Pandemic Diaries Weeks #47 to #49? Or maybe Week #50?

 28 February 2021

 

I know, we all joke about not knowing what day it is during this pandemic. I've tried keeping track of what week of the pandemic we're in, but I seem to have lost a week somewhere.  I thought labelling the blogs by the pandemic week would make sense, and help me keep on top of things.

But no, somehow a week seems to have escaped me.  I only know because week #1 began, for us, on Monday, 16 March 2020, when we awoke to the news that Peru had closed its borders and was closing down all non-essential businesses to slow the spread of Covid-19.  

 

Well, since we're two weeks and three days from 16 March, the beginning of Year 2 Week 1, that should mean we're in week #50 right now.  And I have no clue which week I lost, nor where it went.

 

Not that it matters, at all.  But I like numbers and I like accuracy in my numbers, despite knowing that time is fluid, and our measurements of time and seasons are merely a human construct placed as a way of trying to predict nature and natural phenomena.  So it really doesn't matter to my artistic soul.  But that little part of my brain that enjoys math, numbers, geometry, and problem solving really is not at all happy with having lost a week somewhere.

 

Has everyone seen the wonderful pandemic underwear that two women have designed and marketed?  One day of the week is "Another Day."  There's "This Day," "Who Cares Day," and "WTFDay."  (That's Wed-Thurs-Friday.)  They're absolutely wonderful, and these undies would definitely cheer up any woman's week!  (They only seem to have women's undies at the moment.)

 

Here are two articles, if you don't believe me:  www.stljewishlight.com/news/news_schmooze/getting-cheeky-st-louis-friends-start-pandemic-panties-co/article_a40b76d0-094f-11eb-8356-c781b77aaa85.html

and  www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2020/10/in-her-own-words-pandemic-panties-for-two-friends.html?page=all

 

Pretty funny, if you ask me!  Because we're all at that point of "what day is this?  What week is this?  And how did a single day turn into 33 hours?"

 

I can't believe we've already been in St. Augustine for four months.  It feels as if we've only been here maybe a month.  On the other hand, it also feels like we've been here forever, or at least a year or so.  

 

Because there isn't a great variety to our days.  We have our meals.  Richard goes to physical therapy (so at least we know what day it is if he has PT).  We shop for groceries once a week.  I walk down to check the mail, or I walk to the dock to see what's happening with the tide, the birds, the seasons, or whatever.  Sometimes I sit at the dock just to feel like I'm somewhere other than in this house.  It's a cute house, don't get me wrong, we really like our little house.  And I still love the sunroom, which is where I like to read, write, do my art projects.

 

But that sameness of day in and day out leads to that time warp in our minds.  And other than for any appointments, or important things like whether a favorite TV show is on, it truly doesn't matter what day of the week it is, nor what week of the pandemic it might be.  Okay, well, and when to put out the trash, recycling, or yard waste.  Other than monumentally important events like that, the rest of the week our attitude is "eh."  There isn't much reason to know if it's Monday or Thursday - it's just This Day.  And tomorrow really will be Another Day.

 

At the same time, I'm finding my ability to concentrate has changed.  I used to be able to read scholarly articles and think about what the author said, think about whether I agree or not, try to imagine real-life situations that either prove or dispute what the author has discussed.

Now?  Nah, my brain isn't willing to read the entire article.  I go into fact overload way more quickly than I ever have.  I'm blaming it on that background stress we've all been feeling throughout this pandemic.  Back in my MA program in art therapy, we'd talk about different art symbols that signified "free floating anxiety," meaning anxiety or uneasiness a person might feel that doesn't have a specific cause, reason, focus.  That's how I think of our pandemic stress - it's free floating stress or anxiety, always present, and without anything we really can do about it.

Sure, we can follow the protocols, the guidelines, and the new jargon.  We're self-isolating and social distancing.  I personally am double masking.  We're both using hand sanitizer at the supermarket or the pharmacy, and washing our hands (and masks) when we return home.  

But is that enough?  What if that person over there without a mask is spreading the virus?  What if I missed a spot with the sanitizer on my supermarket cart?  Or when I used the back of my wrist to wipe that hair out of my eyes?  Am I exposing myself to the virus?  Will I get sick?

Yeah, there's always that underlying stress, that free floating anxiety, no matter how much care I might take.

And as more time goes by, more and more friends seem to get sick, no matter that they are following the protocols.  Just in February, three people I know personally became sick or were exposed to someone who became sick, and in all cases someone was hospitalized.  Three people - and in one case, my friend's mother-in-law is the person who became sick, and accidentally infected four family members.  So that's seven people in one month, all people who had managed to NOT get Covid during the previous ten months.

Yup, definitely there's free floating anxiety, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  

Are you like me, a master at not acknowledging the stress and anxiety?  I know many people who have become pandemic bakers, taking this extended time at home to learn to bake gourmet desserts, or bread, or the ever popular challenge, sour dough bread.  To the point that stores keep running out of yeast.  (I've tried to avoid baking, and focused on healthy chicken and vegetable options for dinner.  Because I know I'm a stress eater.)

Instead of acknowledging that stress and anxiety, which likely won't go away until the world is fully vaccinated or develops true herd immunity, or until I stop thinking about all the mutations this virus has created, I bury myself in light reading, or art projects, or watching the changing tides and nature and birds.  I try to soothe my soul with all of that, and just ignore that yes, I'm feeling vaguely anxious and stressed much of the time.  Because I usually am happy and cheerful, and generally don't feel stressed or anxious much of the time.  I'm usually the Pollyanna of any group.  Except somehow, not right now.

 

So I guess this is me acknowledging all of that.  Me, usually mellow Phebe.  The one whose report cards from first grade onward all talk about how placid and cheerful I tend to be.  Me, who usually can find something funny in any and every situation. 

Nope, not much is funny about living in pandemic times.  Closing in on one year of pandemicking, and only a vague idea of when it might be safe to "go back to normal."  There is absolutely nothing funny about losing a cousin, or our favorite post office guy, to this pandemic.  And truly tragic, the total number of lives lost world wide, and the number of families destroyed by this pandemic.  

But at the same time, I can't dwell on that.  I'm personally not able to be down and depressed, or stressed and anxious, on a full time basis.  I truly am naturally cheerful, and fairly mellow.  

One of my all time favorite quotations is from Jane Austen, who really is my all time favorite author.  She wrote (through Elizabeth Bennet, in "Pride and Prejudice"):  "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."

 

Having acknowledged all that anxiety and stress, I'll move along.  And focus on the pleasures of life - flowers, sunsets, migrating birds, changing seasons.  Sunset over the water.  The reflections of the moon over that same water.  Being in Florida as spring approaches.  Being married to my sweetie.  Having a fun and colorful little house, crocheting all sorts of pretty things, appreciating everything that we do have.  

 

And life!  Just joy of just being alive, having accomplished that task.  As we began our year of pandemicking, that was my one and only goal, to keep myself and Richard alive through this pandemic.  Yes, that included getting out of Peru somehow, despite the closed borders.  Finding our way to somewhere warm to winter over.  Getting our vaccines, so that if we do get this virus, we both have a better chance or surviving it.  All of that fits into that goal of keeping us alive.  And thus far, all accomplished!

 

So we have much to be grateful for.  

 

Now if I could only keep that background worrier quiet, it might help.

 

Until then, well, I'll try to lighten up next time.

 

Pandemic Diaries Weeks #45 & #46

10 February 2021

 

When we first moved to St. Augustine, I explained that we were living on Anastasia Island, a small barrier island to the east of the city of St. Augustine.  At that time, I didn't realize that between our island and the mainland there are a series of smaller islands, some uninhabitable.  And that much of the area between Anastasia and the mainland is actually wetlands, or at least it is near us in the vague middle of the island.

So - Anastasia is approximately 14 miles long, and at its widest it is roughly one mile wide.  The island is shaped vaguely like an upside-down tear drop, rather elongated.  The Matanzas River separates the island from the mainland, but the north and south ends of the island are open to the Atlantic Ocean.  There is also a network of creeks that feed into the Matanzas, and our dock is on one of those small creeks.

The river and those tributaries create the intracoastal waterway, and we occasionally see motorboats, kayaks, and canoes wending their way through the intracoastal.  The river itself is deep enough to navigate at all times, but many of these smaller creeks become incredibly shallow during low tide, and can only be used by kayaks and canoes.

Our house is about halfway down Anastasia Island, and between all the creeks and the river are mud- and reed-covered islands.  These are the wetlands - swamps, marshes, bogs, whatever you want to call these muck and plant-covered blobs of land swelling up between all the water.

 

I've taken photos from Google Earth's satellite images, so you can see how large this wetland area is in our part of the island.  It's about 1.3 miles from our island to the houses on the mainland side (about 2 km).  This is one of the wider parts of the wetland area, but it extends several miles north and south of us.  So yes, this is a really large wetland area, full of all kinds of interesting wildlife - the birds, raccoons, opossums, and who knows what else.  I wouldn't be surprised if we see an alligator or two in the spring!  (I'd kind of like to see an alligator, as long as it isn't too close!).  

The photos are marked with a tiny red dot to denote the dock at the end of our street, where I go to look for birds and just enjoy the open space and nature.  It's about half a mile from our house on Fountain of Youth Boulevard.  No, the wetland is definitely not the fountain of youth, the water is quite murky and brown and not drinkable!

This wetland area is the reason we have all these amazing birds right here!  It also makes for a rather humid environment, our little mile-wide bit of land between the wetlands and the ocean.  But it also has created a lush green landscape for all the fauna of the wetlands.

Yesterday morning, it was foggy and eerie.  The fog blows in off the ocean, or comes from the wetlands, or fills our island from both directions.  In all that spooky grey morning light, I saw two white ibises wandering down our street, using those long curved beaks to dig into lawns searching for their brunch!  SO amazing to see them like that, and they didn't seem to mind as I quietly followed them down the street, taking photos as they ignored me and went about their birdy business.

 

It isn't easy to get photos of moving birds, and the fog didn't help.  So these are a bit fuzzier images than I'd usually include.

 

But ibises are such beautiful and intriguing birds, I just had to add my photos.  I did my best to be a stealth photographer, but birds do tend to notice anything large enough to look like a threatening predator.  And they don't understand enough English to listen to me softly telling them how lovely they are, that I won't hurt them, all that.  Besides, I obviously wasn't edible, so they mostly ignored me.

Another morning, I saw something large fly into our backyard.  Looking up, I saw that a hawk had flown onto a broken branch of a tree!!!  What a thrill!  Of course, I grabbed the camera and slipped out the back door, taking photos and telling the hawk he/she was amazing, with beautiful mottled brown and white feathers, and more white with brown bar feathers on the chest.  Just a beautiful hawk, so regal, with golden eyes keeping track of everything happening in our yard, the neighbors' yards, and likely everything within the hawk's very long vision.

I think it might be a short-tail hawk, but I'm not sure.  I'm a very amateur birder, and while I like to know what kind of bird I'm looking at, often I just don't know.  But it was amazing to be close enough to this hawk to get these photos - and you can see that it was a nice sunny morning that day.

One of the most exciting birds in the wetlands are the ospreys - we see them frequently, flying overhead, swooping into the water to catch their meals.  Our nearby supermarket has tall lightposts in the parking lot with flat panel lights on top, and several ospreys are buildings nests on these convenient tall flat-topped lights.  When we go grocery shopping, I've started taking my little camera with me in my pocket, so I can take photos of these amazing birds. 

Some of the zoom photos of the osprey in the tree make it look young, but it was a windy and cold day, and I think the bird puffed up its feathers to stay warm.  Or maybe the wind just fluffed up the feathers.  But it looks more like a fuzzy young bird rather than a bird of prey with razor sharp beak and talons.

 

And if you look closely at the nest, there are little bits of ripped plastic in there with the twigs and branches.  No idea why an osprey might add a piece of plastic bag to a nest, unless maybe it just happened to be with a twig picked up and carefully placed in the nest.

This week, there were the beginnings of more osprey nests on half the lightposts in the supermarket parking lot.  

And one osprey, eating a fish.  If you look really closely, you can see the tail of the fish hanging off one side of the light.  The osprey would eat a bite, look around, eat some more.  Then the bird picked up the fish and flew to a different light on the same post, looking off into the fog for, well, who knows.  Its partner, maybe.  Or any possible predators, though I'm not sure exactly what other animal might be up that high to threaten this osprey.  More likely this one was keeping an eye out for other ospreys who might try to steal his/her fish.

There is often drama down by the dock, when incoming pelicans use their vigorous splashdown to scare away the smaller egrets or herons.  Or when the pelicans make their somewhat ungainly take off from the water.  

 

The herons and egrets are much more graceful, easily lifting off on those long legs with their wide wingspan as they slowly and lazily fly off into the distance.

But then, pelicans seem to enjoy each other's company, often flying by in flocks.  The egrets and herons are much more solitary, often enjoying a morning fishing alone with only their reflection in the water.

 

 

I always look in the mud under the dock at low tide, because the footprints are interesting.  The large birds leave distinctive prints, while the raccoons leave little human-like hand prints.  Well, if we humans had skinnier fingers.

Okay, last bird and set of photos - we have several pileated woodpeckers here.  These are large woodpeckers, roughly the size of crows, with sort of speckled or barred grey and black backs and wings, and a bright red head or crest.  While I've seen these woodpeckers on the trees around the houses, occasionally I'll see one trying to peck his way into a palm tree.  It seems very odd, but I guess to a woodpecker a tree is a tree, and trees have bugs, and bugs are lunch.

Okay, just reminding family and friends to stay safe.  In the past couple of weeks, I've had two friends with either close family becoming ill with Covid, or who became critically ill themselves, necessitating hospital stays.  I know it gets boring - I mean, this is my second blog about birds!  But it's important - social distance, wear masks, wash those hands.  Be safe!