LJ Idol - The Streisand Effect, take 2 - Week 16 extended deadline
Friday the 13th, March of 2020. The Ides are almost upon us and it is such a weird day. I don’t feel well, but I can’t decide if it’s allergies or a mild cold or sheer exhaustion or if, perhaps, I am a fool who should be pressing my medical community for a test to see if I carry the dread disease. I did just do a weekend trip to a swim meet in San Antonio. But the base with the quarantined people was on the other side of town.
I message my supervisor and request leave and permission to work from home. My husband made a neurology appointment for this morning at our big midtown hospital. I don’t want to go to it and risk exposure but Rog twice confirmed the appointment without reminding me that he’d made it and I also don’t want to relegate him to a taxi each way and even more chances of exposure. We drop the girls at school and head to the hospital.
It turns out there’s a new Parkinson’s drug coming online that the neuro wants Rog to try. I am always skeptical of such things, but they give us a starter supply and ask us to sign for permission to wrangle insurance to pay for more. I ask about side effects and am given the explanation “well yes, those are always possible.” My research later indicates that there is reason for hope that the drug will help, but that it causes hallucinations for some people.
The late morning and afternoon pass in a flurry of work and calls and its time to grab the girls from school. Spring break is on! The school carnival, their last run at this right of passage as elementary students, was a delight. But also the teachers all sent home extra work. They are forewarned that things are closing down with Covid 19 fears. They want the kids to be ready for standardized testing even if there are closures.
I have a camping reservation for tonight on the Atlantic coast, three hours from home. Anson is signed up to climb in a competition at the Jacksonville rock gym tomorrow morning and the gym didn’t cancel the competition. Do we stay or do we go? All signs point to Covid 19 continuing to blow up. But camping is relatively safe. And we haven’t got any other spring break plans. We take Jas home, grab our bags and go.
We make it with twenty minutes to spare before sunset. I set up the tent while Anson runs to the bathhouse to put on her swimsuit. We race to the beach with the sky going pastel above us. Low tide. Low tide at Anastasia is breakers right on shore with another line farther out. We lament our lack of bodyboards and surfboards. She bets it’ll be too cold for me. I think about all the ocean plunges in my life, and I’m mostly glad she doesn’t know my history with this kind of foolishness. We run up and down the waterline a few times and then make for the first sandbar. It is colder than this old body prefers, but I still love it. Annie is delighted.
Just as I make it to the sandbar, I spot a moon jelly caught in the shallows, trying to right itself, and try to call Annie over to see it. To stay with it in the current, I’m walking fast in thigh deep water- waist deep for her, and it’s hard for her to catch up. She makes it over and sees the ghostly creature. I swirl the water near it allowing it to pump for a moment upright, and consider the hopelessness of my action. A jelly inside the breakers isn’t going to make it back out to sea. Annie and I talk about jellyfish until she shouts, “I love it here!” And we run up the sandbar in shin deep water watching the sky darken to magenta behind us.
We start to play wave games- kicking the tops of waves, trying to leap completely over some of them. I turn circles in the wind scooping up water and tossing it. “I love you ocean!” I shout. “I’m sorry humans have done so many dumb things! We’re trying to make the best choices! Well, many of us are!” Annie grins at me and takes my hand. “I’m so glad we came here,” she says.
***
Three days later and it remains to be seen how the Covid 19 saga will play out. Have we hamstrung ourselves by not having testing infrastructure in place sooner? I can’t decide whether I think willful decisions were made at some levels with the thought that not knowing how many cases we had would somehow be better for us- that, in effect, hiding the true number of cases out there would somehow be grounds for less panic. If that was somebody’s logic, I don’t think it was good logic. Regardless, we are where we are now. And we’ve got to make good decisions going forward.
I message my supervisor and request leave and permission to work from home. My husband made a neurology appointment for this morning at our big midtown hospital. I don’t want to go to it and risk exposure but Rog twice confirmed the appointment without reminding me that he’d made it and I also don’t want to relegate him to a taxi each way and even more chances of exposure. We drop the girls at school and head to the hospital.
It turns out there’s a new Parkinson’s drug coming online that the neuro wants Rog to try. I am always skeptical of such things, but they give us a starter supply and ask us to sign for permission to wrangle insurance to pay for more. I ask about side effects and am given the explanation “well yes, those are always possible.” My research later indicates that there is reason for hope that the drug will help, but that it causes hallucinations for some people.
The late morning and afternoon pass in a flurry of work and calls and its time to grab the girls from school. Spring break is on! The school carnival, their last run at this right of passage as elementary students, was a delight. But also the teachers all sent home extra work. They are forewarned that things are closing down with Covid 19 fears. They want the kids to be ready for standardized testing even if there are closures.
I have a camping reservation for tonight on the Atlantic coast, three hours from home. Anson is signed up to climb in a competition at the Jacksonville rock gym tomorrow morning and the gym didn’t cancel the competition. Do we stay or do we go? All signs point to Covid 19 continuing to blow up. But camping is relatively safe. And we haven’t got any other spring break plans. We take Jas home, grab our bags and go.
We make it with twenty minutes to spare before sunset. I set up the tent while Anson runs to the bathhouse to put on her swimsuit. We race to the beach with the sky going pastel above us. Low tide. Low tide at Anastasia is breakers right on shore with another line farther out. We lament our lack of bodyboards and surfboards. She bets it’ll be too cold for me. I think about all the ocean plunges in my life, and I’m mostly glad she doesn’t know my history with this kind of foolishness. We run up and down the waterline a few times and then make for the first sandbar. It is colder than this old body prefers, but I still love it. Annie is delighted.
Just as I make it to the sandbar, I spot a moon jelly caught in the shallows, trying to right itself, and try to call Annie over to see it. To stay with it in the current, I’m walking fast in thigh deep water- waist deep for her, and it’s hard for her to catch up. She makes it over and sees the ghostly creature. I swirl the water near it allowing it to pump for a moment upright, and consider the hopelessness of my action. A jelly inside the breakers isn’t going to make it back out to sea. Annie and I talk about jellyfish until she shouts, “I love it here!” And we run up the sandbar in shin deep water watching the sky darken to magenta behind us.
We start to play wave games- kicking the tops of waves, trying to leap completely over some of them. I turn circles in the wind scooping up water and tossing it. “I love you ocean!” I shout. “I’m sorry humans have done so many dumb things! We’re trying to make the best choices! Well, many of us are!” Annie grins at me and takes my hand. “I’m so glad we came here,” she says.
***
Three days later and it remains to be seen how the Covid 19 saga will play out. Have we hamstrung ourselves by not having testing infrastructure in place sooner? I can’t decide whether I think willful decisions were made at some levels with the thought that not knowing how many cases we had would somehow be better for us- that, in effect, hiding the true number of cases out there would somehow be grounds for less panic. If that was somebody’s logic, I don’t think it was good logic. Regardless, we are where we are now. And we’ve got to make good decisions going forward.