One week ago yesterday was what turned out to be my last day of work for who knows how long. I wish I’d brought home more library books.
This weird suspended animation is getting me fully back into blogging. Can we all get back into blogging? OLD-SCHOOL BLOGGING RESURGENCE/REUNION??
Now that we are at least temporarily canceling our housecleaners, I am trying to clean one extra thing/area per day, plus maybe another extra thing if I feel up to it. I know that’s not a lofty goal, but that’s what I’ve got. The day before yesterday, I cleaned a bathroom sink. Yesterday I cleaned half the kitchen floor. Today I used a dustbuster to vacuum the stairs, and I cleaned our tiniest bathroom floor (it’s not even 4’x4′ and takes about six spritzes of 409 plus two paper towels). My goal is to make everyone else in the family participate in this, too, but right now that concept requires more energy than I have.
Things that have made me weepy recently:
1. That thing they’re doing in some countries where at a certain time each day everyone opens a window / goes out on a balcony and claps/cheers/whistles for healthcare workers, or sings a song together, or whatever.
2. Reading that our town is temporarily stopping recycling because of all this.
3. My friend’s daughter was doing a semester overseas, and with much scrambling / canceled flights / just trying to get her to ANY airport in the U.S., they got her a ticket to an airport only an 8-hour drive from home, and her flight went as scheduled, and she is back in the country, and her parents have picked her up.
4. While out on a walk, exchanging a “This is really weird, right??” smile/wave with someone else out on a walk.
5. An email sent by the middle school principal to all the middle schoolers, saying how the school misses them and isn’t the same without them, and how he is learning some new things during this unexpected time apart and he hopes they are too.
6. Healthcare workers not having enough masks. Obviously our government should be taking care of this, but they are not, so We The People have to do what we can to stand in for them. If you have masks you bought in advance of this crisis, would you consider donating them to a facility where people just like us are living through this just the same as we are except that they are also directly caring for people who have Covid-19? Like, I had masks in an online shopping cart; I didn’t buy them, but if I HAD—what a great way to contribute to a situation where mostly it’s other people making the real valuable contributions while I sit here playing Candy Crush and waiting for it to be over. Maybe take out a mask or two for yourself, for grocery-shopping, and then donate the rest. What a huge impact! If we’d KNOWN there would be such a shortage, we could have bought the masks ON PURPOSE in order to donate them!
7. Some of the kids’ teachers being so upbeat online, like “Let’s deal with this new adventure together!” and so forth.
8. An email from TJMaxx saying they’re relaxing their return policy so that the 30 days doesn’t start until after stores re-open.
I am SO HERE for the blogging revival!
I’m a school administrator. I get a little weepy seeing how excited kids and parents are to see each other in our school video conferencing sessions. They’re yelling out, “HI, TEACHER! I MISS YOU! SEE MY BANDAID AND MY DOG AND MY SANDWICH, IT’S PEANUT BUTTER!”
I was just thinking yesterday about Ye Olde Blogging Days. How I would start my day by sitting for at least an hour reading all of my favorite blogs. Way back in the day I had a blog folder with each one bookmarked before the genius of the Reader came along. Sounds pretty perfect right about now.
My neighborhood did a little thing on St Patrick’s Day where folks put shamrocks in their windows and the kids could have a little scavenger hunt. I was near tears while we walked around and saw little, quickly drawn shamrocks at homes of people who don’t even have children! Very heartwarming.
I am right there with you and was thinking about restarting the blog. Will do that RIGHT NOW.
As a long-time old-school blogger, I am HERE FOR YOU FOR THE RETURN OF BLOGGING.
Yesterday I was out walking, because what else are you going to do, and I have never seen so many people doing the same in my neighbourhood. In our neighbourhood we are doing “hunts” as in on certain days, people put a thing in their window for neighbourhood kids to find. Like, shamrocks on St Patrick’s Day, funny faces yesterday. I think Monday is animals.
I’m also hoping for a resurgence of old-school blogging [says the person whose header was already a little dated when she created it in 2009]. All the blogging!
I…don’t know if I remember how to log into my dusty old blog anymore? I will TRY.
I just started working from home on Friday. We will see how my days go and whether or not I have the time/energy. I do so miss blogging! Maybe on the weekends (if I can crack my password!).
Grateful that you are still doing it. I always feel better after reading your posts!
I have really appreciated all your blog posts lately! I rarely comment, but am always excited to read your posts and it is an especially wonderful distraction now since I am an extrovert who lives alone in a small apartment in a state with a “shelter in place” order. Reading your posts is like a check-in with an old friend and it gives me such joy to see new ones pop up in my feed! Thank you!
Everything AliceCW says above (except my location). Thank you for actively posting and I am really appreciating reading the comments…feels like being a part of a community that a lot of us are struggling with right now.
Swistle! I love you! Seeing an update on the feed was a bright spot this morning for me. I got weepy when my three year old daughter casually said her stool was named “coronavirus.” Ugh. We don’t ever have the news on, but this is her life now.
Thank you Swistle! Your blogging may not be an essential service on par with a doctor’s job, but it is right up there. Please keep the posts coming :)
I have been checking Swistle multiple times a day! Please blog allllll the blogs.
I’ve said a couple times in the last day that maybe I should start up my blog again! I don’t even care if anyone reads it, I just need a way to journal everything that’s happening. I tried taking pen to paper yesterday and got four sentences in and felt overwhelmed and weary. Putting it on the blog could make it feel more like a “fun project.”
I feel the opposite! I have so much to say in my journal, pen to paper, but online, I feel like nothing I have to say is relevant or novel or worthwhile. I think it is a good practice to connect again, almost like when we were new moms overwhelmed by the sameness and exhaustion of every day.
Someone asked me to blog every day and I was like ARE YOU MAD and then I thought, wtf else am I doing? So heck yes. I was weepy this morning mostly for Angus, and now he is playing Fortnite very vocally in the basement rather than being on some foreign beach being shot at and my concern seems rather misplaced. I have not done any real helping yet, partly because we are not leaving the house until Angus’s 14 days home are over and partly because I have been a mess. I really needed the break in March Break and instead this all started. So I am going to take a couple more days to be a mess and then try to figure out how I can help. And ditto on the cleaners, but I’ve only thought about it, I haven’t even cleaned anything myself, so you’re ahead of me.
Totally here for the return to old school blogging…just need to find the time. Our company has sent the majority of us home to work from there. I’ve only been at it for three days and have yet to settle into a routine. It doesn’t help that I’ve already had to go back to the office for a couple of hours for two of the three days AND will have to show up on Monday for a bit. It would be helpful if IT would ease up on the restrictions so I could connect to my home printer.
My company IT is similarly restrictive…I finally got admin password to fix it (shhhh), but before that I got pretty handy printing to a pdf, editing that and sending on. But still, some things have to be printed!
Yes yes yes to mask donation for hospital workers!
My husband and I are rounding up masks for Fairview Southdale (Minneapolis suburb) through this anonymous form. No explanations necessary! We will pick them up.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeW-c0eZl1Tnh7P7nZqVfhnP0p1y8ZYHH_gBruPCFZgPjJPw/viewform?embedded=true
This is a sweet list. I had not heard about the window/balcony thing with people thanking the workers. So touchibg! I might not have heard about it because I am on the return portion of a 12 hr road trip from Chicago to New York to clear out our senior in college’s apt.
Someone in a nearby neighborhood is dressing as Elmo and walking a path that he shared on facebook so kids can look out the window and wave to him. So clever. We have some awesome costumes in our basement – I might invite my teen/preteens to try a parade. For shits and giggles.
I support the blogging iniative. I write a blog and I have been surprised by how much I have come to rely on my blog friends. I look forward to connecting with them now more than ever. The more the merrier! I look forward to checking out the blogs that get dusted off and seeing new comments pop up on my blog.
EVERYONE can donate masks to healthcare workers. You can SEW them at home and so do something really useful (which also makes you feel better about the whole lockdown situation etc). I already noticed some American hospitals calling for home sewn masks (after all, these had been in use for quite some time before the disposable type arrived) and I assure you there WILL BE MORE OF THESE DEMANDS as the situation unfolds and stocks deplete. Here in the Czech Republic, “thanks” to our government who has not secured protection gear even for the hospitals, we are at least a week ahead of you and have had a lot of these discussions already. Everyone who can is now sewing like crazy everyday for the doctors, nurses, shop assistants… and for themselves as the wearing of masks in public has now become obligatory for everyone. So if you are thinking about sewing face masks let me spare you the uncertainty/experiment phase and put together some advice.
* EVERYTHING HAS TO BE 100 % COTTON because it has to be boiled everyday to disinfect (elastic gets damaged).
* Other materials (paper tissues etc.) can be added as one-use disposable filters to improve protection but they decrease breathability. Trust me, even 2 layers of cotton are quite difficult to breathe through already.
* There are basically two types of patterns, one is shaped with a vertical seam in the middle and the other one is a pleated rectangle. The pleated type is faster to make and probably also protects a bit better (no holes from the stitching in front of your mouth and nose), and WASTES NO FABRIC.
* To tie the masks, you will need something like cotton ribbon. It will sell out VERY FAST. Use long strips of cotton folded lengthwise to hide the raw edges instead. Or cut an old cotton T-shirt.
* To disinfect your mask, you need to cook it either for 5 minutes on 100 °C (boiling) or 60 °C with soap (then rinse) for some time longer. Air dry then iron on max power. The person who gets a mask from someone else also has to do this before wearing it.
* One person uses several masks per day — once they get wet most of the protection is gone and they have to be changed. Don´t touch the front of your mask, remove it carefully by untying from behind and treat it as possibly full of virus. Wash your hands before and after any dealing with the mask.
It is advisable to wear a mask anytime you are outside in areas with people EVEN IF YOU FEEL WELL. You can have the virus and be infectious already but just not know it yet because of the long incubation period. The cotton mask is not primarily meant as protection for you (but of course it´s much better than nothing) but for others. It works by catching the droplets that contain the virus. These droplets are much bigger than virus particles and cotton can stop them. So most of my virus contained in the droplets I breathe out stays in my mask. The only thing that really protects the wearer is a FFP3 respirator. But if everyone wears masks the amount of virus circulating between people diminishes significantly so this way we can protect even people without respirators. MY MASK PROTECTS YOU AND YOURS PROTECTS ME.
Enjoy your sewing and stay safe!
A pattern/explanation site: https://www.caramilla.cz/site-rousky-ustenky/ (in Czech but scroll down for images and video). I start with a 20 x 45 cm rectangle folded and sewn in half to make a 2-layered square.
More about our face mask sewing movement can be found here: https://news.yahoo.com/stitch-time-czechs-sew-combat-virus-mask-shortage-205213804.html
I remember when blogs were called online journals! I wish the people who posted in the 1990’s would come back and update us-Bitterhag, Shelleyness-so many great voices that are gone now. I stumbled upon the internet community back in the old days, I think Robyn Anderson and Bitchypoo (what a great blog, and now of course she has Love and Hisses!) was my first foray. Anyway, I loved reading about people’s lives, what they cooked, how the family was doing-it all felt so personal and so interesting. Swistle, I think you carry on that kind of old school personal feeling.
So what am I trying to say-YES to anyone who wants to go back to writing online. Tell me what you are cooking, reading, watching-and I’m there!
Grosgrain Garage was a good one too !
Please keep writing! It always brightens my day when I see a new post, and these here days are gloomy lately.
Today in South Korea the government texted everyone telling us to cancel all meetings, travel, religious services, leaving your house except For grocery shopping for necessary provisions for the next 14 days. Mind you, here we are already on a downward slope but in the last couple of days there has been an uptick of cases because people have gotten complacent and are going out. So in case anyone thinks this is still only “just a few weeks” maybe start adjusting your expectations for how long you will be home.
I am hopeful the government will get it together and figure out masks for healthcare workers. Who ARE these people hoarding masks? Way back in Jan before I took a trip my mom tried to send me
Masks bc they were sold out in Korea and she already couldn’t find them in her community. So even as most of American leadership seems to have dropped the ball on this pandemic clearly there were private citizens reading the proverbial tea
Leaves and buying stuff up. Those people for sure need to start giving them to nurses and doctors.
I love reading blogs! Would you consider hosting a linky thing where people could post their blogs, so some of us can find new ones to add to our favorites lists?
Your blog posts are so appreciated. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I made a blog and then never used it ten years ago. I feel like I missed the blog heyday and also the years I had the most to contribute. But maybe not.
I am definitely trying to “resurrect” the blog during this stay at home experiment. Mostly because I’m suddenly feeling a lot of the same things I felt when I was stuck at home with a toddler. I also wondered if this would spur a return to the blogs. So glad yours never went away!
I have resurrected my family blog, mainly to keep the grandparents entertained & reassured that everything is fine for us. Best part is, my 10 y.o. likes doing the writing!
A Yes vote for the blog resurgence! What made me weepy yesterday was driving by an elementary school, and its announcement board by the road said, “We miss you and will see you soon” – no cheery punctuation, though, just kinda left it hanging like that. :( :( :(