Current Events in Our Area: COVID-19

I don’t tend to write much about the ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences that I go through. I’m not sure why that is because I love to read first-hand accounts of those who have survived big happenings. I’ve also been avoiding social media and all of the “stay positive/don’t panic/toilet paper hoarding/homemade hand sanitizer recipes” posts. It’s just too overwhelming for my HSP brain.

At the same time, I do realize that with such big happenings, it is good to have the records of the everyday people.

I’ve been following the pandemic since early January when things started to get serious in China. I wondered how long it would take for countries to close their borders to China. The difficulty seemed to be in not wanting to offend China; nor wanting to ignite panic in the world. I hope that we have learned that it is a small price to pay for saving lives.

I wryly laugh to myself as I remember shaking hands with a Home Depot worker just a few days ago. Our Canadian government had already told us to practice “social distancing” in an effort to stop transmission of the virus. I shook his hand anyway. (May God protect us all. This is going to take some time to adjust to.)

I’ve been fighting a mild cold for the past month. I’ve had a few days where I thought I was getting worse, and then it would just recede and stay in a mild phase still. I haven’t known if it was just snow mold allergies or other allergies or truly a cold. Either way, I am slowly wearing down from it.

Since having pneumonia at age 14, I have been susceptible to respiratory infections. Taking Zinc for my hypothyroidism has made a huge difference in keeping me healthy as well as keeping my sicknesses mild. I’m keeping up with my supplements but my concern is in fighting off the COVID-19 without it settling into pneumonia. Self-isolating is looking like the best defence.

My provincial government has closed down the schools. This is unprecedented in my lifetime.

My children, being homeschooled, will not notice the difference.

The provincial government has also said that gatherings of people cannot exceed 50 people.

While our church plant is smaller than 50 people, we are currently discussing whether to meet or refrain from meeting. We had been discussing plans to hold a Good Friday service in a long-term care facility for the elderly – but the government has restricted all contact to essential within these types of facilities.

Our nearest grocery stores are very busy. It is good to know that they have lots of toilet paper and are restocking other supplies like crazy. We bought a bottle of bleach today – just seemed to be the best thing to have 2 of. We’ll be buying skim milk powder tomorrow. I already have the chocolate Quik for flavoring it if we run out of ‘real’  milk for the kids. I already use the powdered milk when I bake biscuits and other items like that. It helps to conserve the milk they drink.

I’ve been working on making a monthly meal plan for suppers since Autumn. I tweaked our stocked items to have more ‘sick supplies’ of apple juice, popsicles, canned soups, Benedryl, … and increased the homemade soups on the menu. I recently taught my family how to fold wontons for wonton soup (over the Christmas season). They love wonton soup – especially our homemade soup. We are going to be making 4 packages of wontons up this afternoon; freezing them outside on trays and then bagging them up in ziplocks for the freezers. I think that will be about 800 wontons (200/package). We should be good for a few months. 😉 The lovely thing about making wonton soup: you only need chicken stock and green onion if you want to keep it simple. And it doesn’t take much to fill you up (we like 3-4 wontons/p.p.). We like to add shrimp, canned baby corn, and broccoli (frozen) to our soup. I bought 2 bunches of green onion, some for mixing up into the ground pork filling for the wontons, and some for the soup broth. I’m considering trying to freeze some chopped up for future soup broth. Otherwise, if under quaratine, I’ll just use dehydrated onion or even just add some onion powder for the flavor. Dehydrated onion is a ‘must have’ for our family in the winter – in case the snow storms keep us housebound.

I think those of us who live in rural places are already semi-prepared for 2 week long quaratines. We might need to stock up on a few supplies, but all in all, we likely have well-stocked pantries and freezers. I’m fairly certain that I could feed my family for at least 3-4 months, just with what we already have. (especially after I get my skim milk powder restocked 😉  )

Food, medicine, cleaning supplies, and things to do…  I think this may be a good time to catch up on my sewing. And maybe we’ll get our Spring cleaning done before Thanksgiving this year!