Change 🌎

 

I think I can speak for all of us when I say, wow. What a time to be alive. The world…the ENTIRE WORLD is going through a huge change right now. An unprecedented change caused by something called COVID-19 or Coronavirus. At the end of last year this virus started taking a tour around the world. I’m sure we are all familiar with COVID at this point in time as we are all currently on lockdown because of it. I’m really writing this blog so I have something to read in the future when I think back on this time and try to remember what it was like living through something like this.

The main issue with this virus is that it is extremely contagious and easily spread from person to person. Another issue is that when the CDC realized COVID was an issue, we were already 3-4 weeks behind. Because of this many governments are issuing mandatory lockdowns on cities and even entire countries. How f’ing crazy is that?!? 🤯 Italy is one of those countries currently on lockdown. Literally the entire country is in quarantine. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s just crazy. I recently saw a video where Italian mayors were going out into the streets and yelling at residents to go home because SO MANY people are dying. Video posted below:

Stay Home Video

Professional & college basketball seasons have both been canceled because of this virus. The OLYMPICS were canceled because of this virus! How crazy is that?!? So many changes. The city I live in kind of seems like a ghost town. One of my friends put it best when he said “it’s like the world after the Thanos Snap”. If you don’t know what that is, look it up.

My clinicals for Grad school have been ended five weeks early. Schools have been canceled through mid April and a majority of businesses have closed. Well, their lobbies at least. Restaurants and showing commercials saying “we will deliver your meal for free.” Man, they must really be struggling right now. I fear for them. I fear for the people at risk for this virus, and well, everyone I guess. I fear for everyone right now. People are losing their jobs and a lot of people have lost money in the stock market.

I fear for a lot of people right now, but I also feel for a lot of people right now. There are so many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers on the front lines helping stop this virus. I recently saw pictures of healthcare workers with literal cuts on the faces from the N95 masks they are having to wear.

I’m glad people are taking this virus seriously and trying to stop the spread because it’s a huge problem whether people want to believe it or not. It’s a silent enemy, that can’t be ignored. People are dying and there are many precautions being taken to help such as social distancing and the stay home order.

I’ll tell you what though, I have always enjoyed staying home, but once someone tells you that you HAVE to stay home, it’s not as much fun. I went out and stocked up on groceries (not too crazy though). Some people actually went cray cray and bought the stores out! There has been a shortage of toilet paper for weeks now. I asked one of the Publix employees if they got any shipments of toilet paper recently. To which he responded “No! I don’t understand this whole toilet paper shortage thing. That’s not even a symptom of this virus!” I laughed really hard about that for a long time. I’m still laughing about it, in fact.

I recently saw a post online informing people of the rules and regulations associated with WIC (women, infants, children). My mom is a registered dietitian and has worked for WIC for 30+ years. She plans to retire soon. Go Mom! Anyway, the post educated people on the labels posted in grocery stores for WIC approved items. It said “if you’re stocking up on goods, check to see if the item has a “WIC Approved” label. If it does, buy another brand. This is because women on WIC can only buy these specific WIC approved brands. If that item is sold out, they will be leaving the store with nothing. So it was nice to see that we are looking out for our women and children.

I have been making/receiving a lot of phone calls over these past 2 weeks. Probably because all my friends are bored, but it’s nice to catch up no matter what. Maybe this is just God’s way of getting the world’s attention. If it is, I think he has it. I’ve been referring to my bible a lot lately. I’ve also been doing a lot of praying. Times like these make me realize how delicate and unknown life is. Everything happens for a reason and sometimes I think God is trying to tell us something, we just have to pay attention.

Stay safe & healthy everyone. God bless.

❤️ -P

Inspired

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to take a minute to talk about the hurricane that recently came through the northeastern Caribbean islands and eventually made a turn further north to hit Florida.

To start, I would like to say that I have been living an extremly comfortable life here in Florida over the past year. I just bought a house, got engaged to my love, started my second bachelors degree, work full time at a wonderful hospital, got involved at church, and am the proud mother of 2 beautiful rescue dogs. When news of the hurricane began circulating about a week ahead of the storm, people started to get nervous. I was particularly worried because, being from Michigan, I had never experienced such intense weather conditions. I was getting more and more worried that my comfortable life as I knew it would be taken away from me.

About 3 days out from landfall most floridians had accepted the fact that we were all going to experience some part of the storm. Gas stations sold out of petrol, grocery stores sold out of water and canned foods and people all over the state were evacuating.

On Friday, the hospital I work at had a meeting to announce that they had created their A-team and B-team groups. The A-team were the people who were scheduled to go in to work and spend Saturday night through Monday night at the hospital. The B-team were the workers who would relieve the A-team on Tuesday. I was scheduled on the B-team. Hurricane Irma was predicted to hit Florida on Sunday and move through Monday.

When I left work that day I got a frantic call from my mother saying that “the storm had shifted west and it was definitely going to hit my area and I needed to leave right now!” Seriously, I will buy you a plane ticket home, she said. I told her that wasn’t necessary and I would call her later that night. (My dad spent a lot of time calming her down at that point.)

When I got home we started preparing for the storm. I didn’t realize how stressful this situation was until I snapped and yelled at my fiancé for some small reason. I also got sick, and later got an uncontrollable nose bleed which I have learned can be brought on by large amounts of stress. I heard what Irma had done to some of the islands it passed over and it was devistating.

We didn’t have boards to put on the outside of the windows, so Eric went to the store and bought a mass amount of cardboard to tape to the inside of the windows. He was so sure of this method, but it proved to be ineffective when we (spoiler alert) came home after the storm and the house was fine, but all the cardboard had fallen off the windows onto the floor. 😆😆😆

Saturday around 5:00 pm, after we had covered the tv’s and moved everything we cared about to the bathrooms, we left to go to Eric’s parents house down the road. We wanted to go there because of the huge oak tree in our front yard that has not been trimmed for some time (our bad). My worst fear was part of that tree falling on our house or one of the neighbor’s houses. When we got to his parent’s, they told us they wanted to go to Orlando because it would be safer. I wasn’t excited about this idea because we all had dogs. They had secured reservations at a Disney resort, but it wasn’t available until Sunday morning. I did not want to be on the road for a long period of time on Sunday because I didn’t think it would be safe. It was at that time that I contacted my friend Rosie.

I asked Rosie if she and her fiancé, Toney would be gracious enough to let us stay at their house Saturday night. She said yes! We were so grateful. We got in the car with the dogs around 7 pm and there was no traffic on our way to their place. It couldn’t have been more perfect. We stayed up until around 2 am talking and getting to know them. That is something good that came out of this storm. ☺️

The next day we packed up our stuff again. We said goodbye and thank you to Rosie and Toney, and headed down the road to a dog friendly hotel in Orlando. The hotel was great!

On the way there we were able to get gas, and a little more hurricane food before the storm hit that night. It’s worth noting that everywhere in Florida looked like we were in a zombie apocalypse. I’m actually really happy that everything was closed so the workers were able to prepare for the storm and be with their families.

My mom was calling me every hour to make sure we were still alive. I re-assured her that we were safe in our cozy dog-friendly hotel room. At one point I went out to the lobby to get some coffee and there were a bunch of people talking and playing board games. That instilled a sense of calm in me.

Later that night the winds really started to pick up and the storm had shifted toward our area. Eric and our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Cubby slept through the whole storm. And snored too! I personally don’t know how they could sleep. Floyd, our Jack Russell/Beagle mix and I stayed up until 4 am listening and watching the storm. He would bark and growl when he felt the winds were being too loud.

Irma: The beginning

The winds calmed down a bit around 4:30 am and I was able to drift off to sleep. A few hours later around 8 am the dogs woke me up and we took them out to go to the bathroom. The winds were still at tropical storm force. I checked my car to make sure nothing had fallen on it. All was good. We went back inside and down to the lobby for breakfast. I have never seen a longer line for a waffle maker in my life.

We checked out around noon after the storm had calmed down a bit. There was a lot of traffic on our way home. I was bitting my nails (and getting yelled at by Eric to stop) the whole ride back worried about what we were coming home to.

Mass electrical outages, trees down and flooding. Just a few of the fears running through my mind. When we turned down our street I couldn’t look and I told Eric to tell me if it wasn’t too bad.

NOTHING. A few small branches and plants down but other than that, no damage. I couldn’t believe it, I was so relieved. We went inside and surprisingly still had power. Unfortunately a lot of people have been without power for almost a week after the storm passed. We put everything back in the house, and have been trying to get back to life as usual.

It wasn’t until 2 days after the storm that my emotions came out. We were sitting in a work meeting and my boss was talking about how great everyone was during this stressful and freighting time. One of my co-workers who had to work through the storm away from her family, began to cry…and a lot of us started to cry. We all experienced fear, adrenaline and a sense of being totally out of control.I think that is what bothered people the most was feeling out of control of their own lives, and fear of the unknown.

There is some good here though. We have been witnessing help for those who need it. I received many calls from friends and loved ones asking if we are okay. It’s the little things that count. The governor ordered a stop on all tolls throughout the state and all hotels were told to accept dogs. The outpouring of love and support was just…endearing. My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of those who lost their lives.

There is a lot of good with bad. Sometimes you have to search for the good…but it’s always there. ❤️