Pandemic Diary Entry #5

Monday, April 6 (Day 26):  On our walk today, I tried to take lots of deep breaths and appreciate the beauty surrounding us. So grateful to live in a neighborhood where we can take walks like this.

And finally, our own daffodils are blooming! Took long enough.

Yes, these are a different variety than everyone else's daffodils!

Decided I'd better put in another grocery order, knowing it might take a while. It will. This order won't be delivered until April 18th! Glad we bought a big box of rice in early March, and six cans of beans. I am grateful the delivery is less than two weeks from now. Also, I'm lucky to be able to afford delivery and a tip for the driver (all done online of course). They deserve every cent. Essential personnel, indeed!

Please remember to donate to your local food bank, if you haven't already. Some people really are struggling to feed their families during this crisis.

When Jason Reynolds, the national ambassador for young people's literature, asked his Twitter followers last week if they needed groceries, he was flooded with requests. He helped as many as he could, and then other authors stepped in to help. "Just be a human," he said. "People are struggling. More people than we can even imagine." 

I've never met a kinder group of people than the children's authors I know. Kindness counts!

Tuesday, April 7 (Day 27):  Talked to my 92-year-old mother on the phone, as I do often. She lives an hour away, in a retirement/nursing home (one of those three stage places that takes care of you right up until death! It's always been depressing for me to visit her there, even though she's still in Independent Living). And of course they've been on lockdown since mid-March. I can't even wave at her through the window (the way Max Brooks waved to his 93-year-old dad, Mel Brooks, in March), because I wouldn't be able to get past the guardhouse at the entrance.

From Max Brooks @maxbrooksauthor/Twitter

Here's what I couldn't bring myself to talk about on this blog last week: four of the residents of the home where my mother lives tested positive for the virus last week. 

The week before, it was one staff member who tested positive (and, thankfully, was sent home to quarantine herself for two weeks). But the trouble with testing is, by the time you show symptoms, you've already been contagious for about 5 days, right? 

Now, as of today, there are 13 residents with coronavirus. Thirteen! That's more than tripled. This is frightening. They're all in the nursing wing (where my father spent the last two weeks of his life in 2014) and the facility is making heroic efforts to keep it from spreading to the other wings. 

I'm distraught, as you can imagine. You may remember hearing about the nursing home in Washington state, where the virus spread like wildfire. Forgive me if I'm not exactly cheerful this week.

Wednesday, April 8 (Day 28):  Woke up with an aching jaw again. Can you blame me? I realize many people have already lost a loved one to this terrible virus. My heart goes out to you.

Another walk and our cherry tree in full bloom cheered me up somewhat. You might be able to tell that our beloved tree is dying slowly. Lots of empty branches. It used to have way more blossoms than this. But it's still gorgeous.

By evening, I was a little calmer. We started watching Anne with an E on Netflix two days ago, and we're both enjoying it (even my husband, surprisingly!). We were privileged enough to visit Prince Edward Island in 2011. Not sure if we'll get through all three seasons of this beautifully-acted and superbly-written show before it disappears from Netflix, but for now, it's a lovely escape from reality. Which we all need!

Anne of Green Gables museum -- Prince Edward Island, 2011

Thursday, April 9 (Day 29): My husband is the religious one in the family, and this is Holy Week. So it's now Holy Thursday and tomorrow is Good Friday. He still has trouble with the idea of going to church online, although they seem to have fixed their microphone problem (he couldn't hear the priest the first Sunday). 

This is one of the most surreal, unprecedented aspects of this pandemic. It's not just that all sports are canceled. Churches, synagogues, and mosques have all had to cancel in-person services. Even the Amish, one county over from us, have had to stop their every-other-Sunday local gatherings in one member's home. 

Still shaking my head that in late March the President wanted everything open and everyone back out there by Easter. I don't usually get political on this blog and right now I'm trying to restrain myself from saying nasty things about an administration that has made serious mistakes all along. No, he didn't cause the virus. Of course not! But his hesitation and missteps undoubtedly made it worse in the US. His top trade adviser warned him in a January 29th memo that more than half a million Americans could die as a result of this virus. On January 30th, Trump said, "We think it's going to have a very good ending for it. So that I can assure you." On February 28th, Trump said, "It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear." Right.

For more of Trump's actual words all through February and March, see this article from the Washington Post. 

Nothing seems more important to him, than him! More recently, although he finally admitted the virus is serious, he also bragged about the ratings for his news conferences, as if this pandemic is a reality TV show! Grrr... I refuse to watch them. 

Friday, April 10 (Day 30): Yes, we've been isolated for 30 days. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? And I still haven't cleaned my entire house. I think I was too ambitious in the beginning. I didn't account for a complete lack of motivation at this point. And I'm often overwhelmed with the desperate feeling that life is never going to return to normal.

Is it?

An update on my mother's nursing home: As of today, there are now 24 cases in the Skilled Nursing wing. None in Assisted Living or Independent Living. Ten employees are now home with the virus. And there have been three deaths of residents, two of whom were in hospice before the crisis started. If it keeps doubling or tripling every week...

I'm trying really hard right now not to panic.

Still reading:

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater. I'm about a third of the way through. It's an ideal contemporary fantasy escape. But if you haven't read the first three books, start with  Book 1, The Raven Boys. Each boy is perfectly human, yet has a different talent or ability. Then they meet up with Blue Sargent, a high school girl with the ability to amplify anyone else's talent. Fascinating!

COVID-19 stats (from the WHO)

as of April 10:

Countries affected: 213

Confirmed cases: 1,524,161

Confirmed deaths: 92,941

And remember, you can check the predictions for your own state (or country! I recently realized you can choose other countries from the drop-down menu; scroll up above the US) at this website. Note that in Italy, Spain, and France, the deaths per day are going down! They're doing social distancing properly.

Do you have a loved one with the virus? 

Are you having trouble staying stocked with food and necessities?

Stay safe, friends! Stay healthy. Stay home!

Pandemic Diary Entry #4

My Dickens Village holiday display -- with an interesting addition from my son

Friday, April 3 (by my calculations, this is Day 23 of isolation, since we started a little before most people): I finally put away my last Christmas decoration, the Dickens Village display on the sideboard in our little-used dining room. Before you make fun of me for having a holiday decoration up until April, please know that it brought me great joy!

You see, back in early January, my older son surprised me with an addition to the village. A miniature version of my upcoming book. His degree in engineering certainly paid for itself with this sweet and delightful surprise. How he managed to make such tiny book covers, I'll never know. Yes, the title has changed since then, and also I couldn't show this to anyone in January because the contract hadn't been countersigned yet.

Now the future is so uncertain, I'm not sure when the book will actually be published.

Support authors! Support bookstores. Support publishers. If you can afford it, please order a few books from bookshop.org.

The world's tiniest book!

Saturday, April 4, 2020, Day 24 

I woke up after four hours of sleep with an aching jaw, from clenching my teeth in my sleep. This is also known as bruxism and can damage your teeth. Has this happened to you? For me, this is nothing new.

For months after each of my brain aneurysm ruptures, I woke up with aching jaws. My dentist made me a simple device to protect my teeth, but I haven't been wearing it for a while. I also found after each rupture, that massaging my jaw before bedtime really helped.

In addition, I learned not to watch something scary (like the news a horror movie!) just before bed. Oddly enough, last night we watched a really sweet movie on Netflix: About Time with Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, and Bill Nighy. It was actually the third time I've watched it. I love this time travel movie! And it made me forget for a brief two hours about the crisis we're in now. But as soon as it ended, my husband clicked over to the evening news.

I went upstairs.

So... is this aching jaw a sign of PTSD? Without a proper diagnosis, it's hard to tell. But we've ALL been stressed since this pandemic started! Except, we really can't call it "post" traumatic stress disorder, since we're still in the middle of it. Let's just call it TSD.

(Please note: The last thing I want to do is belittle anyone who has been through war, rape, abuse or other horrifying experiences and has PTSD. You're in pain. I get that and I feel for you. I hope you find relief. My brain aneurysm ruptures were pretty terrible, but I wasn't being attacked by anyone else. Only by my own brain.)



Sunday April 5 (Day 25): What a bizarre world we live in now, with religious services online only (except for a few holdouts in Southern states), and no sports anymore! What do you do when you would have been watching Basketball or Baseball or Golf, or even Formula One auto racing (my husband's favorite)?

I've never been much of a sports fan so it really doesn't bother me. Please don't get mad at me! I'm sorry! If you're going to throw anything at me, make it toilet paper. :)

When my husband would have been watching F-1 races, he watches CNBC. Sometimes he reads. If the weather's nice, he putters in the yard. What I do is read or organize the pantry or clean out a closet.

Today we took another lovely walk.

Our weeping cherry tree is finally blooming!

Currently reading:

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater, Book 4 in The Raven Cycle.  This one will take me a while too, but probably not as long as it took me to read The Overstory. I read the first three books in this Cycle back in January and February, when I could get them out of the library. Now the library is off limits, so I ordered a few paperbacks from bookshop.org. Fascinating, utterly absorbing modern-day fantasies published by Scholastic from 2012 to 2016.


Covid-19 stats (from the WHO)
as of April 5, 2020:

Countries affected: 209
Confirmed cases: 1,136,851
Confirmed deaths: 62,955


What are you reading? And do you ever wake up with aching jaws?

Stay healthy, friends! Stay safe. Stay home.

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. 

So... this happened!

In today's Children's Bookshelf from Publisher's Weekly:


 
Sally Morgridge at Holiday House has bought world rights to Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz. The debut novel in verse is about a 12-year-old girl with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder who loves music, math, and everything in its place. When her older brother disappears from his college campus, her family starts slipping away from her. Publication is set for summer 2021; Barbara Krasner of Olswanger Literary brokered the deal. 

Yes! This is really happening! My writing journey continues. I was thrilled to sign a contract with Holiday House. 

Sally Morgridge is a fantastic editor, who is helping me make this into the best novel in verse I can write.

Was planning to do more revising tonight. But I think I'll take a moment or two to celebrate. It is, after all, Mardi Gras!

NOW OR NEVER! by Ray Anthony Shepard for Black History Month

I didn't want to let Black History Month go by without mentioning this hard-hitting, beautifully-written book by Ray Anthony Shepard (whom I was lucky enough to meet at the Highlights Foundation Novel in Verse workshop in 2016).

From the distributor, Penguin Random House

NOW OR NEVER! 54th Massachusetts Infantry's War to End Slavery by Ray Anthony Shepard (October 2017, Calkins Creek, 144 pages, for ages 10 and up)

Synopsis (from the publisher):  Here is the riveting dual biography of two little-known but extraordinary men in Civil War history: George E. Stephens and James Henry Gooding. These Union soldiers not only served in the Massachusetts 54th Infantry, the well-known black regiment, but were also war correspondents who published eyewitness reports of the battlefields. Their dispatches told the truth of their lives at camp, their intense training, and the dangers and tragedies on the battlefield. Like the other thousands of black soldiers in the regiment, they not only fought against the Confederacy and the inhumanity of slavery, but also against injustice in their own army. The regiment’s protest against unfair pay resulted in America’s first major civil rights victory -- equal pay for African American soldiers.

Why I recommend it: I learned so much from this slim volume about a little-known part of American history. Everyone should read this well-researched book, not just teens and pre-teens. Shepard doesn't hold back in telling the sometimes-gruesome, sometimes-infuriating history of the African-Americans who fought and often died for the Union.

Why did I wait until now to read a book from 2017? Ray is such a kind man, when he learned what I had been through in 2017/2018, and that I was awaiting brain surgery in 2019, he told me to hold off until I was fully recovered, saying it's a "hard and sometimes-disturbing Civil War story."  I'm glad I finally read it, though. It's definitely worth it.

Ray Anthony Shepard from his website

Bio (from Ray's website): Ray Anthony Shepard is a grandson of a slave, a former teacher, and retired editor-in-chief of a major education publishing company., He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Education and the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he received a Martin Luther King Jr. Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. This is his first work of creative nonfiction.

"I write to provide young readers of any age a fuller (not revisionist) picture of American slavery, a corrective history of the struggle and anguish of courageous individuals in the two-and-a-half-century assault to limit full American citizenship to African Americans by ascribing inferior physical, moral, and intellectual attributes to a set of racial features."