Wuhan coronavirus impacts (a personal and partial list)

A partial catalog of personal activity and observation brought to you by covid-19

Early on:

• Missing live music on Saint Patrick's Day
• Looking first in the toilet paper aisle on every trip to the grocery store
• Social distancing
• Morbid fascination with films like the 1995 movie, Outbreak
• Recognizing the names of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx
• Not being able to attend Mass in person
• Looking at hand sanitizer with strange new respect
• Saying goodbye to self-serve donuts at gas stations like Sheetz
• Using a drive-through coffee window for the first time
• Saying the rosary with friends on a porch rather than in a church outbuilding
• Thankful that my parish got its Lenten Mission with this priest done before gatherings became problematic

Three weeks in:

• Praying especially for waitresses, bartenders, hair stylists, baristas, nurses, and travel agents
• Remembering that the drive to and from work used to be "decompression time"
• Doing Camp Gladiator workouts over Zoom video
• Sympathizing with truckers, musicians, and supply chain managers
• Wondering how long dad's senior living complex will be in lockdown
• Marveling at the companies now making ventilators and other necessities outside their usual bailiwicks
• Buying bread from a deli that can no longer offer sit-down dining
• Smiling ruefully at apocalyptic headlines in tabloids like The Globe
• Pleased that my son and his girlfriend made it safely to Denver and back before air travel got exponentially more difficult

Four weeks in:

• Sanitizing steering wheels with antibacterial wipes
• Tracking covid-19 statistics on several different websites
• Ordering more bratwurst than was strictly necessary to help the neighborhood pub pay bills
• Commiserating with a teenager going through the most constrained spring break of her life
• Noticing that even the library book drop is closed
• Relieved that The Art of Manliness is still going strong
• Wondering why people who say this is not the Wuhan coronavirus aren't scrubbing texts of  terms like "Spanish flu" and "German measles"
• Watching musicians stream concerts from their living rooms
• Re-reading Max Brooks' apocalyptic 2006 novel, World War Z partly because it was banned in China (where the zombie outbreak in that book started)
• Trying to reach a friend from Nepal who'd been a movie theater usher
• Speculating about whether J.R.R. Tolkien's "one ring to rule them all" was actually a roll of Charmin

Approaching the new normal:

• Hearing from a doctor that his hospital is limited in the number of medical procedures it can perform because so many staffers have to stay home with their children
• Dialing into a "chemotherapy education class" where I could not otherwise be a guest
• Talking my daughter through an essay assignment over the phone
• Hoping for a resurgence of drive-in movie theaters
• Appreciating daily inspiration shared in text messages from the Regnum Christi movement
• Studying the habits of neighborhood rabbits between video meetings and teleconferences
• Learning from Fr. Z. that the Latin word for chickpea is "cicero"
• Calling friends and relatives in other states to hear what they're going through
• Enjoying Banana Chocolate Milano cookies when Target was conveniently out of other brands
• Praying to stay strong for my immuno-compromised sweetheart
• Learning how to be a better helpmate
• Smiling at how Uncle Jim up the road continues to email links to stories in USA Today that he thinks I should read
• Impressed by the literate way friend Alice brought the Donner Party into covid-19 conversation
• Rolling my eyes at some of the crazy
• Feeling protective of my adopted region, which isn't nearly as benighted as some people in New York and New England seem to think

Overheard: 

A staff member with a temporal artery thermometer came to check Da's temperature while I was on the phone with him. Da's side of the conversation cracked me up:

"Come in!"

[...]

"Temperature? I don't have one. I died last week."