I certainly don’t feel like making a blog post right now… but it seems kind of important to stick to the things I planned to do if I can at all do them.
Does that make sense?
This virus is going to take long weeks or months to beat, and if I let it get to me now, I will freeze in place. And that’s not good for anyone. For me, it feels like the perfect storm of my fears, and I am sure other people feel like that, too. I’ve blogged before about my fears about losing people close to me, or having my kids lose me. And money is always a fear trigger for me.
Our house contact in the CSIRO tells us this pandemic will be over in May if we handle it well. Note: Australia is not handling this well. Our current Prime Minister has demonstrated little leadership in previous crises, and he remains true to form; garbled ad slogan statements that end up confusing everyone. ‘Slow up the spread, you free up the bed.’ ??? What on earth? Especially when in the next sentence he told us to maintain social distance of 1.5-2m apart but that going for a haircut was okay as long as it was under thirty minutes. How long does he think hair scissors are?
Schools are open, but you can only have five people at a wedding and ten at a funeral. So if a teacher dies, their whole class can’t come to their funeral? It’s dumb and confusing. And when people are confused and panicky they do stupid things. Like hoard toilet paper.
Other countries have just paid money into your bank account. The Australian government made the recently jobless queue in the street to register with an underfunded and understaffed government department to get a handout that they won’t see in their account before the second week of April. What are people going to live on? How will they buy food? Or pay their rent or their bills? And winter is coming. Never mind the stupidity of breaking the social distancing to queue for hours. Especially if people are ill. They had to call the police in to make them go home when one office closed.
There isn’t a competent person to replace him if he stood down. His whole party is mired in bad behaviour and corruption cases. Part of the PM’s issue is that he is a Prosperity Christian; you know, the ones who think God hates you if you’re poor. [I don’t think that is Christian.] It seeps into his rhetoric. He described the recently laid off as unemployed ‘through no fault of their own’ which pretty much says that all the other unemployed people are to blame for their situation. Half the country just burnt down. Do you think those people deserved that? The government toyed with a tiered unemployment payment in this crisis. Can you imagine? There would be riots.
And then they closed parliament until August. AUGUST!
This fool will kill us all.
Tragically, this has already meant suicides in my kid’s circle of friends and raised concerns about some others who are in the risk group. Honestly, we have just shafted young people; with no money, no job and with debts and no hope… sometimes people make fatal choices. I want to open my home and my heart to all of them, but I can’t. Kid 2 is immune-compromised these days.
And sadly, the US president is, if anything, worse. I wrote back in November 2016 that people will die ^^ but I had no idea it would be this many people. He just gave himself oversight on a two trillion dollar package. The same man who cannot imagine that soldiers could hand cash out to people without taking a few notes for themselves. I always think people out their own thoughts in what they accuse others of doing.
On the shiny side, and believe me I am desperate to find anything, I make bread and I stocked up on flour before lockdown, so last night we had minestrone with herbs from the garden and hot fresh bread from the breadmaker. Today there is a sourdough loaf in the oven. I got out my sewing machine and made face masks.
I have always meant to get to the cans in the back of the pantry and now I can do that. Yay. Beans and rice is a balanced protein.
And look at that loaf, she’s a beauty.
We’ll get through this. Feel free to message me here or on twitter @mtr_amg if you want to chat.
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