Unwitting participants in the pandemic- the weekend of March 15/16
If we thought things weren't going to change over the weekend, we were wrong.
Here's how the weekend looked for us.
On Saturday, I slept in until 5:30 am. Progress in the sleeping in arena!! I'd been waking up between 4:00 and 4:30 am the entire previous week (phooey to Daylight Savings, the beginning of which corresponded with the beginning of my incredible early awakening each morning) so waking up at 5:30 made me feel almost lazy :). I got my run in and then settled in for a day at home. Between the cold weather and the pandemic, my plans included a lot of indoor time with immediate family members.
Donnie and Abby left for the gym about mid morning. I asked Donnie to stop at Kroger on his way home from the gym. I forgot to buy a few things when I was there on Friday. While he was gone, I read an article about how supply chains to grocery stores could be disrupted and shelves could be empty for a while. I sent Donnie a text that said, "If in doubt, buy!"
While most items on the list that I sent to Donnie were of a healthy variety, I did include Reese's Eggs. Reese's Eggs are my favorite shape/ variety/ whathaveyou of peanut butter and chocolate and they are only available at Easter time. So these would be on my list no matter if life was scooting along in normalcy or if we'd be staring at numerous empty aisles at stores. Donnie thought that these eggs were what I was looking for (they are the right shape so they look very similar) but alas they weren't. These are merely chocolate with Reese Pieces inside. For the love. If I wanted chocolate and Reese Pieces I would buy those two items. I wouldn't look for the pieces to be inside chocolate. Of course I ate them. I mean, the components aren't bad, they just weren't what I was looking for :).
After Donnie and Abby arrived home from the gym and Kroger, we organized our extra pantry food items. We spent a good part of the afternoon relaxing in the family room together. It had started to snow/ hail and nowhere was there a more comfortable place to be than on the couch hanging out with the family. We talked a lot about what was going, the uncertainty of the near future and things in general. We called Jacob and talked to him for a little bit. About an hour before dinner, the girls went upstairs to watch something on Disney+. I took a very short nap on the couch with Donnie- about ten minutes. It was crazy to me that I slept in until 5:30 and took a nap. It was in keeping with the crazy times, I guess.
Sunday morning, I slept in until 6:40. I think I've almost adjust to DST. Now if I can adjust to life with the changes that the coronavirus have brought into our lives...
I received an email from the director of our local library saying that the library was closing. I knew that other libraries in nearby communities had already closed their doors so I wasn't too surprised to receive this email. I'm a board member of this library and as of now, our next board meeting is scheduled to occur. We will meet in a larger room where we can sit more spread apart; at this point I'd almost be shocked if we have the meeting even though the number in attendance would be way less than the number of people who can legally meet together in one space.
Our church had already stated that the church would not be open on Saturday evening/ Sunday morning for church services. Our church service was being live streamed at the usual service times. We decided to watch it at the time that we normally attend the service (late morning). Before watching the service, I made some cookies to give to Donnie's Uncle Doug- his favorite kind of cookie is the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie. The cookies are slightly more time consuming to make than regular ones- they are richer and very good. It felt good to be in the kitchen baking. And it felt even better to taste the yummy batter before the cookies went into the oven.
The cookie recipe calls for rolled oats to be ground up. I usually use my blender to do that. This time I decided to use Donnie's Ninja. I couldn't believe how quickly the oats turned to flour like consistency.
In addition to chocolate chips, the recipe calls for an additional 4 ounces of milk chocolate to be grated and placed in the dough.
Also before we watched the church service, we worked on cleaning up the house a bit. Things had been... neglected the past few days. I've been texting more people more frequently, reading news articles more and discussing the state of affairs with regard to the coronavirus with the family. We haven't had a "normal" day since Thursday and the house was starting to show signs of neglect.
In late morning, we viewed our church service on TV via a facebook live link. We have watched our church's sermons on TV a number of times. When we can't go to church, watching a recorded message is always an option. We've utilized that many a weekend when the kids' sporting events precluded us from going to church. The church has, for a very long time, live streamed our services for people who can't make it church but want to watch the sermon in real time. We'd never done the live stream prior to this weekend. Sitting together in our house to watch the sermon did not seem odd; knowing that we could not go to church seemed very odd. The sermon was a good one- I'd had no doubt that it would be.
As soon as the church sermon ended, we left the house to go meet Donnie's Uncle Doug for lunch to celebrate his birthday. We are having a bigger family get together to celebrate his birthday at a different date (well, I should say, we're planning a bigger celebration- who knows if we'll legally be able to by the time the date of that rolls around). We met Doug at Outback Steakhouse. It was not crowded at all- I felt badly for the servers in the restaurant who rely on tips and the food preparers who rely on customers for whom to prepare food.
After lunch, Doug came back to our house and we visited some more. Conversation included, of course, lots of discussion about the changes that have occurred in the past week. Shortly after Doug left, Jacob called me. (Jacob is in Florida right now on spring break). He told us that Ohio's governor just banned eating/ drinking in restaurants and bars. Restaurants would be carry out only. In many ways, hearing that wasn't shocking, just extremely sobering. The reality of the impact this will have on people's lives, as well as the trickle down effect that business bans have on other industries and people's lives in those industries is staggering.
Hopefully we are getting this virus contained and life will resume somewhat more normally from now on.
On Saturday, I slept in until 5:30 am. Progress in the sleeping in arena!! I'd been waking up between 4:00 and 4:30 am the entire previous week (phooey to Daylight Savings, the beginning of which corresponded with the beginning of my incredible early awakening each morning) so waking up at 5:30 made me feel almost lazy :). I got my run in and then settled in for a day at home. Between the cold weather and the pandemic, my plans included a lot of indoor time with immediate family members.
Donnie and Abby left for the gym about mid morning. I asked Donnie to stop at Kroger on his way home from the gym. I forgot to buy a few things when I was there on Friday. While he was gone, I read an article about how supply chains to grocery stores could be disrupted and shelves could be empty for a while. I sent Donnie a text that said, "If in doubt, buy!"
While most items on the list that I sent to Donnie were of a healthy variety, I did include Reese's Eggs. Reese's Eggs are my favorite shape/ variety/ whathaveyou of peanut butter and chocolate and they are only available at Easter time. So these would be on my list no matter if life was scooting along in normalcy or if we'd be staring at numerous empty aisles at stores. Donnie thought that these eggs were what I was looking for (they are the right shape so they look very similar) but alas they weren't. These are merely chocolate with Reese Pieces inside. For the love. If I wanted chocolate and Reese Pieces I would buy those two items. I wouldn't look for the pieces to be inside chocolate. Of course I ate them. I mean, the components aren't bad, they just weren't what I was looking for :).
After Donnie and Abby arrived home from the gym and Kroger, we organized our extra pantry food items. We spent a good part of the afternoon relaxing in the family room together. It had started to snow/ hail and nowhere was there a more comfortable place to be than on the couch hanging out with the family. We talked a lot about what was going, the uncertainty of the near future and things in general. We called Jacob and talked to him for a little bit. About an hour before dinner, the girls went upstairs to watch something on Disney+. I took a very short nap on the couch with Donnie- about ten minutes. It was crazy to me that I slept in until 5:30 and took a nap. It was in keeping with the crazy times, I guess.
Sunday morning, I slept in until 6:40. I think I've almost adjust to DST. Now if I can adjust to life with the changes that the coronavirus have brought into our lives...
I received an email from the director of our local library saying that the library was closing. I knew that other libraries in nearby communities had already closed their doors so I wasn't too surprised to receive this email. I'm a board member of this library and as of now, our next board meeting is scheduled to occur. We will meet in a larger room where we can sit more spread apart; at this point I'd almost be shocked if we have the meeting even though the number in attendance would be way less than the number of people who can legally meet together in one space.
Our church had already stated that the church would not be open on Saturday evening/ Sunday morning for church services. Our church service was being live streamed at the usual service times. We decided to watch it at the time that we normally attend the service (late morning). Before watching the service, I made some cookies to give to Donnie's Uncle Doug- his favorite kind of cookie is the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie. The cookies are slightly more time consuming to make than regular ones- they are richer and very good. It felt good to be in the kitchen baking. And it felt even better to taste the yummy batter before the cookies went into the oven.
The cookie recipe calls for rolled oats to be ground up. I usually use my blender to do that. This time I decided to use Donnie's Ninja. I couldn't believe how quickly the oats turned to flour like consistency.
In addition to chocolate chips, the recipe calls for an additional 4 ounces of milk chocolate to be grated and placed in the dough.
Also before we watched the church service, we worked on cleaning up the house a bit. Things had been... neglected the past few days. I've been texting more people more frequently, reading news articles more and discussing the state of affairs with regard to the coronavirus with the family. We haven't had a "normal" day since Thursday and the house was starting to show signs of neglect.
In late morning, we viewed our church service on TV via a facebook live link. We have watched our church's sermons on TV a number of times. When we can't go to church, watching a recorded message is always an option. We've utilized that many a weekend when the kids' sporting events precluded us from going to church. The church has, for a very long time, live streamed our services for people who can't make it church but want to watch the sermon in real time. We'd never done the live stream prior to this weekend. Sitting together in our house to watch the sermon did not seem odd; knowing that we could not go to church seemed very odd. The sermon was a good one- I'd had no doubt that it would be.
As soon as the church sermon ended, we left the house to go meet Donnie's Uncle Doug for lunch to celebrate his birthday. We are having a bigger family get together to celebrate his birthday at a different date (well, I should say, we're planning a bigger celebration- who knows if we'll legally be able to by the time the date of that rolls around). We met Doug at Outback Steakhouse. It was not crowded at all- I felt badly for the servers in the restaurant who rely on tips and the food preparers who rely on customers for whom to prepare food.
After lunch, Doug came back to our house and we visited some more. Conversation included, of course, lots of discussion about the changes that have occurred in the past week. Shortly after Doug left, Jacob called me. (Jacob is in Florida right now on spring break). He told us that Ohio's governor just banned eating/ drinking in restaurants and bars. Restaurants would be carry out only. In many ways, hearing that wasn't shocking, just extremely sobering. The reality of the impact this will have on people's lives, as well as the trickle down effect that business bans have on other industries and people's lives in those industries is staggering.
Hopefully we are getting this virus contained and life will resume somewhat more normally from now on.
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