A Few Things

Hello Friends. How are you? Have you settled into quarantine life yet? Found a schedule or some consistency that’s working for you?

I’m sure worried about you. I know some of you live in tiny spaces and are feeling trapped. I know some of you have very young kids and nowhere for them to get out their excess energy (and no break for you from childcare!). I know some of you are lonely. I know some of you are worried about paying for food and bills and not sure where to get help. I know some of you have essential jobs and are still heading into work everyday so that the rest of us can remain safely home. I know pretty much everyone is living with an unusual level of stress. I know this is hard.

One of the hardest parts is not being able to see the end. We don’t know how long it will be until our kids can go to school, until we can return to our work places, until we can resume errands and meetings. It makes it really difficult to manage expectations. We got an email yesterday from our school saying that the earliest we would go back is May 4th (but that’s not guaranteed at all).

How about you? How are you holding up? Have you been able to find any silver-linings? Are you remembering to take your meds? Finding new ways to cope? This week I started randomly facetiming long-time friends that I don’t get a chance to talk to very often. Not everyone picks up (and I know not everyone recognizes my +33 French number), but when they do it’s delightful. : )

Ready for some weekend links? Here are a few things I’ve been wanting to share:

-15 times the normal price for medical equipment? In the middle of a pandemic? How is that not illegal?

-Are your kids facing a cancelled graduation? Maybe consider this guide to creating a virtual graduation ceremony.

– Wait. What? The 1,000-Bed Comfort Was Supposed to Aid New York. It Has 20 Patients. “It’s a joke,” said a top hospital executive, whose facilities are packed with coronavirus patients.

-Hah! For all the teachers and parents who are worn out of online school.

-Another article wondering why more men are dying of coronavirus. This quote stands out. “The medical establishment has largely overlooked the profound chromosomal, hormonal and anatomical uniqueness of genetic females. The current practice of medicine was built using research that was done primarily on male[s]”

-An extensive archive of old Mexican packaging. So good.

-They don’t have to be on the front lines, but they choose to do so: Meet the volunteers of France’s Civil Protection Service.

-Two months before the novel coronavirus began spreading in Wuhan, the Trump administration ended a $200-million program aimed at detecting — well, novel coronaviruses. The staff had been working with the lab in — you guessed it: Wuhan.

-Dutch museum says Vincent van Gogh painting stolen in overnight raid. What a time to be alive!

-“We are all science communicators now.”

-What’s it like to have a famous name?

-This Is Not the Apocalypse You Were Looking For.

-I’m most hopeful anytime I hear news about focusing on testing. Experts say Germany’s remarkably low fatality rate for the coronavirus is because they’re testing early and often.

-“Trump supporters voted for a chaos presidency. That’s what we have. And it’s going to kill some of us. It already has.”

-Researchers are calling it a miracle. An agricultural project that cost $54 million and involved 65k local bureaucrats has saved Chinese farmers more than $12.2 billion over 10 years.

-Something for your kiddos. Bond’s mission is teaching children healthy habits for happy brains. They are offering free videos, 8-10 mins each, with athletic exercises, musical movement and mindfulness skills.

Oscar’s latest podcast episode.

-Anyone have a favorite pair of sweats to recommend? I’m thinking about these. I like that they have pockets and a wide waistband.

Here are some tweets I save for you:

Good excuses to celebrate while you’re home this month.

-For anyone curious about what the rest of the world is saying about the U.S. response to the pandemic. She asked, and there are lots of responses.

https://twitter.com/KimberlyNFoster/status/1245214456990351371

-A tweet relating to one of the articles above.

Reading time with Dolly Parton? Yes please.

https://twitter.com/dollyslibrary/status/1244672765283753984

-The reality of this chart is hard to comprehend (press play).

A decade in 3 months.

-I learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t know in this thread about how Fox News makes money. (Even people who don’t watch Fox News are often contributing to their profits.)

Hahahaha.

-I’m not looking forward to this either.

This makes me sad.

-Something gorgeous to look at.

https://twitter.com/presentcorrect/status/1244934836516765696

I hope you have a good-normal-as-possible weekend. I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.

kisses,
Gabrielle

P.S. — The palm tree photo at top was shot in Palm Springs a month ago. It feels like years have passed since then.

6 thoughts on “A Few Things”

  1. I look forward to this post every week. This is one of my favorite blogs. A few months back, I was in the ‘Living with Kids’ series. Some of the pictures I provided were from Easter last year. It seems so long ago, longer than year. How relevant is the ‘Living with Kids’ series now since we are all at home and looking at our homes in a much different way?
    Hard Parts: Missing grandparents, friends, school. Baseball, coaching, museums. Our vacations were canceled. Conferences to re-connect with friends were canceled. I feel like I lost memories I haven’t had the chance of making yet.

    Silver-lining: Family lunches and dinner every day. Mom and Dad home with the kids. I get to spend all day with my 3 and 6 year old. We both are still employed and able to have our wonderful nanny part-time. (Her husband and mine are now a “unit” and we need to talk about our exposures. so weird).

    The hard parts are outweighing the silver-linings though….

  2. That unemployment claim graph … wow.

    Staying home is tricky because there are three of us in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. Not ideal. We’re on top of each other every day. It’s almost impossible to get privacy. And the thought of one of us getting sick and having to be quarantined in the bedroom sounds frightening and logistically tricky.

    However, I’m grateful we are (for the moment) all well, I have a job that I can do from home and am still employed, my husband has made some lifestyle changes recently that are supporting his health, and our college freshman daughter is learning real-life lessons about flexibility and making the best of a bad situation.

  3. I am trying my hardest to just focus on this day, this moment. The 6 of us are now at home-my 2 oldest college kids taking their classes online. I feel badly for my daughter who is supposed to be graduating from Cal in May, and is job searching in the midst of this. My elderly parents live on the opposite side of the country-in my darkest hour I wonder if I will ever see them again. My husband has high blood pressure and my high schooler has asthma-I worry about their health. I am grateful my husband still has his job, we have a house with a yard, and a freezer/fridge/pantry full of food. I like that we all have “friend dates” over zoom and Facetime. We have family dinner every night and go around the table and share what our positive for the day was. I start my morning with a Gratitude list. During the day I do yoga with 2 of my kids. I’ve also (after saying forever I would start) begun a daily meditation. I also have a list of positive thoughts on my notes app that I refer to throughout the day (“In this moment you are well”, “Be brave,” “One leads by calm.”)

  4. Name withheld for privacy

    Two of our family members (very fit, very healthy, late 30s) have been sick for quite sometime with Covid19. They chose to keep as quiet about their situation as possible because of many obvious reasons. They are now communicating, somewhat, that they are still on heavy medical treatment, and that the CDC checks in twice daily on them as they are trying to recover on their own at home.

    The communication that struck me most was “This is real. This is serious. Believe the CDC. This isn’t a joke. This is scary. We’ve never been this sick in our lives. Pray for us, please.”

    For anyone who still wonders who to believe, trust the CDC.

  5. The best thing I did to help deal with this situation was to stop watching the 2 hr. daily WH press conferences which would enrage me each day. Nuff said.

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