Life under Covid-19

So much less difficult for us than for most people.  We are retired, so there isn't the issue of job loss or working from home, and our children are grown, so we don't have to deal with school being out, how they can occupy their time, etc.  We have no relatives in nursing homes. 

We have no complaints.  We have had adjustments, but life is full of adjustments.

And, fortunately for us, we basically were "shelter in place" people anyway, with each other--whether here in Leisure World or out in the desert somewhere.  So having to spend every waking moment together is like a walk in the park....literally.....as we are doing a lot of walking in a park these days.

Once again:  We are very fortunate.

An old expression, but one that has a particularly poignant meaning to us right now:

"Life, if it is going to be fair, is going to be fair in the long run rather than in the short run."

And so, while our situation in terms of Covid-19 is on the ultra positive side, we have had other things that balance that out right now.

Namely, for the past two months we have been dealing with the reality that I probably have prostate cancer.  We won't know for sure for another week, and then will find out how serious it is in three weeks.

That's unfair.  But, my heart being close to exploding in my chest, but it being caught by an alert Urology P.A. so I could get surgery to make my heart as good as new balances that out.  If that had happened, I might not be here to find out I have cancer.  Vicky and I will take that trade-off.

I'm 72.  If this is what I die from, then this is what I die from.  Everybody dies from something.

And, I'm not dead yet, and we have faith in the medical field, and we'll get through this just like other people are getting through the Covid-19 problem.

In the long run I don't believe I have been treated unfairly by life, even with having to go through both heart problems and now maybe cancer.  Instead, I have been far to the side of having life treat me well.

Because of the medical tests and Covid-19 we lost camping trips we had been planning for and building toward.  One was going to be returning to Death Valley National Park to explore the back country.  We had to cut our trip there last year short because we got an emergency message that our home in Leisure World had sustained wind damage.

We sort of think that planning trips to Death Valley is jinxed.  What will happen if we plan another one?  An invasion from Mars?

So we have taken a few shorter camping/hiking trips in and around my medical tests.  But now the weather is too warm for camping in the low elevations around here, so we hope to squeeze in one more trip in a week to higher elevations where there will be cooler temperatures.

In the meantime, we have established a new routine.  We found that last summer it was very comfortable in Arizona if we got up at 2:30 a.m., and swam and cycled.  We could be all done before daylight.  The pool is closed now because of Covid-19, so we get up early and cycle and take a 4-mile walk in the dark.  We have Leisure World practically all to ourselves when we do that.

Here is a photo of our sunrise this morning, toward the end of our walk.

And we work on our hobbies.  And interestingly those hobbies are connected in a very real way to our childhoods.

As a child Vicky did something not many girls did--she knitted.  Her first knitting project was a sweater she wore on the first day of 8th grade.   She did a lot of sewing of her own clothes, but also knitted.

So, she has been spending her time knitting for our new granddaughter Aryana:

 

 

 

A little dress:

And two backpacks for our other granddaughters, both looked like this:

A blanket for grandson Sebastian:

 And a blanket for Jules:

I have reverted back to my childhood and am building plastic model kits.  

When I was a kid I assembled cars and airplanes.  In my home in Oklahoma was a storage space above the garage.  My father converted it into being my bedroom.  It had plywood walls and a plywood ceiling.  I assembled dozens of plastic airplanes and hung them from the ceiling, complete with little cotton balls to resemble flak exploding.  

In the early dawn I would look at my ceiling and imagine all of those planes flying around in big battles.  Because it was not completely light I couldn't see the thread that I used to hang them.  I loved it.

Well, fast forward 60 years, and I am now learning to do desert dioramas.  My first completed project was a model of the 20-mule team Borax wagons.  Here is my finished project:  20-mule-team. 

It had special meaning because Death Valley, where the Harmony Borax company was located, has special meaning to Vicky and me.  We have been there numerous times, and really love the open wildness of it.

Here is a photo with examples of both of our projects:  

My current project is to duplicate a photo of Ian that we took when he came camping with us two years ago in the Mojave Desert Preserve.  We hiked to an old encampment, and found this old '57 Mercury.  Here is Ian approaching it:

I found a model car that was close to it, and am "unbuilding" it to resemble what is in the photo.

Here is what it looked like when I purchased it:

After a childhood spent building models, this is my first attempt to "unbuild" one.

Here is me unbuilding it:

And here is the current iteration of Ian:

Our other activities are shopping at Walmart pick-up.....seriously.  We are extremely careful.

Vicky washes everything, and I put the rest into storage for varying days of quarantine.

Looks like a lot of work, but you know?  It's fun.  We make it fun.

We will all get through all of this.  Keep the faith.

Camping at the top of the hill

In Arizona we are encouraged to get outside and be healthy.  Campgrounds are open, so this meant that we were legally allowed to camp and hike.

We are amazed that there is a location within an hour's drive us of that is almost precisely what we enjoy.  Very few people go there.  Sometimes in a day of hiking and camping we will see two or three people.  Sometimes we will see "buzzers" (OHVs), but mostly in this area we see folks who are cycling on trails.

And from about 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. it is empty, and we are alone with the desert.

Here is a video of us getting to a new spot we had identified.  You need a 4-wheel drive high clearance vehicle to get there, as you can see:

We were there five days and five nights.  Took five hikes.  Five miles each.  High five!

The desert was in full bloom.  Beautiful wildflowers:

The hikes were fun.  We hike about three hours a day, all that our old joints will allow.  For the five days we had an elevation gain of over half a mile.

 

Here is our site on the top of the hill.   See us?

We are in this photo too.  Have to look hard to find us.

One afternoon a storm came out of nowhere.  High winds, dark clouds.  Lasted an hour.  That will happen, without warning almost.  Not predicted.  We were glad we weren't in a tent because the winds were rocking the teardrop camper.  But was beautiful:

Camping and hiking again

After several days of getting up in the middle of the night to cycle and walk, we knew we needed to head to our special desert to.....get up in the middle of the night to hike.

We had identified a site would be remote, and close to hiking areas.

Here we are.

We are on a hilltop, with incredible views in all directions.  We will be here for several.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox on our morning walks

Because our local pool is closed, and the dances we attended weekly are no longer being held, we, like everyone else, is coping with how to still get outside and exercise.

We are doing this by getting up at 3:00 a.m., riding our tandem for an hour, and then walking for about an hour and a half.

In our retirement village, it is actually safer to cycle at night than during the day.  We may see 2-3 vehicles at night, and they are quite visible.  Because we deck the tandem out with several lights, we are also more visible to them.

This morning, on our walk, we saw Mr. and Mrs. Fox:

Well, actually, this is what we saw:

Aren't they cute?

Aren't we cute?

Rattlesnakes! Rattlesnakes! Rattlesnakes!

We camped for a few days this past week. We did something relatively unusual for us--we camped in a spot where we had previously camped.

But it was close to home, and we could get a cell signal (something we needed for the current Covid-19 crisis).  And we knew we would have good hiking, even if we had hiked the area quite a bit.

The biggest news about this trip was the number of (VERY LARGE) rattlesnakes we ran into on our hikes.  After we spotted them, we dug out our snake gaiters and used them.

We could tell they were practicing social distancing like we were because they insisted we stay 6 feet away from them.  We gladly obliged:

 

We need Audie Murphy

Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in WWII.  What he did was nothing short of amazing, and unbelievable.  If you didn’t know about it, Google him.  He was a 19-year-old boy.  He didn’t get his Medal of Honor like the murderers at Wounded Knee did.  He was practically a one man army protecting his squad at the risk of certain death.

After the war he became a movie actor.  He was never a top star.  Mostly he was a B movie western actor.

But he had this gentle, sweet manor about him that, all of these years later, we find appealing, and comforting.

He spent his post war years suffering from PTSD, and died young in an airplane accident.  We read once that next to Kennedy’s, his grave is a the most frequently visited site at Arlington.

We have tried watching current movies to get us through these times, and finally said “We need a 50s Western with Audie Murphy.”  So two nights ago we watched Walk the Proud Land, a story about an Apache Indian Reservation Agent, based on a true story.  Audie Murphy, all 5 foot 6 inches of him, carried the story about a man who tried to help the Apaches and who treated them with dignity.

And last night we watched Kansas Raiders, a highly “creative” story about Quantrill’s Raiders.  Audie Murphy plays, of all people, Jesse James, as a member if the Raiders who was horrified at Quantrill’s brutality.  He was the most gentle and kind Jesse James you could imagine.  The producers just couldn’t cast Murphy as the killer Jesse James really was.  Stupid movie, but once again he was just nice to watch.

He was also, to be fair, in some much better Westerns—Night Passage, The Unforgiven, etc.  Then there was the movie about his war experiences—To Hell and Back.  It was first class, but what he did was actually, true to form for him, understated in the movie.

When Medal of Honor recipients had their graves redecorated with fancier emblems, Murphy's family requested his not be.  They said he would have wanted the simpler, more low-key design.

We need heroes like him right now.  It is too bad he isn’t President.

Self-quarantine: Life goes on. We celebrate knowing each other 9 years

As we always do to celebrate anniversaries, we had fondue.  Don't know why we started that tradition.

This was the anniversary of when we first met, at a dance.

I walked up behind her and said:  "Can I have a dance?"

 

I had danced a few years more than she had, but I threw several new moves at her, in a gentle way.  She caught all of them.

After the dance, she said (and this is recorded in history as the first thing she ever said to me);

"I'm on the right foot!"

Self-quarantine

Both of us had the fortune of working in data-driven professions:  Vicky in law enforcement and me in Psychology.

This history does not allow us to form our own opinions about matters based upon how we "feel" about them, or upon how any political figure or celebrity "feels" about them.

The data from the 1918 flu are clear:  communities that restricted movement and connections among people suffered far fewer cases.

So we have decided to go into self-quarantine.

Starting earlier this week, we have adopted the following policies:

1.  We go to no public places

2.  We go outside only to walk, hike or cycle

3.  We touch nothing outside our home

4.  We wash our hands frequently (the evidence is that washing hands is much more effective than using hand sanitizer......and good soap is still readily available)

5.  Last week we stocked up on food.

6.  Anything else we need comes from Amazon deliveries.

7.  Any mail or Amazon deliveries are handled as if they are contaminated, although we trust the USPS and Amazon as much as we trust ourselves to be careful.  So, we let packages and mail sit for awhile before opening them, and then we open them outside, put the trash into our can, and then wash our hands.

Last week we purchased food.  We stocked up, but aren't doing the thing of buying so much that other people won't have enough.  We bought food we know we will use.

Because of our experience camping we have the advantage of knowing we can live for long periods of time without contact with anyone.  At times we have camped in one spot for two weeks and been fine.  We are basically just doing that except in our own home.

We hope everyone will practice social distancing to the extent that they can.  Giving up recreation and social activities is something everyone can do, but stopping work isn't something everyone can do.

What we see where we live is that some people take that idea seriously and others believe that it is "hysteria."

We feel it is doing our part so that those families that depend upon family members continuing to work will be safer, and they can still work.

We feel very helpless, but this makes us feel we are doing something, small as it is, not just for ourselves but also for everyone.

One thing we didn't need to stock up on:  Wine.  We already had enough!