I’ve been cooking more. I made delicious banana chocolate chip cookies yesterday. I don’t love baking but this is a keeper recipe.
I’m also isolating on my days off . I’m an ICU nurse so i need to stay healthy. I was thinking of retiring a few months ago but that plan has changed with the need for health care workers. Fingers crossed we stay healthy.

A group of gf’s and i are having our first online cocktail party tonight. We’re all wearing our weirdest hat or scarf. It’ll be the social hi light of my week
Take care and stay healthy.

I’m very much an introvert, and turns out I disliked my job and my co-workers even more than I thought, because I’m dealing with quarantine better than I expected. I have moments of being very down, Sunday was one of them. I am able to work from home, but 70 out of our 100 locations are closed for now, so my work has dwindled. I don’t know how long I will be working. But my department’s leadership – sending “essential’ co-workers into harm’s way just to give false re-assurance, makes me seriously question my future with this company anyway. So being home has been very clarifying for me. The only problem is, what jobs will be available in the future?

Walking is my comfort – leaving the house to go outside is so important. I see everyone keeping social distance, even as they walk and bike. I’ve also made a real effort to go on-line less to read the horrifying predictions; it does not help. I have Lucy Parker and Alyssa Cole books ready to read – I allow only positive stories ad authors into my brain right now.

It helps to know others are in the same boat – strange and surreal as this boat is. I appreciate take-out and grocery store workers SO much more. Yesterday seeing the “Heroes Work Here” sign at my grocery store literally brought tears to my eyes. Because it’s true. I so hope they don’t get sick.

I am very sad and sorry to post this but yesterday an 18 year old died in the UK from Covid-19. I am hopeful that now some of those millennials who have been flouting the strict rules we now live under will take notice and stop acting like utter fools. The young are not immune, not immortal and are also at risk just like everyone else. Behaviour over the weekend in the UK was lamentable and now it must stop.

I live in Munich, Bavaria. My husband and I are both retired and high risk. My h just lived through cancer treatment and it finally did look good and we had hope again. I live with Morbus Addison and any major infection can end deadly. For a few nights I really didn’t sleep well, but it gets better now.
In Bavaria we have the severest restrictions in Germany and are mostly housebound. In february during a week of school holidays many people went to Austria or Italy for skiing in the Alps. Now they are back and many brought the virus with them what’s shown in the immense growth of infections. Till now we have not so many deads as Italy or Spain but we don’t know what will come. Hopefully it will get not so bad as there. My heart is heavy when I think of Italy where I have been so very often.
Our younger son just finished his studies at university and is living at home at the moment what otherwise is a godsend as he can do all our shopping and we oldies can stay at home. On the other side he is just appying for a job – in a time when nobody knows which firm will exist next year.
Our older son has a firm where he provides light and sound for traid fairs and so on. At the moment he has not one order. If the shut down will last more than two month I don’t know what will happen.
One only can hope that we all stay healthy and the economy doesn’t fully crash.
Another thought: Till now nobody could imagine that one day, in the 21th century, the entire western world and many, many other countries would have to face such a pandemia. We all thought we were safe. Epidemics happen in Third World countries but not with us. Perhaps in China but not here in this developed civilasation where medicine has made so unbelievable progress. What an error, what arrogance.
And yet another thought: We live thousands of miles apart and we all have the same problems at the moment, the same fears, the same worries. It should make us stay together. We should pray for it.

I live in Portugal, where the government declared state of emergency. We are not supposed to go outside except for emergencies, supermarkets, pharmacies, walking the dog, helping someone in need, in case of violence happening…

I work in a national monument, which has been closed, as were all others. I’m thankfully working alone in this place so no contacting others. This is a small village too, so it’s easy to keep the social distance.
I still live with my parents and they still work. That worries me because the awful part of this virus is how one can be infected and not knowing! They are not in the so-called group risk despite having just entered their 60s but… how can someone not be worried?

The borders are closed, in neighbor Spain the number of dead by covid-19 escalates and many of the cases here have been imported from Italy, where the number of dead already surpasses China.
Still, some people behave as if this is nothing. We saw interviews yesterday in the streets of major cities… they interviewed a group of older men, in their 70s and such, they were playing cards in a park! One of them said he had been to war (in the 1960s) and survived so it would not be a virus to end him.

I get people need to hold on to their sanity somehow but… the virus spreads silently and that is precisely why it’s been do deadly.
It’s been crazy in the supermarkets too, no toilet paper in sight! Sadly, though, many people overbuy, they buy things while others can’t anymore and then we sadly, disappointingly, see food in the garbage bins because it has gone out of validity… so sad.

On the positive side, many people are helping any way they can and we often see neighbors helping those who can’t leave the house, or who are in bigger risk. Many entities/personalities are raising money and giving vital things to our hospitals.
Hope. Hope is what we should focus on…

We are both retired, thankfully, so staying at home isn’t a problem. We have Sky+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Kindles and probably 500+ books in the house. I think that will keep us busy enough. Oh yes, I have great plans to rearrange my spice cupboard and get rid of stuff that’s probably years old – a job that I keep putting off ;-). We have a lovely group of younger ladies in our village who have volunteered to shop, deliver prescriptions, chat, etc. for anyone over 70 or in poor health that need help. I am keeping in close touch with near neighbours (some are well over 90) and the hubby and I are out walking for 30 minutes every afternoon. I think we will save some money as well: no meals out, no driving anywhere much so saving on petrol and no cinema, concerts, exhibitions, etc. My only sadness over this is that I have had to cancel a lunch at The Ritz in London next month as a friend and I were taking someone for lunch for her 80th birthday for a very special treat. Oh well, money saved for another time.

My only gripe right now is the politicisation of the current crisis. All sides need to pull together, accept there are no instant answers, that those in any government anywhere are not magicians and that no one really knows exactly what will happen next. The old “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude would help, particularly in supermarkets where shoppers are acting insane and fighting over toilet paper and cans of baked beans. Today when I went for my normal weekly shop there was not one bag of any kind of flour. Are folk thinking of baking their own bread? Why when there was plenty of bread on the shelves.

Sending best wishes to everyone at AAR and good health.

I guess I don’t really worry about these issues much. All I can do as an individual is to be prepared, behave responsibly, and look after the ones I care about. Worrying about the stuff I have no control over won’t help me or anyone else.

But I do hope that this will be a learning experience for the various governments and agencies that deal with this stuff. I don’t think this pandemic will kill millions, but that particular pandemic is coming eventually. Governments need to stockpile medical supplies, have medical quarantine laws on the books, encourage companies to always have telecommuting as much as possible, and enforce rationing of basic food and supplies ASAP the next time a pandemic hits. Our poor planet is so overcrowded now that if we encounter another Spanish flu type situation, billions could die. That’s been my big concern; that we learn the lessons we need to learn from this so we can continue to survive. And all I can do about that concern is to share it with others.

Stay safe and be healthy, everyone.

I have a terrible feeling that we’re about to enter a new normal. That even when we have a coronavirus vaccine, nothing is ever going to be the same again…and that’s really going to be hard for an old duck like me, very set in her ways and having planned for a retirement in a world that looked as it did pre-coronavirus…but I have a suspicion that world ain’t coming back.

I work in a high school. Our prom was scheduled for last Friday night—and the school board permitted the prom to go ahead, but all other proms (there are eight public high schools in our district and the proms are staggered throughout March and April) are cancelled. All senior trips are cancelled; graduation ceremonies are still up-in-the-air (our school’s graduation was scheduled for April 30). My heart goes out to the seniors who will be missing so many of those senior year events. In our district, as of now, all students are out until April 13, but employees are on stand-by and may have to report to work to assist with on-line classes, paperwork, lunches (schools are still trying to provide meals), etc.

Meanwhile, my two youngest children are supposed to graduate from college in May—one is getting two undergraduate degrees and the other will be getting her Masters—and their university has gone to on-line classes but one daughter still needs access to the campus library for her thesis and the other was working full-time in addition to going to school, but regardless, they both had to come home. They went back yesterday (we live about 90 minutes from their university) to clean out their apartment, but still had to leave things behind (not enough room in the vehicle) and will try to go back Friday to finish the move out. The daughter with the full-time job is able to work remotely right now. I have another (older) daughter who works as a care-giver for mentally-disabled adults who live in group homes. Her job keeps right on going—with the standard health & safety precautions.

My husband—who works in IT/training—is still going to his office because he has access to the equipment he needs. He can do prep work from home, but presenting webinars and training classes requires more sophisticated technology.

As for me, I used to imagine how wonderful retirement would be (my plan is to retire in 2023, but—like so much else—everything is up in the air right now): my husband and I would be empty-nesters and I could read to my heart’s content. Well, right now, it seems that all I’m doing is reading…but that empty-nester thing ain’t gonna happen anytime soon!

I’m lucky that I can work from home. My company is taking this very seriously. We’re a big company with offices in most major cities across the world. Here in the US, we’ve shut down all our offices and everyone has been told to work from home. My husband, however, is still traveling (within the US) for his job, which worries me about what he’s exposed to. He’s also scheduled to go to Mexico to tour some facilities where his company will be doing installations and I’m hoping that will get postponed. Even if the travel is allowed, I don’t think it is a good idea to go right now.

I have two daughters. One is a college student. I had to bring her home, as they extended their spring break and have decided to go with online classes for the rest of the semester. My daughter is disappointed because she just started a new job on campus and still thinks she can eventually go back to the dorm so she can work. I’ve read the press releases, and they’re going to make students move out of the dorm. I don’t think they’ll reopen the athletic center (where she works), so we’ve been having this argument all week. Plus, if she’s living back at home my husband is going to want the pro-rated refund for housing and meals. That’s not money we can afford to write off. My other daughter is in high school, which is closed for two weeks. I’m expecting them to extend that into April, because they have spring break that first full week of April. Then I’m expecting they might also go with online classes for the rest of the school year. We’ll see. She was also going to France on a student trip for her spring break. She’s very disappointed that she can’t go now. The group is trying to reschedule this trip for spring break next year.

I’m introvert by nature. I can handle self-isolation. But self-isolation with my family will be challenging as we begin getting on each others nerves, all trying to work and do school in one household. I’m also trying to manage everyone’s expectations, but that is going to be rough going. In addition to worrying about the virus, I’m also very worried about what this will do to our livelihoods and the economy. We don’t have much of a cushion to fall back on if one or both of us lose our jobs, but we’re still better off than a lot of people. I live in a county with a lot of working poor that are being devastated by lack of income.

As for how to cope, I believe fresh air is good for you. I plan on taking lots of walks to manage the stress. We live on nine acres with no close neighbors, so I don’t need to worry about contact with other people. Spring is in full swing here, so lots of plants are blooming and lots of birds are nesting.

We consider our family pretty lucky. With DH and I retired, we’ve got the grandkids now that day care and schools are closed. All three kids still working and able to do so with limited contact with people. I am very afraid for people who aren’t so lucky – our provincial government is horrible and handling this poorly. On the bright side, I’ve been slowly getting my books unpacked (hello again dear friends) and I see many a reread in the near future!

I’m so glad you created this! I was just looking for a place to post a general comment or request. I was thinking a group “read along” would be really fun right now. It may make everyone feel a little less disconnected.

I’d be open to anything as long as it wasn’t super heavy or depressing. It could be an older re-read or something newer.

I have been reading a lot of Molly Harper lately as I just stumbled on to her and she has a fun and whimsical style of writing. I have been downloading her funny vampire related series from the library. (Thank heavens for libraries!)

I am lucky enough to to be working from home and hope that everyone else is staying healthy, safe and smart!

Flatten the curve everyone!!