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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

A local synagogue ( we've been there before) had a swastika painted on the door yesterday. Feels like a scary time to be a Jew in the US. Or the world in general. Super satisfying to use a new drain tool to get the bathroom sink unclogged and wishing it could be an omen that ugly scum can be removed (from office). Things like this are much more interesting to me since the pandemic since we're always home. Ugly incident where restaurant across the street which has been making really unacceptable levels of noise since they began outdoor dining, has a super loud party on a Tuesday night and when I call to complain, the owner lets the birthday girl curse at me, taunt me, accuse me of being racist (how would she even know there is a difference in race between us when talking on the phone?) and hang up on me. Hard to sleep afterwards. We are all really on edge but it's still not okay what happened. 10/21/20 One of our apartment building neighbors from the new list wants to set up a Zoom call to introduce ourselves to each other! How sweet. It's very helpful to hear from them too that not only are we not the only ones being bothered by the restaurant noise but one of our neighbors wants to move out of the building because it's like having a party next door every night. I think her window faces the restaurant more directly. High school friend on Facebook says her healthy 85-year-old father has died suddenly of covid. He was a lovely man and a staunch philanthropist and community leader. Quite a good constructive conversation with the co-owner of the restaurant across the street which ends on a friendly note. Really hoping it will lead to actual improvement. I feel powerful for having pursued the matter further. He apologized profusely for last night. A difficult part of this is that he is white and the loud angry restaurant patron mentioned that she was Black, and I have to wonder from the profuseness of his apology whether he made her uncomfortable celebrating at his restaurant and so the whole blast of anger between her and me had something to do with white spaces and how Black people have to decide whether to try to suppress parts of themselves to be acceptable there -- was she being extra loud to try to take the space that was subtly unwelcoming to her? I don't know this restaurant guy but I still wish I could have figured out a way to talk to him about that, and I feel ashamed. Our local pharmacy is closing and the nearest one will now be really difficult for me to walk to given my usual pain level. It's probably because they weren't getting enough business in the pandemic. So touching and beautiful that the pope made clear today that he supports gay unions. What a lovely surprise. 10/22/20 Noticing today how much I love that S is always home with me, working from home, hardly any time away from home. I will miss all this sweet togetherness whenever it ends. It is so bananas insane that the President had the same password for his Twitter account as he gives out for wifi at rallies. And no 2-factor authentication. That doesn't bode well for security of anything else he touches. Like the nuclear football. Crying over a video of Biden comforting the son of the Parkland heroic shooting victim, holding him and kissing him on the head. I think all of us are that boy right now -- we're not okay, Biden! Please rescue us! And also, what a beautiful vision, a politician being so genuinely nurturing. I miss President Obama with tearful intensity. L, the same person who made the hilarious ballot box video, went to the ER this morning because she has a painful swelling in her throat and her covid test results from 3 days ago still aren't back so her doctor doesn't want her coming in there, and meanwhile her daughter can't go to school... Our good friend C got her first acting job since the pandemic. She wrote, attaching a picture of herself with a bag of surgical masks: "First booking since Covid. Luckily, it’s a Netflix show and by all accounts, they have the strictest policies to keep everyone safe.  Instead of a fitting, I had a pcr test a couple of days ago.  I was asked to stay extra vigilant between booking and shooting. Had to download an app with daily questionnaires on my health.  Another PCR test when I arrived.  Mountains of documents all sent to me virtually.  No more paper scripts or sides.  A long list of what I can expect on set was sent immediately after my booking. A large bag of PPE was given to me when I arrived. Crew wears tracking watches for contact tracing.  I’m only allowed to take off my mask in my dressing room, in the make up chair, and when filming.  It feels like this is the only show shooting on the entire lot. All in all, I feel much safer than a trip to smart and final.  This is the new normal for a while." Because of my identity having been stolen (for covid relief fraud) and some scary notifications lately that people in India and other countries are trying to get into my Google account, we spent a bunch of money getting two physical security keys and now I'm protected by Advanced Protection -- nobody can sign in to my account on a new device without one of these keys. Now need to make sure the physical keys are in separate and convenient enough places! At the beginning of the pandemic I was terrified the supply chain for everything would fail. So far no,but it makes me anxious that our Amazon subscribe and save (which we do feel guilty about using given their atrocious labor practices but we can't go to stores!) has begun to cancel more of our subscriptions, last month the cat treats, bamboo supplement and Allerpet cat dander treatment. We need those things and I'm anxious that we won't be able to get them reliably. Attended the pet loss grief support group in Michigan via Zoom and really got a lot out of it this time, cried hard over our lost cat and was able to comfort a person who just put her cat to sleep last week. "He thought he was going to wake up with me like normal. And he was still so alert and purring when I took care of him." I kept crying about that all day, remembering how agonizing that was for us, putting our beloved baby to sleep when she still might have been able to have good days. Comforted myself about thinking about how guilty we might have felt if we had seen she was having terrible days, instead of having them looming. Our goodbye with her was so loving and sweet, and we couldn't have had that beautiful last few days if we hadn't acted before she was in agony. I miss her so painfully and feel a grief related to bonding more with our current cat, as well as the climate of loss and death in this pandemic era. I think I saw this recently on Twitter: "Why do we have to love those who we will lose? Because there's nobody else to love." Shiva minyan for R who I barely know. Because of Zoom there are a lot of random people there who don't understand what shiva is and I explained it for them and gently urged them to be quiet and listen to R. I will really miss being able to attend so many shiva minyanim when we go back to having them in person. Also felt worried afterwards that I had talked too much, just second guessing myself. Baked pluot cobbler from the paper-plate-scribbled recipe B gave us and thinking of her with love, wishing she would come out of her coma. I watched the debate to the extent I could stand it, and I'm so glad it's over, but hard to sleep afterwards. Really preoccupied with wanting to eat irrational things and feeling so anxious about whether the lunatic might win again. It would be such a catastrophe. He already has been. 10/23/20 Such a cliche nightmare last night, I have a part in a play but I've never rehearsed it and don't know my lines and they expect me to have come up with a song and someone in the cast has covid! And I'm trying to get there but my cat is in the car and might get out... Delightful talk with my aunt. I asked her, in these scary times, is there anything else you would want to have said to me if G-d forbid we never got to speak again? And we thanked each other for how close we are and told each other some of the things that make our relationship so precious (honesty, how we get each other, how we can say anything). J's daughter and her husband seem to have a reinfection of covid, oh no! As if that family hasn't been through enough! 10/24/20 Sweet restful shabbos evening eating pluot cobbler in honor of B and thinking about her. E's bat mitzvah. We wouldn't have been able to attend if it weren't over Zoom because I couldn't travel that far, so it was very moving and lovely to be with them and see them present her with her homemade tallit and see her burst immediately into tears -- loved having her be so open about her emotions. She spoke eloquently about how the trauma of having to leave her birth family left her with challenges, and noticed that Noah and the animals on the ark had to leave so much  behind and must have grieved so deeply for everything they lost. Bawled our eyes out. Also felt jealous of A and C for being honored during the service. Once we were closer to that family and would have been honored, ouch. Just before lunchtime, thunderbolt news: R, C's girlfriend, one of S's bandmates, is positive for covid. S was just there a week ago for band practice, out in the yard. She probably didn't catch it until after he was there, thinks she got it from a gathering with coworkers out in their yard to eat pizza (they also go out to the grocery store to do their own shopping unlike us), but this is definitely the nearest it's come to us. The biggest risks we have taken are S going to pick up and ship packages inside a UPS store (twice now), going inside his practice space building, and going to C's yard for outdoor, distanced band practice, and I am really stunned and scared by this proximity to us. I hope they'll be okay! We have sent them a food delivery gift card. But of course, as human minds do, ours turn to what this means for us. This could really put the kibosh on band practice for S, which is part of what keeps him going. By the time they're out of quarantine the weather could start being more unreliable, really can't practice in the rain outside. Now we are debating, should we get tested ourselves? I look into testing at home and find in the act of exploring I have accidentally finalized an order for at home tests from Safeway to be delivered tomorrow, no payment has been collected or anything, but if we want to go through with this it would be almost $300 and we don't know whether our insurance will reimburse any of it. That might be too much for just a peace of mind/knowing we don't have to quarantine test. Meanwhile sent a message to our doctor's office asking if we even need to get tested. 10/25/20 Didn't sleep well, bad pain, nightmares about our cat swallowing a needle (eek!!). To my surprise, the doctor's office answers yes, we must quarantine and get tested. So we've made appointments tomorrow for what we hope can be a drive-through test (it's definitely outside at a tent, one way or the other).  What really helps with quarantine this morning is the Window Swap website -- I luck into one with a snowy window and watch it for quite a while and tell myself it's too snowy to go outside (it actually doesn't ever snow in our climate). We just filmed and submitted our own window recently and hope it gives someone else a similar feeling sometime. C posting about her pod and how they are getting ready to have a first birthday party for little R makes me feel sad and left out. Wish we could have a pod. 10/26/20 It was exciting to go outside of our apartment today even though it was to go get the first in-person covid test I've had (I sent in swab and blood samples to a public health study before). I haven't been out since Friday morning, generally rest inside on Shabbat and started quarantine Saturday night. It's a beautiful bright day! I was a bit nervous because the instructions for the appointment at the mobile testing center were vague ("this site accommodates both drive-through and walk-up appointments"). Because of my physical condition, when I go somewhere new, I don't know how well it's going to go for me -- I can't stand in a line for very long (I can usually walk around longer than I can stand still, but that isn't always feasible and especially might not work for a socially distanced line, which I have never yet stood in because we don't go shopping). I brought my cane and the kinds of pain relief I would be able to use in that situation (heat patch mainly, which I'm not using much of these days), and I tried to call the front office as the appointment drew near to confirm that I'd be able to stay reclined in the car, but couldn't get through on the phone, so both of us were feeling a little worried. I was also remembering the time I got swabbed for swine flu in I think 2009, which was a pretty uncomfortable test -- they really jammed the swab way far up into my sinuses. Wasn't looking forward to having that done again, and was a bit concerned that S would start having a dramatic nosebleed from something being stuck so far up his nose. We pondered before we left about the Nozin disinfectant stuff we usually put around the edge of our noses before leaving the apartment (something we've been doing since late 2019 after reading about it in the NY Times) and decided it's totally contraindicated when going to have one's nose swabbed for virus -- funny that they wouldn't instruct us to be careful about not putting anything in our noses before the test because I would think that would matter! I enjoyed being on the freeway on the way there because I haven't been on the freeway since we took a nature walk in July during our "pandemic vacation" time off at home. This tent testing center is set up in the parking lot of a store where we used to shop for Passover every year, since closed. The test was anticlimactic, a big relief -- we pulled in, they confirmed who we were, and the nurse practitioner came around to each window to do the swab. S barely felt it, for me it was a little unpleasant, maybe because I have to be reclined to be in the car and the angle made it go further in? I felt like I was either going to sneeze or burst out inappropriately laughing as she tickled the far reaches of my sinuses with prolonged swirly thoroughness, because honestly it felt a little violating, but I did neither, and then we were finished. We will get test results by Fri and we need to quarantine until then. Our cat was confused and unhappy about our both being gone for about an hour. She's not used to that these days! Meanwhile the sociopath in chief is poised on the verge of making the Supreme Court 6-3 full of right wing zealots who will kill people and destroy their lives for many years to come. It raises my blood pressure so much and I feel so helpless. That's it -- the vote is done and they confirmed her. I'm just sick with helpless rage and dread. She will go start destroying our lives tomorrow. My friend T just got married this weekend and their wedding could be ruled illegitimate by this right wing extremist they have confirmed tonight. 10/27/20 Trouble sleeping, so upset about Amy Coney Barrett. In RBG's seat! In RBG's quarters! As if she were qualified, a person who has never argued a case in front of the Supreme Court! Glee from the right, GOP account tweeting that she was confirmed with "Happy birthday Hillary," (so petty and juvenile), the fact that they held ANOTHER unmasked please-super-spread event to celebrate even though they know the event to introduce her was a super spreader!, and just dreading the way this packed court will try to steal the election and deny rights to women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people... During the night our sweet cat snuggled up so close to me, I don't know if I was clutching her with a special intensity or it's just getting a little chillier or what, but she was putting her little feet in the crook of my elbow as I held her, and it was so reassuring and helped me sleep some. Hate not being able to go out for a walk until we get our covid test results. H in Kenya tells me they get covid test results in 24 hours. Ours could take 4 days.