As I'm sure everyone else is experiencing, my week seemed very strange on several levels.
* One was the progress of Spring. The Dallas area is farther south than I've been in a while and Spring is much farther along than I've been seeing it. Here all the plants are completely leafed out, and it's easy to see which ones survived the winter, which are sick, and which didn't make it. Many of the flowers and flowering trees I saw in Arkansas, for instance, are well past their blooming time here, and we've moved on to Bearded Iris, which seem to be blooming everywhere. Also Anna tells me the Bluebonnets are way past their prime, though I still see some here and there. What's up now are Oriental Poppies and Bachelor Buttons - often together, and their striking blue and red together are just gorgeous.
* Another (and related) area of strangeness was the weather. This past week we had days where the high barely got to the mid-60s, and others that were downright hot. On Wednesday, Dallas set a record high temp for the date of 97°, with a high of 88° the day before. I'm plugged into a 20 amp power cord from David and Anna's house so can't turn on the AC, just the fan. So for a couple of nights, I had all the windows and the door and the skylights wide open all night. This meant not closing the shades, because they'd block off the breeze. I think it was hardest on the dogs - especially Gracie. One evening I found her panting and heaving, and I finally took a chance and wiped both the dogs down with an ice cube. I've heard that may not be good for dogs, but neither is Gracie's double coat in an indoor temp of 85°. It seemed to help her. Actually, I did the same for me and it felt great.
We've also had intermittent rain, with occasional serious thunderstorms. Gracie was already well under the table at that point and, when Dexter came to me and looked worried, I encouraged him to go join her, which he did. Pretty well the gamut of spring weather this week.
* Still another different situation for me is that this is not only not a campground, with the usual campground amenities available (think dump station), but also it's a residential neighborhood that's under an HOA situation. It's certainly obvious to the neighbors that I'm actually living in this RV, but so far no one's raised any concerns. I try to keep a low profile, but I'm still taking up one of only 4 extra parking spaces for this little cul-de-sac we're on. On the other hand, another one is always occupied by the mom of a resident, working here at least temporarily from Louisiana; another one is also always occupied by a nearly unemployed neighbor, so it's not like I'm the only long-term parker. I'm hoping people will avoid pushing on this issue because of not wanting to be in close contact with a stranger during these weird communicable-virus times. And anyone can see I'm sheltering in place, which may ease what might otherwise be trouble.
This HOA seems typical of what I've heard of others, where at least one person is a stickler for compliance with the rules. Anna told me there was a huge fuss when a homeowner on the next street wanted to take advantage of major tax rebates and cover his roof with solar panels. Common sense won, but I guess it was a struggle with some HOA bigshots. But it's that sort of thing that worries me and doesn't want me to get my family into some kind of conflict just because I'm sitting here in front of their house, scared of getting this virus.
* Speaking of campground amenities, I took the RV out on Tuesday to do some errands. I drove over to Rockwall (smallish suburb of Dallas) to a TA Travel Center on the interstate where, for $10, they let me dump my tanks. I found them on a website called www.rvdumps.com, which I hadn't known existed. Very helpful. Showed available dump sites both on a map and in a list. Then I went to The Propane Station in Plano, which was basically a fancy name for a regular gas station that also sold propane. I still wasn't down to a quarter tank but thought I'd better get it while I was out in case the predicted cold front blew through. (It did, but not right away and it wasn't all that cold.) I can usually wait 7 or 8 days to dump my tanks, but it'll still be a once-a-week thing. Now that I have that website, though, I can check out different places in this area.
* Another thing that's different is that I'm not usually too concerned about my health, other than the aches and pains from the most recent dog-dragging incident - that sort of thing. Yet now I'm taking my temp several times a day and continually mindful of possible symptoms. Then at some point this week I learned that asymptomatic can mean the person can have the virus but never show symptoms. I had thought it meant that it might take several days of having the virus before the symptoms showed and hadn't realized a person could have it and never show symptoms. That thought really shook me.
I've seen that my usual temp is 97._° but this week I've seen it go up as high as 99°, which really worried me. That was the first day, though, of the heat wave and I realized later my temp was up because I was hot. It went back down again later. Easy to become a hypochondriac in these weird circumstances.
Anna is as cautious as I am when we go to the grocery store and other errands. We always wear a mask outside our vehicle. Yesterday I also started wearing gloves partly to protect me from all the dopes who still aren't taking this seriously, but also because of not wanting to infect someone else, in case I'm one of those asymptomatic people. Such a strange world we're living in now.
And I just learned this morning that the virus is creepier than I'd suspected. Scientists don't yet know exactly what its properties are. If it behaves like the 1918 flu pandemic, it could abate during the summer and then come roaring back in the fall. They're also discovering that even those who recover from having the virus aren't recovering fully - people's organs aren't regaining their former strength. The virus seems to be leaving a trail of damage through the body, leaving a weakened heart or liver or other organs. There are no long-term survivors yet, since the first case only happened a few months ago, so they don't have any way of knowing the long-term effects of this virus. This information would certainly argue against those who think we should just all get infected, with most of us surviving, and then we'd have antibodies. In fact, scientists think the weakened organs of survivors may make them more susceptible to catching the virus again with possibly worse consequences.
Then this morning I saw an interview with a well-respected vaccine researcher at Baylor Medical College in Houston who said scientists are very unlikely to come up with a vaccine by the end of the year, because the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed was the mumps vaccine, which took 4 years.
He also said the 1918 flu pandemic actually came in several waves that lasted 3 years, from early 1918 until late 1920. He said everybody's working around the clock on this so it's at least possible they'll get a vaccine sooner, but people shouldn't be counting on it.
He was worried about what might happen when they relax the quarantine rules, only to need to reimplement them a few months later when the next wave comes along. He was afraid people wouldn't take it seriously the 2nd time around, since so many are having trouble taking the 1st round seriously. If you want to look him up, this is Dr. Peter Hotez, who's been appearing on many networks to get information out to people. Smart man.
I saw an interview with a woman who is 102. She was born during the flu epidemic in 1918 and lived through the Great Depression and WWII. Her advice on making it through this: To cope with this virus, don't get stressed about planning far ahead. You can't do it. She said long ago she learned that when life started to feel out of her control because of war or pestilence, she would to start each morning by making a to-do list. That was the only thing she could control, and she stuck to working her way through her list each day. She said to keep in mind that this, like everything else, will pass.
I find her advice helpful. Like everyone else, my life is on hold and my plans are shattered. Almost everything about the future seems uncertain and potential hazardous. I can't plan ahead with any certainty at all, and it makes me feel uneasy. But simply accepting that that lack of control isn't my fault, that I can't do anything to bring it back, that I just have to wait for events to unfold and see where we are then - that's an attitude that brings me a small sense of peace. And I love to-do lists anyway.
I've noticed that "Stay safe" is the new way to say goodbye to people. It makes me, and I think others, feel like we all care about each other, that we're all in this together. What strange times we're living in.
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