COVID-19

The Emperors New Virus

So how long until we can ask if everyone has lost their fucking minds?

Another week?

Another month?

Let me set out my logic early so you can decide beforehand if you agree or disagree without having to read a lot of words and then going through the pain and stress of rationalizing your opinion.

Closing shop for a short time was a good move. We knew very little about the virus and there were some very serious implications around it that would have dire consequences.

We can’t stay closed forever. That part should be obvious. The reason that we enjoy civilized life is because of how specialized and connected we are. That is already at risk and staying in the cave longer just pushes it that much closer.

People demonstrated to be at-risk should be our utmost priority. They should be protected and not forced into any kind of return to licking doorknobs.

Our president didn’t suggest injecting disinfectants. Not directly. But he did look over to his advisers with a twinkle of hope in his eye and ask questions about if it was a viable solution and that should be scary enough. It was not sarcasm. Most of his statements could be made around a watercooler with a close friend as small talk and they would giggle and say “man that old Donny T is crazy”. Most of his statements are not exemplary testaments to strong and powerful leadership at the Presidential level.

We are obsessed with death models and that keeps us from asking the right questions. I click on the CDC link at least twice a day. It’s a train wreck rubberneck reaction. How bad will it get. Morbid curiosity. But it isn’t the only decision tool. And it is related to testing which has been shown repeatedly to underestimate actual infections. This has been likened to a war. Battle decisions aren’t made on death toll alone. They include strategic advantage.

Our political parties are confused. We have the party of individual rights and freedom mandating private businesses to close. We have the party of socialism raising up individual safety as a reason for the herd to sacrifice. I’m not picking a side but you have to admit it is weird. I don’t blame them. I’m confused by this mess too.
The reason for flattening the curve was the objective of not overwhelming our healthcare. It was never intended to get back to normal life more quickly. If we wanted to get through this quickly we would put everyone in the same room and have a virus sharing party. Everyone share beverages and cough in each other’s faces. We would be done with it in 21 days. Disastrously, but true enough. This rollback was a move to avoid the situation in Italy where people were turned away and left to die. We’ve blunted the curve but we are at the other end of the spectrum, healthcare workers are being furloughed and fired because nothing is happening. We are now losing healthcare capacity from an action with the sole intent to protect healthcare capacity.

So those are the facts that fuel my thinking. If we are misaligned then don’t bother correcting me because I am just as hard headed as you and we will just waste energy in a comment section. If all that makes some little bit of sense and you can tolerate it as a base of discussion then let’s move to the next half.

We are not seeing the right numbers on actual infections, transmissivity, and mortality. The testing has not materialized and we are operating under the Italy assumption; the idea that mass death and chaos will ensue. All the while we are getting hints that infections are way more prevalent and that this has been here since maybe November of last year. For the purpose of the final question let’s assume these mortality and transmission numbers come out somewhere around a bad seasonal flu.

Some experts are suggesting that a vaccine for a corona virus is a pipe dream that has been tried for many years with no success in sight. It is the common cold. This is a deadly strain. Should we still pursue it? Absolutely. But I would like some reality conveyed to the masses about just how likely it will be to create one. For the purpose of the final question let’s assume this answer is something longer than two years to create one.

The media thrives on controversy and sensationalism and breaking news. Hopefully that is recognized as fact. Take all of the news with a grain of salt. When the lead headline of the day was fear about a second wave next fall I tried to find what they were basing it on. It was an interview in the Washington Post. The guy said that this virus will likely be seasonal and would likely coincide with flu season along with colds and a hundred other things. From that statement we got a day full of dire warnings about a second wave killing millions. Maybe it is true but we are struggling to assess the present situation. It seems irresponsible to start freaking out about the future. But for the sake of my final question let’s assume they are right and this is an annual event.

So… if everyone will catch this thing over some time period, we have no prospect of a vaccine, and this will happen annually in a seasonal pattern. Why are we crushing our economy, our healthcare capacity, and dismantling our way of life?

Its because we have a risk-averse culture who believes that no matter what something must be done. Safety first.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is nothing at all.

So here is my final question that I ask myself every morning…

What the fuck are we doing?

It looks like panic and it needs to stop. But it won’t. No one will put their neck on the line because you can’t prove what didn’t happen and safety is the safest thing. More infections will mean more death and no one wants that hanging over their head but in the end it may well be the lesser evil.

I’ll add a caveat that if a vaccine is on the horizon and/or if the true mortality rate is 1-3% or higher and if I’m wrong about the overall current stress on the healthcare system then we are doing the right thing but I don’t know that we-the-people are seeing the data to make that decision. And we should be involved in that decision. The two things that are rampant in government are tedium and micromanagement. The desire to control every single decision along a flow chart because the general public is considered too stupid to do the right thing.

This whole ride is a daily rollercoaster. I suspect that right and wrong decisions are an illusion because we are where we are and we’ve done what we’ve done. And what we do next won’t hinge on anything you or I think. I’ve never been so unsure and internally divided on an issue.

So, if you were trolling the internet for a random person’s internal dialogue and misguided opinions, this post is for you. You’re welcome. Share with caution. I could be a ten-year-old in Taiwan for all you know. It’s the internet. Anything is possible.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

Life Lessons

Check on your teacher friends. They are having a rough one today. School closures were extended through the end of the semester.

I don’t want to kick off with the wrong tone but I recall a specific feeling from my younger years. I lost a friend unexpectedly and it was surreal until the funeral. Until that moment there was an outside chance that the hanging dread would turn out to be pointless anxiety. There was a finality in the ceremony that made the truth feel real. It gave me permission to accept reality and to grieve.

At the risk of being hyperbolic, today had a similar dark and final feeling. Our state cancelled the rest of the semester and children will likely report to their next grade level in the Fall. In a moment, the kids and their teachers experienced a sudden loss of hope. Hope that things would return and maybe they would get a few weeks with this class before sending them off to their next adventure. A change to say goodbye.

We will probably all joke about getting extra long spring breaks or some other nonsense. I’ve already made a joke about saving money on laundry detergent and school uniforms. It is to cover the raw feeling that life is a little different and there is another thing that can’t be undone.

There are friendships and relationships that are gone. Social networks that exist only at work and at school. There are burdens being carried by parents that they are unprepared to carry. We are scrambling to schedule zoom and log in to the correct remote learning apps. Six of us in my house all doing something internet or phone call related.

Uncertainty is eating at all of us. Sometimes it bubbles out as bold exclamations that “we can’t keep this up forever!”. Sometimes it is denial and I hear things like, “This is an overreaction!”. Some call it supernatural. Some call it sinister. Who knows. We all cope in different ways. I try to take note.

For the teachers I’ve watched, the reactions are just as varied. I’ve seen some try to maintain sanity and community through light-hearted hang-outs. Making sure that middle school kids in the prime of social butterfly timeline have a chance to poke fun and crack jokes. I’ve seen some pour their hearts into personalized effort for each and every student. I’ve watched some take to Facebook Live and YouTube to create content that makes the students feel like they are close to the teachers they love. Sometimes as simple as reading a book. Others are working to keep up requirements and assignments and try to keep some structure for the students. To give them a point of focus and a goal for the day. I’ve not seen a single teacher throw up their hands. They have continued on doing different things because of what they have in common. They love the children they teacher.

I know that the decision to stay home for the rest of the school year was not made lightly. There were tears shed in our house. Not just because Supermom just got a job as a teacher in four grade levels. We shared a minute of sadness. I just wanted to take that minute and capture it in time to acknowledge that we lost the most precious thing we have as people; time with one another. Shared experience.

Seniors are missing their milestones of graduation and prom. I imagine everyone posting graduation memories isn’t super helpful for their mood but it highlights the emotional energy that we put into our memories. There are weddings and reunions and hundreds of other social gatherings that fell victim to COVID-19. That’s just the way it is. We will get back to normal sometime but we will remember the ghost-of-before.

If you are feeling a little down again today, this post is for you. Me too. It happens. This probably wasn’t all that helpful but you’re welcome. Tomorrow is a new one and we will wake up and look ahead.

To the teachers… THANK YOU! And we feel you. I’m sure I will see you from the background of a zoom call but if not, I’ll see you around in the fall. Until then, don’t lick any doorknobs in public places.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

Ah-Sen-Chuel

Our hometown has a stay-at-home order. Most hometowns have a stay-at-home order. Safer at home. Shelter in place. Quarantine. Humans telling other humans what to do to keep the virus from spreading. Then the second group of humans feels confined or chided by the first group so they buck the trends. They stretch the truth. They shelter in cars on the road around other second group humans. Doing important things. Critical things. Essential… things.

Essential activities start to expand at the edge of hypothetical where it meets hyperbole.

I need food to live.

True.

I don’t have food in my hand.

True.

Chicken sandwiches are food.

Still true.

Food is essential.

I like where this is going.

Chic-Fil-A is essential.

Boom. Masterful.

ACT ONE

Me: Give me a sweet tea, twelve piece nugget, large waffle fry, and one Polynesian and one Ranch.

Peppy 17-year-old Taking My Order Curbside: Large fry only or large size the whole order?

Me: Excellent catch. I see why they hired you. Large size the whole combo.

Peppy 17-year-old Smiling So Hard His Eyes Are Squeezed Shut: My pleasure.

Me: *Teleports to the end of the line and finds my order in the seat beside me and my shoulders feeling relaxed from a massage that I can’t recall ever happening.*

ACT TWO

I’ve been to Target.

Essential. Life or death shit.

Stop three on my first day of house arrest. I am walking back to my car that is black but somehow yellow from the solid layer of pollen. It should have bees having a bee orgy and snorting up that sweet yellow powder like Tony Montana did on his desk. Instead there is one lonely wasp directly on the driver’s door. Probably hogging all of the proboscis candy to himself.

My hands are full of essential Easter gear that we ordered online. I am wearing my daughter’s sunglasses that are two grey circles that make me look like a steam punk villain. My oversized blue t-shirt with a yeti in a sweater that says “Yeti to Party!” really outweighs the sunglasses. As I approached the car pondering what to do, the wasp had his own agenda. SCHINNGG. He whipped out his razor wings and slid his attack flight goggles in to place. I barely had time to react as he launched towards me with intent to kill. I swung my bags of candy and Easter baskets. I retreated and circled the car and bought just enough time to leap in the driver’s side. The wasp bounced against the window for a few minutes as I sat back and let my heart regain a normal rhythm. The panic fog cleared from my eyes and I reached for my hand sanitizer. As I rubbed it in on my already dry hands I notice a young couple across the aisle. They had a good laugh at my assault and I realize the absurdity of the whole thing. I went shopping in a funny tshirt that I had on for two days wearing children’s sunglasses and fought a wasp in the Target parking lot and my hands smell like Christmas Cupcake because I stole this sanitizer off my kids backpacks that they probably aren’t using again this year. My sweet bakery aroma probably attracted the damn wasp.

What am I doing with my life? Has it come to this?

Time to head home relax so I can be prepared to not do anything tomorrow.

Exhausting.

You’re welcome.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

This too will pass

And we’re the lucky ones…

Today I drove to the school and a sign told me to wait in my car and someone would come out to help me. It was true. Someone came out and asked me what classes my children were in and I told her. She disappeared and returned a few minutes later with two large Ziplock bags with workbooks and loose paper and a few extra number two pencils. I went home and set the work on the dining room table and went about my day.

By lunchtime I had a pounding headache which I attribute to an unholy layer of pollen on everything. The south has many weapons to kill us and none as deadly as allergies. It still hasn’t totally left me but I am in a pondering mood so I decided to write.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about life changing slowly but all-of-the-sudden. These little moments that seem small but when we look back we can pinpoint the exact moment that nothing was the same. The subtle shift of the earth under our feet. The moment our perspective was changed. There is something about those moments that are sad. It feels like something stolen or an opportunity missed. We grieve the memories slowly through life.

This whole COVID-19 situation will hit us in one way or another. Even if we succeed and stop the spread and protect ourselves (which I believe we are capable of). Even if the economy bounces back. We will still have some scars. The world will be different.

One of the kids asked me today when they could go back to school. That they really wanted to see their friends. I told them, “I don’t know… maybe soon.” And I smiled through the lie. My truth is that I think this school year is over. I don’t think we will go back and finish. For my daughters, I can see what they have lost. Even before they see it themselves.

For Lady Bug, it is the last two months with one of her most favorite people in the world. This person is a teacher with whom she finds love and comfort. She was having an especially hard day the other day and was able to have a Facetime to cheer her up. Those mornings of going to Kindergarten and working on her reading with volunteers and finishing the year out with her friends that she holds dear will probably not be the same. She won’t get to walk over the ceremonial bridge and show her community her growth. Next year she will go back and simply be in first grade. No celebration just a new stage. She will get to experience that odd feeling of seeing people who share your past but not your present. A teacher that you used to know…

For Donna Threeto, she might be even harder hit. Her current teacher has been her teacher for three years. It’s Montessori style so they have combined classrooms 1-3^rd, 4-6^th, and 7-8^th. She loves her classroom and leaving for Spring Break might have been the last day. There. might be a true period of mourning for that loss.

For Threeto and Lady Bug, I can’t describe the comfort of knowing that your children leave home to spend the day with people who love them like their own. These two won’t see their loss until the new phase begins. If they are even able to put words to what they feel. I will donate a tear or two to their cause.

The older two are more flexible and adaptable. They have some chance to stay in touch with a few friends through phones and computers. Prima may miss a summer program that she earned a chance to attend through academic performance. Jane has a summer trip to Chicago that is already cancelled. These are also lost things. Experience that would have an effect and create a memory but now are something less.

But we are not alone. Just like all of the proms and graduations and societal rites of passage, pieces of our lives have been lost and we won’t know it until the night passes and day breaks. There will be talk of postponing graduations and delaying proms but this will only encroach on the next phase of life. It would feel fake and forced. You can’t put time back in the bottle. When the times comes we need to move forward. We will be better served to take the reminder that life can change on a dime and use it to love each other with a little more depth.

More appreciation of the moment.

Give the hugs an extra five seconds of squeeze.

We joke about growing weary of being stuck in our houses with our family. Our patience growing thin. Days like today it seems a very real thing.

But I have everyone close. And they are healthy. And happy. We are growing our own moment in time. We are building the next thing to be stolen. My kids are all at an age where they like me. There is food to eat. We have plenty of TP. Life is good. Amidst the chaos, life is good.

One day in the near future life will return to a new normal. We will emerge from our cave, blinking into the sun.

Our new routine will start suddenly and it will persist. I will mourn the change as another loss. As something stolen. An opportunity missed.

That missing thing is always… more time.

If you are struggling with change, this post is for you. Don’t be bitter about what should have been. Nothing is guaranteed. There are parts of this total shit show that you will miss when it is over. Mourn, adapt, rinse, and repeat.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

Ps – Just as I finished this heartfelt piece Supermom smashed her big toe with a ceramic cup. Edge of the cup fell right on the joint of the big toe and it is black and blue big time. Send some positive feels her way. I bet she doesn’t miss that part when it goes away.

Fun and Games

Day five hundred of my captivity…

I have taken a total leave of absence from writing for what is probably a year. And people still stop by the site and see if something new is rolling off the press. Thank you guys. It feels good.

I’ve been busy and my will to write anything at all has been missing in action. I got to the point where I don’t feel like I have anything to share and now that the girls are getting older some of my previous story styles are no longer mine to tell. Tales of toddlers taking mystery shits on the furniture is fun and games but teenagers with technology will probably not be as understanding. I even thought about pulling site down and archiving for some future generation.

But not to worry, COVID-19 has entered our lives and I don’t have much sanity left. I need the therapy that only blog-style bitching can provide. A unity through misery.

So here is a feeble attempt to document our craziness.

The strangest thing so far is dealing with the ominous slow crawling feeling of disaster and vacation all rolled into one. We started our distancing on the kid’s spring break so when school got cancelled (they call it postponed but we know better) it just felt like the world’s longest weekend. If you watch the news then the world is ending and if I look outside the magnolia tree is blooming. My black car is yellow from pollen and people are walking their dogs more than I remember. Select shelves are empty in the stores but the shoppers meander around smile at each other, making small talk about COVID-19 and the lack of toilet paper. Milk, water, and bread have recovered from the initial rush but paper products may never recover.

Work life is much the same. For the first week it felt like we were trying something new. The second week we all unplugged our hardware from the office and logged in from our living rooms to get emails and take conference calls where kids played in the background. We try to move things forward but this second week was marked by the depression of knowing that we are just getting started in our new normal and lots of wondering if there is a point to trying to work or teach the kids about fractions. The third week may be the charm. The week that we get the groove and settle in to fight this thing off. I hope it is.

I tell my kids to take note. To keep a journal.

I remember an ice storm in the early nineties. We lived in the country and power networks were decimated. I think it was around two weeks before power was reconnected for our area. We cooked on a wood burning stove in the basement. We stayed warm and managed to get a generator to hook up a few essential items like our well. It was a time I remember as fun and interesting. We were toughing it out and surviving and there is something fulfilling about that even when it isn’t easy. I hope my kids remember this time in the same light. For me it is different because we have all the luxury we could want for a quarantine. We have Netflix and Disney and Prime. We have tablets and phones and a schedule that hasn’t been this free since college. It doesn’t require any work or effort. It doesn’t feel like surviving and I assume that is why it also doesn’t feel fulfilling as much as it feels depressing.

Prima, our second daughter, came into our room a few days ago with the complaint of a fever and a headache. We checked and it was 102.5. Fantaaaaastic. Two weeks of distancing and it arrives anyway. The next morning the fever is gone but a slight cough has joined the party. By the end of the day the fever is back. We treat with Tylenol and go to bed feeling like the wave is about to start crashing around us. Then she woke up this morning with no fever, no cough, and a pep in her step. Like it never happened. She probably had one of a hundred colds and some spring allergies but when every sniffle feels like Ebola has taken root it is exhausting.

I think we are developing some sort of quarantine PTSD or cabin fever. That can lead to impulsive and irrational behavior. Which reminds me, we got a baby wallaby. Her name is Stevie.

We also dressed up in fancy clothes and Mardi Gras masks to have our picture taken by a neighborhood photographer. She arranged to walk around and take photos of people on their porch. Three weeks ago that would have been a strange proposal but today we thought “Oh cool! Let’s dress weird and stand in the yard.”.

Everyone is shoving stuffed animals in the windows to give people a fun game of I Spy.

I think recorded history will have a new milestone. I propose B.C. (before corona) and A.D. (after distancing).

There have been upsides. We have been forced to slow down and exist around each other more than usual. We don’t have the pressures of early mornings and things to do at night. I sat with Jane and shared music for five hours yesterday. We went through notable hits from the eighties and the highlights of the millennial playlist. The we watched The Matrix. It was interrupted by a tornado warning and everyone huddling in the laundry room. We weren’t sure if we would rather die by tornado or suffocation from Judy Cornbread farting.

There were terrible tornadoes in Tennessee a few weeks earlier and last night a bad one hit Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Houses are sliding into the Tennessee River from flooding and an overly wet spring. Whoever is playing Jumanji needs to buckle up and finish the damn game because all this chaos is wearing thin. And we’ve all but forgotten that this is an election year. Once this virus clears they will be spending all that political ad money in a compressed window of time before the election.

Silver linings. Something to look forward to.

Anyway… good to talk to you and hopefully I will make a successful return to the keyboard.

If you are sheltering in place and trying to treat the virus from the inside out, with whiskey, this post is for you.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.