May16-May 31st, DC (During Corona Virus)

Happy Birthday to all the May Babies!  Mark Seitz celebrated on Friday, May 8th. Stacey (Seitz) Draper celebrated on the 17th, and Christopher Bozyk enjoyed his special day on the 23rd, Memorial Day weekend. Happy Birthday to Western Michigan Too! The school turned 117 years old this month!

Happy Graduation as well! Our nephew Christopher B had a virtual graduation at Texas A and M early in May. Way to Go Christopher! Our friend's Beth and Barry's oldest son, Barry Jr graduated from Uof Penn in Philly and took a job in NYC.  Their second son, Bryce took a summer internship at Tesla in California. Looks like they will still be empty nesters this summer, even with the covid isolation. And Big Barry retired from his position at the Pentagon. So sorry we have not been able to celebrate all their family's special events together. And that included our long time neighbors from down the street who also retired and decided to sell their home and move to their mountain cabin in a ski resort town in Bryce, West Virginia. Jane and John managed to sell their home without even formally putting it on the market, and got 25K more than their asking price! Good news for the rest of us. I was hoping to spend a little bit of time with them before they left.  I was thinking we could at least all sit down around our fire pit in the driveway and have a drink together. I had picked out an evening before their scheduled move out date where it wasn't raining and a bit cool-comfortable bon fire weather. I sent Jane a message and found out that they had moved out early. So sad. They just could not take another day of living out of boxes, especially since they had moved their daughter and son in law and 2 yr old granddaughter in with them from New York before the shut down in March. We'll have to plan a visit to their place some time in the future to toast their retirement.

Happy Memorial Day! Not the usual holiday. I was actually scheduled to work on that Saturday over the weekend, but we did not have any new patients to treat, so I did not have to go in. I also got Friday off and took the Holiday hours on Monday. I normally would cherish a 4 day weekend for a trip away with the family. Probably to Busch Gardens to enjoy the opening of the Water Country USA and the Wine and Food festival. Not happening this year. Everything is closed. I also miss the Howard County Wine in the Woods festival that I attended last year- a whole weekend of wine sampling and concerts, art booths and food here in our local park. Not this year. Instead, on Saturday night we had our neighbors Dan and Gloria over for drinks and snacks. Gloria has been working as a contract Nurse Manager in the only hospital on Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. She only had 1 COVID patient admitted, and since the island is basically closed to visitors, they really have not had any patients. So they sent her home early.  She was so looking forward to shopping int We enjoyed a bonfire in the driveway! It was cool enough to make a fire and roast some marshmallows. A nice way to celebrate S'more Saturday!  Even Allison's friend Jen from Salisbury University and her fiance stopped by to visit. They were in town to watch her brother's dog while he was gone for the day. We spent Sunday at their house, enjoying a crab feast! We haven't had a crab dinner in quite some time(mainly because they are so expensive, and take a while to eat. Plus it is better if you can eat them outside at home(rather messy), so the weather needs to cooperate. Dan and Gloria bought several dozen and we rolled out the paper on the patio table and went to town with our crab mallets! We also had bratwurst, potato and green salad, mac and cheese, shrimp, chips and salsa, and cheese and crackers, along with bakery designer cupcakes. Plus we brought watermelon and I made brownies and chocolate truffles. Our whole family stopped over along with their two kids and their daughter's new boyfriend. We had a wonderful time sitting out on the patio and enjoying our meal together. Socially distanced of course!

Meanwhile at work, we are slowly making our way through treatments for the Long Term Care residents as well as the Assisted Living Facility residents, but we have seen most of them already. Every once in awhile we treat someone again because they have fallen, and may have injured themselves, or caught a cold and get put on isolation, but there are no new patients coming into our building, and our facility manager is not keen on bringing in recuperating COVID patients due to concern over risking getting our residents sick. Which we all appreciate. We do have an isolation unit in case someone has to go out to the hospital. They stay on the isolation unit for 14 days, but they just extended it to 28 days, in their room. So we have had a few patients to treat there also.   But there are more of us therapists with extra time on our hands and less and less patients. They were going to allow us to work as nursing assistants, but we have not had a shortage in staff members from sickness. Since there are plenty of staff members and not so many residents or patients, they don't need our help. Some of our company's other facilities have started to schedule rehab staff to come in every other day. None of us are working our full hours, so we only get paid for the time we work. And they continue to keep a close eye on our work hours. At least we have not lost our benefits, but some staff have submitted requests for unemployment to cover their lost hours. So far no one has actually been successful in filling out the applications or getting a check. And they already used all their vacation hours. Apparently you also have to fill out the unemployment applications every week. There is a rumor that we will start taking patients in as they have opened up the hospitals and clinics for elective surgeries and treatments again. But apparently most people have been avoiding going to the hospital for fear of catching the virus. Recently, the nursing homes in Maryland have all been tested for COVID by the National Guard, including our facility. We actually did our own testing right before Memorial Day since we had plenty of nursing staff to complete the task. They offered two different ways of testing, nasal or oral swab. I was certainly dreading a nasal swab since I had heard so many horrible stories. I managed to locate the oral swab team-like getting tested for strep throat. Not so bad. So far looks like I came back negative, as did most of our facility. They had two staff members test positive and one private aide, one resident so far. Turns out one of the staff members was my OT coworker. She tested positive, but asymptomatic. So now I am the only therapist and two assistants(for two weeks at least). She is on quarantine for now.  So its off to the Corona Unit for me. Poop. And we'll have to see if we get any new patients. And they plan on continuing the testing. Fortunately the hospitalizations have started to go down in Maryland.

Tom and Allison continue to work at home although Tom has started going into his office. He has his own space and he can get a lot more done, except when they turn off the air conditioner!  Allison is happy working from home and was told she will be switching to her new position in August. She will finally be working in Tom's building by the BWI airport. She can keep working from home if she wishes, even when she starts her new position. Northrop hasn't worked out all the kinks on how to bring everyone back to the facility with social distancing yet.   Tom thought he would stop into work to start a new project before he has to begin his last PhD class. Scott has been hard at work at his Statistics class. He is getting a bit sick and tired of the content as they have been focusing on probability for the whole month. He's ready for something different. He thought he was getting a break over Memorial Day weekend, but then the prof surprised them with lab work, homework and a quiz all due on Memorial Day. We didn't see much of him except when he stopped by to eat a few crabs at the neighbors. And he does not get any real instruction-just reading and watching power point presentations and doing the homework. Tom is helping as much as he can, but also was not thrilled with the over emphasis on probability.

Because we had a 4 day weekend, I thought it would be fun to take a break and go bike riding and take advantage of our nice weather.  We have talked about biking or hiking a portion of the C and O (Chesapeake and Ohio) Canal towpath. It runs along the Patapsco River for about 137 miles from DC to Cumberland in Western Maryland. There is a free parking lot and access point with outhouses/portapotties and a small, nearby town near Frederick MD that I thought would be a good place to start-about 45 mins from our house. As Tom was loading the bikes, I checked the website for directions and noted that all the public bathrooms including outhouses/porta potties along the trail were all closed. As was the visitor center in town with bathrooms, and pretty much the entire town was closed. So it did not seem like such a great idea to go off for several hours in the heat while drinking lots of water without use of bathrooms. So we have discovered that even though many parks-both state and national-have opened up for use, it is primarily for hiking/biking/fishing and boating and no services available. And we have also discovered since that is about all that is open, everyone goes there, so not much in the way of social distancing. For some, they cannot even find a bike. Bike sales have been up-cleaning up the shelves. And local bike stores are swamped with sales and repairs. Still have to wait in line for assistance outside the stores. For some, if you find a bike for sale, you will pay a great deal-up to $1000!  Again, our neighborhood has been busy swapping/selling items, including bikes.

It's quite the experience to go shopping. A few weeks ago I was picking through the leftovers at one of our local grocery stores when the staff yelled "Fire" and pulled the alarm. I had to leave my grocery cart and the door and head to the parking lot when the manager started kicking us out. And I was just getting ready to check out too!  I certainly could have done without the store catching on fire. I think the employees felt the same way-looks like it was a roof fire so no terrible damage and they were open again in a few days. But I had to go and do all my grocery shopping over at another store. Employees continue to wipe down carts, or leave spray and rolls of paper towel for a do it yourself cleaning. Most people don't follow the arrows guiding everyone up and down the aisles to avoid crowding. But everyone seems to be wearing some sort of mask or using gloves. Our shelves are still not fully stocked, especially for cleaning supplies, paper products and popular food items. They continue to limit the number of people in the stores, so sometimes there is a line out the door. I still use my Health Care Worker ID to walk right into Costco if necessary. But even their lines have decreased since they are not stocking as much of the popular items. There is also still a limit on the amount of some items you can buy, including meat and eggs, and those prices have really gone up. I don't like to shop too often, so I try to buy 1-2 weeks worth of grocery items if I can. I did drag Allison along with me to Walmart after we dropped off supplies to Mom B at her place over Memorial Day weekend. We needed a few items like shampoo and Allison wanted to look for some running shorts. While I was making a return, some old guy tried to pick her up(he told us he was 68)! He spotted her wearing the Washington Capitals Stanley Cup tshirt and hat and just so happens he is the organist for the Caps and the Washington Nationals(as well as his church). He was wearing his Capitals face mask. He was so excited to see a Caps fan and share all his stories and performances with us on his cell phone. Boy people are really bored! He is currently out of work since most sporting events are on hold. We finally pried ourselves away, but I noticed he was mostly just poking around the store. I wouldn't have minded chatting with him if he'd offered us free tickets to the Caps games! (although it was creepy having him flirt with Allison!)

We are currently under Stay At Home/Safer At Home Phase 1 in Maryland. Some things are slowly opening, but with limitations.  Tom and Allison stood outside the pet store recently for 45 minutes to buy some fish for Tom's tank. He figured since he and Scott would be spending more time in the basement that they could use a relaxing distraction. None of our stores are open yet. The state of Maryland is easing into Phase 1 with some counties moving faster than others-parks are open, stores are open to curbside business, Starbucks is open and you can walk inside now but can't hang around. Restaurants are open for patio seating socially distanced only or take out still. If they don't have patio  seating they have to request a permit. Some areas are looking into closing off streets and parking lots to allow more seating, but that can mean less parking or ability to drive around town. And you need a reservation or take your chances standing in line. Scott was excited to see his Game Stop was open to 5 customers at a time. Sometimes you don't know what is open or not. Although all big indoor venues like shopping malls, entertainment centers, bars, movie theaters are still closed. Our one and only outdoor movie theater in Maryland just got permission to open-not sure when. Some hair salons are opening, but not ours. Too small to accommodate social distancing. We are all starting to look a bit shaggy. Good thing we had all gone to the salons early in the year and had very short hair cuts, but it is starting to catch up with us. Tom has been trying to trim the sides, but then he ends up with extra long hair on top. Forget about growing a beard-didn't work well. I keep trimming my bangs so I can see through my face shield at work. Scott wants to know what he looks like with long hair but needs a lot of gel to keep his hair straight, and Allison refuses to go back to early days of pony tails!  Hence the hats. The only one getting a trim in our family will be Cookie after I drop her off at the groomers. I had to make an appointment for her 3 weeks in advance since they were so full only grooming 1 dog at a time! And they are open 7 days/week. She will certainly appreciate the shorter coat since it has been getting hotter and muggy. I had to take her back for a check up at the vets from her infected gland-still doing the drop off in the parking lot. But she seems much better-just fluffy and hot!

Churches have permission to open or carry on outdoor services. The Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore has opted to to remain closed. Too hard to social distance at most parishes-too many people and too hard to set up chairs/huge tent in the parking lot-and then no parking. So far they are limiting indoor services to 10 people. So it is tv church for me! Girl Scouts has cancelled all summer camps-day camps and overnight camps for the summer. Boy Scouts have not officially cancelled summer, but it is looking that way. Girl Scouts are planning on a virtual camp and Allison volunteered to make a video of some activity(cooking or arts and crafts/science experiment-she has not yet decided).  She is also still busy reviewing GS Gold award projects. Guess they are happy they switched to online in the Fall. Our YMCA is offering a few exercise classes outside in the parking lots-you have to make a reservation and they only take 8 participants. If you go out in a group, numbers have to stay under 10 still. YMCA will have day camps with just 8 kids and 2 adults per group. Not sure how many groups. I am still happy to play online BINGO with the Y camp staff. We are still not pushing Scott to look for a summer job since he will be busy through June with his class and we are not sure what will be open or running when the kids get out of school mid June. Looks like most engineering internships are on hold for him.

Baltimore and Maryland have pretty much cancelled all special summer events including celebration of the 4th of July. No fireworks anywhere in our area this year. The amusement parks are still closed as well as water parks and pools, zoos. Busch Gardens is giving us a credit for our yearly passes as well as the Baltimore zoo. The Y is giving us a tax break.  I see RVs are making a comeback. Tom was never an RV type of guy. Campgrounds are open, but not all. And you need a reservation-spots are going fast. They recommend you bring our own toilet paper and hand sanitizer as people have been taking those items from the public bathrooms. The CDC does not recommend traveling out of state at this time. And if you have to, they recommend avoiding bathrooms, gas stations and fast food restaurants. What's left?  There are 2 more phases to go through until our state can reopen and they don't think we will hit Phase 3 until the end of summer. That would be when they allow us to visit Mom B in person. The discussion to open schools or not in the fall continues. Most are pushing for them to open, but maybe with varied schedules and every other day with less kids attending. Even day cares are trying to figure out how to open, especially if people start going back to work. Hurry up vaccine!

Our neighborhood continues to stay busy cleaning out closets. Since Allison is looking at renting her own apartment sometime this summer, we have been keeping our eyes open for free furniture or household goods. So far she has two Laz-Y-Boy recliner/rocker chairs, and we just picked up two new sets of Lenox silverware from the neighborhood-one for her and one for Scott when he gets an apartment. She also picked up a few lamps-one floor lamp and one table lamp, and just recently we brought home a very nice heavy wooden kitchen table with 6 chairs. The table is especially nice since it has a built in extension. Plus Tom would be happy to upgrade our couches and donate them to her , as well as our current ottoman/coffee table. She also has her full bedroom set and bed, along with her newly obtained desk and hutch and all of her kitchen stuff from college. So she really is ready to move in! And we are ready for her to move out since all of her stuff is starting to take up space!

I continue to reorganize and clean out our master closet when I get home from work early. But again, no place to take donations as of yet. And the dump is still closed to the public. Scott and I stay busy with the yard work-he cuts the lawn and I do all the trimming and raking. Both Allison and Scott have planted lots of veggies, so it will be fun to see how they do. If we can keep the squirrels from digging everything up! The wild life continues to take over. The neighborhood has been going crazy with all the fox sightings-guess they are going after the squirrels. I wish they'd come eat a few of mine!  And the deer continue to roam around eating all the flowers (and soon vegetables).  My peonies just bloomed-I brought these plants from West Bloomfield. Wish I could have shared them with Mom B. Our neighborhood is also freaking out over the Murder Hornets-the huge, yellow hornets from Asia that rip apart bee hives and can kill humans with multiple stings. Someone thinks they've sighted one every day, but they always turn out to be regular European hornets. As if COVID wasn't enough to worry about.

Besides doing yardwork and housework, schoolwork and workwork, we have been busy reading and catching up with movies and tv/cable shows. Tom and I just watched the "Maleficent 2" movie-we liked it, although Tom needed some play by plays since he never saw "Maleficent 1". We also saw "The Gentlemen" with Mathew McConaughey. Started out a bit slow and confusing, but got interesting and a bit violent. Still liked it. I also enjoyed the tv documentary on "The Roosevelts".  Especially the history around polio and Franklin D Roosevelt, including the camp and treatment center he refurbished in Hot Springs, Georgia. I knew about it, but did not know the history. I especially enjoyed watching the therapy sessions. Can't get away from the stair steps or those parallel bars!  Also busy cooking and baking. We have made quite a few banana muffins with all our ripe,  leftover bananas. Looks like everyone else is busy baking-lots of supplies missing from the baking shelves still like flour and sugar, cake and cookie mixes. I hear bread making is all the craze and it is hard to buy yeast. Still trying not to gain weight during house arrest. Fortunately for me I usually skip lunch at work since it is a big hassle to take off all the PPE before eating. And they really want us to eat our in our cars-they've removed all the tables and chairs from the break room and only allow 1-2 people in our snack shop at a time. We usually just eat at our desks since we have not had patients in our rehab gym since March, but it still feels risky. I am constantly wiping everything down with clorox wipes including computers, phones, tables and all our equipment. I see Costco removed all their tables and chairs from the snack shop and filled the area with appliances. There actually seemed to be less people shopping at Costco since their inventory seems low, especially for meat. And still a limit on the amount you can buy.

Our neighborhood also continues to organize donations, including donations for our local Food Pantry. We contributed to Scott's previous Cub Scout Pack collection, as well as a food collection put on by our local high school students. Nice for those groups to continue to participate in community affairs, even though they cannot be together. Especially for graduations and proms as the school year comes to an end. Last weekend the local high school graduates decorated their cars and had a small parade in our neighborhood. They'll also have a virtual televised graduation ceremony for all high school and college grads with Ravens football player Ray Lewis and Baseball champion Cal Ripken as guest speakers.

Many events wrapped up the month of May, including a sad event in Minneapolis of the death of a resident after being taken into custody by police. It set off multiple riots all over the US, including protests in downtown Baltimore. Fortunately as of now the damage is limited here in Maryland and no one seems to have been hurt. Unlike other more violent protests around the US, especially in Minneapolis with looting and vandalized buildings, attacks on police. Seems that people are especially frustrated at this time having been locked in their homes for so long due to the pandemic, and with so many out of work. Pray for a peaceful ending. And this week marks our vote by mail Primary Election. Tom and the kids are registered as Independent, so they can only vote for our Board of Education members at this time. And none of us can participate in the vote for Mayor of Baltimore which has been an interesting campaign. No doubt the city needs some serious help.

A happier event ended our month of May. Our family got to meet Allison's boyfriend Gabe for the first time. The two decided it was time to meet the parents! They felt since I was recently tested and came out negative for COVID, that it would be a safer time to get together. Allison did not want to spread anything to Gabe's family-both of his parents are diabetic, and his Dad has a heart condition. Plus they have traveled out of the country to Portugal prior to the shutdown. So they did not want to spread anything to us either. Currently Gabe is back living at home with his parents after he had a falling out with his college roommate. The two guys decided to part ways. Gabe is looking at possibly buying a house, but is quickly discovering how expensive they are here in the area. He really wanted a house with a yard. He'd like to put in a garden and even considered adding a chicken coop! Gabe came over late in the afternoon so he and Allison could go on a hike in nearby Patapsco State Park. They had to keep checking the web to see if the parking lots were open or not, filling up with cars. Fortunately at the park they visited, there were 5 different access points, so they got in and hiked for about 1.5 hrs. Allison said most of the people there were swimming and floating on their inner tubes in the river to cool off. They even spotted some deer and a fox when they took a shortcut heading home off the trail. When they came back, we sat outside on the patio and had a steak dinner. Gabe brought over a bottle of red Portuguese wine and some Portugal pastries. His parents are originally from Portugal. Gabe grew up in New Jersey, and the family moved to Maryland when Gabe's Dad took a job at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds where Gabe also works. Gabe also has a national security clearance like Allison. We parents managed to pick out a bit of info without being too overwhelming. We know he is 28 and Allison said he was in a serious relationship in the past, but the girl was not interested in getting married. We talked about the struggles of online dating. This was Allison's first attempt, so far so good. Gabe said he has met some strange women online. We know he has an older brother that is married with a baby on the way, and a younger sister-single and a hair stylist-all currently living with the parents. So at least Gabe is getting haircuts!  We know he went to catholic elementary school in New Jersey and was even an altar server. After dinner we sat out in the driveway and had a bonfire and cooked some s'mores and sipped some beer/wine. It was a lovely evening and we were glad that we got to finally meet Gabe. Tom especially enjoyed chatting to Gabe about computers, and I'm sure that Allison and Gabe were very happy to finally reconnect in person!

We also enjoyed watching the Spacex rocket launch of the Dragon capsule with the two astronauts from Cape Canaveral. Allison wore her NASA Dragon tshirt to mark the special event. I hear the rocket was named the Falcon after the Millenium Falcon spacecraft in Star Wars.