May 1st-May 15th, 8 weeks on House Arrest!

We finally made it to the Month of May. Only now has the Maryland Governor Hogan reported our state can begin to look at reopening. We are still primarily under the "essential" only rule, which means you are not supposed to leave your house unless you are an essential worker, like health care workers, restaurant employees-carry out only, Police and Fire Departments, Gas stations, US post office workers, employees from grocery and liquor stores or pharmacies, apparently Landscape companies, Walmart or Target employees, Home Depot and Lowes. And if you do go out,  you are required to wear a mask. I continue to do the big shopping at Costco and Sam's Club since I don't have to wait in line with my health care badge. Although items continue to be scarce, especially meat right now. I just went to our local Costco and they filled the entire meat counter with fish!  No red meat or chicken or pork to be found. They are still out of clorox wipes and most household cleaners, but paper towel and toilet paper are making a comeback. Primarily in the large club stores, not so much in the grocery stores. Also if they do have items there is a limit on how much you can purchase-only 10 cans of veggies, soup, beans. Rice is still on a limited supply, as are eggs-also limited amount that you can purchase here. There is more bread on the shelves(the kids found my fluffy English bagels!).  There seems to be enough fresh fruit and veggies-I try to keep the house stocked with those items for snacking. We are just finishing up our Easter basket goodies, but need to still watch the calorie count! Sometimes it is hard to shop when most of the items left on the shelves are junk food! Even cereal was starting to get picked over. And there are some very strange food items popping up as last resort. I found bags of fried fish skins at Costco! Really? Not even low carb for Tom!

The Governor just now allowed for the Phase 1 Mid May, soft re opening of parks, golf courses, tennis courts and beaches, but only if everyone keeps up "social distancing"-6 feet apart and no groups larger than 10 people. These areas are really only open for exercise but basketball courts and playground equipment is closed. No one is supposed to "hang out".  They also finally decided to continue with on line learning for Maryland schools until the end of this school year, June 12th. Not to reopen the buildings. Some churches are open but they are encouraging outdoor services and only 10 people allowed inside, like for funerals or weddings. I'm still enjoying my Sunday morning mass televised from Milwaukee(previously recorded).  And some of the counties can open hair salons, but most restaurants and bars are still take out only. Shops are curbside pick up. None of our hair salons are open, and Cookie is scheduled for grooming at Petsmart in 3 weeks!

Girl Scouts decided to cancel all summer camps including day camps. Troops are not allowed to meet in person, and all international trips have been cancelled or postponed. Allison and I would have been camping the first weekend in May where we help run a program for older girls at Camp Conowingo. This year's theme was The Renaissance(with Dragons and Archery and eating our food with our fingers-like Medieval Times). Guess we will just have to wait until next year. At least we have next year's weekend all planned out. Instead we spent the first weekend in May watching the flyover of the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels in Baltimore. Allison and I drove over to the Northrop parking lot near the airport for a front seat view. Quite a few other Northrop employees joined us, and even made a tailgate party of the event. People put out chairs, had lunch and watched their kids run around the expansive parking lot. The whole event only lasted a few minutes, and we only got to view them from the side. We brought Cookie along with us-it was a beautiful  day-nice and sunny. We decided to take Cookie for a walk on the BWI bike trail. Since all parks were closed, everyone decided to visit the bike trail that day! It is a bit hard to shut down a bike trail when it wraps around the airport. There were more bike riders than walkers, so we were not as worried about keeping our social distancing, although we were wearing masks. However, it is a bit hard to go on a hike with a warm face mask, and Cookie's fur coat is getting a bit heavy, so we only took a short walk. But it was nice to get out with a different view. We also tried to catch the flyover from the Baltimore National Guard the following weekend, but we could not see the planes from our house with all our big trees. We just heard them. Easy to do since there are so few planes in the sky now. 

We've celebrated(or not) several Holidays and special events over the past two weeks. We watched Star Wars on May 4th(Star Wars Day as in May the Force Be With You), and on Cinco De Mayo(May 5th), we enjoyed take out from Qdoba. Although we've noticed that the restaurant and some carry out food quality has diminished. Other events we had to modify this past month was how we celebrated Mother's Day. Hope you all enjoyed your special day Moms!  We probably would have gone out to eat, or celebrated at home with Mom B.  Instead, Scott and Allison spoiled me at home with two wonderful meals. I told Allison I am a brunch girl, but she likes to stick to her strict German roots of 3 meals/day at 7/12/6. Mainly because she is worried her iron levels will drop, and she's hungry! I'm pretty flexible on meal time, so she and Scott made me a deconstructed brunch in the morning with a lovely omelet(not their favorite, but it is mine!) They also made cucumber sandwiches and I washed it down with a Screwdriver. And for dinner they made a delicious chicken parmesan with bacon wrapped asparagus. Delicious. Allison also pulled up a Disney dessert recipe recently released. She opted for The Grey Stuff from Beauty and the Beast. Mostly Cool Whip mixed with vanilla and chocolate pudding and crushed Oreo cookies. We ate it with vanilla wafers. Very tasty. And the boys picked up some gardening items for me as a gift. The week before I dropped off a Mother's Day gift package to Mom B which included a short sleeved dressy blue top and some framed photos. I made prints of the family photo of Sarah and Patrick's wedding as well as a cute selfie of Allison, Mom and myself at our tea party last year. I also sent in photos to the facility to add to a Mother's Day video the Activity Dept made for the residents.

We still cannot visit in person. Maryland and the rest of the country seem to have lost the most people to Covid living in the nursing homes. Our county has not had as many deaths-38 total. And no resident diagnoses or deaths in my work facility or Mom's place so far from the virus compared to some nearby counties near DC with 400 deaths and most being in the nursing homes. Some facilities in Maryland have been hosting family parades at their places with residents sitting outside as family drives by to keep connected, or setting up visits through windows or glass doors. I have not been as keen on visiting with Mom B this way since I am not sure she would understand why we can't visit in person. I have been keeping up with her activities through emails and photos from the nursing staff and the facility Director. They were allowing the Assisted Living Facility residents a little more leeway coming out of their rooms, just keeping them separated in large living spaces. Recently the Maryland Dept of Health got tougher on restrictions and wants the residents to remain in their rooms at all times, including eating all their meals.  I know Mom B has a hard time understanding the reason for room restrictions, since no facility has been successful keeping her in quarantine in her apt before. Plus she can't remember the reason even after they tell her, so I think she is still probably going out to the activity room. I try to stay in contact via telephone, but don't always catch her in the room. But since they are serving meals in the apartment, I was finally able to get a hold of her more consistently. I also usually drop off a goody bag once a week with a card, some magazines and candy along with her clean laundry. No flowers or plants allowed since they are worried about possibly spreading the virus.

May 15th was Black Eyed Susan Day in Baltimore-the celebration before The Preakness horse race which would be on May 16th. The Preakness is the second leg of horse racing-the first being The Kentucky Derby which was cancelled. They talked about having the races with no people attending, but I guess it was too much to organize. Plus they have to move the horses all around the country. Instead they have currently rescheduled for October. Well, we can still eat Derby Pie and drink Mint Julips. And wear crazy, big hats!  The weekend before the Preakness our county hosts the Hot Air Balloon Festival. When Scott was in scouts we often volunteered to help unroll and roll up the hot air balloons, as well as hold the tethers as they float above the greens-a lot of hard work. But we always had a close up and personal experience with the balloons when they held it here at our Golf Course Resort. Over the past few years the event outgrew the space and they moved it to our Fairgrounds. The event is free, but you have to pay for parking. They added a stage with live music besides food and vendor tents. Also activities for kids like pony and go cart rides. Not to mention a quick ride in a balloon while it is tethered. And if the weather is too rainy, too windy, too cold, the balloons can't fly. So we have not been to the event since Scott received his Eagle and aged out of scouts during his senior year in high school. I especially enjoyed attending the event at the Golf Course in the evening when they lit up all the balloons. We could sit right on the lawn and had a front row seat to watch them inflate all the different types of balloons and then light them up with the gas tanks on board. I also loved that I was able to bring my parents to the event in the past and drive right up in the parking lot for a front row seat for a once in a lifetime experience.


Meanwhile, I keep going into work M-F for about 3-4 hrs a day as things have been slowing down. Hospitals have not been receiving patients for non emergency surgeries so our rehab facility census has been low. Not sure what is happening to the emergency treatments that usually come to us. Maybe going home with Home Health services, but some people don't want strangers coming in their house and some Health Care employees don't want to travel around. Our staff is not allowed to work in other facilities to avoid possibly spreading the virus. We continue to treat our Long Term Care residents and those living in the Assisted Living Facility. Its nice since most of these people have not had therapy services for quite some time if at all. We are usually so busy with patients coming in and out from the hospital that we don't always get to fully address the needs of our residents as much as we'd like, or spend as much time with them. Or they just get missed-especially the residents in the ALF setting.  However, since we are not bringing in patients at this time, we have more time to address their needs, but we also have to watch our productivity more closely. So they don't want us spending too much time with the patients, or spending time at work doing things we can't bill for like reorganizing  the rehab gym or our educational handouts or finishing our online training sessions. So we all try to get in and get out. I even had a 3 day weekend for Mother's Day since my boss gave me my Friday off. And it looks like we are going to stop coming in on Saturdays since there is just not enough work to go around right now. On the other hand, we were told staff could not request vacation at this time. Plus some staff have had to take their vacation hours to make up time just to get paid. We therapists thought we could be useful working along with the nursing staff since we have enough of the training, but so far we have been fully staffed with limited illness and call outs. Which is good, but  they really don't need the extra help at this time. There are a few local facilities that have switched to Covid only patients. I understand there were some therapists working in the hospitals along side the nursing staff assisting with turning the patients on their stomachs to improve their breathing.  It reminds me of the history of my previous facility in Downey, California. Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center was filled with iron lung patients during the polio outbreak which helped them breath when their respiratory muscles were too weak, much like the use of the ventilators today. Except the iron lung worked on the outside and lately I think the iron lungs might have been safer. Some Covid patients have had problems with blood clots leading to strokes or even amputations apparently caused by forcing too much O2 into the lungs. The OT profession partially grew out of nurses assisting with Activities of those patients placed in the iron lungs with limited mobility. Not only may some of the Covid patients benefit from OT services, but PT and Speech Therapy to assist in their breathing and speech following intubation. However, not everyone wants to especially work with COVID patients. I can understand why. Especially when some of the patients seem to become reinfected, or don't actually recuperate and pass away later at home. We have had some very sad stories in our area. And the Maryland Governor and the Md State Health Dept has requested that all Nursing Home residents be tested, along with the staff. Our facility is on the bottom of the list for testing since we have not had any positive cases in our residents. And the Assisted Living Facilities do not fit in the same requirements, so Mom B probably  won't be tested unless necessary. Not sure how long it will be until I have to be tested.

Scott finished his Spring Term and received a certificate for making the Dean's List. He started his Summer I session on May 4th in Engineering Statistics. He has a class and a lab session. Mostly they use the lab session to do assignments. Right now he is studying Probability and they are using lots of Covid numbers for their stats assignments. How convenient.

Tom also finished his recent online PhD class, number two out of three. His third starts in June. These classes are for "no credit", but paves the way to setting up working on the Thesis. He actually had more of these classes required of him, but he bargained down the requirement with the Dean last year. Seemed a waste of time and money to take an extensive amount of "no Credit" classes to complete research when  he already has enough information collected and learn how to write annotated bibliographies which he already knows how to do. And that is what this final phase is supposed to be(besides taking your money!). So he finished the second class and his current professor contacted his previous professor so they both can help guide Tom on narrowing down his Thesis project. Tom really liked his last professor since he has a good understanding of Tom's subject. And since Tom has been working from home, and we really can't go anywhere, he has had more time to focus on his class and Thesis project.

And he had some time after his class to work on a few projects around the house, including upgrading my computer(mine has been running slow which takes me longer to write my blog!)  He also replaced his pagoda cover over the grill. Last year he bought a cloth covered pagoda that he placed over the grill to keep the snow and rain off when we're grilling. But the cloth cover did not last, so he bought a hard cover pagoda. Seems to be working so far! 

We also had a bit of a warm up at the beginning of the month, so I could not help myself and went out and stood in line at Home Depot with the rest of the neighborhood to buys some flowers and pepper plants. I was just concerned that the supplies would be limited if I didn't jump on it when I was there. I was also using Scott's free time between semesters to help with the planting. He is my little gardener(mainly since he doesn't have as bad of allergies as Tom and Allison). He was very excited to help me work on cleaning out my flower garden and replanting some potted plants, as well as putting in new plants like jalapenos and cutting the lawn. And we started some veggies and flowers from seed, hanging them in zip lock bags in the kitchen window. I usually wait until after Mother's Day to make sure it stays warm, but it was so nice out and I was tired of looking at my dreary flower pots. Naturally, we had a blast of cold from a Polar Vortex last week and I had to cover up my new plants due to freeze warnings. They had some damage, but I think they will make a come back. I've also been busy trimming bushes and raking up leaves and trims, cleaning up the flower beds.

Nature seems to have noticed less people around. Our backyard certainly has been busy with wildlife. Our mama bunny came back to have her family under our shed. And we have had tons of busy birds nesting and feeding at our bird feeder. It makes life interesting!  They say the air is so much cleaner with less exhaust from vehicles and manufacturing plants operating. And it is definitely quieter! So few planes are flying overhead towards BWI, and much less traffic noise from nearby I-70. It is especially eerily quiet at night. Less traffic on the roads although lots more bicyclists and people out walking and taking their dogs for walks, especially in our neighborhood. You have to be careful when you are driving down our local streets since there are so many more kids and adults out in the road now. People got comfortable with less traffic, and are trying to walk with social distancing. And I think people have forgotten how to drive! Lots of speeders and people running STOP signs. Our local police noted they passed out over 700 speeding tickets in one weekend alone on I-95, with people driving around 95mph and faster! Our county alone passed out 400 speeding tickets. And DC was having trouble with motorcycles and 3 wheelers in large groups driving on sidewalks and streets, not following any traffic rules. The most traffic we see nowadays is from Amazon delivery service and Landscape trucks. People just decided they can drive any way they want I guess with less traffic on the roads. However, rules still apply!

So while everyone is stuck at home, pretty much the entire neighborhood has been out doing yardwork or hired landscape companies. That is about all we can do right now. And everyone(including us)have been busy trying to clean out closets and garages. The only problem is that you have no place to take your stuff if you're trying to get rid of it. The resale shops and Goodwill are all closed, as well as the local dump. Instead our neighborhood does the "for free" at driveway or sells things on our web page. Allison has been collecting items for an apartment-she added some lamps and a recliner chair from our friends, Dan and Gloria. She's hoping to find her own place this summer. Our neighbor's son recently moved out to his own apartment, and their daughter moved to another townhouse with friends, so they had extra furniture. Scott snagged a fog machine(great for Halloween!). I boxed up some of the kids extra socks they outgrew and some of Tom's and Scott's clothes for local donations as well as extra kids books.  Our neighborhood has also organized food and water donations for local and downtown Baltimore shelters/food banks which we participated in. I even dropped off some prepackaged brownies(tip from Mark and Linda) to the women that provided us with free face masks in the neighborhood, as well as some to the staff at Mom B's place. Can't do homemade since everything needs to be anti virus vacuum packed!

Allison is still working from home and will officially switch to her last intern placement at Northrop in August. Tom had thought Allison could use her own space and had talked about looking for an apartment this summer after the start of her last work rotation.  She was waiting to see what building she would be working in before settling on an area to look for apartments.  Not that we are trying to kick her out. I love having both of the kids around. They are such a big help around the house, and Scott and Allison get along very well. I think Cookie especially loves the extra attention! But we figured Allison would love her own space, so on a cold, windy Saturday we decided to do some apartment shopping. Mainly just to get an idea of locations and narrow down the choices. We really were not able to tour anything. All of the Leasing offices are closed. You can contact someone on the phone, but they don't want to show anything or have you fill out an application unless you are ready to move in right away. So guess we will take a look closer to the summer months. She did see some buildings closer to work that she is interested in.

We continue to keep entertained by catching up with movies and tv shows. Tom rented "Knives Out"-it was ok and "Ford vs Ferrari" which we really enjoyed. And the kids rented the new "Scooby Doo" cartoon/movie which was also OK. I think I liked "Sonic" better. And the release of Chef Gordon Ramsay's "24 Hrs To Hell and Back" in Olde Ellicott City came out on Tuesday, May 12th. I had signed up as a volunteer with Howard County Ecoworks to assist in some clean up in Old Town during taping of the show, but they changed the date and did not need me. So I missed out on meeting Gordon Ramsay. Poop. Instead, Ecoworks invited me to a "Watch Party" where they play the show on tv in a local restaurant and serve food(BYOB-buy your own booze). Naturally, that was cancelled due to the corona virus. So we enjoyed it here at home. It was crazy watching the two devastating floods in Olde Town again, with cars and people getting washed down the road and the water rising to the second level of the buildings. It was interesting to see how the county has mapped out a plan for removal of some of the buildings near the river, but they seemed to blame the flood on water rising in the river. Which has happened in the past due to hurricanes. This time it was the other way around with water rushing down the street to the river. One of Tom and Scott's favorite restaurants was featured in the show, The Phoenix Emporium. The owner held out as long as he could, but finally sold his building to the county as he is located at the end of the street on the corner right before you arrive at the river. Instead, Ramsay helped him and his staff move to a Brewery/Restaurant up the road after the owner purchased the company, Ellicott Mills Brewery. So now it's Phoenix on the Hill with a new menu and seating arrangement that we have not had the chance to try out. He also spruced up a small sandwich cafe off the back parking lot. They put in a fire pit and you can purchase a s'more kit and make it yourself outside. That looks like fun! He also reorganized a 3 story coffee shop with a barber shop on the top floor. The business seems to have more to offer now. It looks to take the place of our previous coffee shop that will also be knocked down which is a shame. That building had quite a history, starting off as a funeral parlor!  By the way, several of these buildings are said to have been haunted!  Sadly there are still quite a few empty buildings in Old Town, and with the virus lock down it has not helped them get up and running again. After watching the show, Tom felt obliged to drop in on our favorite wine store there, The Wine Bin, owned and operated by an MSU grad and Michigan family to pick up a bottle of wine "to go". Restaurants and shops will not reopen until our area is in Phase II and III. After the show aired, the local news played some interviews they had with Gordon Ramsay after the taping. He mentioned how much he liked our area and that it reminded him of home. He said he called his wife and told her they should consider retiring in this area!  He also owns a steak restaurant in downtown Baltimore at the Horse Shoe casino which I would love to visit with Tom (some day).

Well, I need to get to my mail in ballot for the Primaries. Recently we completed mail in ballots for a replacement for our local congressional rep who passed away last fall, Elijah Cummings. I would rather not be involved in this vote since the District covers our county, along with Baltimore City and Baltimore County. I would like to wash my hands of Baltimore. They have made some very poor choices in leadership over the past few years. So far they have had two women mayors, both kicked out of office during the past 5 years due to crimes. One wrote some kid's health books, sold them to Johns Hopkins and several other medical systems in the area, took the money but never printed or delivered the books. She was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison, but has not yet started her imprisonment yet due to the Covid scare. The previous mayor was kicked out after they found she stole gift cards from the office and bought herself gifts and she is currently running for the office again as the top choice! So we recently had two candidates running for Congress-two african american candidates. One was an elderly male running on the Democratic ticket, held the position before, had been the head of the local NAACP and was forced out for doing a poor job, along with womanizing complaints and the other candidate was a young married mom who heads a local non profit organization to assist disadvantaged women with jobs,  running on the Republican ticket and she lost. Maybe she got the wrong press when she defended Trump's review of Baltimore as a 'rat and rodent infested city'. So much for all the daily propaganda that Baltimore is a city in crisis and needs to make drastic changes. Meanwhile, the homicides continue, even during the corona virus lockdown-but the rats are definitely out!  And the current interim Mayor feels that the government should financially bail out Baltimore, although it was losing money before the pandemic. Mainly because tourism was down since people were afraid to go into the city, especially after the Freddie Gray riots 5 years ago.  Doesn't really feel like Baltimore wants to change for the better. We'll see how Baltimore comes through this.