DangerGirl Central Finally Offers Pandemic News

T’would not be a journal-blog if I didn’t write something about my personal experience during this crazy Pandemic we are still muddling through.

As I’ve heard any number of times, we’re all in the same storm, but our boats are different.  I’m not going to even attempt to touch on what you all are going through, but I need to make a record of what my Rooster and I have gone through.  I’m breaking it up into time blocks so that as I write, I can analyze just where the insanity really kicked in, it will probably become apparent as this post goes on, and on.  🙂

You might relate to one stage or another.

STAGE 1-  Late March to Early April

Working from home was a much bigger challenge than I gave it credit for.  I started with a sticky keyboard and the surprisingly difficult world of moving back to using only one screen for map, research and Photoshop design work.  The rise of the need to use pad and paper was palpable and ultimately welcomed.

My new office partner, LB the 14 year old mean cat, who has nothing better to do than to be cuddled and scratched on her terms, forces her way into the curve of my arms as I compute, and growls menacingly at me when I try to type or use the mouse.  She’s driving me crazy.

I did and do still realize how lucky I am that I am able to work at home and that I continued to receive my full paycheck, regardless of the scarcity of assignments.  I am grateful that the economic part of the Pandemic did not devastatingly reach our walls.

At Stage 1, I was completely paranoid.  I was the lady wearing the gloves in the store (I still haven’t worn a mask and likely won’t, unless I go to Costco).  I wiped down all of our newly purchased packaged groceries and delivered goods with a Lysol wipe upon returning home.  I also wiped the steering wheel, my cell phone, washed my hands and threw those plastic bags away like they were made of dog poop.  I shopped every 7 days at most.

The panic was real when I realized I had reached my last Lysol wipe.

Thank God for the Clorox wipes I found in the RV.  Things may have imploded otherwise.  And let’s hear it for Lysol, Purell and Clorox!  They have never been more successful, or more CHARMIN…. lol.

I worried incessantly when friends stopped by.  I worried so much that I felt like I was going overboard, and yet it was overly common to hear me say to my Rooster, “Stop touching everybody!”  I didn’t let anyone into the house.  Any entertaining was done in the backyard.

Family sent cards and the kids drew pictures also sent via mail.  We had a pandemic Easter Bunny drop from my parents.  Antibacterial pump soap, six rolls of toilet paper and a pot of Tulips.  🙂  It was a whole new horrible world built on fear.

I colored Easter Eggs alone for the first time in my life.  I felt like I was representing.  I also had nobody making sure I didn’t spill, so my countertops got some of the treasured Clorox  I was guarding, due to messing dying alone.

We took our temperatures every morning in Stage 1, seriously.  We waited on each other to get that beep and be validated by the other.  I have an oddly low 97-ish average temperature.

Although I am proud to say that I did not hoard toilet paper or bleach, I think that by now we have been given stock in unneeded throat drops, Vicks and Mucinex, or maybe Walgreens.  You know.  Just in case.

The one thing barely helping me maintain sanity at this time was my Rooster’s off the cuff decision that we start the mini-farm of my dreams.  We became parents to 12 rapidly dying chicks.  (Who knew that baby chicks are tough to keep alive, we’re talking syringe feeding of water!)   6 of them survived (plenty) along with 3 fun ducklings, who presented as not nearly as fragile.

The flowers around the yard started coming back and the great plant orgy commenced.  I refused to go stand in line at Home Depot, so my beautiful yard of flowers of 2020 are courtesy of my government stimulus check, Fred Meyer, Ace Hardware and many hours digging in the dirt (and hauling bags of dirt from the Jeep through the yard).

The garden’s current state of flourishing is courtesy of my Rooster and his many,  many passes with the rototiller, during this Stage of our personal Quarantine, that and all the extra time with nowhere to go.  It’s set up to be a banner year.

I watched the news incessantly.  I kept track of all of the numbers and at first was proud of Trump’s handling of the daily press conference.  That fairy tale didn’t continue on a positive note, with him imploding over press questions and his own gaffes more and more often, until they ceased all together.  It was for the best really though.  I couldn’t take one more day of the parade of retail partners.

I worried daily about my sister Patty, a Respiratory Therapy Supervisor at Tacoma General.  I consistently offered a kidnapper’s (ahem, hero’s) refuge here in our house.  To her credit, she never tried to take me up on it, wrangled her three teens, husband, dog, AND worked the pandemic.

I tried to make masks but failed miserably.  My sewing machine skills in real life are nowhere near what I make them out to be.  The one I did manage to turn out I sent to Utah.  Gotta protect the Chickenhawk, even from afar.

STAGE 2-  SERIOUS BUSINESS (Mid April- May 4th)

Work actually picked up with a couple of research and committee packages here and there.  I completed them all with a fierceness and thoroughness that I won’t likely be able to continue to live up to.  Stage 2 was mental failure.

Several iterations of bird houses were constructed.  Namely the chicken mansion and the quack shack.  My Rooster is an excellent building supervisor, foreman and laborer.

I am the clumsy apprentice but we made it through.  The birds got big enough to go outside.  Everybody is thankful for that.  They are messy, especially ducklings.  Ducklings love to play in water, need a pool and will stare at you inside their dripping wet home as if you shouldn’t even be there.  It’s a good thing they’re cute.

Although we’re in the serious business stage.  I stopped wiping down the groceries.  I got very tired of cooking (odd to me since I love to cook) and began buying some of the convenience meals I shun in home like the very plague that we thought we were fighting.  I take pride in not offering freezer meals outside of the odd pizza.  No more was I too proud.

Pandemic haircuts were given in the backyard.  Jokes were many, but the laughter was less than would be expected.

Just about every other day became excruciatingly long and panic ridden.  I literally swung from “it’s ok, work in the garden and do some yoga booty ballet”, to “go ahead eat all the spaghetti, we’re going to die in flames anyway”.  And somehow those words don’t cover the panic or the confidence that I could count on, each and every other day.

It very much sucked, but perhaps that was my introduction to understanding people who are bi-polar.  I don’t wish this part of my personal quarantine on anybody.

My brother Danny finally got out of the hospital the day after Easter (April 12th).  He was one day short of 8 weeks in.  Sepsis, multiple organ failure and open heart surgery.  He went through the ringer, but him being released was a huge weight lifted off of my world, and certainly off of his.  His challenge is an entire other blog post.

I planted and then weeded the entire garden over and then over again.  I learned that it takes 8 hours to do a thorough weeding.

The weather was incredible.  Rainy but beautiful and sunny.  It was so perfect for the plants.

I grew weary of there being nowhere to go but the grocery store.  Online purchases were made that have still not arrived as of the date of this publication.  I’m in for some surprises when they finally get here, even if I never see them.  They were ordered delivered to the house.  It is doubtful I’ll still be trapped here every single day once they arrive.

STAGE 3  (May 5th to Present)

One day after Jay Inslee’s extension of the Stay Home order we had a birthday parade for my niece Lydia, she turned 13, and was likely butthurt in that 13-year-old insufferable girl way, of life being so unfair and everyone is horrible.  Maybe not…..  I found 13 to be horrible.

We all gathered in a school parking lot near her home and decorated the cars.  What I remember most about that day was the warm feeling in my heart and the rush of happiness that I had when I saw relatives and family friends all there getting ready.  I didn’t hug any of them and I’m sad about that, because I wanted to cuddle them all.

In May time started flying, which is SO GREAT because April took 5 years.  Although time has become so strange because days take forever, but a week flies right by.  It reminds me of what usually starts happening this time of year.  Time always flies because we do so much, we come back to life.  We vacation, we ride, we fish, we shrimp and we camp.  Usually, that’s what we do in May.

I missed shrimping the most.  That is my favorite-est seafood killing adventure.  I hope the WDFW gives us a chance later in the year….. hope, hope, wish.

We had a huge tragedy a week or so ago, the worst of the Pandemic, it cannot go left uncommented upon.  There was a slaughter at the Fowl Orphanage.

Overnight, on any old given Wednesday, Racoons (we assume) came over the fence in the backyard, that is preceded by 1/2 acre of the most vicious blackberry bushes that you have ever seen.  Those same horrible trash pandas slaughtered two of our two month old ducks.  At two months, ducks look fully grown.  It was the worst day of the entire Pandemic (so far).  My Rooster was beyond himself with grief and guilt for not putting them in their cage at night, for leaving the door open.

He and Darrin spent all day hunting raccoons and even killed one of those mean old coons super dead.  They seriously hurt another.  By the end of the day they were in the backyard with an sniper caliber scope, aiming it straight up into the tree that the first two were hunted in.  They found two more pairs of eyes by the end of the night.

Thus began the construction of the Fowl Hotel and the purchase of three more baby ducks.  Yes, again our spare room is home to baby birds.  Wet, messy, scared baby ducks and Honk just can’t wait until they can come out to the Fowl Hotel.

This building is huge, fully wired, and my Rooster has plans to install barbed wire along that back blackberry fence.    It’s a 34 foot long, 10 foot wide run, fully encompassing the chicken mansion and the quack shack.  We spent the entirely of Memorial Day weekend building it.  There went my Rooster’s stimulus check.

Now I go to the grocery store depending on nothing more than the hand sanitizer I will use when I’m finished.  I see the people in masks and gloves, and I do my best to maintain distance.  I have quit biting my fingernails for the most part (it took me 45 years) and I never ever touch my face when in public.

I have been conditioned right up to the edge of the cliff by fear, by the media, by those “we’re all in this together” tv commercials.  And finally it was enough.  Finally, I have come away from the edge on my own.  I refuse to be afraid of something I can hardly control.  I refuse to watch politicians duke it out with words and leave us with promises that we all know will never be fulfilled.  I am tired of all of the backtracking.

I was thoroughly entertained by journalists and talk show hosts broadcasting from their living rooms.  I was not entertained by Saturday Night Live Stays Home.

I have returned to my right mind

I have returned to claim what remains of it.  I cannot be bullied.  I needed to remember that I am DangerGirl.  I do all sorts of things that are riskier than this virus and I will not be held hostage anymore.

I am ready for this to be over.  I’m looking forward to returning to my office for work, rather than fight the 3 lb- 185 year old cat for access to the keyboard and mouse.  I am looking forward to sharing a meal with my family, and going on a ride with a stop at a bar.  I look forward to El Toro’s on Friday nights with our best friends and our favorite Chinese Restaurant in Ocean Shores.

I want to go shopping at HomeGoods.  I need candles and pillows.  I need a big brass bell for the Fowl Hotel.  I need summer stuff.  I NEED HOMEGOODS!

So…….  I’m looking forward.

This last couple of months have changed me forever.  I know that they’ve changed you too.  I see it in your facebook posts and hear it in the phone calls.  Let’s hope we can come out of all this mentally and physically healthy.  Let’s have a new appreciation for the simple things that make us happy and the the need to be nicer to ourselves in times of crisis.  Let’s turn off the TV.

I’m happy I could share with you.  Thanks for reading.

Onward and upward my friends.

I wonder how the Pandemic is treating Jay Buhner?

Just so you know. Today was my first purchase of toilet paper throughout this entire crazy pandemic.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us