Yesterday, we went to the grocery store in the morning. The store workers look frazzled and worried (like us all). I love our store and the workers there. When this is all over, I can’t wait to go up to each and everyone one of them and tell them how much we appreciated them.

After shopping, and using hand sanitizer, and washing our hands a bunch of times; we decided to get out of the house and go for a walk a Magnusson Park. It is a large open space but it was full of people. We were trekking off the paths to try to stay away from other people. That was probably the last time we do that for quite a while.

I swing between “OMG, We should have bought 6 dozen eggs and enough food that we won’t have to leave the house for 6 months” to “the risk to Ena and me personally is fairly low and we are doing what we can do… all we really can do is let this pass… what will be, will be“. I can do this switch several times in an hour. It is crazy making. [Did I mention that I was thinking that my next house would also be a giant autoclave?]

Yesterday evening, Christy called. Sometimes you don’t know what will help until it happens. It was great to chat with her. She is the CIO at our Bothell campus. Christy has been in full-time fire drill since this started trying to get the Bothell campus switched over to on-line learning – suddenly hearing from faculty who said (only recently) that they would never, in their life, teach on line.

She asked bluntly why was I so freaked out. I had to say, “It is just a perfect storm for anxiety”. Which is an admission that anxiety is running around being irrational… not me. I have a name for my anxiety when it is getting problematic. I call it Loki – the Norse God of Trouble. When anxiety pops up, I will say to myself, “Shut up Loki. Your not helping.” Guess I need to say that more.

Maybe we will follow the best case scenario in this NY Times article. COVID-19 might mutate and die out like SARS. It might go into seasonal reduction like flu. There are some promising anti-virals out there that might help the sickest survive. We might be back to something more normal by June. I hold onto this vision of a possible future (while planning for the worst).

Chris Hadfield has good advice. After all, the guy has been isolated in a dangerous environment before.