Last week was… challenging to say the least. Ena had surgery on Tuesday to remove a melanoma from her calf. She is now on crutches. During all of that, we discovered she has a cardiac issue too. So now we are dealing with that.

On Thursday, I had just gone to the grocery store in the hopes of not leaving the house for two weeks. Instead, we seem to running to Kaiser for tests and follow-ups every few days. When we get back from the clinic visits, we put our clothes and coats in the wash, wash our hands, then put on clean clothes.

I have set up a sanitation zone in the garage. All groceries and packages come into the garage. They sit for 24 hours if possible, then I unpack and sanitize things. If we don’t need them immediately, they sit on a shelf (dated of course) for 5 days. I’m willing to wait this out.

Every time I go out with people, I start a 5 day clock in my head. “How about today. Any symptoms?” At this rate, I never get past day three. We are back to Kaiser tomorrow morning.

From the amazing file: King Arthur Flour is out of flour and oats. There must be people who haven’t baked in 20 years who are now sitting on 50 pounds of All Purpose flour wondering if you put milk or water on it. They have it stacked in the back room on top of their 20 cases of toilet paper. Or maybe the US of A is discovering baking along with guns and beer.

There is an interesting trend according to this article. Baby chicks and seeds are sold out too. To quote:

“People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper,” said Tom Watkins, the vice president of the company [Murry McMurry Hatchery].

People are heading back to the land and self-sufficiency. As the article says, “a new Victory Garden era”?

Finally, there is some light at the end of tunnel, at least in Washington. It appears we are bending the curve and getting towards a constant rate of new cases. We are NOT done with SARS-CoV-2 but we are getting out of crisis and more into maintenance. According to this prediction, the peak will hit us around April 17th. That doesn’t mean the end but it does mean that we can keep up the good (stay at home and 6 feet away from everyone) work and not have this get any worse.

To use a baseball analogy, which Brian McDonald of MOR Associates say I should never do: It is a home game. The visitors scored seven runs in the top of the first inning. We scored 4 runs to get back in the game. The games not over but at least we have a swinging chance.

Stay and healthy. Have a video conference dinner with friends. Buy some chickens and plant some seeds.

Jim