Okay, so this is fun. Or not, as the case may be.

We’re into day 3 of our self-imposed, More Or Less Sheltering In Place regime. This is the COVID-19 timeline, and damn if this isn’t just a massive wave that you struggle to stay afloat in.

The World Health Organization has identified about 191,000 cases world wide, and over 3,500 here in the U.S. While “only” about 60 people have died here, over 7,800 people have died around the world. And that’s just as of yesterday. The projected escalation of infected people is frightening.

Life has changed a bit in the last few days. We shuttered our gift shop and our tattoo studios for the time being. I hustled my butt back from the valley, where I’ve been working since last Friday, to get over to the coast before any kind of mandated lock down happens. I go back and forth for stretches of days between our two studios, so I’m used to it, but even that shift was transformed by the virus.

I am happy to report that I am not short on toilet paper, and did not have to do any panic buying to achieve this valued status. And I made sure my sweetie knew this treasure was coming back from the valley with me —->

We made the decision to close the gift shop on Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, after debating going to appointment only with time between clients to disinfect the studios, we ultimately decided to close the tattoo shops for the time being. As I told a customer, “We try very hard to be careful at the studios with all health concerns, but with the kind of work we do, the wide range of clients we work with, and the close contact required, we consider that we are a highly likely vector for passing corona virus.” Particularly as I and my partner are both over 60, and so are many of our customers, it was the safest course.

I spent the rest of the evening packing up and disinfecting every surface I could think of in our valley studio – counters, chairs, pens and pencils, the stapler, the phones, our electronic displays, light switches, sinks and faucets, the toilet, the door handles, the alarm system pad, the copy machine, the printer, the railings on the porch, everything I could think of. I was exhausted, and perhaps mistakenly spent the rest of the night watching pandemic response reporters, medical professionals, and just plain folks living through it on the tv machine until about 3 in the morning. I probably should have gone to bed, but I suspect I would have just tossed and turned anyway.

The next morning I gave myself some time to relax and catch up (kind of polar opposites, but we do what we do). I also filed for unemployment benefits. I checked what our governor is advising, and doing about all of this. I thought about what I’d be doing for the next few weeks. It was overwhelming to contemplate.

When away from home, I stay with friends in their attic studio apartment. We agreed we should be social distancing, so we chatted across six or eight feet of air, but I did not go into their part of the house, and they didn’t come into my guest quarters. By eleven, I was packing up to head home, disinfected that whole apartment, wiped down everything I could that I was taking back home, and headed out.

I had to stop several times, each time donning a pair of exam gloves to go into the stores – I have a box of nitriles in the car, as of Sunday. I know a lot about cross-contamination, or rather the prevention of it, so that was helpful.

The basics are simple: don’t touch something that is or could be contaminated and then touch something that’s clean. For my shopping trips, I had a “dirty” glove hand, and a “sorta clean” gloved hand. My left “dirty” glove was for opening doors, holding the handle of the cart, grabbing boxes and bottles off the shelves, touching the screen on the self checkout terminal (don’t harass me, I have my reasons). My “sorta clean” glove was for grabbing fruits and veggies, and getting into my wallet.

I didn’t bring my re-usuable bags into the stores – I paid the 5 cents for paper bags, loaded them up (“dirty” glove handling the boxes, bottles etc that other shoppers might have touched, and all going into one bag, “sorta clean” glove for the veggies and fruits, which went into a separate bag), and when I got that all back home, three freaking hours later, I wiped down boxes and bottles before putting them away.

I also unloaded just the essentials from my car to begin with, then went immediately to take a shower. The whole point was to mitigate any transfer of the virus from the valley to our tiny coastal village. It’s probably already here, but better safe than sorry.

*sigh*

So, as I said earlier, that was fun!

Yesterday I was exhausted. And I think that’s in part why I needed to write this all out, to help myself understand why I’m exhausted. It’s not just the extra work of cleaning, packing, shopping. It’s the mental work of figuring out how to do things differently, the mental stress of hyper awareness – did I touch my face? Did that person cough on me? – and of trying to sort out the new routines.

Yesterday I woke with a great weight on my heart. But after catching up on the horrific news while helpfully interspersing it with cat videos and wonkette.com, I started in on sorting out our money situation, working out contingency plans, catching up with family, contacting customers and writing statements to post online about our businesses, and being heartened by how many people are just buckling down and doing what they need to do.

And I went for a walk in the beautiful sun. I need to do more of that.