What the hell ??!! (Week 1)

March 11-18 2020 BROOKLYN NY - COVID19 Log Entry 1.1

First week - following news closely (closer than many) ; I’ve become a constant irritant to those around me who ask (and some who don’t) (and more than usual) as the sheer amount I’m reading is beyond what I’ve ever done for any school course in my lifetime ... And it (news, journals, anecdotes, social media posts etc) is filled with the terrible, no good,  awful, terrifying studies of how we are in a countrywide steamroller. And barreling like a planet around some magnetic orbit toward absolute destruction of our lives . And that we will be lucky to survive . And that it’s not “just like a flu” and not at all just in Wuhan, China . 

Before I continue with what I’ve been learning in the recent bit of time - really only about two weeks now - let’s establish who’s home here with me:

First : so my husband Michael and I have a small limestone house in Kensington, Brooklyn. Have been here since my younger son Elliot was two, Dan was twelve and Alley 14. That was 15 years ago to give you all a chance to practice math (see how I turned that into an educational moment?). So all the above are here now except Dan now 26 who works for a major hospital here in city and for the time being is well and has an apartment. And our daughter (now 29) who has a partner and they live upstairs in their own apartment. 

Again, I digress : so in the span of the days before the big reveal by the fake President that indeed we are in deep deep shit and many of us will actually die of a terrible virus we never thought twice about - in that time, I started to calculate first how to convince my youngest son to stay home. As he is a happy senior in high school, and actually loves his school and friends (and the city and his soccer team and more ...) convincing him to stay home and that the schools would be closed at any rate was a TOUGH sell. He doesn’t mind homework (yeh, that sounds crazy right) and takes things in stride. So i implored him to use his brain for looking at some of my miserably depressing COVID19 reading. Which he did - after he went out to a friends’ birthday dinner in Park Slope - and after some of the other parents there asked me why I wanted to take him out of school . For anyone who is unfamiliar with urban  parenting over here on the east coast, it’s constantly a pull between just letting our kids supposedly be just that (kids) and racing to top everyone ... so parents asking me why I took Els (what he’s called by those of us who luv him) out of school REALLY we’re all kinds of disapproving like it was NEGLECT or something equally idiotic. 
Anyway, I told them school was imminently over for the semester (they didn’t believe me) and I called it a night. Convincing people of terrible shitty events isn’t easy.

By that Sunday (March 15th), Mayor Deblasio and Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo had indeed closed the schools. And begun to ask everyone to stay home. And stop mixing it up with people generally. And then the idea of having groceries for a couple of weeks seemed doable ; though anyone who knows what a Whole Foods in Brooklyn looks like will extend their deepest sympathies to me. 

I avoided that fate - shopping here sux under normal conditions, even with a car, with millions of people panicking and the shelves emptying at dizzying speeds etc etc . You get the picture . Even before COVID19, I shopped online, which unbelievably worked till a couple of days ago (not now). And Michael drove off to Costco and bought exactly the kind of food his German born mother must have bought him and that I NEVER buy anymore and that my own mother may have eaten in the Midwest of the 1050’s . More on that difference later ... so we have a pile of food and stuff that doesn’t need refrigeration. Some comfort as the days unfolded.

Meanwhile, I realized after all my entreaties to keep everyone home, that i wasn’t and am still not feeling so great. At all . Hard to do much, super tired, sore throat, and slight discomfort in chest ... that’s the bad part - the lungs being the reason so many die of this virus. And while it really is impossible to completely isolate myself, and I don’t feel that terrible, I’ve engaged in some interesting cleaning protocol to try and limit what further damage any of us can do to one another ... more soon..