Day #17: Staying Home by Going Outside
The overwhelming message everywhere and by everyone is to stay home to stop the virus. Which is driving me insane because we get outside every single day. And we're supposed to. What the authorities mean by stay home is don't have birthday parties, don't have play dates, don't get your neighbors together for a picnic, stay away from others. And I get it. Their messaging has to be simple. This is not the time for nuance. They need to express how urgent it all is. And it is urgent.
I took my youngest for a road trip day today. Daddy got to help James clean his room, a gargantuan task, and my job was to take Max and GET OUT OF THE WAY. Mother Nature seems to be in this weird mood because at the same time she is throwing this horrific deadly pandemic at us, she is also giving us the most beautiful early spring. Sunny early spring isn't uncommon for us, but it has lasted an unusually long time, although I think we are seeing the end of it now. So Max and I headed north and west of here to find pretty views and the beach, which we did.
Max handles being cooped up inside about as well as I do. So...not. His word for outside is "shoes," and every day he brings me his shoes, talks about his shoes, wants to wear his shoes. You can tell shoes are a trigger for him because, although we get outside basically every day, nothing about where we go or who we see and don't see is normal. Plus it was really nice to just be with him. Walking with both of them is a challenge because they are at different speeds so I spend my life trying to slow one down or speed one up or both. Max can still go in the carrier, but he just wants to walk. And he does not wish to hold someone's hand. On the beach with just me, he could walk Max speed. He could pick flowers and hold them in his tiny fist, pick up rocks to hear what dropping them sounds like, and if there was a doggie we could stop and watch that doggie. He has also learned to say the word birdie. I did not know that I had it in me to be a birdwatcher, but it is hawk mating season and all the spring songbirds are out and being outside alone just us so much has made me really watch the birds for the first time in my life. I didn't know you could birdwatch with a toddler. I didn't know a lot of things.
So it was a great day. All social distancing rules were followed, I didn't feel guilty about anything we did, not even stopping for takeout (6 feet from everyone, touch nothing, hands washed when you get home.) I came home with that good kind of headache you get on a long road trip when you've been looking in the sun too long and had not enough water. Good takeout fixes that kind of headache.
Why would I ruin that? What is it that makes me want to turn on social media, a news site, or click on that link my sister sent and hear the bad news? 'Cause there's not much good news.
Information is my business. I'm a reference librarian. And I KNOW there's a lot of bad information out there. I know how to screen a lot of that noise out. Even information coming from reputable health sources and journals is fuzzy right now because the disease is just too new. The medical researchers are trying to keep up but they don't have hard data. That's why this is hard...because it is new and it is ahead of us. So I know there's bad information. But there's also some real information and it isn't good. The hospital beds are filling fast. They are having to figure out how to open new beds or convert existing ones to ICU beds...fast. There is a medical protection gear shortage. The numbers climb every day. This disease is at minimum probably 3 weeks from peaking in this area. Those are facts. And when you go to...any informational source there is, be it the radio, social media, news sites, wherever, you get slammed with them. There's no way to avoid it. Which is why I spent my road trip hours in the car today with an audiobook and not the radio.
Why is it so hard to walk away? There is such a fine line. It is important to be informed. If you don't know how serious it is you won't follow the guidelines...and for a layperson like me literally the only thing I can do right now is follow the guidelines. But information can swamp you so fast. I'm reminded of what my OB said when I was pregnant about health information online. Will reading it help? Is the information solving a problem you have, or is it the problem?
I'm fairly certain a lot of people in my life think I don't take this seriously or am not listening. It's the same reason I'm a sucky environmentalist. It's not that I don't believe the science. It's that it overwhelms me and I don't know what to do next. It's too big for me. I'm pushing on the ocean. So I go outside. I go for a drive. I find the scenic views. I find a new trail. I watch birds. Apparently. The word "struggle" was in the dictionary.com definition of "coping," one of the least terrible things I googled today. It is hard. It is okay that it is hard. We can do hard things but that doesn't make them easy.
Today I'm grateful for audiobooks, road trips. my baby Max, shoes, flowers, doggies, takeout, Harry Potter, parks employees, forgiveness (even of yourself,) my family, my health, the ability to take a deep breath of fresh air, the sound of the ocean, and...birdies.
I took my youngest for a road trip day today. Daddy got to help James clean his room, a gargantuan task, and my job was to take Max and GET OUT OF THE WAY. Mother Nature seems to be in this weird mood because at the same time she is throwing this horrific deadly pandemic at us, she is also giving us the most beautiful early spring. Sunny early spring isn't uncommon for us, but it has lasted an unusually long time, although I think we are seeing the end of it now. So Max and I headed north and west of here to find pretty views and the beach, which we did.
Max handles being cooped up inside about as well as I do. So...not. His word for outside is "shoes," and every day he brings me his shoes, talks about his shoes, wants to wear his shoes. You can tell shoes are a trigger for him because, although we get outside basically every day, nothing about where we go or who we see and don't see is normal. Plus it was really nice to just be with him. Walking with both of them is a challenge because they are at different speeds so I spend my life trying to slow one down or speed one up or both. Max can still go in the carrier, but he just wants to walk. And he does not wish to hold someone's hand. On the beach with just me, he could walk Max speed. He could pick flowers and hold them in his tiny fist, pick up rocks to hear what dropping them sounds like, and if there was a doggie we could stop and watch that doggie. He has also learned to say the word birdie. I did not know that I had it in me to be a birdwatcher, but it is hawk mating season and all the spring songbirds are out and being outside alone just us so much has made me really watch the birds for the first time in my life. I didn't know you could birdwatch with a toddler. I didn't know a lot of things.
So it was a great day. All social distancing rules were followed, I didn't feel guilty about anything we did, not even stopping for takeout (6 feet from everyone, touch nothing, hands washed when you get home.) I came home with that good kind of headache you get on a long road trip when you've been looking in the sun too long and had not enough water. Good takeout fixes that kind of headache.
Why would I ruin that? What is it that makes me want to turn on social media, a news site, or click on that link my sister sent and hear the bad news? 'Cause there's not much good news.
Information is my business. I'm a reference librarian. And I KNOW there's a lot of bad information out there. I know how to screen a lot of that noise out. Even information coming from reputable health sources and journals is fuzzy right now because the disease is just too new. The medical researchers are trying to keep up but they don't have hard data. That's why this is hard...because it is new and it is ahead of us. So I know there's bad information. But there's also some real information and it isn't good. The hospital beds are filling fast. They are having to figure out how to open new beds or convert existing ones to ICU beds...fast. There is a medical protection gear shortage. The numbers climb every day. This disease is at minimum probably 3 weeks from peaking in this area. Those are facts. And when you go to...any informational source there is, be it the radio, social media, news sites, wherever, you get slammed with them. There's no way to avoid it. Which is why I spent my road trip hours in the car today with an audiobook and not the radio.
Why is it so hard to walk away? There is such a fine line. It is important to be informed. If you don't know how serious it is you won't follow the guidelines...and for a layperson like me literally the only thing I can do right now is follow the guidelines. But information can swamp you so fast. I'm reminded of what my OB said when I was pregnant about health information online. Will reading it help? Is the information solving a problem you have, or is it the problem?
I'm fairly certain a lot of people in my life think I don't take this seriously or am not listening. It's the same reason I'm a sucky environmentalist. It's not that I don't believe the science. It's that it overwhelms me and I don't know what to do next. It's too big for me. I'm pushing on the ocean. So I go outside. I go for a drive. I find the scenic views. I find a new trail. I watch birds. Apparently. The word "struggle" was in the dictionary.com definition of "coping," one of the least terrible things I googled today. It is hard. It is okay that it is hard. We can do hard things but that doesn't make them easy.
Today I'm grateful for audiobooks, road trips. my baby Max, shoes, flowers, doggies, takeout, Harry Potter, parks employees, forgiveness (even of yourself,) my family, my health, the ability to take a deep breath of fresh air, the sound of the ocean, and...birdies.
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