How many suns are there in our universe?

I wasn’t sure what to write about today- I have a few half ideas, but nothing even close to full. I caught up on blog reading as I was very lax yesterday….and I noticed a trend. People are going to get essentials, and they don’t see people wearing masks….

hmmm…

What does that mean?

Remember I went on my mask diatribe the other day?

That very same day I was talking to my friend who lives in another state. She and her son went outside without wearing masks. Someone coughed on them. her first statement was “If that woman got us sick…”

And my first thought was: if you get sick, it’s YOUR fault. So I got out of the text chain because I’d already admonished another friend for not wearing a mask…

If you are not social distancing, if you are not wearing a mask, if you are attending funerals and weddings and parties I have one question for you:

Why are you better than anyone else?

Why do the rules belong for everyone except you?

I get the whole give me liberty thing, but you might not be giving death to yourself…you might be giving it to someone else…

And this ties into the work from home concept. When we become insular, when we focus on ourselves, we forget that there are other people that we coexist with.

Are we a society?

Or are we a collection of individuals?

As it stands now, we are a people who take no personal responsibility. We ghost people we no longer date. We blame others when things go wrong. We turn the other cheek when we see hate and intolerance. We don’t want to get involved…

Sure- it’s nice that people in NYC clap for medical professionals at 7pm.

It would be nicer if we weren’t doing it standing outside in groups without masks…

We’ve become great at the grand gesture, but what we really need is everyone doing small gestures…

We work together and thrive, or we work individually because who gives a crap about anyone else…

Think of it like this: I know I look ridiculous walking around like Billy the Kid in my pink bandana mask. But I prefer that than to look really great in my casket…

We can’t all be the sun. Think about what happens if we are…

64 thoughts on “Trece- The Sun”

  1. Hubby and i took an early morning walk and were passed by a guy in a big truck hauling his boat down to the neighborhood’s presently closed boat ramp..signs everywhere..(maybe 5? BOAT RAMP CLOSED) but again..this dude must feel he is “special”..rules are for others I guess.

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      1. You know I read in our local news that DUI arrests are up 21% in our tri-county area.. (so, you’re drinking at home and then going for a ride??🤔) domestic violence calls are up as are calls for mental health interventions. The list of side-effects to this whole situation are mounting..I hope a way forward, even a narrow one, can be crafted soon..too much pressure is building up.

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  2. Rarely do I see people other than my husband and I wearing masks. Last grocery store trip other than myself I only saw 3 others with masks and 2 of them wore them
    below their nose. I don’t understand it. It seems people want to be magically cured when they get sick. Such as the give me a pill to make it go away mentality. Yet when there are some very easy preventive techniques to not getting sick they are not being used! 😷😷😷

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    1. Exactly. Anyone who gets it now, and this includes my family, it’s their own damn fault. We’ve been warned for a month…given parameters….the fault is ours if we get it

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      2. As time goes on it’s less luck and more preparedness. While I consider my family and I lucky so far, we’re trying as hard as possible to reduce our exposure. But if we get it….we didn’t do enough. We know this virus sucks

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      3. Well, there will be people who will be reckless and not get it. A lot of it is being in the wrong place. My nephew contracted it at an Amazon warehouse. Not his fault. Maybe the company’s.

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  4. When you made that post last time, I remember saying ‘what if the person next to you sneezes or coughs’. 🤷‍♀️ We should take care of ourselves. We are not superman/supergirl. Nope!

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    1. That’s exactly it. Sneezes and their germs can really travel, and even covering your mouth doesn’t stop a cough germ from spreading. We need to protect each other

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  5. Good morning LA. This post is for areas where masks are required or strongly recommended. Which is not case where I am UNLESS you are infected or a health care worker. It is believed that wearing a mask when you’re not infected they give you a false sense of security and result in you touching your face more often. Also people sometimes wear the mask incorrectly and take it on and off and properly. Lastly masks need to be replaced often.

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    1. At this point, everyone should be wearing masks. I get all your points, in fact, I preached them. But you don’t know if the guy next to you just traveled up there from New York….also, they’re finding they so many people are carriers of this….this is an err on the side of caution. At least people should have a scarf around their neck to pull up.

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  7. Work together and thrive! YES!! Sadly I’ve been in situations where people have nothing to protect themselves nor anyone else so now I hardly leave the house. I do not understand why/how people feel they are above the laws (because I think they are laws? rules?) to be out without proper protection. The rules apply to all in order to not spread the virus. It’s a strange world for sure.

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    1. It should be common sense and common decency. If we need rules and orders to be decent, we’re already beyond redemption as a society

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  8. I informed my husband last week that I needed to wear a face covering when I went food shopping and he asked why so I told him the CDC recommends it and he said he hadn’t heard that. Now I live with him but I read and watch news which he doesn’t because it feeds into his anxiety so it is up to me, which feeds into my anxiety. People have become numb, don’t want to watch the news and figure that it is someone else’s job. I know the daily press briefings only add to confusion and such so I watch the breakdowns instead of the whole thing. Maybe the people who don’t wear masks are watching the President say it is voluntary and he won’t be doing it?

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  9. My workplace just mandated we wear masks. I’m not thrilled as I think it will uncomfortable, and I will just want to touch my face even more. To take a drink of water will require 4 hand washes and a new mask. I’m afraid it will fog up my glasses……more hand washing.

    I have felt fairly safe from the public behind the plexiglass. When I must get close to a patient for an injection let’s say, I wear a mask and gloves and ask them to mask. Most of my patient interactions are behind the glass, and on the telephone. So even without proper PPE, I am not scared to go to work.

    But I will wear the mask to protect my co-workers, and they will do the same for me. Despite working at our own work stations, and sanitizing surfaces frequently, we must pass by each other frequently throughout the day. By wearing masks we won’t be unknowingly passing germs to the surfaces we touch regularly.

    But if I have to go into the aisle to counsel a patient in the drugstore, and they cough or sneeze on me, the surgical mask will not protect me.

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    1. But you won’t touch your mouth or nose or eyes. And you need to be six feet away. Counseling must be done at a distance. Think drive thru confessionals…

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  10. My rant about politics and idiots stemmed from people’s reactions to COVID. I got halfway through ranting against the Super-Right Conservative friends who keep posting articles about overreacting and conspiracies -then remembered that my good friend IRL reads my blog. :/

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  11. Went for a quick trip to the pharmacy yesterday. Felt odd putting the mask on but… well… do what we must and all. I made a couple surprising observations:
    1. About 3/4 of the people I saw were wearing their masks, even just driving in their cars.
    2. Most men were wearing their masks.
    3. Most women were not.
    4. More women than men were engaged in discussion with another person.
    5. There were more men than women out and about.
    6. I’ve clearly missed ppl watching 😆

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  13. I must admit I don’t wear a mask generally when I’m walking the dog but I am in a residential area and cross the street if I see someone coming toward me. I do usually have a scarf around my neck so I could pull that up in a pinch. We have some masks from when my husband was in maintenance and I have a few of them in the car so I can remember when I go to the grocery store. There were a few without masks when I went the other day 😦 but most people were wearing them.

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  14. Just finished sewing up the little buggers – 3 each – for myself and hubby. I go on walks around our block in which one rarely meets up with a walker, if ever. So I feel blessed to not have to wear a mask at this time doing that – but now avec un ‘masque’ I can go grocery shopping outside the ‘senior hours’ if need be and feel okay about it all (and wear the darn thing during senior hours, too of course!)
    The first thing that came to my mind on this tho was, “He who is faithful in little is faithful in much”
    It all counts!!!!

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  15. I read that you shouldn’t wear masks unless you are sick. Half the time I don’t know what I should be doing because there’s so much conflicting information. I am staying home as much as possible and when I go out I stay away from people and use hand sanitizer a lot and wash my hands and face when I get home. I’m not wearing a mask because I don’t have one and I can’t get any and I don’t know how to sew one for myself nor do I have the materials if I did know how to sew. My husband has seen people who have masks but they aren’t wearing them properly.

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    1. About ten days ago the cdc recommended that we wear masks or face coverings because they’ve found that many people do not show any symptoms but are carrying the virus. We don’t have masks either. I took bandanas,(kitchen towels and cloth napkins work as well) fold so it’s about three/four inches wide. Put hair ties on each side about three inches in. Fold over the end of bandana towards middle and then use a rubber band to tie up end. You use hair tri to go around ear…I know this sounds confusing, so I’ll post a pic of what I did tomorrow. You should get the general ideA. The goal is to cover nose and mouth

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  16. Whatever did happen to “United we stand. Divided we fall”? I sometimes do think we’ve gone a bit overboard on individual liberties in this country. That’s fine when your decisions don’t threatens others’ well-being, but that isn’t the case with a virus.

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  17. I wore a mask yesterday while standing in line for school laptops. We did a mostly good job of staying at least 6 feet apart. I do need to figure out how to keep my glasses from fogging up. How to handle needing different prescription glasses for different tasks. But the biggest problem was making myself understood when talking to others because I was muffled. I don’t talk loud anyway. So it was just terrible. Almost yelling at the person person I was talking to. There is definitely a learning curve. Not to mention the difficulties of wearing the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood. But I’m not going to stop wearing it. Practice makes improvement.

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  18. Wearing a mask is such a small thing. I know that the guidelines change at least weekly, but why not do everything we can to help stop the spread? Even if we do it imperfectly, it is better than not doing it at all.

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  22. I can’t imagine living in NYC during this time. I really feel for all those that work in hospitals and nursing homes trying to help those who are sick, or doing their best to protect themselves and others from getting COVID-19.
    I’m a nurse. I would have never predicted that the day would come where we would be wearing face shields all day…but it happened this week. So far no direct exposure to COVID+ patients, but almost certainly that day will come.
    I purchased some cloth masks from a friend that sews. Mostly trying to avoid the grocery store. I believe they are the right thing to do when we must be around crowds. I am absolutely fascinated when I go to the grocery store and there are people out and about with medical grade masks….but my organization has struggled to get enough PPE.
    I am completely baffled by the stories I have heard about a handful of churches planning on going ahead with in-person services.

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  23. Here in St. Louis, most people are wearing masks when they are in stores. Most don’t wear them just walking down the street in my neighborhood, but that’s because we’re in a suburban area, so staying at least ten feet away from others when walking is no problem.
    That being said, my husband and I were walking our dog the other night, and turned down a side street where the residents were all lined up on the edge of their yards, talking to each other from across the street. Fine. But three of them and another dog were in the middle of the street, and they didn’t budge, even though they saw us coming. So our only choices were to turn around are pass right by them. As I stood there debating what to do, and wondering why no one moved, the dog got loose and ran up to our dog in a threatening way. Only then did they move in order to grab their dog……who thankfully didn’t bite mine.
    I found it incredibly annoying. It’s a public street, we’re supposed to be social distancing, just move out of the way!

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    1. I know! Obviously, that happens here a lot, which is part of my frustration. And when I see people sitting on a bench talking to each other, and it’s obvious they don’t live together, it’s infuriating….

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  24. I have yet to wear a mask but that’s only because I haven’t been in public except to be in a car for the past month and almost a half. This next week I have an eye appointment. I’ll be using a bandanna that day even though I’m very well. It’ll ease the minds of the people I see on my outing.

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  25. Neighbours in my apartment block are going out regularly throughout the day – I’ve decided to stop “noticing”. I rarely go out, except to collect medication once a month, but only ‘cos I cannot get them delivered. I walk outside once a day choosing a time when most people are home. Himself is going out to work, so he does the once-a-week grocery shop alone. We don’t use the common areas of our apartment block, instead we’re fortunate in having a patio door leading outside. All my medical appointments have been cancelled, if they weren’t – I’d have cancelled. I have a virtual physio appointment this week as I’m struggling with my recovery, but I’d not go anywhere near a hospital except in an outright emergency. My daughter has had to visit a hospital – for an emergency – and the stress caused by that was more than enough for us all. A friend who’s working in a supermarket is in tears most evenings because she sees the same people shopping – Every Single Day of the Week. Why? Because they’re bored or lonely or just want/need to get out of the house. There’s things each of us can do for the greater good – some of us do them, others don’t. I don’t believe anyone is getting it right all the time.

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