Life in the Time of CoVid-Day 9 Lockdown
April 4, 2020-Day 9 of Lockdown:
Worldwide: 1,333,373 confirmed CoVid cases; 60,375 deaths.
N.Y. Virus Deaths Double in Three Days to Almost 3,000; “New York in 'race against time' as Trump stresses face masks are voluntary”
Who’s Zoomin’ Who? We had brunch/cocktails with the family today: Our time 7:00pm, their time between 9 and 1 pm their time. (SA is 6 hours ahead of ET, 9 hours ahead of Alaska). We slowly sipped our daily wine rations, they sipped coffee…we think it was coffee…it was in coffee mugs…Not judging!
I’ll Snap a pic next time…
It was our first family Zoom ever! Unlike many others, our scheduling a family Zoom session is not a response to us missing daily interaction with each other, like it is for others. We all live far apart: Alaska, New York, Connecticut, Texas, Nevada, California, Montana, and that’s only our “immediate” family. And now, Curtis and I in South Africa. (After more than a month in one country, bags unpacked, on a first-name basis with grocery clerks, qualifies as “living”.) We chat, but not as a group. Nor, before CoVid struck, did we feel the need. That was then…
The Zoom session was grand (way better than I imagined it would be…I groaned when I saw the invite.) The grandboys popped in and out, people came and went, the conversation hopped around. And better than SKYPE or FaceTime. None of the usual half-head, partial-nose, ground-ceiling-getting dizzy moving around as each family had its own screen. Forty-minute Zoom sessions are FREE.
If you’re worried it’s too complicated: All the kids are doing it! Sis-in-law, Liz talked Curtis’s mom, Adele through the sign-up steps. We weren’t in on that session, but from what I heard, even the first 10 minutes of everyone watching and commenting while Adele figured out how to make it work were fun. Commercial over! (No Zoom isn’t paying me—wish they would…Any Zoom folks out there? Send me money!)
South Africa: 1,505 cases: 9 dead. Medics and volunteers set up testing station on the front porch of a block of flats in Johannesburg’s ‘gritty’ Yeoville neighborhood.
See all the people—1 metre apart…all the way inside the mall.
Curtis and I braved a trip to the shops today. Nine-days in, lots of folks have run out of rations. Even at Woolies, the line was triple the length. The feeling was a bit more relaxed in the line. But inside….YIKES!
What is it about masks that make people go into TV Gangster mode?
Are bandanas infused with some form of botox that freezes eye-smile muscles.
Does wearing a surgical mask automatically make one’s demeanor go into harried surgeon mode?
Yes, cranky person, that scarf you’ve triple wound around your face does look too tight, but really, is that any reason to hip-check your way through the laundry soap aisle?
Whoya Lookin’ at Buster?
Watching everyone stomping, growling, ferreting their way through the grocery, I was reminded of my friend Mimi’s antidote. Mimi lived upstairs from us in Trinidad. While shop clerks in Trinidad didn’t have the “Locked down but I still have to work” faces clerks in SA now have, many had scowly faces ie: Smiling is not in my job description. Instead of being bothered by it, Mimi took it as a challenge. She went out of her way to be extra sweet, polite, cheerful with everyone. And by golly it was contagious.
Two for me . . .
So, while I stood in the Click pharmacy line buying Nurofen (SA version of Advil) for my achy-breaky back and candy for my locked-down soul, I channeled Mimi.
I smiled a huge eye-crinkleer at every custie & clerk and chatted up the lady in front of me. (I got her laughing!)
Danged if I didn’t want out with a two-step feeling—and 3 packages of candy (2 for me; 1 for Gloria) Yeehaw!
Speaking of TV Surgeons, Check this out:
Medical Dramas Go From T.V. to ER by Donating Medical Supplies to Fight Coronavirus
Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19, New Amsterdam, The Good Doctor, etc. have donated their supplies from the studio sets.
(Festival of Charles Buds—that’s the dance we were supposed to be doing…)