Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Thursday, April 2nd, 2020

Birthday

EM turned 17 today!

Given the lockdown, I had spent days agonizing about how to make it special for her none the less. With what circumstances availed I think I succeed as best I could.

Last night I prepared a birthday table, with gifts and our Vietnamese candles featuring the 17. As to gifts, which had been another problem, they featured some extremely rare items such as Purell, latex gloves and toilet paper 😊. She clearly has a sense of humor as we both laughed at this assortment (I had thought myself so fortunate to find these items at Strosnider last week).

I had picked up some beautiful earrings and a matching chain in Addis during my most recent trip to throw in the mix. Given we are homebound, I had intended to expand our patio furniture to feature a second love seat so we could each have one to lounge on over the coming months. Changed the plot though when I remembered about that unused hammock in the garage, which the tooth fairy had brought a few years ago, so a hammock stand ended up being the main event coupled with two fruit trees to support our fight against climate change and increase self-sufficiency.

The hammock is now all set up and proved to be a great success. Maybe EM will even finish 1984 and get on with that extended essay. The trees had their own role to play – seeing EM had to plant them on the front lawn this afternoon.

So grateful to the mums of her best friends and others who help make this a great day.

To support the exercise of tree planting I had set up a small table with the birthday cake on the front lawn. Turned out to be a great idea as her swim team bestie came by on her stroll through the hood, sang happy birthday, grabbed a piece of cake and left. Same with her bus friend who happened to be out for a run later in the afternoon, while we enjoyed the sun sitting out on the front steps.

The Art class bestie somehow took her exercise today strolling up and down our road with her mum and the English bestie and her mum happened to walk their dog in our neighborhood this afternoon. What a nice coincidence. It made for two hours of socially distant entertainment on the front lawn and the road, maintaining 6 feet at all times of course.

The afternoon ended with her Art class friends setting up a zoom party, which is still going on as I write this.

Glad I had taken the afternoon off work. It allowed me to make a shepherd’s pie for lunch, which courtesy of Mrs. Balls peach chutney, turned out to be rather delicious. Sadly we will have to have it again tomorrow as I still haven't found a needy person in the hood with whom to share our spoils. And of course, the free afternoon afforded me the time to make our traditional birthday cake. Only our after-lunch walk fell a bit shy of 30 minutes as the cake needed to be saved from too much heat.

Nice also to see all the birthday wishes on FB, WhatsApp, and SMS. I took that as an opportunity to call many of the well-wishers, some of whom we had not spoken too in months. There is something positive coming out of this - our global circle of friends is coming closer together.

All in all,a happy day with little thought of the ongoing pandemic.

The Listserv has reverted to the leaf blower discussion courtesy of someone wondering about the noise of circling helicopters, but I do have a sense that people are losing patience with the debate. And I detect some humor in the responses. I for one am glad my laptop features a button labeled “delete”.

Good things come of the Listserv too. We have adopted two elderly couples for whom we are doing the grocery run alongside our shopping. These folks are so terribly nice and grateful for any help, which makes it a great pleasure for us to be helpful and it is a win-win situation. Also, someone had the idea to see if farmers and other small businesses around the area deliver. Very keen to see that list!

News on the virus front continues to be mostly sad. Over 1 million people infected worldwide with more than 51k dead. On the bright side, some 200k recovered, which helps build that famous heard of immunity.

Numbers in the US continue to increase at an alarming speed, which does not bode well for this lockdown to end any time soon. Then again if we take the cue from China, it is a minimum of 74 days before things begin to open up. Here is hoping that we have passed 21 of those already, though not overly confident given that US policy continues to be a piecemeal approach.

On that note had a postcard in the mail today stating “Trump’s Coronavirus recommendations” what a f’ing joke! It went straight into the paper recycling bin. Just feeling very sorry for the trees that have let their life for this BS.

I did come across one fun article today – about how the Governor of Massachusetts procured some 1.7 million N95-masks from China, turns out he was able to use the aircraft of the local football team to fly them from China to Boston. Apparently, boxes with masks are not allowed to travel in passenger seats, even if there are no passengers on board, so they had to leave 400k behind. Tencent helped collect masks from various suppliers across China and will now guard the ones left behind as well as organize for these to make their way to Boston (or New York – Boston is sharing!) by some other means. While a very cool effort, the globe needs to move together in combatting this crisis. It is a time when more rather than less cooperation is needed.

Some pics from the socially distanced birthday.