March 2020

 The month it all started.  What a strange month.  But it started off normal.  I took Dylan and Mitchell skiing one last time. 

The girls had Festival (where they play two songs in front of a judge).  And then their recital the next day.  They did great!

Kylee was practicing to sing in Sacrament Meeting.  But then church got cancelled.  Ryan was scheduled to speak as well.  I was bummed.

Kaden is enjoying Bears vs Babies and I think it's such a cute game.

I saw a post with all these hilarious pictures from China (I assume, perhaps it's other countries too).  I was dying at the animals and water jugs.

Kylee has been wanting to make a cake, so Rachel came over and they got to baking.  

Kylee drew a picture of Rachel.  

At this point school was officially cancelled for an indeterminate amount of time.  We started online school from home, and social distancing which meant we didn't go anywhere or play with friends.  Boo.  We did a lot of puzzles, but this puzzle was the hardest one.  It took a long time and I promised the kids ice cream if they finished it.  They did right when the governor ordered all non-essential businesses close down for three weeks.  I wasn't sure if ice cream was essential or not, lol.  So I hurried to Cold Stone to get it just in time.

These magnets are fun and I call this geometry study.

During quarantine I did a lot of running.  It was all I could do, the pool closed down and it was too cold to ride my bike.  And I needed an out.  It was for my sanity.  I kept doing my marathon training even though I had a feeling all the races would be cancelled.  Other than running, I started on a project.  While cleaning out my dad's house a few years ago, I ended up with all our old photos and my brothers wanted them digitalized.  At the time my printer scanner was not very good.  But we have since gotten a new printer and it's much better.  So I spent hours scanning pictures onto the computer.  I came across some really great ones.

Coronavirus, the Pandemic of 2020

I have seen people say we should write things down.  Because this is a crazy time.  And years from now it will be in history books.  I mean, if there were still actual books printed.  It will be online I guess.  It will be talked about.  Coronavirus.  COVID 19.  Pandemic of 2020.

Let’s start at the beginning.  For my family at least.  January we had plans to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Florida.  Meanwhile, across the world in China, a fast-spreading virus was making headlines.  Ryan asked me if I was nervous about traveling.  Of course not.  Why worry about something happening way over there?

Well, it was in China, and it was in South Korea.  And it was on a cruise ship docked in Japan, where people had to stay on board under quarantine for 14 days!  As the day of our trip got closer, it was popping up in more places.  And it had made it to the US.  But I was still unconcerned.  The death rate was somewhat low, and nonexistent in children. 

Ryan watches keeps up with current events more than I do.  I only catch things posted on Facebook and had only heard of Coronavirus because it was on The Weather Channel when I was looking at how sunny it would be in Florida while we were there.  He started asking me if we had enough food storage.  He said we have money to buy what we need, but it would be pointless to have money instead of food in a crisis.  China was shutting down.  People were quarantined.  Hospitals were full.  Ryan was worried that would happen to America.  I told him we wouldn’t starve.

We went on our trip, had a great time, saw a few people wearing masks in the airports but otherwise everything was normal.  A week after we got home Kylee came down with a high fever and sinus stuff.  She had to miss MORE school, which was unfortunate.  A friend of mine joked about coronavirus and I said, “not funny!  We were just in and international airport!”  But my mom assured me that there were no cases of coronavirus on the east coast at all.  Only in California and Washington.  Kylee recovered after four solid days of being miserable.  And just as she got over it, Kaden threw up and then had a fever for four days as well.  Thankfully nobody else got it.

One of my best friends, Jaclyn lives in South Korea right now.  We have a group text with 5 of us from Cache Valley, friends since high school.  We heard things about churches being closed in Asia and missionaries being reassigned.  I started asking Jaclyn about how it has affected her life.  She told us they have been stuck at home.  Church and school are closed.  They do virtual school, communicating with teachers online.  And they do church at home each week.  She also told us she lives on a US base and she is being stopped and having her temperature taken whenever she enters the base.  It all seemed crazy!  She told us the hysteria is a much bigger problem than the actual virus.  She mentioned that during the SARS epidemic the stores in China ran out of toilet paper.  We kind of laughed about that.  Why toilet paper?

A week or two later Karlee (lives in Salt Lake) sent a text about the first coronavirus patient being flown in to Utah.  At this point it had made its way to the east coast already, and a handful of other states.  This patient had been on the cruise ship, quarantined on the ship for two weeks, then treated in Japan for another two weeks.  They finally got him back in the states on the west coast and were now flying him to his home state, where he would be in a special hospital that deals with highly contagious diseases.  Jokingly I texted that I was going to go buy toilet paper the next day just to be safe.  And I did.  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra pack of it on hand.  As well as tissues and paper towels.  It was basically time for me to restock my house on all of them anyway.  And Ryan had continued to ask if I had the things we would need.  I couldn’t imagine a way that our water would stop, so I wasn’t worried about that.  But I did think about a few things for baking and some sauces like bbq and ketchup.

The virus continued to spread throughout almost all of the states.  And wouldn’t you know it, toilet paper started disappearing from the shelves!!  Every time I went to Sam’s Club it was more crowded than usual.  But otherwise things still felt pretty normal.  As Ryan kept saying, it wasn’t a matter of IF coronavirus would come to our area, but WHEN.

Ryan went on a golf trip to St. George with some friends.  While he was gone, the news continued to get worse and worse.  Jaclyn said her parents went to Vegas to watch Utah State win their championship game, and she was frustrated with them and asking them to please go back home and stay.  They are older and in the dangerous age group.  After that it was announced that the NCAA games would be played without fans.  Sad!  The church had also sent something out asking people to please not travel to Utah for General Conference in the Conference Center.  Talk about a bunch of high risk older people.

But things got pretty bad on Wednesday night.  March 11^th, the Jazz were supposed to play in Ohio.  The stadium was full, the game was supposed to start any minute, and a Jazz player Rudy Gobert was waiting on test results for coronavirus.  If he was negative, he planned on playing.  He tested positive, and the game was cancelled and everyone sent home.  The NBA then cancelled every game for at least 30 days while they tested players and figured out what to do.

Ryan heard this news and started worrying even more.  We had a conversation that night where we decided I should buy a new chest freezer because that’s the only way we can really stock up on meats.  Our outside freezer is so full already.  He was asking me things like, “there’s still food on the shelves, right?”  I was like, yeah it’s totally normal right now.  Though Sam’s was a little busier than normal.  Apparently Costcos in Utah were running low on toilet paper, tissues, bottled water, peanut butter, tuna fish and frozen orange juice.  Sam’s was low on some of those things too.  So people were already taking it seriously.  Then there's people like this:

He tried to sell Clorox wipes and Sanitizer for $8-20 on Amazon and got kicked off.  People like this are the reason there are hoarders.

Per Ryan’s request, I spent the next day (Thursday, March 12) shopping for a freezer and stocking up on a few more things that would be good to have.  I couldn’t find a freezer in stock but I didn’t get the feeling it was because of COVID 19 hysteria. (That’s the virus’ official name, coronavirus is the disease it causes.  I think.)  It seemed like freezers just sell a lot here, with hunting a big sport and everything.  But I didn’t want to be too late so I got online and ordered one.  I had been to three stores for freezers, the library, melaleuca (cleaning products), Sam’s Club for a little extra of the basic foods.  And I wanted to swing by Broulim’s but I was tired and I didn’t want my cold food to get hot in my car so I decided I would put off my trip to Broulim’s until later that night. 

Utah started stressing about COVID.  That afternoon my friends were texting saying the Governor just announced that you couldn’t have gatherings of more than 100 people.  And we got a message from Kylee’s soccer coach that the tournament she was supposed to play in on Saturday was cancelled.  I was like, “Utah is losing their minds!”  I guess the Murray school district closed schools because there was a possible child with it there. 

An hour later I was getting dinner ready when I got an email from the church.  All meetings were cancelled.  No more public gatherings.  The hysteria that started in Utah was making its way to Idaho as well.  

Kylee had a soccer game at 6 and I sat there with my neighbors watching and talking about how the stores were running out of the basic things like flour and milk.  I was also texting my friend who raises cows and securing half a cow for us to be slaughtered in a week or so.  Kylee injured her tailbone and wasn’t even playing in the game and I was getting more and more anxious, wishing I had not put off going to Broulim’s so I got someone to give Kylee a ride home and I headed to the store.  It was chaos.

The lines were incredibly long.  And the basic stuff was GONE.  The good news is I usually buy the organic stuff anyway so it wasn’t a big deal to me to sneak over to the organic section where they still had plenty of pasta and rice.  The bread shelf was empty other than the organic, really hearty stuff- which is what I ALWAYS buy, lol.  The regular yeast was gone but I spotted two bags of Bob’s Red Mill yeast that I snagged.  I got everything I had been hoping to get other than canned milk (they had lowfat, but not regular).  I was hearing things about how Winco had to stop letting people in the store because it was too crowded and lines were too long.  There were lines outside waiting to get in.  As I was shopping, I noticed everyone still smiling, a bit of excitement in their eyes.  I made my way to the back of the line, even though there was no real order as to how the lines worked.  I had no reason to make anyone made.  But everyone I encountered was polite and happy still.  The checkout counter I ended up in was being run by the manager.  I’ve met him before so I knew he was the manager.  I asked him if he thought things would get all restocked and calm down by next week.  He kind of forced a little laugh and said, “it might take a little longer than that.”  I asked him if it was like this earlier and he said it started about 3 or 4.  Just as I thought, as soon as the church made their announcement.  The LDS community realized how serious it was the second the church took it seriously.  And they all realized they have been told to be prepared so they better get out and get their 3 month supply at least.  I am guilty of this too.  It’s hard to keep three months worth of food to feed a family of 6.  We eat a lot.

The fact is that it’s not likely grocery stores will close.  But gosh you would hate be sorry instead of safe.  Also Idaho was still one of the only states with no cases reported.  These had me cracking up.

West Virginia beat us.  By a few days actually.

Over the weekend, it was a big roller coaster for me.  My friends in Utah said their governor cancelled all schools for two weeks.  I assumed our state would follow.  The whole weekend I anxiously watched social media and the district’s updates.  And finally found out that they were not going to cancel schools.  I was so frustrated.  It’s not that I wanted to teach my kids at home.  Or that I was worried about us getting the virus.  I was worried for our community.  It seems like schools are the easiest place to share germs.  And hundreds of kids gather together.  We had, in fact, had a case in our state now.  And most people believed the only reason there weren’t more is because the testing is so limited.  The nation was talking about “social-distancing”, avoiding shows and bars and sporting events (most of which were cancelled anyway).  I felt like our district was risking the health of our whole community because they didn’t want to miss any more school because we had already had 4.5 days off for extreme weather (wind+snow).  And because of the kids that get free breakfast and lunch and wouldn’t otherwise have much food.

True story.  The snow was melting and mostly gone.  But it's March in Idaho so it was no surprise.

But after Monday back at school, they figured it all out and ended up cancelling the rest of the week and plan to have everyone online after Spring Break.

Tuesday morning I woke up to a bunch of texts from my Utah friends.  There had been an earthquake!  What is going on?!  Is the world really ending now?  Ryan and I had been thinking this was a good wake up call so we can be prepared for when the end is really here.  But man, maybe this is it?  The angel Moroni on the Salt Lake temple had lost his trumpet.

 We had still tossed around the idea of heading to St George for Spring Break.  But were leaning towards ‘bad idea’.  Then this earthquake hit with threats of the Wasatch fault going off in response to this one (West Valley fault).  Not to mention the hysteria increased and more food-hoarding.  It wasn’t going to happen.  We got a refund on our payment for the resort. (He offered us $500 discount if we still wanted to come, but I just mentally couldn’t do it.  Too much stress.  And it wasn’t even going to be that warm down there.  60 degrees most days.)

So here we are.  Practicing social distancing.  Trying to flatten the curve.  Told to not gather in groups over 10.  Avoiding the gym (sad! I want to swim.)  Sports all cancelled for the foreseeable future.  Movie theaters closed (or should be at least). School from home.  Not even supposed to hang out with neighbors really.  Most restaurants are offering take-out still, but not dine in.  Churches and temples closed (other than for living ordinances).  Life is put on hold.  We are playing a waiting game.  A wait that could last MONTHS.  That probably will last months.  Italy has been a cautionary tale.  I read this a week ago, and it was a big reason I was stressing about our schools

But the biggest concern of all is not getting the virus.  Of course that is scary that some people might require hospitalization or die.  But the death rate is not that high.  The biggest problem with social distancing is that our economy is crashing.  So many people can not work.  People are being asked to work from home.  Places of business that survive on the public getting out and gathering together, will not be making money for a long time.  My mom is no longer working because of changes in the hospital and surgeries.  The stock market is suffering terribly.  There is talk of this being another great depression.  It is a tough time for a lot of people.  Not to mention the fear that you can't get toilet paper or bread at the store.  

Here is some humor that has brightened the mood on social media lately.  Kylee's attendance was COVID, lol

And here are some uplifting thoughts.