Many of us are staying at home right now. I just found this site. It looks like it has a lot of good content for kids to read. And it’s free.

Open Culture

http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/enter-an-archive-of-6000-historical-childrens-books-all-digitized-and-free-to-read-online.html

There are at least 811 new coronavirus deaths reported in the US on Tuesday

From CNN's Dave Alsup

Illinois update:

There’s 25 confirmed cases in the county to our west and cases in every county around us. 

It is officially in my county now. Person in their 20’s tested positive. Because it is all around us, I had been careful, assuming it was here also. The young patient is reportedly in a major hospital in another city (transferred from our small, rural hospital).

Illinois update:

Public Health Officials Announce 461 New Cases of Coronavirus Disease 

30th Mar, 2020

5,057

DH shaves his head. Got tired of the receding hairline years ago. If he let it grow he’d have a ring of hair around his lower head. Looks MUCH better bald.

I have long hair that I usually braid. I usually get it cut twice per year, but I somehow haven’t got around to getting it cut in ... gee, we’ll over a year. I was going to get it cut this spring. Guess that won’t be happening for awhile! But I sure like the idea of Tress Mobile. 

🎉 Happy birthday CG! 🎉

Stormy weather.

Power keep flickering off and back on due to the high winds. Trying to get ready for work. Power loss equals water loss in the country. Might be tough to look "professional" today.

One prep we had intended to get but finances got in the way: a concrete storm shelter. This is why stormy weather always makes me feel a bit anxious -- we don't really have a safe place to ride out nasty storms. Somehow, some way, I hope we can get one, sooner rather than later. DH was going to build one, to save money, but he never got around to it before he got sick.

Infant death. 😿

From CNN:

>>>>>
 

First death of infant in connection with coronavirus reported in the US

From CNN’s Hollie Silverman

1 hour ago, euphrasyne said:

 

I've always liked the quote "Do what you can with what you have where you are."   

Agreed. While we cannot be completely self-sufficient, what we can do is a big help and worth doing. And that is true of anyone. , at any level of home food production.

If I could have only one thing in terms of home food production, it would be my chickens. They are not too much work, they can forage for some of their own food, and the eggs are rich in vitamins and protein. I am glad to see more towns allowing backyard flocks nowadays. Backyard chickens should not be a luxury only for us country bumpkins. 

On 8/10/2019 at 6:26 PM, Mt_Rider said:

This is a topic I bring up every so often.  Since I ran into this article, it's  very interesting to read about some folks that have actually kept the data and learned some things.  CAN we live off what we can produce....if we HAD to? 

 

As you all know, the answer is easy for me - no.  Even the pre-tech people groups migrated south and down in elevation.  They came up here for the summers. 

Given our current health challenges, no, we couldn’t live off what we can produce. But what we can produce (or, what I can produce, really), can go a long way toward feeding us. I have lots of fruits, some of which are medicinal: rose hips, cherries, apples, raspberries, strawberries, elderberries, highbush cranberries, hawthorn berries, mulberries, blueberries. I have a fair number of herbs. We have good egg production. And then there’s the vegetable beds.
 

Our pecan trees are several years from production right now.

But given our health challenges, we cannot scale up for grain production, which we would need to do for sufficient calories. We have enough land, good soil,  and a good food producing climate — in theory we could be entirely self-sufficient. But I don’t have the physical ability to provide the needed labor. So, our garden homestead can only be a part of our food survival, not all of it.

There are severe shortages of PPE for medical personnel and so it was only a matter of time before they started discussions about DNR for COVID-19 patients. Should medical staff risk their lives trying to do CPR on a COVID-19 patient whose heart has stopped?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/health/coronavirus-hospitals-do-not-resuscitate-bn/index.html

Happy belated birthday, Mary. Hope it was a good one.

Sleepless here too, Miki. Guess the anxiety of these times is getting to me.

Going to do granny hours shopping for some fresh produce today and also some garden seeds (I hope). Also need another med for DH - doc changed one. Not keen on going out into this mess, but need to get it done.

I need to build a new garden bed this year also, to add to the garden — figure we’ll need the extra food. Fortunately we also have poop factories, aka horse and chickens. I need to pump up the wheelbarrow tire and hope it will hold air so I can shovel some aged manure and compost for the new bed. 

Exactly, Littlesister. This is just another way to politicize this crisis. This pandemic is not being deliberately spread by terrorists or evil people.It is spreading because people won’t / can’t stay home and this virus spreads easily between people. But that is not entirely their faults. They have to work, etc. And since they aren’t even testing every pneumonia patient, a huge number of people don’t even know they are infected with this virus.

I access this site via my iPad. I can see the chat box, but it won’t let me enter a comment.

This is a sobering report.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-covid-hospitals/index.html

This excerpt really got me:

>>
Another nurse in Georgia said she was repeatedly denied testing, even as her own symptoms worsened over the course of a week. The nurse, who had cared for several patients who died of pneumonia but were never tested for Covid-19, was finally tested Tuesday -- the same day she was admitted to the hospital and put in isolation.

"It was not until this morning that I could finally be tested," she said as she gasped for breath between heavy coughs. "It is insane. And it's infuriating. You feel you have to scream to even be heard."
<<
 

They aren’t testing. Patients are dying of pneumonia and not counted in the pandemic numbers because they aren’t testing. 

CNN:

DOJ may criminally charge those who spread COVID-19 intentionally.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/coronavirus-terrorism-justice-department/index.html

20 hours ago, The WE2's said:

 

Although it raises blood pressure, hubby knows without a shadow of doubt that a teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water every day stops the pain in it's tracks in a matter of hours.  Not something one can remain on, but it does work.  When he has a flare (even with meds) he just takes a dose and usually the next day or two, it's gone.  Not a doctor, just sayin'...

DH’s gout is way past home remedies. We used to use all those, of course. And I wish we hadn’t.

He also does not drink. He also rarely ate beef (has had ZERO since September).

He is too fat. That is likely a contributing factor.
 

Gout completely destroyed his knee. There is no knee left, really, just deteriorated bone on bone. No cartilage, no meniscus, nothing that makes a knee function as a knee. The x-rays and MRI scared even a Harvard trained orthopedic surgeon we were referred to at one point.
 

I tried for years to get DH to go to a rheumatologist, for proper treatment, but he stubbornly refused. He would see a nurse practitioner at a local family medicine clinic. He was prescribed one medication, but his blood levels were not properly monitored. And he would use home remedies for those flare-ups too. Now the knee cannot be saved. It can only be replaced. And it took some searching to even find a surgeon willing to do the surgery.

Lesson here is that gout is NOT something to take lightly and to “treat” with home remedies. It can actually completely destroy a joint or joints. Even if you get some temporary relief, those aren’t actual TREATMENTS and do nothing to save the joints. Gout is a disease best treated and monitored by a rheumatologist.

Just sayin.

Number of confirmed cases in USA passes 64,000. There are, of course, many who have it and are untested.
But suuuuure this will be over by Easter. 

Today is my first day of being home from work, on my work rotation. “Slept in” for 20 minutes before the menagerie reminded me I was late for feeding. But it was an odd night, full of weird dreams and wakefulness, so I don’t feel well-rested.

Fed the menagerie, collected the eggs, fed the DH, and started some laundry, Need to sort through food preps today and do some rotating. Also need to clean AGAIN. It’s mud season here. It is a constant thing. I could mop every day and still not keep up. Mud season bizarrely started mid-winter this year and continues. Climate change. 

Good to see you!

We are also only semi-prepared here, because life happens. But we are better prepared than many, as you are. We’ll get through this together.