How do people stay entertained while staying at home? The husband and I have not had a problem, though since he's been working from home, he has fewer hours to fill. Monday's email brought a message from one of the neighbors (we live in a subdivision of about 17 homes, one of which just became vacant). She said that she would be hiding a bunny figure somewhere in the subdivision. Said bunny would contain small gifts of some sort. Who ever found it should email the neighbor group and announcing "Bunny found!" They should then put new small items into the bunny and re-hide it, emailing "Bunny is back!" There were various "rules," some of which seemed contradictory. Things like hiding it a certain distance from the road but not in an area that would be lawn-mowed. A person could only find the bunny once, but another member of the same family could then find it.
I was not prepared for the reaction to this attempt at subdivision entertainment. The bunny was hidden for the first time and found within an hour, by a nine-year-old girl. One the bunny's second hiding, it was again found very quickly. Both of these first two families have kids, so I was not surprised that they found some fun in it. The third finder, though, surprised me, in that the couple are almost empty nesters--kid is in college--and don't seem at all the type to play. That's at least the impression I get seeing the woman walk the family dog. She's never smiling and barely acknowledges you should you greet her. Finding the bunny, filling it, and hiding it again clearly made her feel happy, so who am I to wonder.
The husband is somewhat blase about the bunny enterprise. Older son and I are in agreement that were we to see the bunny we would not rescue it. Something that's been touched by a number of people with unknown contact experience, filled with similarly previously touched items. I just don't see the fun in that.
Should this seem to be an overreaction, there was a report yesterday that almost a third of the new cases in New York are people who were staying at home. They could not trace how these individuals were exposed. Wider transmission through the air than previously seen? From the surface of something brought in from the outside such as the glossy outside of a junk postcard? I don't want to find out first-hand period full stop. Life is scary enough right now without worrying that playing hermit might not in the long run work.
The pandemic continues and as it does, there has been a plague of locusts moving from Africa into the Middle East and South Asia. There have been a couple of earthquakes, albeit small ones. And now the Northeast and New England are about to be hit with a very unseasonable polar vortex from which some areas might see temperatures colder than at Christmas and, wait for it, 6 to 8 inches of snow. Yes, snow! In early May! I must admit that I find the thought, "Just who pissed the gods off so much that they start the end times early" amusing. No, we certainly did not need this. Now that it is all here, though, we will have to learn to deal with it to make it through to the other side. (Insert ear-worm here.)
4 comments:
Here staying at home also seems to mean walking the dog, going for a walk, doing the shopping, going to the post office/pharmacy. These don't count because they are essential but really they do count.
Is it raining frogs anywhere yet?
I looked at the article. It's "staying at home" as in "not going out to work". Just because one is unemployed or retired doesn't mean that they haven't left the building, at the very least they will have been out grocery shopping. If they have a large family and a small kitchen then they will be going out for food more often than those who can afford to buy big and store it.
PS Here the analysis is that if you are black you are twice as likely to die of C19 than if you are white. They are still looking at why this might be - more working where they have contact with the public, overcrowding - at the moment it's speculation as to why but the number crunching shows that the increased risk is real.
You wrote "Just who pissed the gods off so much that they start the end times early" and my answer is: isn't it obvious? Damn, though.
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