Week 1: Please Stay Home

I don’t think it’s too wild a guess that you all feel, like we do, that the changes happening in the world feel so sudden that the last 7 days could have been better paced to have taken place over months or even a year, rather than a week. I’ll round up the photos from our cameras here and also add commentary along the way about the first week that coronavirus prevention measures hit close to home.

Last weekend was the end of early voting in Chicago, and I meant to vote on Saturday but the lines were really long and social distancing had begun. I decided to get to the downtown polling place first thing Sunday instead, figuring (correctly) that not many people would go downtown to vote at 10am on Sunday. Plus, I walked down from the Hancock building and had a lovely walk along the Riverwalk. From the beginning this quarantine has been hard to wrap one’s head around, since it’s totally fine to go outside as long as contact with others is avoided. It feels like, oh, this is ok, but it feels weird. Most of the people out on the Riverwalk were running – and it really would be a great place to go for a run.

It’s been a while since I walked past this mosaic titled The Flight of Daedalus and Icarus by artist Roger Brown on a building in the Loop.

Quick interlude here to say that the Friday before I dropped my phone at work, shattering the glass. My appointment to have it fixed at the Apple Store was cancelled Saturday morning, when Apple made the decision to close all stores. I have a temporary phone and am getting the glass repaired but it’s been much more difficult than usual. My takeaway is don’t break anything during a crisis! My regular phone is a small size – this new temporary one feels like I’m carrying around an iPad!

In terms of public guidance about preventing the spread of coronavirus, Illinois schools had just been announced closed until April 2 (now extended to April 21). John’s office then mine announced we would all work from home for a few weeks minimum. On Sunday, Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a press conference where they announced that all bars and restaurants were closing except for takeout / delivery until further notice. Social distancing and only going out for needed was strongly encouraged. We heard a lot about stores with empty shelves but around us supplies were mostly pretty OK. There’s no hand sanitizer anywhere but that seems to be a national shortage, along with other kinds of important equipment. A colleague of mine sent out an email to round up hand sanitizer to drop off at the nearby police station since there was none to be had for the emergency responders, pretty shocking.

Turns out my lunches have long been pandemic-ready. Here’s my Monday rice (left) and beans (right) cooking! I could get used to cooking lunch during the morning, rather than having to be sure it’s ready to pack up first thing!

John and I worked from home all week and were both very busy. John’s work focused more on clients who had crisis communications to put out, and mine involved getting folks access to files, which is all-important in a work from home environment. But with no commute time, even though it was busy, that did allow some nice outdoors time. Today we went for a walk on the 606, which you can see was an activity a lot of people had in mind! The two women in front of us, one on the right with a blue hood and the one on the left with a gray hood, were actually walking together but keeping 6 feet between them. Someone who passed them shouted out “good job keeping the distance!”

Since the rules have changed so fast, stores and restaurants have put up handwritten signs explaining their status. Here’s Letizia’s and Flying Saucer signs.

Miles called Monday night, having received an email from his college administration explaining that they really needed to have way fewer students on campus, and by the end of the week. And students needed to leave for spring break and complete the semester online, not coming back to campus this school year. This changed his plans a lot, and on Tuesday we moved up his flight and signed up for a storage service so that he could move out of the residence hall and put his belongings into storage until Fall semester. He flew to Chicago Wednesday night, and when we went to pick him up the airport was really empty, seemed to only be college students returning home there! Miles’s friend Ashton and Ashton’s cat Nyx had planned to stay with us, so although they left campus not long after Miles they didn’t arrive until the wee hours of Friday. Midway Airport had control tower staff who tested positive for coronavirus and the airport was on a severely reduced capacity, so the trip here was roundabout, by way of Nashville and Milwaukee :\ So very happy they arrived safely at last! Here’s Nyx in motion.

Ashton and Nyx – sorry, kinda backlit!

Nyx with flash! Photographing black animals is hard, which I knew from attempts to photograph Speedy!

Speaking of cat / piggy interaction, it’s going well during supervised settings so far. Speedy is following what he’s heard on the news and is sheltering in place (in his case, hiding in his hut!) and Roux has dropped his dominance act and is content to just stand there next to Nyx. We think it’s got to be fun for all of them!

Miles has a list of pandemic projects, one being learn to cook more dishes. He made an Indian dinner for us tonight, a curry dal with baby kale and sweet potatoes, served with naan bread and chutney. Really yummy, Miles!

Everyone loves sitting in this chair in the afternoon. Here’s Miles and Nyx sharing it.

A few roundup items without pics: we are clearing out the back upstairs bedroom to repurpose the room as a home fitness center. Today’s goal was to move out the bed, but we couldn’t get the box frame down the turn in the stairs. Not sure how we got it up there! Liam remembers it was a tight fit bringing it up, but we just could not get the box spring out today. So… we came up with a plan B. We measured the back window and found that we should be able to fit the box spring through with about an inch of clearance. Obviously very careful to not hurt ourselves, tear out the window frame or destroy our house or the neighbor’s on the way down, we got the box frame into position then counted to three and let go. It fell very nicely straight down, and we then went down and carried it out to the alley. Success! I’ll end on that note, as it seems a natural break since as of 5pm today we went from this week’s guidance of please stay home to, as of 5pm today, a stay-at-home order, per the governor and mayor’s office.  We now have more specific instructions to stay home except for necessary outings or trips that allow for social distancing like taking walks. It’s all been delivered very well and is really the least we can all do to stop the spread of the virus. Stay safe and sane everyone!