Bad night

Tuesday: Rest 

I call it “rest” but really it’s: horrible night of sleep, very early morning, and tons to do today.

We went to bed super-early last night because we had to be up at 4:30 to take Mik to the airport. But the power went out sometime before 11, causing a fire alarm to start making a horrible noise, which woke me up and started me worrying about all the food in the freezer, whether we’d be able to cook Mik breakfast, global warming, etc. So I slept on and off after that, but then starting around 2 the power turned on and off three separate times—and every time it did it would cause M.H.’s phone to light up the room, the Sleep Number bed to make a loud clunking noise, and the fire alarm to switch from its horrible but relatively quiet growl to a loud “low battery” beep every 30 seconds. I must have eventually gotten back to sleep because when the alarm finally went off I was in the middle of a nightmare.

(Obviously M.H. slept peacefully through it all. Not jealous.)

But then I had to give my baby back to his college AND I theoretically have to work all day. Grumpy face.

Transitioning

Saturday: Walk 1.2 miles
Sunday: Walk 1.2 miles
Monday: Walk 1.3 miles

Mik goes back to college tomorrow, and I WOULD go straight back into Whole30ing, but we have a refrigerator full of leftover taco bar at the moment, so it’s going to take a few days. I also really want to do more on the exercise front again, but I haven’t really been feeling that great. I’m not sick, but I definitely don’t feel 100% well either. Hopefully it’s just from lots of gluten and time at my desk, rather than a virus. (Actually, as I think about it for a hot second, I kind of hope it’s from a virus and not just from a week of worse eating/movement, because that would mean there’s absolutely no margin for lifestyle error anymore in my life, and that would be RIDICULOUS.)

The tiny bit of extra walking this morning was because as I was approaching my house, I saw two kids run over to our Little Free Library. I took a detour so they would have a chance to look without me scaring them off. :)

Administrative note

Probably I will blog again someday, but THIS is just a note to say that “thebombdotmom.com” will no longer redirect to my Blogger page after June. Was anyone even using that URL? I don’t know, it is no longer worth $15 a year to me.

Instead, starting now, LittleMediaEmpire.com redirects to my LinkedIn profile. “Little Media Empire” is what I call my business in my head and may soon be its official name if I become an LLC. (Which I may or may not actually do.)

A public service message for my blocked Facebook friends

Hi, do you hate being locked down? Does it feel super un-American that you can’t eat at McDonald’s or go to church? Are you willing to sacrifice every vulnerable human being on earth so you can get regular haircuts? If so, I think it's important that you direct your righteous rage to the right place.

This was always a tough situation. With a super-contagious and deadly virus on the loose, it was inevitable that we all be “socially isolated” for some period of time. Lots of us—you, too, as I recall—were willing in March to do that for several weeks, since it was literally the only way to save millions of lives. That was supposed to give the federal government, under the advisement of its PREVIOUSLY SUCCESSFUL VIRAL PANDEMIC PLAN and REALLY SMART PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERTS, time to get the virus under control.

Instead of trying to do that, the Trump administration:

• Tossed out the pandemic plan, having already tossed out the pandemic team
• Put Trump in front of cameras daily to congratulate himself, raise the projected death toll he was absolutely fine with, and “be sarcastic” about our health options
• Hoarded medical supplies
• Pitted states against each other to make it harder to get medical supplies
• Actually stole supplies, but apparently only from blue states
• Fired or tried to silence their remaining experts
• Lied about everything and discredited journalists trying to tell the truth
• Failed to put out even a consistent messaging about what we all should do

So now it’s mid-May, and we're in the same situation we were in March. (Except a little better, because we now know that we’ll be in much better shape if everyone simply wears masks! Which you also refuse to do!) But nothing remotely useful has happened on the federal level, so we have the same two crappy choices: Stay locked down or millions die. With no end in sight.

We ALL hate this. I have it pretty good, all things considered, but I’m temporarily living away from my family because of coronavirus, so rest assured that I hate it, too. But you have to try to understand that we’re not here because states and communities are taking the “save millions of lives” option—that’s the obvious choice, and you’re a monster if you disagree (guess that’s why you’re blocked!). No, we’re here because Trump was too vain to even admit we had a problem and too stupid to know what to do about it. We’re here because lying is his default position and it seemed a lot easier than trying.

It was never going to be easy to fix this; I don’t know what the country would have been like right now if someone else had been in charge. But Trump has done the worst job imaginable, and I am with you in your frustration. But if you’re going to vent and rage, direct it to him. And if you’re planning to exert your “right” to go toast your temporary good health in a crowded bar, please go back to venting and raging, because a lot of other people have the right to not be killed by you.

Casualties

Hello I am still trying very hard not to complain about my privileged personal situation, but I honestly wasn’t emotionally prepared for a level of government malfeasance and societal insanity that means I might have to stay locked down LITERALLY UNTIL A VACCINE IS DEVELOPED. I already did NOT want to get this virus—I guess I’m not one of those people who hears “just a bad flu” and thinks, “Well, dandy, that sounds FINE!”—but it’s so horrifying that nobody really knows what it does to survivors long term. If you’re an elite athlete who gets this, your career is maybe over. If you have a stroke, your life as you know it is maybe over. Will your kidneys ever be the same? God only knows.

Of course existence is unpredictable and nobody lives forever and nothing is guaranteed and afterlife and Stoicism and quantum physics and whatever, but it makes me so mad that the federal government hasn’t done a single useful thing during all this time when most of its citizens have dutifully done their best and tried to stay optimistic and waited for help. Instead we get chaos, discord, disinformation, kickbacks for the rich, and “Well, people in hell want icewater, too.”

If you’ve guessed that I’m feeling rather madder than usual at the Trump supporters enabling all this, you’d be right. My feeling is that to simply BE his supporter you’d have to believe that what the rest of us call “news” is a lie and that therefore it’s fine to believe whatever you can find on the internet. It’s so personally offensive to me—as a former cog in the machine that produced news—to hear disgusting generalizations about the evils of “the mainstream media” as if it were one unified entity and not human professionals I know named Laura and Brian and Karron and Karen making a long series of informed decisions as part of their damned jobs.

Will my relationship with people who refuse to join us here in reality ever be the same? That’s maybe over. More casualties.

On the self-improvement front

So despite having literal nightmares about crowds—last night, among other dreams, I was at the symphony, desperately trying to get everyone to spread out—everything is going OK. I have food, I have employment, I have some family around me, shelter, heat, comfort, entertainment, enrichment opportunities, popcorn, a yard to roam in, a second yard to care for, etc., etc. This is not ideal, but I honestly have nothing to complain about, and so I won’t.

I have heard a lot of talk about how “This is a pandemic, you don’t have to better yourself,” and I agree with that. But on the other hand, since I am literally fine in just about every way, I see no reason why I can’t turn the yoga dial up a few notches and actually get better at something during this time. Additionally, my current read is “Portrait of a Lady,” which is not exactly a light summer beach book, but I chose it before the pandemic and might as well get through it. (Of note, my other indefinitely-checked-out library book is about quantum physics.)

I’m also eating as healthfully as humanly possible, but that’s not to “better myself”—I just think it’s the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself from illness, right after staying away from crowded symphony halls.

Advice for the conditionally healthy

Disclaimer: I don’t really know anything.

It has not escaped my attention that a 5- to 14-day incubation period means any of us could have coronavirus right now and be totally unaware of it. You’re feeling good? Congratulations, you weren’t infected as of March 18. (Well, actually, that is pretty good news, because my own personal COVID freakout began on March 12, and I’ve been as careful as I can since then.)

Anyway, I always assume I have the virus, and based on that assumption, here are the steps I’ve been taking:

1. Do not eat anything that might make you feel sickish. So for me, sugar can give me a sore throat, and dairy makes me congested—I am avoiding both like the plague. The last thing I want is to have a cough and then a panic attack. My diet is pretty impeccable right now.

2. Get hours and hours of extra sleep. Maybe you’re bored anyway. Sleep has the dual advantage of killing a lot of time and also giving your body tons of help with whatever it’s doing.

3. Take every supplement known to boost the immune system. It’s better if you’ve been taking these for a long time, but go ahead and start in with the C, the D, the probiotics, the leafy greens, the green tea, etc. Turmeric is anti-inflammatory, and coronavirus hurts us with inflammation, so I don’t see a downside.

4. But don’t take a fever reducer if you can help it. If you get a fever, you will want to know asap, and you won’t know if you just took Advil for neck pain.

5. Give yourself a fake fever. Fever possibly works by improving the efficiency of white blood cells, making it easier for them to spot invaders. So sit in a hot bath or a sauna if you have access to one, and sweat. Or do what I do and pile a million blankets on yourself at night. Heat stress is good for you anyway, and maybe your immune system can kill this thing off before the symptoms even show up.

6. Keep active, but don’t push it. I want to be healthy and limber and strong, but if I am falling ill tomorrow, I certainly don’t want to have done an exhausting workout today. I’m personally cool with walking (fresh air!) and yoga, but I absolutely do not want to huff and puff right now.

7. Don’t do anything that will land you in a medical facility. To me this means excellent dental hygiene, being extra-careful with kitchen knives, keeping meat and vegetables on separate cutting boards, and just generally not doing anything dumb.

8. All the usual. Wash hands, six feet away, stay mentally healthy, hug the people in your bubble, etc.