There Will Be A Tomorrow

I got kicked out of the office when we opened back up a couple months ago. I've been relegated to working from home so my wife can have my office, moving her out of the space she normally shares with her medical assistant, thus allowing the staff to properly practice social distancing as much as possible throughout the work day.

Figuring out how to 'safely' reopen the office for in-person visits was anxiety ridden, but we put together the equipment and supplies needed and hammered out processes in a way we were all eventually satisfied would mostly avoid killing our patients or selves.

That said, a staff member tested positive for COVID last week so we're back in lockdown doing remote only visits this week until we get new clear results back on the rest of the staff.

Luckily(?), it was the staff member who least frequently interacts with patients, is the most conscientious about using PPE, and we caught it pretty quickly with our standard screening. Most importantly, she and her family have so far been symptom free and will hopefully stay that way through the course of the infection.

She almost certainly got it from contacts in her personal life, but it's just an up close and personal reminder how vigilant we need to be until an effective vaccine is widely available.

It's taken me two months of working from home and effectively self quarantining to move through the requisite stages of goofing off, snacking too much, and becoming depressed, but I believe I've finally got a pattern and perspective to bring me back to normal . . . -ish. ( I'm still missing and suffering from a lack of socialization, putting a heavy burden on my wife in the evenings).

I even found an anchor sturdy enough to set up a workout station.

Surrounded By Joy

In the midst of it all, I live in a land of magic and wonder.

Dancing daily with dragonflies and humming birds. Honking, bleating, and chirping with an assortment of frogs or singing with wrens and a constant chorus of finches. In regular repartee with witty woodpeckers and chattering squirrels.

In the evening I take census of timid, ghostly house geckos. Check tree frog tadpoles slowly developing in the cozy environs of their nursery. Investigate if the cotton mouth is visiting the pond or any koi have gone missing. Play Where's Waldo with anoles who've crawled up to tuck themselves in on the highest fronds of the fern bed.

And I get to share it all with the beautiful soul of kindness and gentleness.

Missing

I miss . . .

. . . the theater. We were going almost every Friday, now I can't even remember the last performance we saw. (Something at Shreveport Little Theatre?)

We watched the Disney+ performance of Hamilton this weekend and were all blown away. The performances were great, but I was particularly caught up in the brilliance of the story weaving around itself, evolving thematically. I'd been wanting to plan a trip to New York, now that want's been moved up to intent, with a live performance of Hamilton as the center piece.

. . . the coffee shop. I'm desperate for a good cup of espresso and a brainstorming session. To sit in Silver Grizzly with an almost narcotic cold brew, watching people move through their individual coffee shop performances, synchronizing my own, planning in a frozen moment the set of next steps into some aspect of my future.

. . . the museum. Five years ago my relationship with art wasn't even aspirational, now there are days I know I'd be thinking and breathing so much better if I could stand quietly in the Longview Museum of Fine Arts surrounded, submerged in color and shape and story.

. . . travel. Trips with my wife to see concerts, visit museums, and be awed by nature. Personal workations to unwind my thinking about projects and processes. Trips overseas with family expanding our sense of wonder. Arkansas and Austin. Iceland and Ireland. I've finally gotten to a healthly place of acknowledging and dealing with the wanderlust that's been a drive most of my life, but now I'm getting a bit bound up again. Luckily with it being Spring and Summer, the orchard is providing a surprisingly joyful stand-in when I need to untie internal knots.

. . . the gym. I tried for the first few weeks of lockdown to create some kind of training regimen at the office with what was on hand, but that dropped off even before I had to move to my home office. All my 'gains' are going back to my waist, and it's a bit crushing.

A Dream of Millions

Consciousness as the dream of a million cells, organizing together under auspice of ancient manuscript, illuminated with flourish and error, moving forward against entropy to generate a sum of parts drawn to even greater calculation.

Covering

We finally got N95 masks in for the staff thanks to the diligent efforts of our office manager.

Masks are one of the last bits required to open the office up again, the other being COVID testing, which we're doing today. It'll still be another week before we have patients back in for visits, but I'm bringing the staff back next week to start prepping.

We need to clean, take inventory, re-set up equipment which had been moved to employee homes, make sure we're all on the same page in terms of implementing safety precautions, and then check to see if there's anything else we can do to keep patients and staff safe when we fully open the following week.

I'm quite over this whole COVID19 thing myself, but I'm also well aware COVID's not over us. If I take shortcuts out of emotional exhaustion and apathy I become culpable for causing harm which is not a situation I'll accept.

Our daily visits are down about 30% for reasons both real and specious, but our income is down by almost 50%, so while keeping staff and patients safe, I do need to figure out how to ramp things back up in shortest possible order, which is going to be the most stressful part of June for me.

I still have issues accepting I can't control all the parts of a system and, in a situation like this, non-acceptance is just fuel for a raging bonfire of anxiety. Managing that fire will be as important as solving the problem stoking it.

I also have to figure out what to do about the world at large. My wife and I have been on lockdown for the last two months, but once staff and patients return our quarantine is over. I'm unsure if or how to take advantage of that.

They gym opens back up next week, and I miss lifting, but I'm not sure it's a reasonable activity to engage in at the moment. I also need building supplies for projects at the house, and I likely will be making a Lowe's trip at some point.

I also miss the theater terribly, and while so far none of our venues have announced any performances, it's going to be a hard call when they do.

In the meantime, Gordi's released a brilliant EP out ahead of her next full album:

Morning In The Orchard

Mother Wren is in and out of her nest this morning with assorted wriggly bits. Her eggs must've hatched.

Woodpecker stops by and grumps at my proximity to the feeder, retreats to the woods to continue his complaints. I can't take a bird like that seriously.

Raucous cowardice of the bluejay: all the corvid cacophony without any of the wit.

The Gang of Squirrel is also unhappy with my repose, so many eyes glittering from pine bough and fence post, bushy tails flashing impatience for their shot at the seed cake, but I'm only half way through coffee and news, and am having a brilliant morning.

Community

I'm a very late comer to the show Community.

I like watching people be kind to each other. Thinking about it, I realize now it's one of the main reasons I'm so attracted to Robin Williams.

He was sharp as a whip and twice as fast, so there was the joy of an engaged intellect in watching him, but more than that he was charming in a way which usually came from being kind. His wit often did make others the butt of a given joke, but it rarely felt malicious, and his general behavior exhibited a genuine sense of empathy and kindness.

Similarly, Jimmy Stewart's take on Elwood Dowd in the movie Harvey. A sot, certainly, but also a person with a genuine interest in others and their well being. People were worth both his time and attention.

Community has it's share of standard sitcom characters in Jeff, Britta, and Pierce, and Shirley's depth of kindness is shallowed by the enforced connections to a judgmental form of Christianity, but Abed, Troy, Annie, and Dean Pelton are characters grounded in true affection for others. They find intrinsic meaning in treating each other with dignity and joy, even when they aren't receiving it, and I love watching them interact when they're firing on those cylinders.

I wish more shows would be brave enough to leave the sitcom snark and soap opera drama behind to tell stories about people just enjoying each other's company.

On The Other Hand . . .

Almost time for the monthly VPN visitor.

As long as you're anyone else, I'm grateful for your time and consistency.

"Am I a frame in your bigger picture?"

We received our Paycheck Protection Program loan, as well as a small loan directly from the SBA, so despite our revenue having dropped off by around 50%, we should be able to keep everyone employed and insured until August. Hopefully by that point there will have been enough improvement in treatment, PPE supply chains, and general management of things that we'll be able to be in a more normal operating position.

As it is, we're down to 2 N95 masks, were only able to order more this past Monday, and those have a 2 to 4 week lead time. So even as Governor Abbott in all his wisdom has decided to drop his shelter orders even as the Texas rate of infection climbs, I'm not opening our doors until we have the equipment to keep staff and patients reasonably safe.

I am flabbergasted by the Open Now protestors, even as I understand the anxiety they must be feeling and how easy it is for anxiety to express itself through anger. Still, the combination of ignorance, conspiracy theory, white nationalism, and right wing astroturfing leaves me almost aghast.

I've mentioned before, we've been fortunate in so many ways, even more so with these loans coming through. I would be in an incredible state of panic if I were in the employment circumstances so many people have ended up in, but I can't imagine risking other peoples health and lives just to vent that panic.

Of course the cherry on top of all this is the Yam in Chief for whom black men kneeling in protest of murder are sons of bitches, but armed white men storming public buildings for the right to spread infection are good citizens.

This has always been the county I was born to, but it is not the one I was unsuccessfully indoctrinated into believing in.

But music! Because Noah Kahan put out a new EP:

Faouzia has another new single:

As does Fenne Lily:

And a wonderful new song from Gordi:

And if that's not enough, I recently ran across a song by Scars On 45 from their eponymous 2011 album:

The charm of this song lies mostly in witty clichés: "Of everything I've lost, I miss my mind the most." "And if a look could kill you'd need a license for your face."

But the chorus holds the lines which truly capture my imagination and adoration: "If I could be just a train fare richer I'd change my needs"

For me, the story is told just in that simple phrase: A woman trapped by need and circumstance to a person and place making them want to be someone else somewhere else, who believes scraping together the cost of a ticket and the will to board a train would lead to a whole better life just a ways down the track.

Protecting What Remains