Camera Talk

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Turn and climb again

This week was difficult work wise and personally. Losses in nursing homes have increased – it’s all so preventable and yet inevitable. Having worked in nursing homes I know the environment, but the levels of despair and fear in light of a pandemic are incomprehensible to me. We worked this week to elevate policy asks to help – from making sure nursing homes are receiving PPE just like hospitals to including more funding for home and community based services. But it all feels too little too late. The news this week of a preliminary study finding that perhaps mortality rates are not has high as initially thought was welcome, but of little comfort in settings like nursing homes where more than 3,500 individuals have died in just the first three weeks of April. Then came pushes again to reopen, get back to normal, save the economy protesting in flagrant disregard of social distancing putting us all at risk – but particularly older adults, people with disabilities, Black and Hispanic communities, and our health care workers. A devaluing of life that I simply felt overwhelmed by this week.

I’m reminded of a Death Cab lyric:

Sometimes I think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom and we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that I have figured what it’s worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse

I took a lot of walks on the trail, listened to new music (I really dislike the new Fiona Apple album in contrast to the rest of the world), watched Frank Lloyd Wright virtual tours, spent hours getting just the border done on our jigsaw puzzle, and had a very long happy hour with the Kansas City ladies. Grandma also came home to my parents’ house and so all her grandchildren sent her get well notes that wallpaper the french door to her room for both love and privacy.

Some other good:

If I’m not on the couch working, I’m here – and the light just makes me happy.

Katie sent me this and I both laughed and cried.

I am doing my best to Marie Kondo the house. So I cleaned out all the bathroom cabinets and drawers. I no longer own any nail polish, but I’m ok with that. I also transferred all my photos onto one hard drive into folders organized by year. It’s a project I’ve been working on for a while. I have something like 4 terabytes of photos, so I’m feeling pretty proud. This is a picture I found from Costa Rica from 2011 that somehow got lost in a folder that never saw the light of day until now.

Jake’s making pizza now and that seems like the perfect way to start off week 8 of quarantine.

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