Pandemic Diary Entry #13

Sunday, May 17 (Day 67):  Finished reading The Year We Fell From Space by Amy Sarig King (Oct 2019, Levine/Scholastic, 272 pages, for ages 8 to 12).  Gorgeously written, as all of her novels are. And if your middle grade reader is reading this, they'll probably be grateful for the short chapters.

My favorite lines, from p. 51:

                        "... some kids join band or play sports.

                         I just think about the stars. Usually by myself.

                         I'm probably from another planet."                       

Support authors! Buy this book from Bookshop.org.  Or your local indie bookstore (you can even choose one while you're on Bookshop's website). Also available at B&N. 

It's beginning to look like summer in our back yard.

Our rhododendrons next to the deck get prettier every day.
And here you can catch a glimpse of our Accidental Garden!

Monday, May 18 (Day 68): Our Giant delivery was due between 9:30 and 11:30 am. Nice of them to let me know last night, via email, so I didn't have to get up at 5:30 and check. The food arrived around 10:30. Only 20 bags this time! Still far too much plastic. We didn't get any ground beef this time, so no hamburgers this week. Think someone's trying to tell us to become vegetarians? We also didn't receive the milk, the lemons or the Dawn dishwashing liquid.

Another long walk today. It looks like summer everywhere.

I realize these are weeds, but they're pretty!

The trees at the top of the hill from us are green and lovely

Lemon chicken and zucchini parmesan for dinner. Watched an old Goldie Hawn movie that, surprisingly, was not a comedy!


Wednesday, May 20 (Day 70):  Warm and partly sunny. I have to admit, the days have begun to run together, to blur in my memory as if they're all one. If I don't write in this journal every day, I immediately forget what we did. So I'll start skipping days and only write about the ones where something different happens.

Went through the first half of my manuscript again. Not making very many changes any more. Reading and re-reading my lovely editor's comments and occasionally changing one word in the text.

Started reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green.  Wow, am I glad I didn't read this before writing my novel in verse! Aza, the main character, suffers from a mental illness. At one point, she eats her sandwich in quarters, as my character does.

In the afternoon, our younger son called! This is always an occasion. I love hearing his voice!


Thursday, May 21 (Day 71):  Got through part three of my manuscript. It's written in four parts, so I'll finish up tomorrow. This is the third time I'm going through my editor's line edits, so I think it'll be as complete as I can make it for this round. Hope she likes what I've done!

Veggie pasta for dinner. It turned out better than I thought it would. Zucchini, mushrooms, and chopped tomatoes sauteed in olive oil and served on rotini. Lots of oregano and basil and pepper.

Here's something you probably never knew about me: I'm allergic to garlic and onions (my maternal grandmother was too). It makes cooking difficult, especially anything Italian. And every commercial salad dressing or pasta sauce or soup contains garlic powder and onion powder.  So I have to get creative. Any recipe ideas that are free of garlic and onions would be most welcome!


Friday, May 22 (Day 72): Woke up with a headache. Then the rain started after breakfast and eventually my headache went away.

In the afternoon, I finished going through line edits (for the third time)! Yay! Feels like an accomplishment in this time of crisis (and headaches). I loved working on them because it was such a beautiful escape.

Keeping my fingers crossed that my editor will like and accept what I've done.

Leftovers for dinner. A few episodes of Cheers on Netflix.




COVID-19 World Stats as of May 22 (from WHO):

Confirmed cases: 5,105,881
Confirmed deaths: 333,446


US Cases as of May 23 (from the CDC):

Confirmed cases: 1,595,885
Confirmed deaths: 96,002




What about you? Have the days blurred together, so you don't even know what day it is anymore?

Tell us about any good books you've read this week.

And if you have any favorite recipes that don't involve onions and garlic, please let me know. Thanks!

Pandemic Diary Entry #3

Yes, this is 8-year-old me, preparing for a future quarantine
 in which I'm forced to stay inside and read!

Pandemic Diary Entry #3

April 2, 2020


Hope everyone is staying healthy!


Monday, March 30: We received our first grocery delivery to our home. It was due to arrive between 6 and 9 pm (I had put in my order the Thursday before!), and the driver didn't drop off the bags in our garage until 10:45 pm! Which is normally about a half hour after my bedtime. We got more than I expected, though. We're going to try to eke it out for two weeks before we do any kind of shopping again. When we start to run out of food, there's always this (my husband bought it weeks ago!):

Cue the Spam Song!

Tuesday March 31:  I still miss my sons terribly, but I'm managing to find plenty to do. Walking (when it's not raining!), watching movies, cooking -- oh, and cleaning. Still cleaning. I try to clean one thing a day, not necessarily an entire room. One cabinet, or one closet, or a bathroom. Mostly, of course, these days, I'm reading.

Plus, I've learned a new skill: making dinner out of leftovers from several different meals, which often results in odd combinations, but occasionally delights us. I used to hate leftovers, but now I embrace them. Ask me about the stir fry dinner I made from half a boneless pork chop, sliced into tiny pieces, leftover pasta, and leftover peas, with a generous dollop of low-sodium soy sauce.


Wednesday, April 1: (Strangest April Fool's Day ever!) On our walk today, I couldn't help feeling our flowers are a little lacking compared to everyone else's. Yes, this is our sad flower bed in the front of the house. It's nearly empty for a reason: my husband removed all the overgrown hosta last year because it was a gourmet salad for the huge herds of deer that roam through our neighborhood, eating whatever they want. Bullies! Of course, they also eat hyacinths, so he's been spraying them with something this year. Don't ask.

As you can see, our daffodils aren't blooming yet. (Deer don't eat daffodils! That's why everyone in our neighborhood has them.) Our daffodils seem to bloom later than everyone else's, though. They always have. We suspect it's because when we planted the bulbs years ago, we followed the directions. Planted them six inches deep.

Thursday, April 2:

FINALLY, I finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, published in 2018 by W.W. Norton. It won the Pulitzer in 2019. What a stunning novel! Written in third person, it's long and sprawling and multi-layered, with multiple protagonists.

What's it about? In a word, trees! It's environmental fiction and it spans many decades, from the 1940s to the present.

Most of us realize we are connected with every living thing, but I'm afraid most of us think only of animals when we say "living things".  Like the polar bears and butterflies in my upcoming novel.

However, we are also connected to every plant, especially trees. Did you know they communicate with each other? That they help each other, as well as us? This novel is fascinating, even if keeping the many characters straight was a juggling act for me (since I read so slowly now). The story really takes off in Part 2 ("Trunk" -- Part 1 is "Roots", Part 3 is "Branches") when several of the characters from Part 1 meet up to protest logging companies that want to cut down old-growth forests.

This book has many quotable lines, but here's one of my favorites (from p. 443):  "You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes."


What have you read this week?


Have you learned any new skills this week?


Finally, a favor: If you can afford to do so, please donate some money to your local food bank. You can do this online. Not everyone can pay for groceries at a time like this.



COVID-19 STATS for April 2, 2020 (from WHO):

Countries affected: 206
Confirmed cases: 900,306
Confirmed deaths: 45,693


And if you're in the US and you're interested in seeing the predictions for the peak in your state, go here.




"It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics." George Bernard Shaw

Pandemic Diary Entry #2

A neighbor's weeping cherry tree

Pandemic Diary Entry #2

Saturday, March 28, 2020


Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. New York City has become the new epicenter of COVID-19 in the US, and the US is now the new epicenter for the world. My heart goes out to my friends and cousins in NYC.

At this point, we only go outside to occasionally pick up groceries, and to take walks. It almost seems cruel, doesn't it? That so many trees and flowers are blooming, and it's still March, and it's all lovely and inspiring, and the world is a trash fire.

Daffodils! They're everywhere in our neighborhood

T.S. Eliot said in the opening line of The Wasteland, "April is the cruellest month." But March has been cruel enough. If April is worse than this (and it undoubtedly will be), we're all doomed.

See? I have moments of deep despair, where all I want to do is crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and shut out the world. I've suffered from anxiety all my life. I took Xanax for years. This is worse than anything I've been through, and I've been through a lot.

But I have to remind myself that we have plenty of food, a warm house, a beautiful neighborhood for walks, tons of books to read, and of course there are always movies to watch. I also have to remind myself that everyone is in the same boat and the only way we'll get through this is together... apart but together.

Received an email on Friday from my college roommate, who has lived in Paris since 1984. She became a French citizen years ago, and when I emailed her last week to ask how she's doing, this was her response (she gave me permission to post):

We are in our second week of lockdown and can only go out with a printed or handwritten form ticking off one of the 7 reasons for going out. Then signing, dating and marking the time. We have to show it along with our ID card.

People can go out alone or with a family member for max an hour within one kilometer of home address, to have a walk or walk the dog. The first time fine has gone up to 135€. 

The gov't is saying the lockdown could last 6 weeks but will depend on the curve. At the moment, it's rising exponentially and some area hospitals are overwhelmed.

The East and Paris region are the most affected. But poor Italy has double the number of deaths as China, and Spain is quickly catching up to that number.

So you think you're suffering during your quarantine or self-isolation? At least you don't have to show an ID and have a printed form filled in with date and time whenever you go out to the grocery store or for a walk! At least you aren't limited to your own neighborhood for walks. 

On Friday, besides talking the walk pictured above, we started cleaning out our pantry, one shelf at a time. Found some canned soups that were best by 2017! So it's been a while since we cleaned that closet, obviously long before my second brain aneurysm rupture (which was in 2017). We also found a bag of dried navy beans we purchased from an Amish market two or three years ago (there's no date on the bag). My husband is currently washing and soaking them. Does anyone know if it's safe to eat beans that are two or three years old?

Today, the rainy day, I cleaned out the extra bathroom in our house, the one formerly used by our sons, who are now grown and living elsewhere. Oh, how I miss them! I just want to give them each lots of hugs, but for now I have to put up with texts and phone calls. However...

when I cleaned out their bathroom, I found all of these treasures!

They're ours now. Buried treasure! It made me deliriously happy!


Stats for March 28th:

Still reading The Overstory by Richard Powers (this book is long, and the print is tiny!). I miss the years when I could read faster. I have some fantastic-looking books to read next, including one by Amy Sarig King and one by John Green.


From Worldometer:
Countries affected: 199
Number of cases: 662,402
Number of deaths: 30,826

That's more than doubled from four days ago. The US now leads the world in total number of cases at 123,271, although Italy has the most deaths at 10,023.



How are you holding up? Do the stats depress you? Should I keep them to myself? You know I'm really keeping this journal for the future, right?

Do you take walks and look for beauty where you can find it?

Pandemic Diary: March Edition

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

The world has changed dramatically since my last post. That was only one month ago, people!

Figures. I finally get a book deal.... and the world falls apart. This, boys and girls, is an excellent example of irony.

But this isn't about me! We're all self-isolating and fighting to stay alive in the worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu. It's bizarre, and surreal. And it's frightening how fast it multiplied around the world and in the U.S. My husband and I are hunkered down at home, far away from our own sons (sniff! sob!)  and other family members.

They say you should keep a pandemic diary for future alien archaeologists, yourself and your family. So I'm starting one now, looking back at early March with the perspective of a few weeks. After this, it will be real time.



Pandemic Diary, March Edition

March 4, 2020

We already knew the virus was coming, so we stocked up on canned beans at the market (I still have my receipt!). The TP aisle was already nearly cleaned out, so we bought one 9-pack of the only brand left, Charmin', the most expensive one, naturally!

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

That was the last time I went out of the house and did something normal (besides picking up groceries). Actually had a mammogram. The waiting room was a lot emptier than usual, and I had no trouble staying six feet away from the other patients. Also took full advantage of the three hand sanitizer stations, after signing in with their pen, for instance.

Afterward, my husband (who has been my driver since my second aneurysm rupture) and I went to lunch at a sandwich restaurant. We already knew by then not to go somewhere with a lot of people, like Panera. So we picked a sandwich shop that we remembered is never crowded.

Little did we know that would be the last time we'd eat out in a restaurant, where you sit down and they actually bring the food to you. Remember that?


Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The last time we went out in public! That was for groceries and medications. There were still some meats and canned goods, but the frozen meals were already low, and the liquid hand soap aisle and TP aisle were completely empty. Why does everyone hoard stuff like that? We need bidets in this country!

Later that day, the World Health Organization declared this a pandemic. Here's a quote: "As of Wednesday (March 11), 114 countries have reported that 118,000 have contracted Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus... Nearly 4,300 people have died."


As of Tuesday, March 24 (13 days later), 196 countries reported 395,583 cases, with 17,234 deaths. That's quadrupled in less than two weeks!

And so it continues...

From the Portland Press Herald March 12, 2020

Speaker Pelosi bumping elbows with Senate Majority Leader McConnell on March 12th. How nostalgic now. Remember when people thought elbow bumping was the way to greet each other? Before we learned we have to stay at least six feet apart to stop the spread of the virus? 

Friday March 20

For the first time, we ordered groceries from Giant Direct. I put in the order on Wednesday, but the first available time slot to pick up in their parking lot was Friday afternoon. It went smoothly, but we only got about 2/3 of what I had ordered. Guess that's going to be the norm from now on. 

Week of March 22, i.e. this week

My husband and I spend a lot of time reading (I'm currently immersed in THE OVERSTORY by Richard Powers, that won the Pulitzer in 2019), cleaning, finding creative ways to make another meal out of bits of leftovers, taking walks for exercise, and watching movies. Funny movie suggestions are always welcome.

How do you spend your time while self-isolating? Have you done anything you'd never done before (like clean out that closet you've been neglecting)?

Stay safe, everyone! And remember to check on your neighbors by phone. Let's all hope this experience leads to more kindness, instead of more selfishness.