Coronavirus...New Normal
Homemade face masks
Monday, April 6. The novelty has worn off as we enter our fourth week of Stay-at-Home living. What started out as a disruptive, but stirring time, has become what actually is - house arrest without the ankle bracelet. All the experts tell you to exercise at home. Simple, right? There are tons of videos. My personal trainer gave me two workouts that I can switch day-to-day. None of that has been particularly successful for me. Maybe it's my penchant for humiliation, but I do so much better when I pay someone to tell me what to do, watch me do it with less than stellar form, and then congratulate me on a "Good Job" no matter how I might do. It's a Pavlovian experience.
Small approval rewards lead me to work harder. Luckily, I don't drool all over like a dog waiting for her treat. Left alone, I don't exercise alone without an extreme amount of self-guilt. I lack self-inner discipline when it comes to body sweating and grunting. I think about it, but I don't do it. The best I've been able to do since the Stay-at-Home order is a daily neighborhood walk for a mile or two (yes, I do keep social distance). My excuse is that two rounds of foot surgery over five months caused me to get off track and let my body "go to seed".
By the end of March, that seed had taken root. I grew out instead of up. Many winter cold and gray days, left me lethargic. This morning the sun is shining and the air is warm for the second day in a row. It's spring. Maybe I will spring into action.
This new normal has made grocery shopping adventurous as it never was before. In our area, you're not supposed to just "pop-in" for a few things. Shop only when you need to (e.g., once a week or less). Toilet paper and paper towels have become the new currency. Never pass up the opportunity to pick up a package whether you need it or not, but don't hoard. Don't use your own bags. It's back to "paper or plastic". And now, it's wear a mask to protect other people from yourself.
It's harder on my husband than on me, quite frankly. He's the kind of guy, bless his cooking heart, who can spend hours caressing the fruit and vegetables, chatting with the butcher, and scouring the aisles for that difficult-to-find ingredient for a new recipe. He definitely didn't get the hardware gene.
I don't know how it is in your area, but there are no face masks to be had, and, if there were, you should leave them for health care workers. Yet, the edict last Friday was to wears masks while shopping. It's a catch-22. Like magic, overnight, the internet became littered with "how to make face masks" instructions and videos. I found several that were fairly simple. So I combined one that had a well crafted pattern (almost up to hospital standard) and one that recommended poly-fiber grocery bags (edges don't ravel). The problem was that I didn't have a sewing machine and was not going to cop out using cotton napkins or scarves for masks. I made the prototype on Friday. Made some fashion adjustments then forged ahead on Saturday. It proved challenging, but I was able to construct four masks for my daughter and her family (she never did learn to sew and that's my Bad), one for my girlfriend who found me a thimble early on Saturday morning, and two for ourselves.
After stitching for 12 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday, I learned that hand sewing aggravates the arthritis in my thumbs, but yields decent washable face masks. From what I've heard and read, we only need to wear face masks when we can't keep "six feet of social distance". It should have been called "six feet of physical distance" because we human beings are social animals. Too many people are not talking or smiling anymore. That's the source of our isolation, in my opinion.
We're being told to stop socializing rather than to socialize at a physical distance.