March 24, 2020 – Here’s the second in my pictorial journey through self-imposed home quarantine. As I stated the last time (see Part One), I’ll try to keep it light and try my best – no guarantees – to keep out the politics and frustration (a hard one at this point). We all need to smile a little more, right now.

Aero Garden in the kitchen. We should have grown veggies instead of petunias.

Pandemic Hits Home
Thursday, March 19th, Vicki comes in the back door and puts her things down in the dining room. She has an odd look on her face. It’s lunch time, so both Emily and I are sitting at the table in our breakfast nook. I ask her if everything’s okay…she proceeds to tell us that a coworker – who is new to her department – just got a call that her adult son was sent home from work because he has a cough and was running a fever. Suddenly, coronavirus gets even more real for our family.

Really? Sleep in here?

Upstairs/Downstairs
We disinfect everything – and I mean everything. Vicki moves all of her day-to-day things into the dining room. We use clean dish towels to touch door handles and sink faucets. Emily and I continue to eat in the kitchen area while Vicki stays mostly in the dining room and the (rarely used) living room. Emily and I commandeer the den.

I sleep in the mother-in-law’s quarters downstairs. Zoe, of course, sleeps downstairs with me, but she doesn’t like it. Life is now very surreal. We have a much better appreciation of how people on the front lines of the pandemic deal with everyday life.

Weather, Weather, Weather
As I said in Part One, the weather in Memphis has been crappy – and that’s putting it nicely. Warm and rainy one day, cold and rainy the next. It makes a weird, depressing situation even more miserable. You can’t go outside, and it’s so dreary that every day looks like nightfall. Ugh.

God Paid the Utility Bill

Finally…sunshine!

Finally…sunshine! Saturday (March 21st) was a glorious day. The sun was out almost the entire day. The neighbors were out, too, which was a mixed blessing. I’m not sure everyone is on board with social distancing. In particular, one set of neighbors are all crammed together in the front yard yucking it up and playing a form of tennis on the driveway. I watch from my front porch as one player hands a racquet to another neighbor (not a family member, by the way), who proceeds to get in the game. Yeah, I’m really not sure that everyone – even when one of those neighbors has cancer – understands how serious this situation has become.

One other note – We were invited (via text) to come over and hang out with these same neighbors. Vicki replied – also via text – that we may been exposed and needed to self-isolate. Did she get a response? Has she gotten any kind of response to this day? Nah. Piece of advice – If someone who’s married to a Stage IV cancer patient says that she may have been exposed to a deadly virus, and, therefore, we need to stay away from each other and everyone else, shouldn’t you do the courteous, caring thing and – at the very least – respond? People. I’ll address this, especially “religious” folk, in my next installment.

Zombie Apocalypse

Apple Store in Germantown. Four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon.

After about two weeks of being at home, I decided that Sunday to get cleaned up, put on some real clothes, and drive around Germantown. Vicki and Emily had told me about the store closures and empty grocery shelves, but I wanted to see – from the safety of my car – what this pandemic looks like. It was – as I told Vicki when I got home – like a zombie apocalypse. No one’s out. Very few people driving around. Shopping center parking lots empty – on a Sunday afternoon! Wow.

Thanks, as always, for listening…and be safe and, if you can, stay home!

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