Saturday, Self-Isolation Day #43
We request continued prayers for my husband's mother D. She has been sick with COVID-19 for a month (now negative, but still sick), alone in the hospital for nearly that long, and is now on her second stretch of being on a ventilator in order to give her lungs support for longer while they heal.
Saturday is a day of family chores. Today, Chris made pancakes (you know how long that takes!) and I encouraged the kids working alongside me to go as fast as they could with all their chores. We vacuumed eight rooms and cleaned four bathrooms in time for a big, cheerful breakfast, which made for good attitudes before music practice and free time and, for me, lesson planning for the week.
Mary was desirous to learn how to mow the lawn, which is good at age 11. John will maintain this as his primary duty for our family, but now we have another capable mower on hand!
Legos have been a compelling activity lately. I notice that the boys (4, 7, 13) build complex cars and airplanes and the girls (9, 11) build very detailed homes for their Lego people families, and they write up lists of the names of all their people and their familial relationships to each other.
Chris shopped at Costco for us and came up with a wonderful find: a $40 shade that should prevent our sun room from being the OVEN that it is from April through September. The quote we got for professionally installed shades was exponentially more and, while that product was probably well worthwhile, this is a better fit for the budget right now!
In the evening, the children played outdoors and the girls played violin for neighbors sitting on their driveways.
Then the adventure began! I was going to bed around 10:30 when a friend texted me and asked the difference between a tornado warning and tornado watch. I was confused because the weather had been beautiful and dry all day, but checking confirmed that we were under EXTREME WARNING: TORNADO WARNING!
I trekked downstairs to show my still-awake husband and we saw three super cells traveling at 40 mph over Charlotte metro area. We woke up all the children and brought them down, groggy or completely asleep, down to the den. Within minutes, the warnings were repeatedly blaring to TAKE SHELTER NOW, so we all piled into the powder room.
We brought the laptop into the bathroom to watch our city's wonderful meteorologist Brad Panovich livestreaming to keep us all informed. These cells were huge and fast and were dropping quarter-sized hail. It was surreal that our weather remained perfect during the countdown, with Brad P. telling us accurately down to the minute when the rain would hit us.
David learned to walk in his cast just over 24 hours after getting his hard cast on: now he is proficient and is toddling everywhere!
A cute moment from Friday night . . . Our four-year-old drew Piglet and the Backson, the non-existent monster from the Winnie the Pooh movie. Thomas crept downstairs at bedtime and put up the picture with a magnet on the clothing dryer. As he stared at it proudly, suddenly he became quite afraid, ran out of the laundry room, and slammed the door shut. He declared to a sibling that his own picture was so realistic, "Now it makes me think the Backson is real! I'm afraid!"
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| A very realistic Backson |
Saturday is a day of family chores. Today, Chris made pancakes (you know how long that takes!) and I encouraged the kids working alongside me to go as fast as they could with all their chores. We vacuumed eight rooms and cleaned four bathrooms in time for a big, cheerful breakfast, which made for good attitudes before music practice and free time and, for me, lesson planning for the week.
Mary was desirous to learn how to mow the lawn, which is good at age 11. John will maintain this as his primary duty for our family, but now we have another capable mower on hand!
Legos have been a compelling activity lately. I notice that the boys (4, 7, 13) build complex cars and airplanes and the girls (9, 11) build very detailed homes for their Lego people families, and they write up lists of the names of all their people and their familial relationships to each other.
Chris shopped at Costco for us and came up with a wonderful find: a $40 shade that should prevent our sun room from being the OVEN that it is from April through September. The quote we got for professionally installed shades was exponentially more and, while that product was probably well worthwhile, this is a better fit for the budget right now!
In the evening, the children played outdoors and the girls played violin for neighbors sitting on their driveways.
Then the adventure began! I was going to bed around 10:30 when a friend texted me and asked the difference between a tornado warning and tornado watch. I was confused because the weather had been beautiful and dry all day, but checking confirmed that we were under EXTREME WARNING: TORNADO WARNING!
I trekked downstairs to show my still-awake husband and we saw three super cells traveling at 40 mph over Charlotte metro area. We woke up all the children and brought them down, groggy or completely asleep, down to the den. Within minutes, the warnings were repeatedly blaring to TAKE SHELTER NOW, so we all piled into the powder room.
We brought the laptop into the bathroom to watch our city's wonderful meteorologist Brad Panovich livestreaming to keep us all informed. These cells were huge and fast and were dropping quarter-sized hail. It was surreal that our weather remained perfect during the countdown, with Brad P. telling us accurately down to the minute when the rain would hit us.
Our home was totally spared and we experienced only steady rain and wind. The above radar photo shows minutes after the storm had passed over our home. See the gap between the southernmost two red spots? That gap opened up in the large red blob at the last minute as the storm passed over our home.
Thank you, Jesus! With three deaths in our family in the last single year, a direct hit from a tornado almost three months ago, my mother-in-law on a ventilator for the last month, a worldwide pandemic and resulting economic devastation, and the tornado repairs on our home still scheduled (roof and fence replacements), we really hoped for relief from this possible crisis.
ThankyouJesus, thankyouJesus, thankyouJesus . . .
Bonus Reading for Posterity:
- This article offers calm and sober statistical analysis of our neighboring state Georgia, which has reopened quickly and under criticism. The New York Times is Verifiably Wrong, Georgia is Doing Great on COVID-19
- Hospitals can only serve people if they have enough income to keep doors open, doctors and nurses employed, and supplies stocked. MOST U.S. HOSPITALS ARE EMPTY. SOON THEY MIGHT BE CLOSED FOR GOOD
- Many citizens have lost their jobs, maybe more than in the Great Depression? While millions have filed for unemployment, the unemployment checks (debt saddled on many future generations) is not even arriving. What is it like to have ZERO INCOME? Is that also a tragedy? I Might Lose My Job. Do You Care?
- This author writes in a very heated way that may be overblown. However, I am recording it for posterity because I really think the future weeks and months are going to give us some interesting retrospective on how the powers that be handled this situation. We will know one way or another! This Pandemic Is Over. Let's Stop the Economic Suicide, and Get Back to Work
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