Day 6

Today I needed to read my own posts, especially the one from yesterday about being allowed to be frustrated. And to feel the feelings, instead of numbing them. I was in a bad place, you people. Interestingly, this is the second day with a rather bad mood and in both instances, the mood itself was not related to Covid19 really. So what’s up?

I told you about the power outage, that led to me publishing yesterday’s post just now. Well, said power outage was supposed to be resolved within 2 hours (first FPL update) then by 8:45pm and then by 12:15. Their second update to the resolution time sent Henning and I scrambling to protect the food, we were finally able to find and that was supposed to last at least a week so we could limit the exposure (aka shopping adventure – see Day 5 for details!). Henning went to the fuel station to buy huge packs of ice which we then partly portioned into small bags to put on all perishable foods in the fridge. A service notice at this point – a fridge will keep temperature for approximately 4 hours if left mainly closed, a freezer is supposed to keep its temperature for 24-48 hours, depending on how full it is.

So it was dark, hot and the the resolution time kept being updated. Everyone that knows me also knows, I am not doing well with these kind of situations. Well I can manage the situation and go into “resolution mode”. I told Henning to get ice, I started portioning etc. – I am usually not freezing (pun intended) or paralyzed. I need to “act”. BUT after that was done, it was waiting game and that, that is a whole different story. So we went to bed and my husband and Sam tried to sleep (it was really more trying than anything due to the heat) and I kept looking at the power outage updates – EVERY 10 minutes (if I managed to make myself wait for that long). Long story short – at 12:15 am, the message was changed into one I really did not want to read “we do no thave a time of resolution yet”. FPL trucks showed up in front of our house twice last night. After the second time, power went back on. At 5am in the morning and after a sleepless night for me. But hey, we got power!

So we got up with the plan to take a nap later and went about our day. My husband was great as always and went to get our coffee, I made breakfast. My mood was not great, but at least things were back to normal. Well! Not that fast, young lady. I went for my coffee and tried it – it did not even remotely resemble the coffee I actually ordered. Unfortunately it was not only wrong, it was also disgusting. So, no sleep and no coffee. Things could not have gotten worse, or could they? You guessed it. I was sitting outside and my husband was wondering, why the pool pump was not working…yes. The power was off, again. Just when the fridge started to recover AND of course after I had removed all the ice bags. So here we went, again. It only lasted for another a little over an hour. But yeah, I was done with this day.

Enough about my mood though, this is a Social Distancing dicary, now isn’t it? So I went on a little bit of a shopping spree. Say what? Hold on, before you judge. I kept my Social Distancing intact and it also was not throwing money out of the window (not literally nor figuratively). Hear me out. So we watched our daily dose of Covid19 updates on Good Morning America and they featured couples that had to quarantine from each other as one was infected and the other was not. And I realized, we would be screwed. Yes, we do have a house with 3 bedrooms. However, only one of the bedroom has furniture one can sleep on. And our recliner couch in the living room is not a sleeper couch either.

Not, that either of us is planning on getting sick with Covid19 (or the flu or anything else, that would make it necessary to keep your distance). But should anything like that happen right now, the situation would be complicated. We do have an air mattress somewhere but that was already a stretch when we “lived” on it, after having moved from Germany to New Jersey without furniture. No repetition needed! So we expedited our lose plan of eventually buying a Queen bed for our second guest room. The mattress arrived today, the box spring will come tomorrow and the bed frame should arrive Wednesday or Tuesday. And then we will set it up and hopefully forget about it again for a LONG TIME!

And once it is set up, we could also actually socially distance from each other, if this whole situation would otherwise lead to a divorce or murder. I mean, we are both peaceful people, but since the media keeps telling us, how bad this is, we might start to believe it at some point? Naaaaa, not really!

Oh and talking about shopping spree – you probably can all guess, what the next major purchase is going to be? Remember, there was a power outage…yes, we MUST get a generator. That’s for sure! The good thing about our neigborhood is, there is a lot of people helping people. So we know which one we should get, and got a somewhat expert opinion too from one of our handy man neighbors (via text, remember, Social Distancing). He is not really a handy man, but apparently super handy.

Unfortunately otherwise our neighbors are partly also bad examples, when it comes to Social Distancing. Kids are still playing together in groups in the gardens or are roaming the neighborhood. What’s wrong with that, you ask? They probably know each other and the families very well. And yes, I am sure they are and they do. But if they let their kids play with each other – do they know, if one of them does not also let their kids play with other parents kids? Or one of the parents still has to work in an office or is exposed otherwise? You don’t and you can’t.

And that is the huge problem with pandemics. And the reason, that Social Distancing is the only thing that will help to flatten the curve to first reduce the amount new infections and ultimately reverse the disease progression. Really, it’s the only thing that will help. Even though our Covidiot in Chief and some others think, the economy is more important. It’s not. Cause an economic system only really works if there is people in that system that can work and consume and vice versa. That’s how economies work – last I checked.

So it’s a bummer as I like our neighbors but they are not acting super responsibly here either. Neither are the the two pictured below. By the way, there is only one of these signes at the entrance to the track, which is also closed of with “crime scene / caution tape”. And then there are some on the way to the track and the track is also surrounded by caution tape, too. You could definitely easily overlook that. Sure!

Well, we keep up our walks and jumps (into the grass to avoid Covidiots) and we keep wondering, how stupid people can be. Makes you wonder, if this is Darwin’s law on display? But that law is all about survival of the fittest, unfortunately these (mentally and socially) unfit people will likely end up surviving. And the smart ones (that keep their distance) and the bravest, that try saving the Covidiot’s and other’s lives as nurses and doctors, fire fighters, ambulance drivers etc.

If you have gotten this far with this post, you will have noticed, that it ends kind of in the middle – that is because the wordpress app apparently did not save my entire text last night. Kind of fitting, for a rather messed up day. I will not be able to restore it. So I will end a little shorter this time, check out day 7 for more. In my original post, I announced a challenge I would be putting out for us to keep our thoughts on something positive. Please join!

Keep your distance, stay healthy and happy and take care!

Hugs,

Nannette