Saturday, March 21, 2020

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Tonight's picture was taken on April 1, 2009. Mattie was in his very small hospital room and he was visited by Brandon, his cancer buddy, and Whitney and Lesley (child life interns). As you can see, Mattie was the life of the party. The reason we were able to manage and cope with these incredibly long and stressful hospital days was because we had an amazing support team inside and outside the hospital looking out for us. 








Quote of the day: Update on the Coronavirus from the CDC

1. Total cases: 15,219
2. Total deaths: 201
3. Jurisdictions reporting cases: 54 (50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and US Virgin Islands)

Data from DC (12% of those tested are positive; over 573 people tested): 

Those who tested positive:

• March 7: 2 
• March 9: 4
• March 11: 10
• March 14: 16
• March 15: 17
• March 16: 22
• March 17: 31
• March 18: 39
• March 19: 71

Peter and I were reflecting the last time we dined in a restaurant. It was on March 11. Only ten days ago. A lot has happened in ten days. Life as we know it has ceased to exist. Or has it? We took Sunny for a walk today on the National Mall. Thinking we would walk passed the cherry trees and find no one there. To our surprise there was incredible traffic and people were walking in GROUPS everywhere! Hoards of people to be specific and NO ONE seemed worried about the virus and they certainly weren't heeding the social distancing guidelines. 

Well you could have two reactions to what I am reporting! One could be.... how refreshing, people are acting as they normally do and carrying on with life, or two, you could be disgusted for the blatant disregard for what our nation and world are facing now. Unfortunately, I side with the latter. I was absolutely angry at what I was seeing, because this is exactly what we don't want...... groups of people milling about with the potential of further spreading the virus. Needless to say, Peter and I kept our distance from all these people and walked on the other side of the road. 

Our beautiful amaryllis is blooming in this chaos. 

Do you see the traffic!? These are NOT parked cars, these are cars waiting at a traffic light as they try to approach the trees and take in their glory. 

Because the trees are so full of blossoms, it is hard to capture the number of people all around them. I was across the street from the trees and wasn't interested in getting closer to prove my point. 

Even the crab apple trees are blooming! They have an incredible fragrance. In a way, nature reminds us that there is always hope and that it won't always be like this. 

A robin sitting in a crab apple tree.