Adaptation to COVID world

I talked to a buddy today. He's an essential worker in an auto body shop. Skilled labor at what he does, but still. Anyhow, he said that business was down, as you'd expect. They have a few cars that have been done for a while but have not been picked up. Any new car that comes in for work, the boss cleans and disinfects personally before the car goes to the shop. I thought that was pretty solid.

 

They've cut my hours at the driving job. I worked three days last week, just enough to not be eligible for unemployment. I have enough money in the bank that I'm not worried about the next month or two (as long as I stay healthy) but I have to move sometime after that and that will be difficult, if not impossible, without a stable income.

Yesterday, I found some vinyl food service gloves and I made a mask with a face towel and rubber bands before I went grocery shopping. My brother told me there may still be some masks in here from when my mom was in hospice last year, but I haven't found them yet.

Next week will mark a year since my mother's death. Going through this quarantine now it feels kind of like when my mom was in hospice. Back then, I had to be in here pretty much all the time. At the end, we had a home health aid come in to take over for me at night, but I had to be here pretty much the whole time, just like now.

 

Honestly, that's a picnic compared to World Wars and the Spanish Flu.

 

The wealthy are upset they can't access their beaches.

Florida Panhandle property owners sue over beach closures behind their oceanfront homes

 

Do they pay any money at all to clean or care for the beach? No?

Well, I guess it sucks they were not rich enough to own an island.

 

Yeah, it was a picnic when my father lost his job as a manager with a corporation he had over twenty years with and took a job at a lumberyard to keep groceries on the table.

No, it's not the 1918 Flu, but I strongly suspect that you didn't live through it or you wouldn't be so cavalier about it. Think about how fucked up an economy is when it gets to the point that home mortgages are at 18%. It is not just the housing market that gets hit.

 

Better than grabbing a gun and taking a boat to Omaha Beach.

I cannot imagine living during WWII, where we basically had comeback victories in Europe and in the Pacific theater.

 

Yeah, dad did that too. He pulled a Silver Star and a Purple Heart playing tag with the German paratroopers in the Normandy hedgerow country.

That's one of the few times I ever saw him cry, during that recession, tears of betrayal and rage, frustration and fear. He went from being a high middle manager to working for peanuts, had a house note and expenses reflecting his previous income and two kids in college, and it took months and relocating halfway across the country to find a comparable position.

Middle class problems? Sure. We weren't starving, but my mother was back in depression cooking mode. We all felt it.

 

So I discovered a problem with the whole "wear a mask in public" thing. Some of y'all might already be experiencing it. It was first for me.

I went to a nearby butcher shop to pick up an order. They were only allowing two customers inside at a time. So I was standing outside on the sidewalk - where they'd drawn circles six feet apart. it's 87 right now and that danged cloth mask my neighbor made by doubling up fabric was HOT! I never took it off. But I got a pretty good sweat going.

 

Second problem: If you haven’t used mouthwash lately … man, oh man. You will know it with that mask on.

 

Walked up 18 flights of stairs in a cloth mask the other day.

Oh my.