Settling in

This weekend the news keeps coming: everything is closing. There are rumblings of shutting down travel in and out of our state. The airport is empty. Every few minutes I get an email from another company telling us of their COVID-19 plans; I keep hearing about shut downs. Starbucks, REI...just about everyone. I went out to refresh my supplies (we ate most of our fresh stuff, as we do each week) and the stores were erratically stocked: some aisles were empty, others full.

Seattle has a great deal of the nation's cases. I'm following the numbers on The Seattle Times, as they are doing a daily update:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/coronavirus-daily-news-updates-march-15-what-to-know-today-about-covid-19-in-the-seattle-area-washington-state-and-the-nation/

Washington State has 769 cases confirmed today, although testing is still only available for medically urgent cases still. There are predictions that there are actually more like 20,000 cases right now in the US.

I am carefully watching what is happening in Italy, Spain, and France, because I think we're tracking them, both in terms of our numbers and in terms of government intervention. This morning I had a conversation with friends about restaurants and bars shutting down, but I thought it was weeks away; just minutes ago I read that the governor is closing all restaurants and bars starting tomorrow. Gatherings of 50 people or more are prohibited; gatherings of fewer than 50 people are also prohibited if they can't

Strange times.

As for my daughter and I, we are hunkering down (as Fauci said). She went out with a friend yesterday to a movie, and I regret it. The theater only sold 50% of tickets to allow for social distancing; I warned her not to share food like popcorn (they had to get their own), and I sent her with hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes so she could wipe down her seat...and right as she left, they announced that movie theaters might get shut down. But perhaps it's good she went, because along with bars and restaurants the article I just read said that "entertainment venues" are being shut down as well. "Fitness clubs" - we belong to the Y - are closing for two weeks.

Hunker down indeed.

I did my last grocery trip for a while; we have groceries to last at least two weeks, and I do not plan to enter a store for a minimum of one week. I had left Amazon behind a few months ago, but I signed up for Prime again: I can get dog food, groceries, and anything else we need delivered to my front door.

Hunkered down.

Tomorrow morning I'll go to work by taking my coffee into my office in the basement, and I'll come up with a list of things I need to accomplish by next Monday, when the kids join us online.

I'll take the dog on long walks. I'll drink gallons of tea, watch Netflix, read books, play Mancala or other games with Tessa. We'll cook good food, we'll bake, we'll listen to music. At some point I'll do yard work. I could stand to do some yoga. Maybe I'll paint a bedroom.

But I think I'm going to really take social distancing seriously.

We're hunkering down.