Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles

This will probably be my last post on this blog, unless something surprising and dramatic happens in the future—and hey, if this last year and a half has taught us anything, it's that surprising and dramatic things happen. Here's all the big, good news I have: ❤️      I, my partner, and all of our immediate family members are fully vaccinated and have been since late April. We officially all survived to get the vaccine, including most notably my lovely 87-years-young grandmother. ❤️      My partner gave birth to our second child, a beautiful baby girl, who unfortunately spent three days in the NICU as a very small, very-nearly-premature baby with low blood sugars, but is now healthy and growing strong. ❤️    The spread of the virus is lower than ever in the US (if I'm reading the data right), and in my area, the government's mask mandate has been lifted for vaccinated people. ❤️    My partner and I got to hang out with a fri...

I stopped updating this blog on a regular basis because, after months of hoping for the best,  nothing was really changing . Fortunately, that's not exactly the case several months later. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of COVID-19 cases, deaths, pandemic-deniers, and people just not taking things as seriously as they should. But hey, we've just had more vaccinations than cases in the US , which is such a freaking relief to see. Oh yeah, there are a few vaccines available since I last posted any pandemic updates and more on the way, and we now have a president who seems to take the pandemic seriously, and the last one instigated a failed coup d'état attempt, and in retrospect I really picked a bad time to stop blogging about these things. That said, I'll leave all of that stuff for the history books to explain, and keep this blog focused on my own experiences during the pandemic that has now overflowed into 2021. Through some combination of bein...

A lot has happened since I last posted here. Multiple holidays have come and gone, my parents had a COVID-19 scare that fortunately turned out alright, and most fortunately I've got a job again! Unemployment hasn't been fun. Not that it ever is, but combined with the following factors: The pandemic The lack of unemployment compensation due to the pandemic The lack of stimulus checks because America The transition into the "everything is dying and it's cold as heck" season I was getting especially stressed out to the point that I was starting to not feel like myself anymore. Even the small things I would normally do to improve my mental health were constantly out of reach. I would talk to friends and find it difficult to focus on what they were saying. I would have a drink in the middle of the day. I would tell everyone I was alright and most of the time I believed it. I knew I was getting worn down. I knew I was floating toward some form of depression. I started b...

Despite the pandemic, I had a wonderful Father's Day weekend. On Saturday I took my daughter for a long morning walk and then grilled burgers for my family in the afternoon. Despite the forecast predicting thunderstorms all afternoon, the weather seemed to work around our plans by only raining for a bit after the morning walk, while we ate dinner under the protection of our outdoor umbrella, and while we spent some time inside the house to digest before going back outside for s'mores over our new fire pit. On Sunday my partner surprised me with my favorite breakfast (eggs benedict), a few gifts, and the fact that she'd reserved us a time to visit the zoo in the afternoon. As everyone who reads this blog is aware, the Milwaukee County Zoo was perhaps the thing I missed the most about the pandemic shutdown and I was really, really excited to hear that it would be opening up with new safety precautions . Not only was it a fun place to spend an hour or two last year, but our da...

After venting my anger at the man who thinks it's okay to gas peaceful protesters and a priest out of her own church to take a photo  last week and watching protests intensify, devolve into riots ( possibly perpetrated by far-right instigators  and otherwise opportunistic white folks , like this guy with a bow and arrow ), and be escalated by absolutely unnecessary police brutality , I thought it'd be good to focus on the positive stuff today. Uplifting Protest News Firstly, in positive protest news, it's important to note that most of the protests are, in fact, peaceful, and the majority of police are trying their best to keep the peace. Of particular note are several instances of police walking with protesters such as in Flint and  in New Jersey  (showcasing a proper example of deescalation and how to serve and protect). Likewise, there are examples cropping up of  peaceful protesters turning rioters over to police  to prevent escalation by outsiders. Se...

It feels poetic that shortly after my previous post reiterated how bad an idea it is to relax self-isolation efforts, my home state of Wisconsin reported experiencing two weeks of sustained decline of new COVID-19 cases and subsequently the relaxation of restrictions on some businesses . For the most part nothing is changing, but small retail stores may now reopen for in-person shopping of up to five customers at a time with social distancing practices. Of course, the fact that newly-reported cases are back down to below 200 per day for the first time since April 27th is a good thing and evidence that efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 are working. I'm just personally not sold on the idea that loosening restrictions is the best response to this development. That said, the extent to which restrictions have been loosened is so incredibly small that I can't help but wonder if this is just our governor's way of trying to keep his political opponents and the folks protes...

We had quite the busy weekend, such that it felt even more full than the three-day-weekend I took last week. The weather cooperated for the most part, which helped a lot. My partner and I, with the help of her father, were able to make some real progress on expanding our vegetable garden and even erect a brand new storage shed. Pictured: Our daughter, the foreman, inspects my father-in-law's progress on the shed. While I was in charge of watching our daughter, I was even able to take her out on a run using our running stroller for the first time! It was really rough on my arms and definitely more difficult without being able to actually use them to keep my momentum, but she kept shouting "WEEE!" during the run so I'd call that 100% worth it. Beyond that, there was a lot of playtime with our daughter, good food eaten, and many laughs had. There were several moments of the weekend where it was incredibly easy to forget that we're...

I've gotta say that the four-day work week feels just about perfectly balanced with the three-day weekend I just had. We should really consider switching to this kind of schedule as a society sometime. The weather still hasn't quite been cooperating, unless you count that I needed it to rain for my early spring weed & feed mix to be more effective. Of course fortunately my partner and I got a lot of our big springtime outdoor work done back when it was warm for a week and it's not like we can really go outside anyway. Aside from all the beautiful and adorable growth of our daughter, the biggest news of this week is that we (but mostly my partner) painted our big hallway in the color that will eventually cover the majority of our house. We really like how it turned out, which is good because we bought a five-gallon bucket of that paint so we're pretty committed at this point. Here's a before and after photo: As far as mental states during a...

So it turns out there's not much to blog about when nothing new happens. Go figure. Complacency is definitely setting in. Working from home, my partner not working, and not seeing people is feeling normal now. It snowed for a bit yesterday afternoon, then the sun came out and melted it all, and then it snowed again and stayed snowy overnight. So that was weird. I haven't been out for a run since my 5K in large part because the weather has decided not to cooperate. I know it's only temporary but it's a real bummer to have these cold days come back after getting a glimpse of what a beautiful spring week could be. The warm weather went a long way toward things feeling kind of okay. However, in good news: we've got a new brick fire pit on our patio to replace the store-bought metal one that rusted away over the winter! It was a gift from my in-laws, constructed by my father-in-law who's always eager for a project. He also finished constructing the ...

Well here we are at our first holiday in quarantine: Easter. In previous years my partner and I would first have brunch at her parents' house and then dinner at my parents' house. In both cases we would fill up on delicious food while enjoying the company of our family, hopefully while also enjoying some pleasant spring weather. We knew things would be different this year since our daughter is a year old, but of course we didn't anticipate a worldwide pandemic and quarantine. Fortunately we're still able to go to my in-laws' house because they're part of our 5-person quarantine group, though it will be with a few fewer guests than usual and for dinner instead of brunch. Unfortunately, although neither of my parents are working right now and are therefore not exposed to strangers every day, they're still outside of our 5-person quarantine group. We won't be able to see them or my brother and grandma for Easter, and I won't be able to e...

This week has been going pretty well so far. My partner is killing it as a full-time mom and she even used her free day yesterday (our daughter is still going to be cared for by her grandparents on Wednesday mornings) to do some room painting, cleaning, organizing, and other productive stuff. I try to check in with how she's doing mentally pretty frequently and it sounds like she's enjoying the extra time with our daughter and the opportunity to get some things done around the house. Our daughter herself seems to be growing so much and living her best life every single day. It's a real treat to be able to leave my home office for a minute to see her whenever I want to, because her joy is infectious and she makes me so proud. As for me, I've definitely had some rough moments mentally this week. In particular, I had a tough morning on Monday just worrying about everything, and yesterday's blog post was tough to write because the gravity of the situation–even this ...

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I did indeed run the Milwaukee Marathon Virtual 5K race yesterday and I wasn't totally alone–my partner and daughter came with me to go for a walk around the park and cheer me on! I'm proud to say that it went very well! I ended up not only running faster than I have been recently (which was my goal), but I also ran 5K in a personal record time of 25 minutes and 44 seconds! In all, because my measuring of the route was imperfect, I actually ended up running a total of 3.28 miles in 27 minutes and 10 seconds, which actually itself would have still been a personal record for a 5K run. Yeah, I'm still bummed that the full event was cancelled because of this COVID-19 pandemic, but I and my lovely, supportive family managed to make it a special event regardless. Stay healthy and sane! -Ryan

This morning I came across this article  reporting on how people in Jalandhar, Punjab are now able to clearly see a section of the beautiful Himalayan mountain range from their homes 143 miles away for the first time in their lives–and historically for the first time since WWII–because of the lockdown. This echoes the story that went viral a few weeks back about the Venice canals returning to their natural clarity. Except while the Venice canals merely look prettier but are not necessarily healthier with reduced human intervention, the Himalayan mountains have been revealed specifically by the reduced amount of garbage being pumped into the air. Consider it this way: those mountains should be visible to this town all the time, but the younger residents didn't even know what they were missing because of how gradual the change has been over the last 75 years. It's stuff like this that makes climate change so infuriatingly difficult to talk to people about–few people seem...

For the first time in a while, the weather forecast doesn't look very depressing. It looks like we're going to have temperature highs of at least 48F and the low is only going to just barely approach freezing a few more times, with only a few days of rain in the near future. This is much-needed, since the COVID-19 pandemic has otherwise had everyone stuck indoors. Of course it would be nicer if we could get outside and actually do things  in the nice weather, but I'll take it for what it's worth. I watched a news clip where a local police captain talked about how people are encouraged to get outside while complying with social distancing rules. "As this goes on longer and longer and people understand what it's about, we will increase our enforcement, and if people are blatantly violating the order, we will make arrests and issue citations," Zalewski said. It makes me wonder if, as the weather improves, there's going to be a point ...

The idea of starting a third whole week of this isolated lifestyle is suffocating, as I'm sure you agree. Fortunately I have a little bit of good news. We were keeping tabs on my brother-in-law's progress through his unknown illness since he revealed it to us , and based on his description of the symptoms and his incredibly quick recovery we've determined–insofar as we can without being medical professionals–that he had a mundane cold or flu and not COVID-19. Not only is that good for him and my partner's parents, but it meant there was once again the option of our family seeing them on the regular again. After talking about it and discussing the pros and cons yet again, my partner and I have decided to resume taking our child to her grandparents' house for the mornings of the workweek. We have no idea how long this pandemic and resulting isolation is going to last, but we're going to take advantage of what little luxuries we feel comfortable with for...