Pandemic Diary — March 29 to April 4, 2021

Monday, March 29   Deaths  2,375 (+0)   New cases  217

Another busy Monday. We both did our respective grocery shopping; then M worked in the yard a little while E did Zoom yoga. E then went out for errands and came back with copier paper, map pins, some rather beautiful Year of the Ox postage stamps, and one very clean Turkish blanket. As a reward, she got a treat in the mail: date bread from the China Ranch Date Farm. China Ranch is just a few miles outside of Tecopa, CA. We have fond memories of some date bread that we got the last (and only) time we were in Tecopa, a town which is within striking distance of the middle of nowhere, down around Death Valley. We’ll cut into this loaf for breakfast tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some photos of the Tecopa area.

Putting date farms and date bread aside for the moment, what is this talk of map pins? What are map pins and why did E buy them? All will be revealed in time. 

Tuesday, March 30   Deaths  2,381 (+6)   New cases  415

As planned, we had China Ranch date bread for breakfast. Wonderful stuff. After that, E did a Zoom exercise class and then walked to her dentist’s office where the exact contours of her mouth and throat were measured and recorded by some kind of digital imaging device. It was not painful, but neither was it pleasant. She walked back home and arrived just at noon. After a lavish luncheon of salad and half a piece of bread, she went out to the back yard. She had been assigned to find an answer to the question of just what M does when he goes out to “work in the yard.” As soon as she arrived, it all became clear. 

Eventually M woke up and it was determined that E needed a reward for undergoing such an ordeal at the dentist. We put ourselves into the little blue car and headed downtown in search of those special mini-cupcakes that the dentist used to provide (another casualty of the Pandemic). We were hoping that we could find them at Tried and True and sure enough, there they were. We got a couple of decaf cortados to go with them and went down to the river where we could park in the sun.

In the evening it was back to 20 Dakika. Ali, who is working as a cleaner in the staff wing of the prison, has worked out a way to communicate with Melek. This depends on the fact that the boiler room of the staff wing is quite near the laundry room of the prison. So Ali can get into a room that is directly under the prison laundry. And of course there are some disused plastic pipes that extend from the boiler room up into the laundry room and he has broken a hole into one of them, using his trusty hammer which he carries in a green canvas shoulder bag. At the appointed time he starts talking into the hole in the pipe calling Melek’s name. Turns out she’s late because she’s having a crisis of conscience about something or other. In fact, she decides not to come. But then, twenty minutes later, she changes her mind and rushes down to the laundry room by means of a not very clever ruse and a plunge down a laundry chute. Once in the laundry area she finds the pipes, but doesn’t know what to do next. She calls Ali’s name, but he can’t hear her. Thinking quickly, she grabs a large crescent wrench, which is a standard feature of all Turkish prison laundry rooms, and breaks a hole in exactly the right pipe. At last, they can talk. What an emotional moment! Especially when she confesses that in fact she was acquainted with the murder victim long before the day of the incident, something which she has previously denied. Poor Ali can only stare dumbly into the jagged hole in his part of the pipe. How could she have lied to him? We just don’t know. 

Wednesday, March 31  Deaths  2,383 (+2)   New cases  441

During the most recent ten-day period, the COVID death toll in Oregon was just two per day. This rate is lower than it has been since the beginning of July. It is comparable to the levels of the early months of the pandemic. 

The table below shows the data from which the chart was derived. The numbers in the left column are the average deaths per day in each ten-day period. The dates in the right column are the end dates of each period. The colors show what could be seen as three phases of seriousness during the first year of the pandemic in Oregon.

Now, as for those map pins. A while back Andrea gave us a map of the world that was specially made to track which countries a person has visited. The idea was simple, just stick a pin in every country we’d been to. The kit came with pins, but not very many. And when we ran out, we put the project aside. After a time, maybe a year or two, E was on her way to Office Depot to get printer paper and we had the idea of getting more map pins. The project is now more or less finished. Here’s a part of it. There are pins in Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile.

Thursday, April 1   Deaths  2,385 (+2)   New cases  521

Had the usual FaceTime tertulia with J and R this morning. We told them about taking B and B out to Ankeny, where there were coots and wood ducks on the water and hundreds of Canada geese in the air. J and R, fully vaccinated, are planning a trip to southern Utah in May when their son is participating in the St. George Ironman.

E had a busy day, what with tertulia at 8:00, exercise class at 9:00, a visit to S and Pepper at 11:00, a meeting with her seamstress in the afternoon, and a Laughter Yoga session at the end of the day. M spent an hour or so in the yard and then spent several hours searching online for a pickup truck, something he has been doing quite a bit of lately. Finally, at about 3:00 in the afternoon–after E had seen the photos and approved of the color and general appearance of the truck–he bought one. Or to be more accurate, he has entered into an agreement to buy a 2019 Nissan Frontier from CarMax, a fixed price seller whose business is mostly online. 

The truck is in Renton, Washington, near Seattle, so the next part of the process is to ship it to Oregon for final approval. CarMax is charging $99 to get it down here, which should take about a week. At that point M can look it over and test drive it. If he decides not buy at that point, he can just walk away; but the $99 is non-refundable. 

Friday, April 2   Deaths  2,385 (+0)   New cases  499

We visited the plant store this morning, succumbing to a combination of good weather and a $20 coupon. We ended up with a rather heterogenous group of plants. We got as many natives and near natives as we could, but then we grabbed a few other plants just because they seemed like they might fit in where we need things. Did we then rush home and put them all in the ground? Surely you jest. We were exhausted and hungry. 

For M lunch was humus, flatbread, pickles and cheese. For E it was a small, house-made sandwich of tomato, cucumber and peanut butter along with a piece of Co-op falafel. After lunch we planted an aster, two checker mallows and a flowering currant, at which point E had to go in and do her yoga class and M was tired. Nine pots remain to be dealt with tomorrow.

Saturday, April 3   Deaths  2,391 (+6)   New cases  476

More planting today. In the back yard, M stayed mostly in line with our native plant agenda, adding a mahonia (Oregon grape), a snowball bush, and a penstemon. Alas, M has a hard time maintaining his focus. So we also have three plugs of black mondo grass, which is not really grass and is definitely not native. 

In the front E put in a bellflower fuschia and pulled out a ton of weeds, mostly unwanted grass. She then determined that since her desired natives were unavailable she would have to go traditional, at least a little. Off we went to Bi-Mart for alyssum and pansies. 

In the evening we got take-out Korean food from Koriander. Did we then tune in to Istanbul to check on Melek, who is locked in a room with a pyscho who has been hired to kill her? Or did we instead check on Maribel in Madrid, who seems to gotten pregnant from her impulsive romp with Diego? Neither one. We skipped TV and just let them suffer. We ourselves did not suffer; we had Magnum ice cream. 

Sunday, April 4   Deaths  2,392 (+1)   New cases 404

In the morning, more garden work. All the new plants are planted and a few old ones moved from one spot to another. Maybe now we can have a break from this garden mania, at least for a while. At 4:00 we had a Zoom meeting with brothers J and J, during which E got a FaceTime call from Andrea. Resourceful as always, E held her phone up to the camera on our computer and the Andees were able to join in. Nice. 

After a semi-special Easter supper overlooking the garden, we watched some TV. First we looked in on 45 Revolutions, where it turns out that Maribel, while nauseous and two weeks late, is not pregnant at all. Whew, saved by the writers again. Then we watched Episode 1 of Atlantic Crossing on PBS, which is a WW2 drama, this one a focusing on Crown Princess Martha of Norway, who fled to Sweden and then to the U.S. after the Nazis invaded her country in 1940. What a contrast between these two shows, both in subject matter and in cultural milieu.