The Waterstraut Waterspout: Social Distancing Journal, Day 14

It's been an interesting two weeks. In the last two weeks, I'm the only person to have left our house. Two store visits, and one take out trip. That's it. I miss the outside world. Our TV's are all connected to Chomecasts, and when you're not using them, they flip thorugh our google photos. Now, I look at them all longingly, like 'remember when we went places?'

But on the bright side, home isn't terrible. I have a nice home, a screened in porch, a fenced in yard, a basketball hoop out front to keep us busy, and an awesome neighborhood for walking. Life could be much worse. And so, I'll stay at home, and just hope for a day when we can go out and about, safely of course, again.

The big news of today, America passed 100,000 cases, and Trump finally enacted the Defense Production Act to make GM produce ventilators. For Bingo purposes, Disney extended their closure "indefinately" and Trump signed a Coronavirus Relief Bill. My friends, we have BINGO!

As we checked off our last square, we wondered should we make another bingo, and if we do should it be more positive? It might be stuff we don't see for weeks though. Like we could add "Disney reopens", and "resturants become dine in again". We'll see. I haven't decided yet.

In other news, not much has changed in Florida. Our cases are going up, but not as quickly as I think they probably are in reality. Maybe I'm wrong. But, our testing seems way behind. Even our drive-thru testing centers had to stop because they ran out of supplies. I think we're at about 3,200 cases. Oh, and we're going to stop people from coming here from New York and Lousiana. Again, ridiculous, especially from the spring break state. Something like 850 healthcare workers wrote an open letter to our governor begging him to order a shleter in place, and send them more supplies. But, it was just more of the same today.

So you know what, let's focus on the positive. You know what my favorite thing about all of this is? The various zoos, aquariums, and parks that are letting their animals go on "field trips" while their aren't any guests. Busch Gardens took some cheetah cubs out on leashes to see the hippos, penguins are running rampant over all kinds of zoos, and aquariums (I believe a penguin named Wellington at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago started the whole phenomenon- and the Field Museum answered by sending someone out in one of those dinosaurs costumes to look at dino bones. Hilarious!). Yesterday the Tampa Zoo read "Miles and Miles of Reptiles" to a giant tortoise, a couple of animals got to play on the playground, and today a porcupine went to visit the painted dogs and the hippos.

So there's my national bright spot for you!

As for us here, Asa joined me on my morning dog walk today, so we did the loop past the park.

I was hoping to go down to play volleyball in the sand court at the park this weekend. But, I guess they took the net down becuase too many people were congregating there. I did put my feet in the sand this morning though. There's just something about sand in your toes that must release some endorphines. In me at least.

Usually I have things like lentils and eggs florentine for lunch, but today I through caution to the wind and had a BLT. We ate outside, and Delano showed up for scraps, like he was a dog or something.

School is weird. Like, we CAN do most things we used to. Of course our programs and such are cancelled. But as far as work here goes, it could be business as usual. But things just FEEL weird these days, you know? So sometimes we're in the middle of things and I'm like 'lets just scratch this.' But today, we powered though some of his board. He wasn't thrilled with today's Khan Academy Lesson. But, we also finally utilized the National Geographic section of Disney Plus for Film Friday.

Shout out to my mom, who is basically teaching Calib his entire math class these days too. They spend a couple of hours on zoom every day, and he's gone from barely getting a C to a solid B, so things are looking up. Also, it's the last math class he ever has to take, I think. He might have one more, or this might be it. Either way, he can't wait for 'no more math class' to be thing for him. I said it's been a glorious 20 years for me.

We did get a new net for the basketball hoop from Amazon, ours was kind of falling apart. So, Asa and Hayden took care of that and then played some basketball.

While I swept off the front porch and watered my plants...

And then I took a walk for awhile. I did the loop, came back around and got Asa, and then we walked down to the round-a-bout and back. I just am so used to go places and walking everywhere that I'm feeling couped up. You know what helps? All the sidewalk chalk. I love it.

No gator sightings on my walk, but I did spot a turtle happy to be sunning himself in the (very) warm sun today. Tomorrows high is like 95!

We did walk down to the lodge, where we found the playground cautioned taped-off. And the only ones using the pool were a couple of ducks.

There weren't any deer in the round-a-bout, but there were lots of cranes also out and about. They are not practicing proper social distancing.

Back at home, a garden check for you. The peppers are doing really well.

And we even have some ladybug friends to eat the aphids.

Tonight for dinner we got take out for the first time in weeks. It's such an ordeal, I'm not sure how often we'll do it. We picked Capital Tacos, because I feel like we should be choosing local places right now. You know, big chains will survive ok, we also have to take care of the little guys. But anyway, we went "out" with Cort, Holly, Gwen, Garrett, and my mom. By that, I mean they also got take out, and then we ate dinner via video chat with them.