Christmas 2020

December 8, 2020

Merry Christmas from the Deep South! 

We really have had our fill of covid craziness.  We could write a book about the way we, and almost everyone else, have been similarly affected.  We can’t wait for 2020 to be gone!  At a very basic level, simple things have become so complicated and potentially dangerous where health safety is concerned.  During March, April and May we only left the house for food and pharmacy needs.  We added limited trips to the bank and post office.  I cancelled most of my doctor appointments and have only recently re-scheduled them.    Luckily, we don’t have to do much shopping, and if we do, it can be done online.  However, Mike has frequented Home Depot so that he can stay on top of home repairs.  Our malls are empty.  In a way, I don’t feel that it is risky to be there because many more people are in the grocery stores than are at the malls.

We have missed the ability to eat in restaurants. We have eaten out only  twice all year because it was possible to eat outside. Both times we had perfect weather.  However, now it is too chilly.  We have gotten a number of take-out restaurant meals to break the home cooking routine and to support local businesses that are having a rough time surviving covid. 

We have had to forget about traveling abroad.  When we returned from the Bali to Bangkok cruise in 2019, Mike started planning a trip that would include a Nile River cruise.  Who knows when, or if, we will be able to make a trip like that again, especially if it takes four to five years to stamp out covid, or get it under some form of control with a safe and effective vaccine and pharmaceuticals.  Also, it has been difficult seeing the grandkids.  Underlying all of this is the fear factor in getting covid, even when taking precautions like wearing a mask in public, distancing and frequent hand washing.  Age-wise, we are in a highly vulnerable, at risk group.

Still. life hasn’t been all that bad.  We are healthy.  Silver Sneakers, which had closed for three months, re-opened on a limited basis on June 25th.  Instead of classes Monday through Thursday, now there is only one class on Thursdays by reservation and for no more than ten people.  I missed Silver Sneakers as much for the social contacts as I did for its benefits from exercise.  Our club’s pool opened on June 1st.  Again, the number of people who could be there at any time was very limited and there was a very cumbersome lottery/reservation system to use the pool.  For all of the inconvenience, being able to use the pool made the summer feel more normal.

Baseball returned near the end of July.  I tuned in for as many games as I could, even if the Braves weren’t in the game.  Despite the odds, they had a great season until October 18th when the Dodgers ended the Braves hopes for advancing to the World Series. 

Near the end of July we drove to Rincon to see Jim, Kristin and the grandgirls.  We had not seen them since Christmas, so we really missed them.  Relatively speaking, it was a low risk trip because we drove there and stayed with them.  We had all of our meals in-house.  Effingham County’s covid caseload was far smaller than what we have experienced in the Atlanta-metro area.  We were there just before Lily turned five, so we were able to celebrate her birthday. 

But best of all is that the Fab Four is now the Fab Five.  At the end of May our fifth grandchild arrived.  Alec was born on May 29th.  He is Eric and Amber’s second child.  With covid’s summer surge, we weren’t sure how best to make a trip to Fairfax to see him.  Mike and I were at an impasse over how to get there.  He wanted to drive; but that meant too much reliance on hotel rooms, indoor restaurants and public restrooms.  I was against that option and wanted to fly.  Mike was concerned about being around too many people in the airports and TSA lines.  In the end I prevailed.  We made the trip in early October when Alec was four months old.  We took many precautions to make the transit time as contactless as possible.  We printed our boarding passes at home.  We drove to the airport instead of using MARTA, which we usually do.  We did not check luggage, but limited ourselves to carry-on, so no one else touched our luggage.  We wore KF94 masks and I also had on safety goggles to completely enclose my eyes.  We flew Southwest.  The flight had only 60 passengers and no one in the middle seats.  The time in the air was just over an hour.  The Atlanta airport was not crowded and the TSA lines moved quickly.  When we arrived at Dulles, the airport was almost empty.  It was the same when we left Dulles to fly home. 

We are glad that we took some risk (with precautions) to spend  time with Alec.  He is such a good baby and totally adorable.  It was also great to see Ethan.  He has boundless energy.  Eric has been able to work from home since mid-March.  This has been a big help for Amber to have an extra set of hands around and for him to spend time with Ethan while she is tending to Alec.  Eric won’t be back in the office until after the first of the year.

Some things in and around the house totally failed starting in July with our garage door opener.  This was a big problem because our two car garage has only one large door instead of two small ones.  It was not easy for Mike to raise and lower it without power.  Before buying a new opener, he tested one component, a circuit board, because that was the part that had failed.  He found someone online who should have been able to fix it, but in the end could not.  This took almost three weeks to get nowhere.  So, Mike bought a new Genie opener, which he installed himself.  In mid-August the AC system for the first floor abruptly stopped working.  Mike suspected a hard failure in the compressor as the source of the problem.  He called a few heating and cooling companies to come to the house to estimate the cost of a new system, plus the cost of a new hot water heater.  It is very old and ready to be replaced.  We hope we have headed off trouble by not waiting for it to break and flood the basement.  We had to wait over two weeks for our system because covid has kept workers out of the factories.  This has slowed production.  Thankfully, the upstairs AC system was unaffected, so at least we could sleep comfortably. The repair costs for the door opener, AC and water heater set us back about $9500.

When we returned from Fairfax, we discovered that our “new” LG refrigerator wasn’t working.  We bought it in 2017.  Everything in the freezer had thawed and had to be thrown out.  Luckily, it was mostly fruits, vegetables and pasta and not much meat.  My basement refrigerator was not very full, so we put as much of the refrigerator food as we could from the LG in the Hotpoint.  We had to wait ten days for LG to come and replace the compressor and evaporator.  Because of a class action lawsuit which blames LG for using faulty parts over the last four to five years, we did not have to pay for parts or labor.  Otherwise, our cost would have exceeded $1000.

We recently heard the forecast for the coming winter which says that it will be a warmer and drier one.  I hope so because 2020 has been extremely rainy and that was before hurricanes Laura, Sally and Delta rained themselves out as they traversed north GA.   

We hope that you have avoided covid and will have happy and healthy holidays.