Working Mom – Travel Dreams

We all have stress in our lives but I have been having a bit more than usual over the last few months. My body is starting to crumble under the pressure.  My hair has started to fall out. My psoriasis has started to flare up on my elbow. I’m having trouble sleeping…

It isn’t the pandemic. It started way before that.  My friend’s mom passed around Thanksgiving. In an effort to help her not sit around and mope through the holidays I spent more time with her than usual putting myself behind on my own holiday stuff.  I just could not get caught up. I am use to having all my shopping done way before Thanksgiving and wrapping everything on Black Friday then I can sit back, relax and enjoy the holidays. As I struggled to pull it all together at the last minute the stress began. After the 1st of the year, everyone decides to take better care of themselves and work gets super busy, for about a month then it drops off.  With February my sister’s house caught on fire so I was helping her sort through everything so repairs could start.  A week after that school was canceled and the state went on lock down.

I am not alone in this time of stress.  People are freaking out and are worried about their future and the future of their families. My request in this time of global stress is to try to take a step back, take a deep breath and know that you have this. Think logically. Try to help those in need if you can. most off all… Take care of yourself.

Let me star by saying I am soooo over hearing about the Corona virus and the hysteria it has caused. People are NOT staying calm. People have lost their damn minds.

My day job I work in the medical field. It’s boring after 24 years but I’m good at it and it pays well. Through the media, everyone is an expert on how I should clean my equipment. I clean everything between patients just as I have for the last 24 years. I’m also a bit of a germaphobe. Until recently, my co workers have teased me about when patients touch my ungloved hand and I touch nothing with that hand until I can wash it. Needless to say I have grown very weary of people and their crazy requests…seriously crazy. Like insisting that my ultrasound exam chair that weighs at least 300 lbs should be packaged and sterilized like operating room instruments between patients. Um 1. This is not an operating room 2. The chairs and tables in the operating room are not packaged and sterilized either. She was insane and yelling at me and insisted on talking to my supervisor because I have no idea what I’m doing. Yeah, not a problem. I’ll walk you over to her office as long as I don’t have to stay here listening to you.

Then there are the hand sanitizer people. Bathing every inch of exposed skin in the hand sanitizer in the hall outside my office. Hands, arms, necks, faces, legs… if it’s exposed it’s getting sanitizer! I had a patient clean her paperback book with hand sanitizer…even the pages. But by far the worst is every single person takes off their masks as soon as they get in the exam room with me. Why? Sick or not they take off the mask the well ones complain about cleaning everything. The sick ones cough in my face. Yes, you heard me right. These are not kids. These are adults. Adults that knew enough to wear a mask to protect everyone else that then take off the mask and cough in my face with no effort to cover it at all. With the outbreak this has become a problem to the point there was a meeting Thursday afternoon to figure out how to deal with this since we are just starting to see this virus.

People are loosing their minds. We are more prepared than most at our home. Our older son has a cardiac problem so we have “go bags” for every member of the family and supplies on hand to last a month 24-7-365. If he has a medical problem we could be quarantined at any moment. We have been quarantined for weeks and months at a time several times. We have a stock of Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer on hand always. Most families with medically complex children I know are always prepared like this. We are calm. We can wait it out. What worries me is the panic outside our door. I worry about refilling supplies a few months from now. I worry about the economy and what this panic is going to do there.

Stay calm. This is just starting and we are probably looking at at least a year of of this. I for one can’t wait until shelves are again stocked and people stop acting crazy.

I love spring. The harsh winter is over and flowers start blooming as the temperatures start to rise and the days get longer. Spring is a time to open your windows and let the fresh air in, clean up the yard and prepare for BBQs, hikes and sitting on the deck watching the sunset.

Here in California the first signs of spring we get are the mustard blooming on the sides of the roads and the cherry and almond trees blooming with white and pink flowers. The trees only bloom for a week or two then the blossoms fall away. My friend and I have been trying to get some photos of these trees in bloom in an orchard for a few years now. Unlike a lot of the instagramers that are wandering onto private property, we stay off the private lands, park legally and take photos from the public streets. This is easy to do and we just can’t see why so many people feel the need to be IN the fields. If you are skilled there are tricks you can do with the camera to make it look like you are in the fields when you are not. you just need a little prep work or work after on the computer. It really isn’t that hard. We have yet to make it to the orchards. As soon as we see the trees are in bloom we plan a day to go on the weekend and the blooms are gone and the trees look sad. 

This year the trees bloomed and the day after the bloom started I went on small hikes before work for a few days to take photos of the flowers saving the weekend to go out with her and photograph the orchards in bloom! So we get up early.  We have researched three areas to go take photos. All the trees looked so sad having lost half their blooms by the weekend.  two days later there was a big windstorm now all the trees are bare again. I am so glad I went on those hikes. Now I just have to wait a few more weeks to go see all the wildflowers on the hills.

You may have wondered why I didn’t post last week on the 14th. Well, life has been busy! It had nothing to do with the long weekend or Valentine’s day at all. Let me explain what all this has to do with marriage…

My brother finally did it!  He proposed to his long time girlfriend despite the fact that all of us were starting to wonder if he would ever get up the courage to actually do it on Saturday, February 8th. Lets just say the proposal did not go as planned and the backup plan was also a flop. But it eventually happened and we could not be happier for my brother and future sister in law. That started all the excitement and talk of weddings, venues, food, dresses, flowers and honeymoons.

Two days later tragedy struck in my family and my sister’s house caught on fire while she and her husband were at work and her son was at school. Structurally, the damage was not too bad. Their garage around the hot water heater, their linen closet and their master bathroom and bedroom were the only fire damaged areas. The smoke damage is extensive with it permeating everything and soot has fallen on everything. They are renting so the coordination between the homeowners insurance and their renters insurance companies has been awful. 

Repairs are expected to take 6-12 months and their home is currently without power or water. They will be temporarily homeless while the repairs are being made and everything needs to be taken out of the house because it needs to be completely gutted and rebuilt.  This is a slow process.  Everything needs to be photographed where it is.  Then it is removed and another photograph is taken to document the damage. Then we attempt to clean the item and see if it can be salvaged. If we can salvage it, it goes into storage. If we can’t another photo of the damage is taken and it is entered as a loss. this is the case for every single item.  Everything.  Dishes, towels (all a loss because they were in the linen closet that was on fire), every nick knack, shoe, piece of furniture… it all needs to be documented and the process is painfully slow. This is how I have spent all my spare daylight hours. My evenings I am washing the bags of fabric items to see if I can salvage them or not and sorting accordingly to go back to my sister.

People don’t seem to understand what a process this is. Everyone says “well you have insurance so they should cover it”. Insurance only goes so far.  Insurance does not cover the two weeks both of them have been off work trying to catalog and deal with all of this. Insurance doesn’t cover the hundreds of hours we have spent sorting nor do they sort for you.  Insurance covers the “loss of use” for a short period of time, but not the whole time you are displaced. They were in talks to purchase the house from the owners before all of this happened.  All of that is on hold until the home is habitable again. People also say “as long as everyone is OK the rest is just stuff” Well, yes. But unless your home burns to the ground you still need to deal with that stuff. Demolition can’t start until all the stuff is gone. Documenting and dealing with all the stuff is a VERY slow process.  We are hoping to be done by the end of the month. We know the fire could have been MUCH more devastating, but that doesn’t make things any easier.

In an effort to not let the tragedy rain on my future sister in law’s excitement I went to lunch with her over the weekend.  No talk of the fire. Just weddings, colors, dresses, flowers, food, honeymoons and all the other details of a hopeful new life together. This was a very welcome change to the clean up effort at my sister’s house.

Through all this I am still working full time, still have my photography side business getting busier and busier and I am still spending time with my husband and children. My husband has been wonderful through all of this and is keeping the house going and the kids entertained while I dart in and out helping out for a few hours here and there. Almost 9 years later and we still love each other.