
Local count: 794, 33 deaths (16 NH), 135 recovered. That is the smallest step up we’ve seen in several weeks and I really hope it’s a good sign (rather than labs backed up over Easter). No new news about my grandmother. Tests continue to come back normal. Strong possibility she’s had TIAs (like mini-strokes that don’t cause permanent damage) but we won’t know for sure until the MRI results come in. Other than that general worry, it was a pretty good day today: a 5K in the morning, and a virtual party for the March/April birthdays – fancy dress suggested! – for our hiking group in the evening.

–Tuesday, April 14th
Local count: 815, 33 deaths (16 NH), 141 recovered. I saw an article today that says the WHO doesn’t know if covid-antibodies are enough to prevent a second infection with the virus later on, which is one of the big things I mentioned in my rant above (written several days earlier). This is extremely worrisome and we need to continue to stay safe at home until we get on the other side of this! We have some models out in San Antonio that predict we’ll hit our peak in late April to mid-May, which is definitely further out than originally predicted. We’re really doing a good job here, despite our high death rate percentage (which is mostly due to the unfortunate nursing home outbreak). As for my grandmother, MRI confirmed that she’s had a minor stroke with only minimal permanent damage (some mild vision loss in one eye), and she’s on new medications and regimens to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Definitely a relief! I need a few less exciting days!!

–Wednesday, April 15th
Local count: 890, 37 deaths (17 NH), 147 recovered. Sad to say that this is the second-highest daily increase in cases that we’ve seen in San Antonio. Most likely the low numbers these last two days were a backlog from the holiday weekend. There also is an increasing number of cases breaking out at the county jail, despite all the precautions the city has taken. At home: The boys have started getting info on their modified, at-home AP tests, which’ll be interesting. We have no vegetables because the selection has been scant and going bad quickly, so my body is craving some good nutrition. At least the cold front means I’ve been able to do a lot more walking. Though I did encounter a family of eight, half in masks, at the trails today, ranting about how we need to start opening things up again because “They” (the media? WHO? Democrats? Lizard folk?) are deliberating trying to destroy America…

–Thursday, April 16th
Local count: 918, 37 deaths (17 NH), 176 recovered. I decided to add the recovery data to my spreadsheet/graph. The numbers didn’t start to come in until March 30th, but it helps me to see them in conjunction with the other numbers. We did get a few local updates today. San Antonio decided to make face masks mandatory (rather than suggested), effective immediately. Thankfully, outdoor exercise is exempt from this requirement as long as you’re practicing good social distancing measures. I’m relieved, because if it was required during exercise, that’d be the end of running for the next few months…

It was a rough week, given my grandmother’s stroke and a bit of snowball emotion for me regarding how long we’ve been stuck inside. I know we have another few months to go, and that’s tough.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
With the world a mess right now, I need a place to look at all the good things. Here are some highlights of my week:

  • honeysuckle!
  • time and endurance improvements on my runs
  • Laurence finished pulling off the planks of our deck, so we can begin the next phase of building
  • Morrigan dyed his hair for the first time (red, though didn’t end up as red as he’d have liked)
  • Since we couldn’t make true grass baskets for Easter, we had a lot of fun with makeshift materials. (see photo above)
  • Jason and I watched Dark Waters, which is both a phenomenal and terrifying movie.
  • restaurants that allow curbside pickup so our family can still have “eating out” nights
  • cards received from friends
  • virtual birthday party night with my hiking friends
  • crossing off another box on my running bingo!
  • a new one-mile PR
  • a lovely cold front for a few days this week

How are all of you holding up right now? Is your state or local community looking out for you?

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Race Report: Race Across Morocco 5K (Virtual)

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Thistle

A couple months ago, I stumbled across a virtual 5K called Race Across Morocco. I’d never signed up for a virtual race before and had no experience with that sort of thing. Since I had 5Ks planned and purchased for March and May, this virtual one in April seemed exactly what I needed. I hadn’t anticipated coronavirus or events being canceled, moved, or made virtual. Last month, I did the Shamrock Shuffle 5K as a virtual event and wasn’t particularly a fan of the “format” as you might call it. But still, I’d ordered and received my packet for Race Across Morocco, so I decided when it was cool out on Monday morning to just go for it.

I did this 5K once again at my local hiking trails. The problem with doing a 5K in that location is that there’s this one giant hill toward the summit. You either go up a very steep trail, or you go up a long, meandering, constantly uphill trail. When I walk these trails, I prefer to stay on the upward track as long as possible. If I’m going to run, though, I want to walk up the steep hill so I can have my running mostly downhill. Because running uphill sucks. This is the same location/route where I’ve been running full miles and slowly improving my time, but not the same park where I practice Couch to 5K (it has mostly level ground).

The morning was beautifully cool and I decided to push myself a bit. Honestly, it’s hard to know just how much of my difficulty during this 3.1 miles came from that extra push (which of course started by speed-walking up a giant hill in the first mile!) and how much came from a combination of prolonged insomnia and massive amounts of oak pollen in the air. Either way, I was breathing hard and the air felt thick even though the humidity was low. My legs hurt, feeling a bit battered and almost to-failure fatigue toward the end. I did run the entire second mile, and beat my current mile-PR by 24 seconds. It was still only a 15:07-minute-mile, but I’ll take it! The first time I ran a full mile since all this weight regain, it was almost a 17-min-mile, so that’s some major improvement!

Anyway, I finished the 5K in 51:47, or a 16:42/mi pace, with about half the race run, half walked. I opened up my medal afterwards and was excited to see and wear it. I was also excited to cross off my third running bingo square, labeled “international.” While I’d love to actually run an event in another country one day, I don’t want to bank on ever being flush enough to do so (puns intended), so a virtual international 5K will have to do!

I do look forward to real live 5Ks again one day!

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Personally Paranormal

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Thistle

Last week, I reviewed the Real Life Ghost Stories Podcast, and said that I’d discuss my personal experience with the paranormal in another post. This is that post, and I’ll warn folks ahead of time that this might be long. I’ve tried to cut out as much as I could, but family paranormal history in particular was a big part of my formative years and so makes up a bulk of my experience.

This all starts with my maternal grandmother. She wouldn’t claim to be psychic or anything, but she does have many stories of psychic experiences from her life. She’s not happy about this, and calls it a curse. For example, she gets a particular kind of headache when she encounters someone who is about to die or experience the death of a close loved one. When she was a very young child, she dreamed that her father was going to be run over and killed by a yellow truck. She told her parents this, and they dismissed it as a nightmare, but soon after, he was run over and killed by a yellow tractor while out on a job.

It’s not always a curse, though. When her oldest child, my aunt, was a teenager, my grandmother dreamed that the kids would be driving with their aunt as the pedals would get stuck. The driver would lean over, and while distracted, the car would run off a road into a tree, killing them all. My grandmother confided in her daughter, who she dreamed was in the front seat. Later, this situation did happen – a screwdriver rolled under the pedal, and the driver reached to get it. When the car ran off the road toward the tree, my forewarned aunt grabbed the wheel and jerked them back onto the road, saving them. There have been more recent incidents as well. Back in late 2001, I found out I was pregnant with my second child. I called my mom, then my cousin Jen, to tell them. Jen said, “I know. Grandma already told me.” Apparently, despite the fact that I lived a thousand miles away in Wisconsin and hadn’t been in touch with anyone, my grandmother had dreamed I was pregnant with a baby boy, and she announced my pregnancy to our whole family before a couple days before I let anyone know.

Many of my family members are skeptic and believe these are all coincidences and explainable. Fair enough. I just know that remnants of this “psychic gene” have been passed down. My cousins and I used to play games together and would all come up with the same words or ideas at the exact same moment. I dreamed about my family gathered at my uncle’s house twelve years before he bought the house and I ever saw it in real life. My friends and I would try to “send each other dreams,” which resulted in having dreams in different colors/perspectives than I’d ever had. Once, right after my mom got a few lottery tickets, I suddenly and absolutely knew that the number 2 would be on the lottery that night. I announced this aloud – my mom was frustrated that I didn’t tell her before she picked her numbers – and indeed 2 was on the lottery.

But psychic stuff, especially mild traces of it, likely can be explained away. I certainly don’t attribute the things I suddenly “know” in adult life to any kind of paranormal ability. Usually, I think that stuff is due to subconscious observations making connections in the brain that you might not comprehend on a conscious level. However, these kinds of psychic dreams or connections are only the tip of the iceberg of what I’ve experienced in my life.

The earliest thing I can remember dates back to when I was three years old. (Side note: Most people don’t remember back into infancy and toddlerhood because during puberty, your brain reshuffles brain neurology to prioritize memories that will be more important moving forward, and many of the things you learn in infancy are no longer needed. Because I experienced a lot of trauma during my puberty and adolescent years, and became hypervigilant, my brain didn’t do the discarding that most brains do. I have roughly two dozen memories from my first three years of life, before my family moved to South Carolina. Interestingly, all of these memories are in a weird, almost sepia tone.) We were packing to move from Texas to SC. My parents had covered my sister’s and my bedroom floor with squares of various carpets (samples? random ends they got cheap?), and my dad was stacking these up to go into boxes. I was sitting nearby and playing. There were two stacks of carpet ready to get packed. My dad’s back was to them. I watched one square of carpet float up about a foot in the air, float sideways to the second stack, and then drop onto the second stack. I wasn’t scared until after it landed, at which point I began screaming (for no reason, my dad thought, because I didn’t have the language to explain).

This next story comes from our first campus apartment in South Carolina. It was a two-bedroom place with a closet in the hallway that was probably meant to be for coats or a pantry? It had shelves lining the walls and no windows, and my parents called it the “playroom” because that’s where we kept all the toys. It was hardly big enough for my sister and I to stand around in. I was about 4-5 years old, my sister two years younger than me. At the time, I was in love with Michael from Knight Rider (I know, I know), and used to play this came where I’d go into the playroom, shut the door, and turn out the light so that it would be pitch black. This was the only way my sister and I could “talk” to Michael. We didn’t receive responses or anything – it was just a game – and I’d imagine some “adventure” assignment from Michael for us to play. We’d leave the room and have our adventure. Neither of us were afraid of the dark or of the playroom.

One time, however, we went in there, closed the door, turned off the light, all like normal. But when I turned around to begin “talking” to Michael, I was shocked at what I saw. I’d had this giant stuffed bunny since babyhood. Its paws were originally glued together by a flower, but the flower had disappeared and its arms hung straight out by its sides. The bunny was in a box on the bottom shelf where he normally sat. When I turned around that day, I could see the bunny – because there was a lit candle in his paw, and his arm was moving slowly up and down, and the goddamn bunny was smiling at me. I freaked out. I screamed and reached behind me to where the light switch was. Only it had disappeared. I could feel the shelves and the edge of the doorframe, but there was no light switch between them. So I tried to grab the doorknob, and the door was completely flat, no knob at all. My sister was screaming too – though I don’t think she saw anything, she was just scared because I was – and we ran in circles in this tiny closet, trying to find a way out. I finally found the doorknob just as my dad had gotten to the playroom to see what was wrong. (I think I got in trouble over this.) I know that the switch and doorknob disappearing were probably just a result of my panic, but that nightmare image of the bunny, which came absolutely out of nowhere in a situation where I wasn’t in the slightest afraid, still terrifies me. Needless to say, I never played with that bunny again.

There were little things throughout the years. Once, my bedroom light flickered on and off again in the same kind of quickness as a brownout, and in that microsecond, time seemed to slow. I heard a deep, commanding voice (that at the time, I assumed must be either god or the devil) say, “Come with me.” I was just playing in my bedroom at the time, roughly six or seven years old. When I was ten, I woke up from a dream about a bomb, and could hear ticking when I laid on my side. I wasn’t scared of it and knew there must be something in my ear, but while I was awake playing with the noise, I heard the sound of a knife against a knife sharpener several times (though we had no knife sharpener). I freaked out, thinking someone was in the house, and went to my parents, who wrote it off as a nightmare until it started happening again. My dad went to go check it out, and decided it was the toilet making noises. Wut? I didn’t sleep the rest of that night. I couldn’t tell you what either of these experiences were, something my brain did or something “other.”

In high school and early college, I dated a guy whose family claimed to have Mexican witchcraft roots. Say what you want about that sort of thing, but I witnessed too much in that house to not believe. On multiple occasions, I watched my boyfriend point to his open bedroom door from across the room, say, “Close,” and then the door immediately closed just as if a living person was touching it. (The door opened into his bedroom, so it could not have been someone hiding in the hallway.) Once, after staying the night in their house on vacation from college, I got up and went to the kitchen to get a drink. I froze as a man in a dark suit walked out of their laundry room. He froze, too, and we stared at each other. I was terrified because I thought he’d broken into the house and I was going to be killed (this wasn’t the safest part of town!). Then he turned and walked out of the back door. I was relieved until I realized the door never actually opened. I wrote it off as still semi-dreaming in the early morning, and began to tell the story to my boyfriend’s mom at breakfast. As soon as I said, “I saw a man,” she interrupted to ask if he was wearing a dark suit. When I said yes, she nodded and said that she didn’t know who he was, but his ghost was always hanging out in the laundry room and that she’d seen him dozens of times.

I have so many more stories, but this is incredibly long as it is, so I’m going to close with my favorite. This is one of those inexplicable experiences that may have a perfectly rational explanation that I just don’t know. It happened in the summer of 1999, when I was visiting Wisconsin and when Jason and I met in person for the first time (after several months of letters and phone calls). We went with a mutual friend to a gathering at a farmhouse in the country. (This was all rural area.) While everyone was watching a movie, Jason and I decided to go outside to talk. We sat down on the gravel driveway and chatted for a long time. A tiny kitten came up to us and began to crawl up and down our arms, mewing, getting into our hair, crawling over shoulders. It was adorable! At one point, I looked up, and realized there was an entire circle of cats around us. Nine total, all spaced equidistant in a circle around us, their backs facing us. It was the weirdest thing, and I was at a loss to explain it. Shortly after I noticed, a car came up the driveway, so Jason and I got up, moved to a picnic bench on the other side of the house, and resumed talking. The kitten followed us and resumed its manic affection. I looked around just to see, and all nine of those cats had also followed, and had created a circle around the picnic bench, backs to us, spaced equally around. I wasn’t so much creeped out as in goggle-eyed amazement. Of course, we attributed it at the time to our grand love story because we were in that phase of infatuation, heh. But to this day, I have never seen anything else like that nor do I have any explanation for the behavior of those cats.

So there you go. A partial description of my dealings with the maybe-maybe-not paranormal.

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Sunday Coffee – More Abandoned

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Thistle

So…I’ve now abandoned two books this month. I cull many, many books after the first few pages or even the first few chapters, but I don’t consider a book abandoned unless I make a great effort to get into it and read a considerable chunk of it (generally past the 50% line). This week’s abandoned book was Depression Hates a Moving Target by Nita Sweeney.

I began this book at the beginning of March. It’s a memoir detailing the ways in which Sweeney struggled with bipolar disorder and her journey into running. She is a slow, unconventional runner (at least for the percentage of the book that I read), which made her journey more relatable for me. And yet, I still couldn’t get into the book. After six weeks stalled out around the 50% mark, I finally gave up.

I’ve never been a big memoir person. Every once in awhile, I find one I enjoy, but I’m not generally a fan of the format. I prefer memoirs and personal stories in visual format. (This might explain why I enjoy Lucy Knisley’s graphic memoirs, when usually I’m not a fan of graphic novels/nonfiction most of the time.) Sweeney’s story was interesting, but by the time I got to the middle of the book, I felt like I’d read everything I’d needed to read. I have no idea what else happens afterwards because it seems like all had been said? I don’t know. Memoirs often feel like that to me. Probably why they aren’t my favorite.

Anyway, it’s a good book, well-written, and an interesting look at running in a way that doesn’t involve super-athletic superhuman feats of crazy races and some such. I recommend it, even if I didn’t personally finish it.

PS – Happy Easter to those who celebrate. I hope you’re staying safe at home. Our family will miss going out to egg hunt at my grandparents’ ranch, or even hosting Easter at our home like we did last year, but safety first. The boys will be doing an indoor egg hunt and a cascarone fight out in the front yard.

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 4

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Thistle

Jason and I have been wondering a lot about what the world will look like when all this is over. Already we’ve seen some signs – a local university, for instance, said that it won’t be requiring SAT/ACT scores for three years starting fall 2021. I’ve also heard from many teachers in many different states that they’re required to put out virtual work, but also not allowed to fail students even if work isn’t turned in. How are universities and future employers going to adapt to the folks who had one of their pivotal years in high school during quarantine? Everything is going to have to change. I also really hope this can lead to some better changes – like valuing those employees our country previously said weren’t worth raising our pitiful minimum wage for, or realizing the barrage of standardized testing is pointless and detrimental to students.

Unfortunately, this was another scary week in the Gignac household. Worse than the previous, I’m afraid. Y’all? I’m drowning right now. I’m overloaded and having trouble seeing forward. My tarot card above is exactly how I feel.

I’m writing this all because I need written records to look back on. 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, April 3rd
Local count: 342, 9 deaths, 47 recovered. Huge spike in numbers today due to the nursing home outbreak that I mentioned in my last quarantine post. We also heard that the city is beginning to issue major penalties (like revoking occupancy certificates) for businesses that refuse to comply with the shelter-at-home protocols. (Apparently, the biggest violators are Planet K and vape shops. Go figure.) The city leaders finally closed golf courses, too. Community spread is now leading travel-related cases in the city for the first time. On the home front: Jason and I got word that our May 5K has been moved to July – a good decision though the heat will make that one a rough event. At least it hasn’t been canceled altogether! I had a facetime coffee date with a friend to help alleviate the monotony.

–Saturday, April 4th
Local count: 384, 11 deaths, 47 recovered. Jason went grocery shopping and I’m just so thankful that HEB is taking really good care of its employees and customers right now. Plus we managed to find toilet paper for the first time in a month, woo! I haven’t been sleeping well since all this started, and I crashed for a fitful nap in the afternoon. Ugh. But I also found a tutorial on making myself a mask out of an old pair of Lularoe leggings, which worked okay. I wouldn’t expect it to protect me/others much, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

–Sunday, April 5th
Local count: 410, 12 deaths, 67 recovered. Today was a rough and scary day. Everyone was feeling fine (J and I even went for a walk first thing in the morning –> ), and then suddenly mid-afternoon, Jason crashed with chest pressure, body aches, and a 99.9 degree fever. He took the city’s evaluation pre-screening and then called Urgent Care on their advice. They were able to get him in for a test the same evening. Once there, they listened to his lungs, took an EKG (because of a family history of a heart defect – the EKG was normal/fine), and did a nasal swab for the COVID test. They sent him home to convalesce, and said he should receive his results in 5-7 days. !!! We’re just going to assume he has it and try to take care of him while also staying six feet away… I’ve been thinking about where Jason might have picked this up, and I’d guess he was exposed at Walmart back on the 27th. We’ve avoided Walmart because they’re taking just about no precautions at all, but that day one of our two junk laptops died. The boys need those for school and shipping estimates for online ordering were several weeks long, so Jason ran to Walmart to pick up whatever was available. His symptoms began about 10 days later.

–Monday, April 6th
Local count: 456, 12 deaths, 77 recovered. San Antonio put through a resolution to extend shelter-from-home (which technically ends on the 9th) through the end of April (which is when the state order currently ends anyway). They also officially put through the recommendation to wear cloth masks when in situations where social distancing is difficult (like grocery shopping, despite precautions taken by stores). Jason woke up with shortness of breath in addition to other symptoms. Not bad enough for the ER, but still not a great sign. For the first half of the day, he worked from home just to keep his mind off things. Then he slept the whole afternoon straight through. My friend Stephanie went to HEB to get us a few sick foods/items like soup and Gatorade, which was a godsend since we’re currently not supposed to leave the house.

–Tuesday, April 7th
Local count: 503, 18 deaths, 77 recovered. We had a big spike in our death numbers here today, though not an actual spike in deaths. It turns out that the nursing home that had a massive outbreak due to lax precautions was also hiding the numbers of folks who died of COVID in their care. Almost half of SA’s death toll has been from that facility, as well as almost a fifth of confirmed positive cases. It’s unbelievable. That facility needs to be SHUT DOWN, but sadly it’s state-governed and not under the jurisdiction of San Antonio. Sigh. Otherwise, Texas closed down all the state parks and historic spots, including walking trails, until further notice today. At home: It is really odd to take care of someone from six feet away. Jason has entered the digestive-distress portion of this illness, and I feel so helpless standing “nearby” to ask if he needs anything, washing my hands multiple times throughout the course of helping him get food or water, dropping Tylenol onto his plate or into his hands without touching him. Stress and worry are compounding, particularly as I’m not only acting as caretaker, but taking over the things he normally handles (cooking, for instance) and full-time responsibility for Ash (who has remained steady-but-not-improving for the last two months).

–Wednesday, April 8th
Local count: 554, 20 deaths (10 from the nursing home outbreak), 92 recovered. Personally, I had a bit of an emotional meltdown this morning after waking up at 5:38am for the seventh morning in a row. WTF, internal clock? This is not okay! Stress, anxiety, worry, overwhelmingness, insomnia, fear, lack of exercise, lack of schedule, and not-enough-attention-to-nutrition have snowballed on top of me. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a deep hole and don’t know how to even begin to escape. I want to begin building my front garden. I want to go for a run, or a hike, even alone. I want my hands to heal from the rawness of washing up 100 times a day as I take care of Jason. I want my kids to be able to go back to school, if not this semester, than in August. I’m exhausted, and teary, and I don’t have a lot left to give right now. In better news, Jason started feeling more alive today. He ate more, and didn’t feel sleepy in the afternoon like normal. Hopefully he’s on the mend!

–Thursday, April 9th
Local count: 615, 22 deaths, 92 recovered. Thankfully, it seems that the outbreak at the nursing home has been contained and hasn’t spread to other facilities despite some (previously) shared staff. Unfortunately, the economic crisis is coming to a head – people without jobs or food, the city losing millions in revenue, etc. It’s going to be tough, and we have a long way to go. As for the family: Hallelujah – Jason’s results came in, and he tested negative for covid. I know there have been false negatives, but this really has seemed more like a stomach flu after the first day or two, and I really think he’s safe. It’s such a relief. I spent the morning in a bit of a messy-emotion flail, relief warring with deferred grief and fear and anxiety. Afterwards, though, I felt good enough to dress up for the day, and be a little silly in celebration.

This week I got a preview of what could happen should one of us catch the plague, and it’s not pretty. I really hope everyone starts STAYING HOME. The number of cases in the USA is INSANE – a full third of the world’s cases. So many people are sick and dying, and it’s just so terrifying. This morning I have to go out grocery shopping (since Jason is still sick), and I’m scared because I have so many underlying conditions. It’s the first time I’ve been out to the store in a month, and with it being so different (limited numbers, spacing decals, plexiglass stations, etc), it feels like a new-to-me place and my anxiety/agoraphobia is spiking badly. But my family needs this, so into the danger I go.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
With the world a mess right now, I need a place to look at all the good things. Here are some highlights of my week:

  • San Antonio is enough ahead of the curve that they were able to loosen restrictions on COVID tests, and thus when Jason got sick, he was able to get in for a test that same day, even if results would take time.
  • friends willing to get groceries for you when you’re not supposed to leave the house
  • the shoutout and messages from the hosts of Real Life Ghost Stories after my review this week – it still boggles my mind every time someone reads this tiny blog of mine!
  • a few more friends and family joined Marco Polo, so I’m able to stay closer in contact with them
  • the folks who host the Real Life Ghost Stories podcast put up their first youtube channel video, giving me more spooky paranormal stuff to listen to!
  • Jason starting to feel better, and then getting the negative test result
  • My family didn’t have any good masks (just construction/dust-protection paper masks, and the one leggings mask that turned out to be AWFUL to try to breathe in), so a friend made us some and dropped them on our doorstep.
  • Our vet is still open curbside, so we were able to get Ash’s next round of medicine without any person-to-person contact.

How was everyone else’s week? Are you all still holding up? Please reach out if you need to talk!

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Wellness Wednesday – A New Personal Milestone!

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Thistle

Note: This post was pre-drafted before Jason got sick and my family entered full-on quarantine.

Last Thursday, I looked at the weather and saw that soon, San Antonio would be sitting in a multi-week rain cloud. I hadn’t run in days – in fact, I hadn’t exercised much in days. My body desperately needed to MOVE. Looking at the possibility of being flooded out for weeks, I threw on my running clothes and headed out to the park.

My next scheduled run for the Couch to 5K program was Week 5, Day 1, which consisted of three five-minute runs with three-minute walking breaks between them. For anyone who has done C25K in the past, you might recognize the dreaded Week 5. From Day 1’s fairly innocuous pattern, you jump to two eight-minute runs on Day 2 (a reasonable increase), to a frickin’ twenty minute nonstop run on Day 3. From my own personal history and the stories I’ve heard from many others trying to attempt this program, this last day of Week 5 is where folks often fall apart. Twenty minutes is a LONG time to run nonstop, especially when the longest you’ve done previously is eight minutes, and for most of the program, it’s been five minutes max. It’s a really huge jump and a valid reason to struggle. It’s also extraordinarily intimidating.

When I finished Week 4, I felt good. In fact, I felt so good that I no longer felt intimidated by Week 5. I’ve been doing this program in a way that kept me running slow, steady, and gentle. I’ve focused on keeping my breath calm and my heart rate down. There’ll be the occasional day when I feel like pushing hard, and as long as I can do that without hurting myself, I don’t mind doing so. But mostly, I’ve tried to run in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m dying by the time my program says, “Walk!” And I felt like I could do that nonstop twenty minutes. It might not be fun, but I could do it.

So when I went out to the park last Thursday, I decided to skip Days 1 and 2 of Week 5. Day 3 is the intimidating one, the big hurdle, and I wasn’t going to let weeks of rain delay me facing it. I put in my headphones, turned on my music, and hit Go.

Five minutes of warm-up walk later, and I was off.

My pace was very slow. Later, when I looked at RunKeeper, I found that I held a pretty steady pace of 3.6 mph, or a 16:40/mi. For the entire twenty minutes. Because I did it. I jumped over that hurdle and left it behind me. And you know what? I was okay. I felt okay. When the program told me that I was halfway through, I was surprised, because I’d estimated that only about seven minutes had passed. When I was told that I had one minute left, I had enough gas left in the tank to speed up to a (slightly) faster pace for that last bit. I felt like I could have held up that pace for a lot longer than twenty minutes, and that’s HUGE. It’s like coming over the mountain – the rest is downhill from here.

During my twenty-minute run, I achieved three major milestones. First, it was the longest time I’ve run nonstop since 2014 (back when I was 75-80 lbs lighter and had been running regularly for three years!). Second, it was the furthest distance I’ve run nonstop since then as well. Third, and my favorite: I’ve run a full mile several times since last September, but it’s always been on a route that’s 2/3rds to 3/4ths downhill. In last week’s run, I ran 1.2 miles nonstop on level ground, no slope to help me out at all (which makes a MAJOR difference!). That last milestone was also one of my current running goals. It’s not a mile PR by any stretch of the imagination – downhill means faster without as much effort – but it feels better than a PR. It feels like achievement. It IS achievement. My face afterwards says it all.

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Podcast Review: Real Life Ghost Stories

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Thistle

 

I’ve mentioned the above Podcast in several posts lately, and figured I should do a longer review because I love it so much. Real Life Ghost Stories is a podcast hosted by Emma and Dan, a couple who seem to both love and fear the paranormal. Each week, they do a movie review followed either by stories gathered from historical accounts, folklore, and various other research tidbits, or user-submitted personal paranormal stories. The podcast is a mix of very creepy tales and lots of humor, giving it the right tone that never goes too far off to one side or the other. I’ve found myself looking over my shoulder and laughing out loud during the same episode. Emma is the perfect storyteller (with, it has to be said, a gorgeous Irish accent). You know how sometimes you listen to an audiobook and the narrator is just awful, and sometimes they’re brilliant and bring the story to life? Emma falls into the brilliant category, and the banter between her and Dan is priceless.

Now, to get a bit into why I, personally, love this podcast, I have to give a little background. Two things are important here.

First, I’ve never, ever in my life been able to enjoy a podcast. I’ve tried so many. I tried nonfiction podcasts on subjects I enjoy (food history, the biology of stress, fitness, writing). I’ve tried fiction-based podcasts like Night Vale. I’ve tried to listen to podcasts that are actually college lectures. I’ve even tried listening to the podcast that my favorite author co-hosts, because I love his stories and I love hearing what he has to say about writing and fiction and all the rest. But nope. I’ve never been able to continue past a few episodes. I don’t like the podcast format, the succinctness of them, the weird mix of conversation and teaching that so many use, etc. I chalked this up as being the same as my dislike of magazines. I don’t read or like the article format and my brain just blanks out after a while when I get bored. So honestly, when I heard about this podcast from Andi at Estella’s Revenge, I doubted I’d enjoy it or listen to more than an episode or two.

So why bother at all, right? Well, this comes down to my second point: I’ve been interested in the paranormal my entire life, partially due to early childhood book selections, partially due to personal experiences. I’ll save said experiences for another post, because otherwise this would go on WAY too long. But Andi’s description of the podcast seemed so ME that I decided to download the first few episodes and give them a try, even if I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work out longterm.

It was Emma’s storytelling that hooked me from the beginning. Y’all know that I’m a HUGE audiobook fan but also very picky about my narrators. Emma is an amazing storyteller. She reads both her own and others’ stories out with perfect timing, pitch, and emphasis, so it’s more like performing the story rather than just reading them aloud. So few people realize how tough that is, and how the best audio narrators are the ones trained in vocal acting. I don’t have a clue what training, if any, Emma has, but she has the talent in this regard.

More than that, though, the podcast has this perfect mixture of story and banter. It’s like listening to a new mini-audiobook with each episode, followed by the sort of discussion that you could see happening at an in-real-life book club or at a fireside sleepover. Dan is the perfect counterpoint in the podcast, bringing in reactions and moving the podcast from story to discussion seamlessly. The banter between the two never feels staged or scripted. It’s awesome.

(photo credit: Facebook RLGS)

Jason tells me that I’m obsessed and he’s probably right. Over the last few weeks, I’ve nearly caught up with all 70+ episodes, and now I’m wondering what I’m going to do in a few days when I’ve finished them all. I keep telling him little stories I’ve heard or things I’ve learned, or things I’ve seen on their instagram/facebook, and he laughs at me each time. He can just keep laughing, though. This podcast is carrying me through all this COVID lockdown and book slump, and it’s giving me reasons to smile, which is a lot to say given the current environment. I’m so happy to have found it. Many thanks to Andi!!

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Sunday Coffee – Just After I Thought I Found a Good Book…

Posted on April 5, 2020 by Thistle

Earlier this week, I saw a preview for a new TV show coming out: Defending Jacob. It featured Michelle Dockery (Mary from Downton Abbey) as the mother, and the story looked interesting. A fourteen-year-old boy is accused of killing a classmate. His parents want to believe he’s innocent and steadfastly defend him, but of course there’s always a doubt in your mind. Beyond that, there’s the reaction of everyone around them – the hoards of press, the court trials, the graffiti on their house, etc. It seemed like a fascinating-if-gruesome psychological story, even better in book form.

The show was based on the book (same title) by William Landay. He’s not an author I was familiar with, and I’d read none of his books before. Confession: I tend to avoid male authors in modern fiction, particularly anything of the literary or thriller areas, because of certain trends that often go through their writing. I’m not anti-male-author or anything like that – in fact, most of my favorite authors are male – but there are particular quirks of writing that I see too frequently, and so gravitate toward non-male authors. (Notably, there are certain quirks of writing I see too often with modern female writers, too, and I tend to avoid those authors or genres that use them frequently. They just happen to appear more in genres I avoid anyway.) Anyway, the story for Defending Jacob was interesting enough that I put myself on the ebook hold at my library.

Friday, the book became available. I downloaded it and began to read. Right away, I was hooked. The story was fascinating. I didn’t really like the frame story back-and-forth – that’s often just not my favorite technique – but it wasn’t too bad. Those male-writing quirks? Definitely all present, unfortunately. The way the narrator described his wife and her friends, the self-indulgent masculinity, the arrogant navel-gazing, etc. But it was a much more subtle version of it than I often see, and the story itself was interesting enough for me to ignore the parts of the writing I disliked. Until I came to this line:

Seriously. “Try as I might to penetrate her, by talking, kissing, stabbing myself into her” – WTF? Was that meant to be clever? Because it feels like it was meant to be clever. Bleagh.

Anyway. I’d actually planned to read past this, but the line was just so bad that I had to share it with Jason and my online book group. Jason didn’t know what book I was reading, looked up the characters, and found Defending Jacob. He read the Wikipedia summary, which of course had the full plot, and was really surprised that I was reading the book. He expressed his surprise, and a warning bell went off in my head. Because that description I gave in the beginning? That’s exactly the kind of book that I’d read, and Jason would know that. Clearly something happens at a point beyond where I’d read that Jason thought I would highly dislike.

He didn’t want to give me any spoilers. I thought about things that might happen in the book that would make me dislike it and want to abandon it at the point I was at. I mentioned those particular things. Turns out, one of those things did indeed happen in the book. So I asked Jason to tell me the entire spoilery plot, and then I read the Wiki article for myself. That confirmed it – I did not want to read the rest of Defending Jacob.

The part that I read – probably around 40-50% – was actually really good if I ignored the writing quirks that drove me crazy and the awful line I highlighted above. The story was good. But I’m glad I had some forewarning, because if I’d read the entire book, I’d have had another really negative review to post here. I think other people might really enjoy this book. The ending just hit on one of my personal dislikes (not just in books, but stories in any form). Everyone has their particular pet peeves in books, and this one hit on mine. So yeah, I’m writing about the book because 1) I’m frustrated that I still haven’t been able to find a book to read and love since early February, and 2) I think other people might really love this book and I thought it deserved blog time despite my abandonment.

Now I’m back to the drawing board. I literally have no books right now (physical or virtual) that I want to read. Even those that I want to read eventually don’t sound appealing at the moment. Quarantine is a really bad time to have a book slump!! Anyone have any good suggestions?

PS – This book takes place in Newton, MA, which is where my family lived in 2014-2015. Both this book and the folks in Newton seemed to feel that Newton was “like a small town,” which just shows that none of those folks have ever lived in an actual small town. Newton was like a giant suburb city with multiple divisions (there were five “towns” with different names inside Newton!) and as much crime as you’d expect in a super-rich, posh area that snubbed their noses at outsiders and anyone they considered beneath them. The romanticism of the area boggles my mind. That place was awful.

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Quarantine Diaries – Week 3

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Thistle

So we enter Week 3 locally just as the US case number surpasses any other countries worldwide, and end the week with triple that number. Yikes. It was a scary week for us personally, too, as both Jason and I got sick. Both illnesses were short-lived and mild. I have no idea if it was corona or not – this is the time of year that so many people get sick with major allergy season and all – but either way it was scary!

To repeat from previous weeks: 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, March 27th
Local count: 120, 5 deaths. One of the weirder facets of my anxiety is that it’s relieved by organization, especially data-organization. So on this morning, two weeks into quarantine, I decided to put together a spreadsheet of cases and deaths in my local county. This way I can watch as things progress, and hopefully see a flattening of the curve over time. I don’t know why it calms me to gather this info and follow the progress, but anything that relieves my personal anxiety is okay in my book. Anyway. In local news today, the mayor closed city playgrounds and basketball courts because they were hotspots of people refusing the shelter-at-home order. They want to keep the parks themselves open for people to get exercise, but there are signs up all over the place with social distancing guidelines as well. Our city also began a daily televised live update. I rescheduled my upcoming well-woman and twice-yearly physician exams from April to July/later. No need to go to the doctor’s office for check-up stuff while the Virus is prevalent! The day ended on a positive note, with my first virtual Happy Hour with my hiking group. (photo credit: Lindsey)

–Saturday, March 28th
Local count: 140, 5 deaths. The city website added zip code info to their COVID page, and so far my zip is in an area with 1-4 cases (ie pretty low). This was mostly a good day, spend on Marco Polo with my hiking ladies or on Facetime with Stephanie. It was a very social day even though I didn’t get out at all. On the other hand, Jason began coughing and got short of breath while out at the grocery store, and spent about six hours sleeping in the afternoon. After that, he felt better, but we’re keeping a really close eye on it. We suspect it’s allergies and stress, because Jason’s body reacts to stress with extreme sleeping.

–Sunday, March 29th
Local count: 157, 5 deaths. Unfortunately, Jason started feeling unwell again during the afternoon. He took a self-test for COVID and was told to self-quarantine (100%) for two weeks. That evening, he began to get body aches – not a good sign. Additionally, I developed a mild fever by bedtime. So…not good. Right now, the plan is to shelter at home and try to keep from passing this to the boys. If necessary, we can call in to a nurse line through our insurance for further direction. Hopefully our symptoms will remain mild. But keep our family in your thoughts, please. No matter how often we wash our hands and disinfect the house, it’s difficult to contain an illness when it’s already inside.

–Monday, March 30th
Local count: 168, 6 deaths, 44 recovered. Today was the first day we heard about local recoveries. Additionally, the city began to put a ton more information on their COVID-19 site, which is great. Plus, we got the word that the Olympics will be scheduled for July/Aug 2021. Glad they’re not canceled altogether! On the home front, Jason continued to feel tired today, but was able to work a full day. He slept a few hours after work, and still has no fever. I felt perfectly fine and normal all day, though I did check my temp in the evening and have a mild fever again. Honestly, I wonder if the digital thermometer is a bit faulty. I miss the old mercury thermometers. They were so much more reliable!!

(quarantine cat snuggles)

–Tuesday, March 31st
Local count: 207, 9 deaths, 44 recovered. The governor ordered a statewide shelter-at-home mandate (finally!), and extended school closures through early May. We doubt the boys will go back to school at all this year. I feel so bad for Ambrose, who is missing all those senior year ceremonies and the last few months with his friends. As for health, I woke up in the morning with a weird pain deep in my lungs, like the bottom of my right lung was in some kind of cramp – not like anything I’ve experienced before with bronchitis or other chest infections. I also had a dry cough that I couldn’t shake, even though otherwise I felt just fine. The pain persisted through half the day, then came back in the evening. I also had a weird headache-like feeling in my whole head in the evening, like a painless headache that made everything tender. I’m probably just being hypersensitive, but it definitely feels like I’ve come down with some kind of illness, COVID or not. Hopefully not. But I’d rather be careful. I self-quarantined to my bedroom today and made personals ads for my cats because I was bored out of my mind.

–Wednesday, April 1st
Local count: 229, 9 deaths, 45 recovered. Woke up feeling just fine. So I don’t know. It’s weird and I want all the weird on-and-off symptoms to GO AWAY and leave my anxiety alone. Weird news, though – a semi truck carrying toilet paper bound for San Antonio got in an accident in Dallas and all the toilet paper burned… Otherwise, a pretty routine day, and happily got to participate in a virtual game night via Zoom and Jackbox Games.

–Thursday, April 2nd
Local count: 254, 9 deaths, 47 recovered. Sadly, this does not include the numbers from a major outbreak contained at a nursing home, which will include another 59 cases. All but 11 residents there tested positive, and there’s a high likelihood those 11 will eventually test positive even if removed from the facility. This is a terrible outbreak on a vulnerable population. San Antonio is working to shore up protections for other group facilities. The city leaders have also put out public pleas to religious facilities to voluntarily stay closed even though the Texas governor overruled the city’s mandate (grr!) Things are okay on the home front. I’m pretty sure the symptoms I felt this week were related to allergies, and that any fever was faulty equipment. I’ve been perfectly fine the last two days and Jason has recovered well. I actually went out running this morning (following all social distancing protocols of course!) and felt no difficulty with breathing or chest pressure etc. Thankfully, the boys have all stayed completely healthy as well so far, also.

(SA cases/deaths through Week 3)

So, a very scary week altogether. I’m really glad I have my support group online and easily accessible via video chat/texts. That’s been very helpful and necessary during this time.

Positives and Highlights and Nice Things
Every little bit of good news helps right now. Here are the small bits from my week.

  • discovered Unsolved Mysteries is on Amazon Prime so I’m binge-watching now, and my youngest son was hooked from the very first show.
  • virtual meetups: happy hour, coffee dates, game nights – Marco Polo is a wonderful app and gives me a lifeline to my support group!!
  • discovered one of my fellow hikers is a published romance author!
  • started an online book group via Marco Polo!
  • finished Week 4 of Couch to 5K before I began getting symptoms (and yes, totally alone in social distancing protocols!)
  • finished Week 5 of Couch to 5K (mostly because I skipped right to Day 3, heh) and hit a personal goal of mine (to run a mile nonstop on level ground rather than downhill). I ran further and longer than I’ve done since 2014 when I was 80 lbs lighter. Woohoo! My face afterwards –>

How were things with all of you this week?

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