Monday: March 30, 2020
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, I have developed a routine for myself. I wake up at 8:00 and probably spend one hour emailing my fiancée till 9:00 and then going to eat breakfast. From breakfast, I wash up and do homework until around lunchtime. I’m never hungry around lunch, but since all the stores are sold out of bread, I am on bread duty making white bread, french bread, etc. Today, I made focaccia bread. I can never entirely stay on task for too long, so today, my younger sister and I decided to bake more. Before the quarantine started, we bought all the necessities. Still, me being a huge sweet tooth, I opt for baking to not only pass my time and to satisfy my craving. From there, I did more homework, which most of my days usually consist of, until dinner time where my sisters and I muscled up something to eat. During this time, the news is often on, describing the events, death tolls, and such. I live in Hodges SC on Lake Greenwood. In our community, everyone is roughly a few blocks apart. Sometimes I perceive myself as being isolated from the world. I wonder if any of us have it, and the symptoms haven’t developed it. I count down in my heads the days since we went into the grocery store. What if we got something in there? What if I have it? What if I am spreading it? Out of the family, I am the harshest about not going out even out to the grocery store. I know that If one of us catches the virus, sadly I fear most of us will end up dead. Even with all the questions in my head, I tend to silence myself, knowing that my family, as of now, is in one of the best circumstances. No one around us, we are not in the city, and we keep everyone at a distance. That night I had a movie to watch for my cinema class and my sister, and I decided to watch it together before going to bed.
Tuesday: March 31, 2020
I try to never go out. I really do, unless it is to help my grandma with groceries, which we have only done twice since the start of the pandemic, but this was a day I had to go out for a lengthy amount of time. I have terrible allergies to the point I used to always have my inhaler around. To help with my serve allergies I get 2 shots, once a week, every week. After
I get these shots I must stay there in the medical center for 30 minutes in case I go into anaphylaxis. Today was the day. I did my usual routine and got in my car to drive there. At this moment, the pandemic was so bad I was advised to wear gloves and mask, with hand sanitizer and Lysol in my car to spray myself after the procedure. Once I got there, I sat in my car and called to tell them I am here and ready for my shots. They are only letting two people in at a time to get the shots to decrease the contact. They also asked me questions like, have you been around anyone that has been diagnosed with the coronavirus? Have you been out of the country? Have you had any upper respiratory issues? That last question was the hardest to answer. For the last few days, I was experiencing a sore or tightness in my throat, making it a little difficult to breathe. I didn’t know it was because of the pollen and springtime or something else, but when I told them, “Yes, I have had a sore throat for a few days.” It terrified me to come to reality and think that I may be sick. For a moment, there was silence on the phone as my usual nurse, Mark, pauses, and talks to the doctor in the back. All I could hear was muffle until he broke the silence to tell me to come inside, not to touch anything, and go straight to the room in the back. I sanitized my hands, put on my gloves, my mask, and sprayed myself down with Lysol. Once I made it to the back room, and they poked both of my arms with the needles, I was walked to the waiting room in which I usually sit for my 30 minutes. For those long minutes, I tried not to think about anything just wait, make sure I am at a distance from everyone until I am able to go home. When that did happen, and I got to my car, I did the procedure again: hand sanitizer, Lysol, take off gloves and mask.
Wednesday: April 1, 2020
I would love to say something interesting here or how I was surviving, but honestly, I had a migraine. From the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, I was cooped up in my room with all the lights off and curtains closed.
Thursday: April 2, 2020
This morning I decided to wake up my sisters, who usually are night owls and sleep till 12, and we all made pancakes together. As we did that, my grandmother assigned our chore for the day. My little sister and I, who like the outdoors more, are sent out to go into one of the empty lots in search of some of the onions that grow there. It is weird sounding, but we are running out of onions. So, my little sister and I strip into our hiking gear to head out. My grandparents grew up very poor and kind of lived the American Dream and worked up in life to become middle to the upper class. Still, they are never ones to spend much money, they are thrifty through and through, so rituals like this are not weird for us. We ride the golf cart to the empty lot and head on it trying to find good ones. It took a wee bit of digging, trial, and error before we got good-sized ones and put them in our basket to take home. Once I got back, I heard the news from the New York Times. Greenville SC, out of all the cities in the United States, is the most unsafe for the coronavirus outbreak. So, it seems that no one in that town is abiding by the quarantine rules, social distancing, nor wearing masks and gloves. My parents live there, we haven’t seen them in weeks. Hearing that news only left the worst questions and scenarios in my head.
Friday: April 3, 2020
Since I cannot go out, I try to do one recreational activity every day besides homework. I don’t get a lot of time with my sisters. My work is one of my top priorities, and I am very conscious of my grades. While my sisters are at home, they tend to take care of themselves while my parents work all day. So, quarantine as allowed me to spend a lot of time with them. Today, I decided to steer away from listening to the news and get away from the idea of what’s happening. I feel that is wrong of me, but I did not want to think about it. As I did homework for the morning, my grandma organized all her magazines, collecting over a hundred of them for me to cut out recipes for my cookbook or for my sister’s project. My sister and I both sat down on the floor of my room one by one, cutting up over a hundred magazines into collective pieces while listening to my record player. This process probably took three hours.
Saturday: April 4, 2020
This pandemic is going to get worst. My day today was mostly homework, typing up a project I have for my sociology class. But now I can honestly say that people are stupid, people are not taking this seriously, and these people are people I know personally. I have an old friend from high school. Throughout the pandemic, she has posted how this is a government scam, there is no real virus, they shouldn’t close nonessentials because she needs her hair dye. But today I open it up, and there is her partying with her friends and a whole group of them going into abandoned factories around Maudlin. To make it even worst, another friend of mine that used to go to Lander posted her at a huge party or rally on campus. There were probably a little more than 30 people there, and a bunch of the frat guys was wearing mask for their performance. No one else was. I sound critical here of them, but when seeing that, all I could think of was how they are not only putting themselves at risk but their friends and family. What will it take for people to learn and to lower the curve? Honestly, I don’t know.
Sunday: April 5, 2020
My routine starts over again, I wake up to email my fiancée for the small amount of time I usually get with him and go get breakfast. Good Morning America is on and fortunately enough
I made it upstairs during the social media part or cute video segment, something that wasn’t about the virus. The start of my day is quite dull because usually I always wake up before my sisters, who are traditionally my entertainment during the day. Anyhow, I make the most of it by deciding to do my homework in my hammock on the porch. It is funny how before the quarantine, all the days at school were raining, muggy, and depressing. At least for me who hates cloudy days, and once quarantine starts, they have been the most beautiful days. It’s honestly unbelievable how pretty the days are. Always sunny, barely a cloud in the sky, and temperatures warm enough to bask in. If the lake water was warmer, I’d be spending every day out in the water swimming to the rocks that peak out near my dock. The rest of the day, I was either doing homework on the hammock or in my room where my sister plays video games. Though some may say that it is not very good to allow my sister to play video games while I do work, but if she is not here, I tend to wander and get distracted.
1) How are things going for you?
Personally, things are going as well as they could be. I feel that to truly get through quarantine; it helps to have a routine. Most of my days revolve around homework and finding small activities to do during the day to pass the time. Out here, it’s much more comfortable and less scary than what I would feel if I was in Greenville. I can go out of my house without the notion or fear that I could get sick or must wear a mask. I don’t quite know how to explain life in this pandemic, mostly out here. Quiet, minimal, everything seems far enough away. I wake up to Lake Greenwood, and I go to sleep looking at Lake Greenwood. What once was a lake full of people at the sand dunes on sunny days are replaced with a few silent strolling boats throughout the day.
2) Describe your work, noting if there was anything of particular interest:
My work changes every day, of course, while I am at my grandparents’ house, I have the chores and rules of everyday life. Every day revolves around my schoolwork, and with it being online is a plus in some respects. I am one of those people who love to write down everything. So, with my lectures online, I can put on subtitles and make it as slow as I need them to be to comprehend everything. I used to work as a tutor, but I decided to take a semester off tutoring to focus on my transition from nursing to history. Now I am fortunate enough to not have a job during this pandemic.
3) Has anything changed since the previous week? If so what? How do you think and/or feel about these changes?
4) Have you been following local news about COVID-19 or other important stories? If so, what developments were there? What did learn about these events make you think and/or feel?
Every day around dinner time, the whole living room is full of silence. My grandpa in his chair, my grandma in the kitchen, my older sister on the couch, and my younger sister and me on the bar. All of our eyes are on the news. We may be doing other things, but barely any words are exchanged. Dramatic, but I feel as if that speaks to what it feels like. Each day it gets worst. From the start, people were getting sick, a lot of people were getting sick, and then today you hear a lot of people are dying. It is not a lot of people but the most deaths ever in a 24-hour period from the coronavirus, more than 1,000 people all from the US. Everyone stares at the screen listening to the president, and the doctor speaks the words no one wants to hear. They say that this is not the end, and this is not the worst. Since we heard of this, we pledge not to go out for the next two weeks. We have been in strict quarantine unless it is going to the store, and when we do, it is one person with a mask and gloves on. But for now, no one goes out. For me, the news that hit me the worst was one where the outbreak had gone rapid on a navy ship underway, where many of the sailors have gotten infected. While listening to the story on the news, I started crying. My fiancée, who is in the navy, currently is on one of those ships that have gone underway during this crisis. Though when I heard he had to leave, I was delighted, in my mind, I’d rather he be safe on a ship far away from this than to get sick and me not be able to get to him. When I heard this news, it tore me to pieces to know or to grasp that this is no joke, this virus does not discriminate, and it will infect people everywhere no matter what.
5) Have you been following national or international news about COVID-19 or other important stories? If so, what developments were there? What did learning about these events make you think and/or feel?
6) Is there anything else you would like to add?
I have found out that both of my parents, who work daily in Greenville, have come into contact with people infected with the virus. At my mom’s work, three people have been diagnosed with the virus, and because of this, they are letting everyone out for two weeks on paid leave. At my father’s work, they had already recognized one person with it. They closed the factory down for a day or two to clean, but my father knows that they could not have cleaned enough to protect people. Yesterday he called us to say that another person has been infected with the virus, and there is closing it for one day of cleaning.
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