Quarantine Essentials

I try not to talk about politics on my blog, but it's really hard not to when our lives are being so drastically changed by the government. If you want to avoid reading my political musings, skip to the part after the photo of Oliver throwing a water balloon. There are many moments when I'm scanning the news online, and I feel like I must be having a bad dream. It's just hard for my brain to wrap itself around what has been going on in our country over the past two months. The constitution was primarily written to protect the rights of people and limit the power of government. Thankfully there are some, such as the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, that seem to understand that their state's stay-at-home order was unconstitutional. The Governor of Florida said that some other Governors are acting like dictators right now. That is exactly the word I would use. Laws are passed by the legislative branch. One person doesn't get to make the rules all by himself. The Governor of the state of Washington seems to fit that description. If you don't participate in contact tracing or agree to be tested for COVID-19, you can't leave your house at all. Seriously!?!?!? Our Governor has said that churches can't even have drive-in services. I think a vehicle is very effective protection against catching germs from someone. Thankfully, we still do have freedom of the press in our country, and thankfully police officers and local government officials are for the most part not enforcing many of the new rules. I haven't heard of any of the churches getting into trouble for having a drive-in service in our state, for example. Although I haven't attended a drive-in service, I think it's a creative solution. The Governor never said people can't park in the parking lot of a grocery store, Walmart, or Lowe's, so I have no idea what the basis would be for saying they can't gather to worship in their separate vehicles in a parking lot or drive-in movie theatre. Also, why is it unsafe to shop in a small shop but safe to shop in the big box stores? Asking employees to have their temperature taken or wear masks is one thing, but making arbitrary decisions about which businesses are "essential" and "non-essential" is completely wrong in my opinion when the "non-essential" ones are not allowed to stay open. People keep saying life will never go totally back to normal. I hope that the overreach of government ends as soon as possible. I will spare you my thoughts on the insane amount of money our government is spending. That's another huge can of worms.

If the coronavirus was anywhere near as deadly as Ebola, it would be a different story. People disagree on what the mortality rate is of COVID-19 because we don't really know how many people have it due to the fact some people are asymptomatic or have such mild symptoms that they never are tested. I've seen estimates that are as low as less than 1%. If the government truly felt the need to do massive interventions to save lives, there are many other things claiming more lives in 2020 than COVID-19. I don't know how accurate the data on Worldometer is, but according to that site as of today, 307,258 people around the world have died of COVID-19 this year. It sound like an awful number, but thus far in 2020 there have been more suicides, more road traffic fatalities, more deaths by malaria, more deaths from HIV/AIDS, more deaths caused by alcohol, more deaths caused by smoking, and far, far more abortions. About 500,000 people die in the US per year from smoking cigarettes. That is probably five times more than will die from COVID-19 this year in the US. If they banned the production and sale of cigarettes in the US, it would harm part of the economy and send some people into unemployment, but it wouldn't cause anywhere near as many to become unemployed as the economic shutdown has caused. Some people would still smoke because people still die from drug overdoses even though drugs are illegal, but some people who smoke cigarettes in the US now who wouldn't do so if it were illegal and they had to buy them on the black market. They could ban automobiles and alcohol and save more than 100,000 more lives in the US each year. I don't actually think we should ban automobiles. Closing all of the schools, churches, and a majority of businesses for months seems just as ludicrous to me. In our state, more than 2/3 of the COVID-19 deaths have been in nursing homes. Obviously certain populations need to be quarantined, but quarantining everyone?!? I feel they could have invested far more of their efforts on protecting those populations. They purposefully put people who had been released from the hospital with COVID-19 into nursing homes. Why?!? I would feel perfectly safe taking my kids to a playground. Even though I feel the Governor's state-wide ban on using playground equipment is unconstitutional, I am following the rule and hoping and praying the restrictions will be eased as soon as possible. I read today that DelGrosso's amusement park isn't going to open in 2020 because of government restrictions. I would never have guessed when we celebrated Oliver's birthday there last August that it wouldn't be possible to go there in 2020 because of government regulations. The park has been around for 101 years. Time will tell if any of the amusement parks open at some point this summer. Our field trip to Hershey that was rescheduled from the end of March to June 4 has now been moved to September. Here's to hoping and praying we will be allowed to visit museums in September.

I have been trying very hard not to dwell on what we thought we would be doing on a particular day whether that was a trip to Chicago or something closer to home. There are many things I am thankful that we still are able to do as they have become our "temporary normal." I'm trying to keep my mind fixed on all the blessings rather than all the things we miss (church, library, field trips, etc.). I also think it will be helpful if I deactivate my FB account again as ignorance might be bliss when it comes to dwelling on what is going on in the world these days.

• Board games
• Audiobooks via RBdigital, Hoopla, Overdrive, and Audible - right now we are really enjoying the Book Scavenger on RBdigital. 
• Books - that we own plus eBooks we've borrowed through Overdrive, Hoopla, and Kindle Unlimited - We've had a free trial of Kindle Unlimited for several months, and when I went to cancel it this week, they extended our free trial by another month. Thank you, Amazon! I've also gone a bit crazy with using Bonus Borrows through Hoopla this month. Thanks, Hoopla!
• Adventures in Odyssey - Nadia has been listening to episodes for many hours a week thanks to the subscription that my Dad got her.
• Zoom/Skype/FaceTime/Instagram - Nadia has been using all of the above to stay in contact with her Bible bowl teammates, cousin Rachel, and the two youth groups.
• Puzzles - The kids, especially Nadia, have spent SO many hours doing puzzles over the past month. Two boxes that each contain 5 puzzles are supposed to be arriving at our house tomorrow.
• Piano - Nadia has practiced a little bit, but Ian has been spending a lot of time on the piano. A new book of Disney piano solos is to be delivered to our house with the puzzles tomorrow!
• Spending time outside - rollerblading, bike riding, jumping on the trampoline, using Nadia's big swing, going for walks, playing with neighbors, walking on stilts, and using scooters are the main things the kids have been doing outside. The guinea pigs also enjoy eating grass outside when the weather is warm enough for them. Since it was in the 80's today (from snow to 80's in seven days!), I filled a bunch of water balloons for five kids to enjoy (my three plus Nadia's two friends).
• Mad libs
• Internet - we are very, very thankful for the Internet. It means we can stream what we watch on Disney+, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and a church service on Sunday morning, etc. We also enjoy using our Echo dots to listen to Amazon Music or a streaming radio station. Ian used games on the Seterra website to learn the location of every country in the world over the last few weeks! He mastered the islands around Australia yesterday (Oceania) and all the countries of Africa today.
• Nintendo Switch, laptop, and iPad - Nadia uses the iPad and my iPhone every day. Ian uses the Nintendo Switch for one hour a day. Nadia uses my laptop some, but I am the one who uses it the most for things like lesson planning and blogging.
• Friends - After going two full months without seeing any of her friends, two of Nadia's friends came over to our house today. They've jumped on the trampoline, gone for a walk, thrown water balloons, played a game of Clue, baked chocolate chip cookies, and much more. The sound of their laughter is music to my ears. They aren't wearing masks or worrying about staying 6 feet apart. Next Tuesday two boys are coming over for a play date. Now that we are allowed to have small gatherings, hopefully we can continue to schedule sleepovers and play dates since youth group meetings, church services, and such are still forbidden. I'm also very thankful that the kids in the neighborhood are playing together again after staying apart for about six weeks. One neighbor has an inground pool. I'm hoping Ian and Oliver will be allowed to swim there from time to time this summer like they were last summer. My friend Cheri, who lives about 45 minutes from us, says we can swim in her pool this summer. I won't make that drive on a regular basis, but it's nice to know the kids will be able to swim at least a few times this summer.
• DVDs - Usually we get our DVDs from the library. Since the libraries have been closed for two months, we've used Redbox a couple of times and also signed up for a free 30 day trial of Netflix's DVD service. The boys and I enjoyed watching Ride Like a Girl this evening that I got for free from Redbox.

I don't think a quarantine is ever going to feel like any kind of normal, but hopefully these "essentials" will help us through the next at least two more months at home. I asked my neighbor when she thought we'd be able to go back to church. They go to the same church we go to. Her answer was January. I hope she's wrong, but I think it's definitely possible that we will have to wait until 2021 given the size of our church.