Author: Doris

• I’m low conflict.
• I will do laundry.
• I cook mediocrely.
• I will bleach anyone’s hair.
• Jeremy complained that I left the refrigerator door opened too long yesterday. Instead of being annoyed (which I was), I replied, I realize that is a reasonable request. I will try to do it in the future.
• I am quiet.
• I will defer to you in video choices.
• Though I will also offer up suggestions when no one has any which will be turned down promptly.
• I will FaceTime your family members.
• I will FaceTime my family members.
• I tiptoe through the house not making much noise.
• I will not talk about the pandemic if you don’t want to. I will talk about the pandemic if you want to.
• I, incredibly, have two steady jobs.
• I will support people with my two steady jobs that no longer have steady jobs.
• I will not freak out.
• I will not make you do anything.
• I will maintain a semblance of a schedule.
• I make Dutch Babies.
• I will attempt to do TikTok dances to amuse everyone.
• I can cut hair.
• Sometimes I open the window in my home office so I can hear the three kids next door screaming on their trampoline.
• I watch deer outside my window.
• I refuse to buy extra snacks to keep in the house.
• I do not yell.
• I do not curse.
• Maybe I’m boring? Do you want a boring roommate? Maybe not.
• I will spend a long time making face masks.
• I will spend too long reading an MIT listserv list in utter disbelief that even smart-on-paper people are idiots.
• I like to go scrounging in the pantry to use up old ingredients.
• I like to find things and repurpose them.
• I don’t drink coffee, so there is more for you.
• I would love for you to talk as long as you’d like, if you’d take no offense to me falling asleep to your voice.
• I have a lot of sweatshirts you can borrow.
• I am needy only once a day. That is the frequency at which I will ask – are you sure you still like me?

Jeremy had to go to Walgreens to pick up Edda’s prescription for the emergency seizure medication that was prescribed 10 days ago and found some Hot Pockets for sale inside the drug store. He bought three differently-flavored boxes and put them in the freezer and we wondered how long it would be before Vince discovered they were there. It took about 2 days. All weekend, Vince and I did a taste off on Hot Pockets. We promised we wouldn’t eat any without the other and that we would split a box. I have to say, I used to love Hot Pockets. I no longer love Hot Pockets. They are so flabby! Were they flabby before? I thought the food scientists figured out how to crisp in the microwave a long time ago. I think I could go the rest of my life without eating any more Hot Pockets. I wonder, though, about Pop Tarts.

I made mini cherry pies with pre-made pie crusts and canned cherry pie filling. Again, I made them individual sized and froze them, so we wouldn’t eat them all at once.

I also tried to make a Dutch Baby which failed terribly the first time (I used whole wheat flour instead of regular white flour). Looks like a giant greasy pimple, huh? We ate it anyways. Delicious.

I did much better the second time around. Look at that! Gorgeous.

I also promised Vince mid-week that I would help him bleach his hair. I have never had my hair colored, so I don’t know exactly what goes on with the coloring and the foil and Vince had set up the whole thing without much warning for me, so I just had to wing it. I usually like to do a bit more research, like 15-20 minutes of youtube research, but he was just like – let’s go! it’ll be OK. with various warnings of burning scalp, or breaking hair or whatever. I told Vince that I knew I wasn’t his first choice for this hair procedure (he confirmed that I wasn’t his first choice), but that I was honored that I wasn’t the last choice, which logically would have been Jeremy. But Vince laughed and said that he would rank me higher than all of his male friends.

My personality is suited to quarantine. I don’t mind being at home. I find my natural sleep schedule is 10 pm – 6:45 am. This is how much I want to sleep. In real life, I’m almost always an hour less than this. I’m not counting this as real life. Though I’m sleeping through the night, I’m having vivid, scary hospital dreams, so can tell I’m not quite right.

So I’ve used PPE many times in the past, most often for contact or contact plus isolation (which is just gown/gloves no mask) and sometimes for droplet (flu) and sometimes for airborne (TB). Remember HIV is just standard precautions (gloves only), though when I’m doing anything with ostomy bags or feeding tubes or wounds and HIV, I do dress all the way up with mask and gown – though technically you don’t need to. Sometimes the contact precautions are overkill for history of various antibiotic resistant bacteria, but no active infection in the patient. I will admit to being cavalier with PPE in the past, just ripping the gown off willy-nilly and shoving it with a bare hand into an overflowing trash can full of used gowns. Forgetting for hours that I’m wearing a mask that I’ve pulled down off my face from the front with an ungloved hand and is now residing like a necklace around my neck. I’ve been reviewing the proper procedure for removing all this crap which is the most critical part. You think you are done and are tired and want to get out of the room, but not contaminating yourself with the contaminated crap is hard to do. I think the most most important parts are to keep your hands clean (I have a problem with this) and to not touch your face (I have less of a problem with this). I have excellent, professional level seamstresses making me a bunch of face masks and scrub caps.

Jeremy spends his workday with Edda and finally yesterday, he had to barricade himself with his desk and the dog crate so Edda wouldn’t come over every five minutes and hit him on the head. We had the first of many (I suppose) meetings with Edda’s special ed team via video. Jeremy is on top of this – he’s been practicing Edda’s fork skills with her. I have no patience for any of this. Jeremy’s approach is soothing to me – he’s relaxed and matter-of-fact and makes forward progress in a steady, gentle manner. I want to set goals with strict timelines and then get discouraged when I meet none of the goals.

I was helping with dinner last night when I told Jeremy that I thought I should make a homemade face mask with the pattern published in the NYT. He immediately said that he would LOVE a homemade facemask and then I asked him why he didn’t ask me to sew one earlier. He said that if he had asked for one outright, I would have gotten annoyed at him and rebelled by silently refusing to make any masks. I think his assessment was correct. Anyways I’d resisted making a handmade mask even though I sew quilts all the time because I think quiltmaking is just 2D and not 3D which is the skill that is required for a mask. I don’t follow patterns like for clothes, I don’t do curves. I just sew in straight lines. But then Jeremy looked at me and was like – if you ranked everyone in the house in sewing ability, I think you’d outstripped the rest of us by a couple orders of magnitude. He offered to bathe Edda in exchange for time for me to make a mask. The mask was not straightforward, it was a little complicated for people who don’t really know how to sew. Anyways, it turned out mediocre. But serviceable in a pandemic.

Vince is back in classes – kind of. He’s got a couple of zoom classes a day. He’s spending his time trying to teach himself chemistry. I’m a bit embarrassed that I’ve forgotten a lot of high school chemistry, he comes and asks questions and then I google it. And then we find a youtube video and learn it all again together.

About 4 hours after I wrote the last post, I was like, omg that was too dramatic. Like you are really going to die and that you’ll never see your family again. Get a grip on yourself. It’s fine! I’m fine! Everything is fine! Haha. No, no really. I did feel much better in the afternoon after keening around all morning. I’m not an ED nurse, I’m not an ICU nurse (though I probably will float there soon). I probably won’t get sick. If I get sick, it’ll probably be fine. Anyways. What is there to do? Nothing except wash my hands. (And sew a mask. Maybe I should sew a mask today. There are instructions on how to do it in the f*ing NYT today. It’s a crazy crafting newspaper now.) Though I do pause at the nursing crisis contract I posted yesterday. It’s 21 days on and 2 days off which is insane. And you can have no scheduling requests which means that they’ll switch you nights and days with only 24 hours rest in the middle which they perhaps will count as one of your days off. There is no question you will get sick doing that amount of work even without covid.

Now that we have no more physical childcare left, Jeremy moved his home office into Edda’s bedroom where occasionally she does things like try to eat Jeremy’s hair. Though managing her is easier in her room than in the first floor space because she can’t ask to have a snack every 30 minutes.

Funny filters on my serious husband. I think Jeremy comes off as a kind of aloof, serious guy to people who know him at work – but really, he’s a kind goofball.

So there are only a few videos I can watch these days. I’ve reverted to reading children’s books – you know like Stuart Little and Trumpet of the Swan. I kind of refuse to watch the weird tiger thing everyone is watching now.

All of our cooking shows are moving home and making coffee:

I’m also enjoying episodes of Star Trek: TNG which brings back fond, fond memories of college and also it is so soothing. Competent leadership in the face of danger. I love it.

haha. Monday morning and I’m making oatmeal raisin cookies. I’ve been trying to find recipes that allow us to not make 24 cookies all at once, rather we can freeze them and bake them 4 at a time. This time I did scoops and froze them. I’ve done chocolate chip cookies in a refrigerated log and then sliced them when I wanted some cookies. It’s really bad to have 24 cookies all at once. I mean, I can be disciplined in many ways, but 24 cookies during a quarantine is not a situation that is set up to win. BC (before corona), I had tried to cut some calories by cutting out sweets to combat the inevitable middle age weight gain. But there is no way I’m giving up sweets now. I see that the yeast shortage in the country is coming to all the cooking websites and we are headed towards unleavened bread territory. They are like – look out for these recipes soon! I’m going to be making sweets out of quinoa soon.

Do you want to see an ad for travelling nurses? This scares the shit out of me. Jeremy came into the room yesterday and said Cuomo was putting out a nationwide call for nurses to go to NYC. And I tilted my head as if to ask, are you asking me to go to NYC? And then he quickly said – no! I’m not trying to convince you to go to NYC. I said there is service and then there is service. So my unit is short, so I’ll be starting full time again week of April 12. I hope I don’t die. I hope I don’t make my family sick. I actually thought, hmmm – if my lungs filled with fluid and I die, would I have been happy with my life? I would say yes. I would miss everyone a lot and they (I hope) would miss me, but I have no regrets. Mostly I miss my brother who has been out of touch with me for years. My dad was mad at Jeremy for using a surgical mask and not an N95 mask to go grocery shopping. My dad was like – I have a bunch of N95 masks that he should use. I’m like – can we not blow those on grocery shopping trips? Maybe I’ll need them when I start going to the hospital. And my dad was like – oh yes! you’ll need a good mask at the hospital. Face palm.

I want to wrap up Vince’s college application experience so I can remember it later. I want to start by saying that Vince is the best son a mother could have ever asked for. When I told him I was going back to the hospital and that I was scared and that he would need to help Jeremy with Edda-care and the house and the dog and stuff because I wouldn’t be able to touch them for a few months, he said – of course, to not worry and that he would do what needed to be done and the gave me a hug and told me that this was the right thing to do. He is kind and generous with his time and things. He cooked gumbo for dinner for us last night. He is a natural leader and has kids following him around all the time. He tells me he’s not cheating at school even though it’s rampant. He’ll stick up for the underdog. He’s never been self conscious about having Edda as a sister with his friends or in public. He’ll uncomplainingly go to things that I tell him he must go to. The school thing seems so frivolous right now – ridiculous. Vince’s classmates are putting together a google doc full of places where everyone is going – Cornell, Pitt, Arizona and I get all sad thinking the kids won’t be able to say good-bye to each other before they leave the area. Who knows if anyone is leaving the area. Everyone is going to go to Cornell from their living room. OK. Enough of this. I’ll wrap up Vince’s college application process later.

Carla passed away from Covid yesterday afternoon, right around the time that we were gathering for our virtual Sunday night dinner. Carla is Bob’s cousin – a potter extraordinaire! We have a few of her pieces including this one we use everyday on our island for our fruit. I remember an incredible conversation I had with her one Thanksgiving about having special needs kids. She had a son who had dysautonomia and passed away as a young adult. Edda had been diagnosed for many years by then, but I was still struggling with so much grief and she helped me out that afternoon and, then, of course, everyday from then on.

Jeremy is grocery shopping once a week for us and for my parents. Yes, he’s wearing a mask (which he just decided to to for this week, he didn’t last week). He just came back from Whole Foods where they have signs saying not to buy more than 2 of certain things which is completely understandable, but he’s like – argh! I’m buying for two families for a week. I gotta buy enough so I don’t have to come back. Jeremy, though he didn’t sleep well last night, seems, to me, to be working ok. He has three one-hour meetings today and his work seems to be as busy as ever.

I’m off-kilter. I called my work at the hospital on Friday expecting that they’d be swamped, but the opposite is true. They are quiet. Census is low because they cancelled all the elective surgery and DC seems to be controlling contagion well, so I’m going to be off the unit for an entire month. I was scheduled to be off for the next two weeks for our spring break. My charge was like – we are OK, just stay home Doris. I thought I’d be going in, so it took mental energy to prepare to go in and then I had to release it when they said to stay home. All those health care professionals in NYC! Of course I’m reading the articles, of course I’m crying & scared. I know Carla’s unit was swamped (they are a suburb of NYC) because the family could barely get brief daily updates. Because I’m so freaked out, I can’t concentrate on my completely non-body fluid job very well. I can sit in front of the computer for hours looking at chemical formulas and thinking nothing. I am also doing weird things like making homemade bagels – I had to go all the way to DC to see Lauren (from 6 feet away) to get 8 tablespoons of yeast because the grocery stores are all out.

And pickling. I made pickles.

Edda is fine, we are losing all our childcare today. Kitachi, who was off for two weeks because schools are emergently closed, had to go back to work at a daycare center for essential workers. It seemed prudent to have her not come anymore. So we are trying to readjust that. We’ve been in touch with her teachers who are figuring out how to deliver special needs curriculum virtually.

Max, enjoying my “quarantine” bed.

Yesterday was Edda’s 16th birthday! A mixture of happy/sad as usual. Toss in some pandemic anxiety and there you have it. We did make the best of it as we could. Jeremy made a very nice breakfast of pretzel roll and eggs and we asked Kitachi (usually we have her come from 10 to 4) to stay until dinnertime to celebrate. Jeremy made the most delicious dinner of pulled pork, red cabbage and polenta. And we celebrated with an ice cream pie from Carmen’s. We FaceTimed my parents and we all sang happy birthday to my darling daughter. May I always be able to care for you & may the love that you send to me everyday sustain me. We also Google Duo’ed Edda’s teacher and had a fine time chatting about Celine Dion. We also got virtual missives from so many previous au pairs from around the world, European au pairs who we were going to see this summer, but now we most likely are not.

Jeremy is working on keeping up Edda’s eating skills. We normally just feed Edda her food, but at school, they patiently load food onto Edda’s fork and encourage her to feed herself. So Jeremy’s been doing that with Edda.

We had two telemedicine appointments this week, one with Edda’s neurologist and one with Edda’s pediatrician. The neuro to follow up on Edda’s increasing frequency of seizures (we are not putting her on an anticonvulsant, but we are getting her some rescue meds if her seizures turn lengthy/scary). The pediatrician for well visit – which I set up for camp forms. Is camp even happening? I dunno. Probably not.

I’m working on my quarantine area. I have my work computer, a bed and my quilting stuff all into the 2nd half of our bedroom. I know, the whole house is so enormous I can basically put an apartment’s worth of stuff into half of my bedroom. I think the idea would be that when I’m at home, I’d spend all my time in this area and we’ll designated bathroom space too. I saw other health care workers on Instagram who are camping out in a tent in their garage. I can’t do that. I just can’t. If I’m going to do something that scares me, I can’t also be sleeping in the cold garage away from my family. I mean, I’m going to be 6 feet away from my family in my house. But at least I can talk to them or watch TV with them or something. I guess other health care workers have sent their families away and they work all the time. I also can’t be working 7 days a week, I hope it doesn’t come to that – working 3 days a week non-pandemically was exhausting enough. If you work all the time, the chances of you getting sick because you are exhausted are so high. Sometimes reading the news makes me feel better, sometimes not reading the news makes me feel better. It’s a toss-up. I probably should figure out how to reuse masks or something. Or how to splice an oxygen tank (I have an idea with straws and tegaderm). I saw videos of engineers trying to make face shields and ramp up manufacturing from simple materials. That made me cry. I texted a pal on the unit yesterday and she told me that the floor was fine, but there is mandatory float to the ED or the ICU. So it means that if they are short in those depts, you get sent there. Which is nerve wracking, not only because, you know, that’s where all the coughing people are, but also I’d be working with other nurses who I do not know with procedures/routines I’d be unfamiliar with. Like ventilators. Honestly, I do not know how to use a ventilator, how to monitor a ventilator, etc. Jeremy is helpful saying that cell phone data shows that Marylander’s are pretty good at staying put. Maybe it won’t be bad here.

Vince has decided to go to UCDavis in the fall. He’s already dreaming of the clubs – I think he listed three including one that involves working on the farm on campus with the cows. It is my sincere dream to take a road trip with him and our family and my parents in our stupid minivan and deliver him to his dorm in the fall where I will buy him X-long sheets from Target. I will then go to the college bookstore and buy him a UC Davis sweatshirt and then I will have lunch with him in the many open dining options around campus. Maybe we’d even bring Max. She’d be completely beside herself with happiness. We’ve been watching Bon Appetit videos and we watched this one last night. I love Hot Pockets and I marveled at the time when you could buy 20 boxes of Hot Pockets. I asked Jeremy if there were any Hot Pockets left in the store, he said absolutely not – those things are the first to go! And then I marveled at all these unrelated people sharing food together! Back when people could leave their houses. Sending lots of love to you all. <3

Edda and I Google Duo’ed her teacher yesterday and met all of her cats. This, I believe, is Flower. One wouldn’t name a cat Flour, right? I didn’t clarify the spelling. We got an email from MCPS that starting on the 30th, there would be instruction starting up for everyone. I’m not sure how a huge, vast public school system will do this, but it’s going to happen. I’ve heard a bunch of smaller, private or charter schools have been able to just purchase laptops/hot spots for the students that needed them, but MCPS needs to take care of so many kids and even special ed kids like Edda. Honestly, I’m not that worried about either of my kids missing out on educational learning or anything. I just wish they could hang out with their friends.

We Zoom’ed family dinner last night. I think this took only 20 minutes of trying to get Gene and Bette to connect well. I’m not quite sure what is going on at Rivendale, but the internet connection seems way crappy. Anyways, after 20 minutes, we settled down into chatting.

My toe is better all the time, but I got freaked out on Sunday morning at 5:30 am (I was supposed to work on Sunday) and I got up and called the night charge and made sure I wasn’t scheduled on that day. And I wasn’t. I asked how the unit was – he said it was quiet, low census and the patient population was no different than usual. Everyone I’ve told this to was like – the quiet before the storm. I have to decide how much news I’m going to consume. It’s really not helpful for me to be constantly updated on how the hospitals are going to be inundated with COVID patients and there isn’t going to be any PPE. Though I laughed at this joke on Instagram. JHACO is the accreditation organization for hospitals and the pop in and do checks to make sure you are following protocol and yes, I’d been warned to not put scotch tape on the walls only about a month ago.

Jeremy went grocery shopping this morning. An adventure in itself. And now we start the workweek.

Yesterday was supposed to be Edda’s 16th birthday party – the annual pancake breakfast. Of course, it was cancelled. We celebrated, just the four of us together. Instead of the buttermilk pancakes that Jeremy prepares in vats the night before, so it can age overnight as suggested by the recipe, Vince had a leftover just-add-water and shake-in-the-container pancake mix he had gotten from a scout camp out. We used that to make about 12 pancakes. We also had bacon and Jeremy made an extra-small serving of his famous blueberry compote (usually we make about a gallon). I dressed up Edda with some sparkles:

I wore my traditional pancake breakfast outfit.

Jeremy even pulled out the griddle and batter dispenser. It was lovely.

We facetimed with Bob on his 80th birthday on Friday. They are doing well in Berlin. We facetimed with Vidya this morning on his 50th birthday in India. And we facetimed with our tenants in the basement also this morning. Edda’s seizures are getting worse – I think we’ve had one each day the last three or four days (I’m afraid to let her walk…which is a bad thing), we have a telemedicine appointment with Children’s on Monday – I was relieved they switched it to telemedicine! I was going to cancel. Vince got into Irvine on Friday – I think he might sweep his college admissions. I’m thrilled for him – so different from my own experience and Jeremy’s experience of general rejection and disappointment.

Jeremy has no more biking videos to watch, he’s converted to watching dorm videos of various colleges Vince could go to. He’s come to the conclusion that lots of UC students want to grow up to become youtubers. He says it’s very satisfying to give the 73rd like to someone’s video. And that you shouldn’t bring very much and not pack in hard luggage because there will be no place to store anything. Quads in rooms the size of our dining room. Vince was telling me he’s not so sure he’s going to be a good roommate. I said that he had to try. He’s high on the mess scale and a little high on the noise scale and perhaps high also on the unpredictable sleeping hours scale. Also! I had momentarily forgotten about the Asian-ness of the UC system. My high school and college experience was heavily Asian which was fine, but omg. Irvine is over half Asian. I haven’t done that in a long, long time… We are having fun finding videos like this:

I’m trying really hard to not read the news more than once or twice a day. I need to stay calm-ish. Like a clam. Like a calm clam.