Stay Home, Stay Healthy; Week Seven

This week felt more normal. I still feel like something in me has snapped. But maybe not in a bad way. I’m laughing more. I care less. Not about other people, but about minor details of life. How much does it all really matter anyways? If I feel like drinking… I’m going to drink. If I feel like treating myself to a spiced-chai-tea-latte three days in a row… well, I’m just going to do that.

All five of us are back to work. The worst days of the last seven weeks seem like a dream. Like labor. Us women remember labor and the pain, but we don’t really REMEMBER… until we go into labor again and wonder what the f we’re thinking doing it all over again. I digress.

With no surprise, Governor Inslee extended the Stay Home Stay Healthy order. Some freedoms were re-granted, boating and fishing for instance. I am actually not sure what else opened because I stopped listening to him. There are phases in which the economy will be re-opened. ‘The economy’ is an impersonal way of saying, ‘small businesses that people have worked their entire lives to build and that are now collapsing at the hand of an overreaching government’.

*Note: This may be one of the most ranting weekly diatribes I’ve written during this pandemic

In Clark County, there are nearly half a million people. As of last Friday, there have been 375 positive cases of Coronavirus, CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Virus, COVID-19 or whatever you choose to call it. There have been 23 deaths. On Friday, there were 10 people in the hospital that tested positive. In a Facebook Post last week, I said, “All deaths matter. It’s not fair to say that since I believe our economy should reopen that I don’t care about people. I do care about people. I care about more than just people not getting coronavirus. I don’t feel like the numbers reflect the current protocol”. I had several people reach out and thank me for posting that. Pro-quarantine people are accusing those that want the economy to re-open of being selfish and uncaring. That is simply not the case.

I care, emotionally. And I care with my actions. I have spent more money on supporting local businesses than normal, I have been generous with my tipping, I have donated to the food bank, and other charities. My family had minimal contact with others for six weeks. I use hand sanitizer before and after I go into a public place. I touch as little as possible when I’m out and about and I respect people’s personal space.

I care that this virus isn’t spread. But I also care about my friend that owns a small business who isn’t receiving enough unemployment to even pay her rent. My grandma needs to not get sick, but she also needs hugs and she needs to get out of the house. I care about my neighbor that mostly likely needs to put her dog down, and can’t be with him at the vet. Convicted criminals need to stay locked up, and business owners trying to feed their kids need not be arrested.

And don’t even get me started on the Stimulus checks. How does it make fiscal sense to mail out checks to every American because there is a pandemic? My household income has not changed… why should I get this money? My grandma is retired with money coming from social security and a pension; her income has not changed… why should she get this money? It’s always fun to get unexpected money. I get excited when I find $5 in a pair of jeans I haven’t worn for a while. But think of the financial burden this stimulus package will cause for our generation and the next, and possibly even the next. I am not opposed to financial relief, but a check to every American just doesn’t make sense.

We watched Captain America; The Winter Soldier last night. There’s a scene that I could not help relate to the world right now! (Call me a conspiracy theorist, that’s fine. I’ve been called worse). Captain America in all of his studliness and Black Widow in all of her kick ass beauty discovered that SHIELD, the organization designed to protect the world, had been infiltrated by HYDRA, an evil organization set on control. A scientist of HYDRA, now surviving in a computer database describes, with much pride, how the organization was able to get humanity to buy into their evil scheme. They decided that humanity ‘could not be trusted with its own freedom’ but they discovered ‘if you try to take it away, they resist… that humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly’. In order to make that happen, HYDRA secretly fed crisis and reaped war for decades, and ‘when history didn’t cooperate, history was changed’. They ‘created a world so chaotic, humanity was finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security’. WHAAAAT??? Oh my goodness. (Click on this paragraph… and watch the clip starting at two minutes)

Maybe this is going too far. But when .004% of the county is dying of coronavirus, and the governor has shut down life as we know it… it’s got to make you wonder. Sweden has imposed far less restrictions on its citizens…. yet only .03% of their population has died due to COVID-19. And to put a little more perspective on the numbers… in 2018, .011% of our population died in car accidents. In the same year, .014% of our population died due to suicide, and an astounding .19% of the US population died due to cancer. All far higher percentages than COVID-19. All deaths matter… but if it was only about saving lives… we’d focus more on mental health, stop driving cars, and stop smoking/eating GMOs/polluting the planet/using chemicals on plants/and other cancer-causing things.

Just makes you think, doesn’t it?

Off my soap box for now…

Abby ripped her declaw off, so she got to visit the vet. Jesse and I went out on the boat. My knees got sunburned. It was fabulous. The girls and I took a roadtrip to the beach. I couldn’t have asked for a better Mother’s Day… visiting with my girls for hours in the car, and rocking out to great music (and some questionable music). These girls make my heart happy. Rey Reynolds is running for office, and I have volunteered to help with his campaign. He is a police officer with background in Fish and Wildlife and mentoring juvenile delinquents… what a phenomenal history to bring with him into the job of creating laws. I’m reading John Maxwell’s, “How Successful People Think” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. A bit of motivation and some entertainment. I’ve started watching Schitt’s Creek on Netflix again… laugh out loud funny. And Lexi is becoming an amazing baker. That’s my week in a nutshell!