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Doing Stuff

I surprised myself by being fairly productive on my first day back. I unpacked all my bags, cleaned up the honey from my suitcase and belongings, and did some laundry. Awesome!

And for the sake of some good “before” and “after” pictures, I straightened up my pantry. (It was also good for taking stock of what food I have for my quarantine time.)

10 Comments

  1. Lauren

    Taking a ‘before’ picture is so smart. You get to see the improvement! That pantry looks so organized! Now I want to go through my kitchen cupboards………

  2. Deborah

    Can you go out for food during your quarantine? Can you go for walks?

    The pantry looks great!

    • Brad

      You are not allowed to go for food. I have a bunch of food at my place now though, and there are delivery services. You are not supposed to leave your property to go for a walk, but you can walk in your own yard.

      • Lauren

        Does your complex count as your yard?

        • Brad

          I don’t know. Since people here take quarantine pretty seriously, I will say “no”, especially since this is a public website.

  3. Linda

    How are you doing mentally with quarantine? I’ve been self quarantining since the first of April. I have very little phone or media contact with people and I’m beginning to get very depressed. I’m not in much contact with family either as they are busy with their immediate family and live out of state. At first I was real busy stocking food. But I’m well stocked now so only have to keep my stock amount up and rotated by date. I’m losing motivation. We have tons of mosquitos here and very hot right now so not going outside. Getting to where I don’t function well. People in my area don’t seem to want to stay engaged. They wouldn’t wear masks or follow guidelines either. They went back to holding social distanced church with masks and when numbers got real high here they just stopped meeting. I never went. Anyway, no one at all calls me and when reached out they were kind but didn’t encourage much contact by their responses. I feel my contacts may annoy them. But they all this time have been a social having charity yard sales and church meetings so they haven’t even noticed people like me feel alone. I mentioned to the church secretary I felt isolated and all she said was well I’m sure many people feel like you do. I thought about some of those quarantine apps but they don’t appear in my app store so don’t know if I trust their safety. Lots of hackers out there. There aren’t any nice recreation areas to go to with the heat and mosquitos.

    • Brad

      Hi Linda. I haven’t quarantined nearly as long as you. My longest time of staying exclusively at home was two weeks.

      Your situation sounds tough. My mom has a similar situation, but does have family nearby, so that’s helped a little. She is a naturally outgoing person, so it has been really hard for her to be alone so much.

      I have been very thankful to have been able to travel to visit my family. At least we could quarantine together. Would that be a possibility for you? To just go stay with a family member for a while? Being alone so much can be really difficult.

      I haven’t been to in-person church since March. I miss it. My church here in Maui met with an app called Zoom. It was a real blessing. I was glad to be able to see them and have them see me. We are still doing Bible study this way. It meets at 9:30am Hawaii time. I would love to help you figure out how to come online with us if you are interested. Let me know. Our church services are on YouTube, so they aren’t interactive, but it is nice to see my fellow congregation members on the video.

      Going for walks has been a blessing for me in the past. Even just passing someone else on the other side of the road and saying “hi” was a positive interaction and helped me feel less alone. I know you said it’s hot there though, so I don’t know if that’s an option for you.

      I hope you can find ways to connect. Keep coming here if you want. I just write about whatever I did for the day, so it might not be very exciting, but we’re all friends in the comment section. 🙂

      I’ll be praying for you!

  4. Linda

    Thanks Brad for being kind. I like walking outside sometimes but we live in an agriculture area where irrigation causes lots of mosquitos. They are overwhelming plus the heat. It is cool in the mornings but the mosquitoes! I mean if I open my mouth get a mouthful!

    My husband and I used to go to a lot of music venues, art shows, community events, plus very active in church. It’s rural so everyone knows everyone. So we have lots of acquaintances we were used to seeing. We are in our 60’s and are not originally from here so people tend to forget us quickly if we aren’t out about and staying relevant. It was interesting when I read on one of your friends list that traveled and stayed in Germany a lot that their friends back in America soon forgot them as well and how hard it was to get back into the social groove once they got back home. It wasn’t so much that they were forgotten as much as things changed and they weren’t as relevant and had to build their social life back up again. That is such a foreign idea to me because society was built on people not events when I was very young. I think society is so mobile that community isn’t as previous generations. I feel society has really shifted since I was a child. When I was a child I lived in two areas that were extremely socially connected. One area was my ancestral community of many generations and there was a crossroads country store where everyone gathered on hot afternoons for cold sodas and snacks. People just popped in at random. If anyone got bored they’d go sit inside on the bench or chairs and see who else would show up. Anyone who got off work or had been to town had to drive by there. We jokingly called it the community center. If someone drove by and saw a car they recognized they’d stop and visit. Sometimes it got crowded. Most people were also related distantly or by marriage from having settled there since the mid 1800’s. So I feel that affected the closer bond. There wasn’t the age stigma either. My 79 year old grandmother played 42 dominos every afternoon with the teen age boys after school or chores. The other place I lived was a peninsula that had an island feel to it. It was great and the most happiest time in my life ever. There was always something going on in the park on the ocean front. Back then even though most people were not well off there, times were fairly good for most people. Everyone was similar in social status but were diverse in other ways. Everyone had what they needed. Most houses about the same and people were very well connected to church. I was a tot and it wasn’t unusual for some christian friend to come over and pick me up on a Friday night and take me places like the movie theater or bowling alley or take me to their church for children’s activities. We all acted like extended family even though my family had just moved there. Women didn’t work and they met every week for coffee and bible study or just visited time to time. We were always visiting my two next door neighbors. They were old widows. They didn’t mind me popping in as a kid alone and visiting either. They would let me watch them make peanut brittle or whatever they were doing. My dad came from a family of seven children so we visited my aunts and uncles a lot too. But my kids live several states away and I don’t get to see them. My family that used to live close are now scattered and most have died off. Cousins lost track of each other. Most of that was caused by people having to stay abreast of career changes. I’ve noticed that people who are able to live in the same community with their family for their whole lives are able to maintain tighter relationships. Also when I was a kid my Grandma had this open door policy where family was welcome any time. They all lived within two hours driving distance. She would get on the phone and call all of her adult children and try to bribe them all to come to her house to stay for the weekend by telling them what she planned to cook for all of them. Lol! Holidays her adult children showed up with a houseful of kids and packed into a small house. The cousin’s all got army cots in the den like a giant children’s camp.
    I ended up estranged from my son which is strange because he is a pastor. He has three children of his own and adopted four foster children and is overwhelmed. He pastors a small church and his career was in radio but that has all changed with being automated by a giant corporation called Clear Channel. So the last few years he’s had lots of job hopping while still full time pastor. That is a long story of a turn of events. My daughter is overwhelmed with an autistic child which takes a lot of her physical energy. Last time I visited I got a hotel room so I could rest as needed. I visited for hours at a time. But I have a bad back and the autistic one climbed up on my head several times and he was six years old! Thank goodness he is small for his age! I sent her an instant pot last week to giver her some relief. We talk on occasion but her two children keep her very busy. I would be more at risk for corona there with all the special needs medical people coming in every week for the autistic therapies.

    I might think about being added to your group. But for now might just pop in and post now and then. Blogging might be a good outlet during this time. I found you by your ant post as I am tormented by a bad kitchen sink thief ant colony. Having trouble keeping the 20 mule team from separating from the sugar water and peanut butter and fear they aren’t really getting the poison. The borax clumps up in hard clumps after a few minutes of moisture and separates from the other ingredients. Hope I’m not just feeding them and getting bigger and more colonies.

    Yes, you all aren’t the most exciting bunch but y’all seem to have good values and are close in spirit it seems. Even if your group was exciting before corona, there isn’t much way to be exciting right now. I mean, what can someone talk about when they are locked up so to speak? I guess what has shocked me during all this is I expected my church would stay connected by phone calls once a week or so and such and was shocked when we weren’t. We had zoom twice and then my priest transferred. Now we have an interim priest and live stream church on just Sunday and no more zoom. But again, I’m not from here and most of them at church are all related as family and I’m not their family member. The small towns here are six generational similar to the one of my Grandmothers. I reached out by email and only got a one or two liner response. Which tells me they aren’t interested in staying connected. Some have had college kids come back home and are busy. I just assume they are busy dealing with all this themselves. Since I didn’t get much of an email response I’m afraid to try calling. Don’t know how they would feel about it. I don’t know what to talk about. I know I’m posting so much that it seems I’d know something to talk about but these people are very reserved and don’t rattle on. When they talk at church they are tied up in deep conversations about their families and people they grew up with.

    Anyway, keep posting however mundane. When I was a kid in my generation there wasn’t any entertainment. TV wasn’t even broadcasted all day. Several hours in the afternoon were just blank and nothing after midnight. They played the National Anthem at midnight when all TV and radio stations went off the air. Having company sometimes consisted of sitting on a wooden front porch in rocking chairs as everyone had a metal dishpan full of butterbeans they were shelling as they told jokes and talked about what was going on in the community. But we didn’t worry about boredom then because we had each other and our personalities and foibles were the entertainment.

    • Brad

      Linda, have you ever considered writing down your memories? I loved reading the description of the crossroads and what people did when they met there. So interesting!

      Also, thanks for the information about ants and state universities 🙂

    • Lauren

      Hi, Linda!

      It is fascinating reading about your childhood. Times are certainly different, even without COVID messing everything up. I’m sorry to hear about your current situation, but this is a fun place to ‘meet’ each day. Brad is so faithful about daily posts, and they are the best way to begin the day! Glad to meet you. 🙂

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