Husband wore the respirator, didn’t get any weird looks. Last time I was grocery shopping (3 weeks ago) someone mocked us for trying not to pass directly next to people through the doors. Oh how times have changed.
10 Likes
Is there anything else I should be doing with money besides using it to support local businesses? We have a small pile of cash ready to deploy and I feel like there have got to be some non-profits (homeless shelters? meals on wheels? hospital networks?) that could also use donations but I can’t find any reliable information about where I can help the most.
3 Likes
I covered this in the most recent episode @Sunflower in the second half about checks!
2 Likes
Thanks! I’m not a podcast person (I have very short auditory attention) so I’ll wait for the transcript to be available 
3 Likes
I think it will be out later today! Our transcriptionist is usually quite fast.
2 Likes
They are closing parking lots at our parks, and going to enforce with tickets. To stop gatherings. But what about parking and staring at the lake? Or going to the park that is walking distance for no one?
I will just use my same regular path for the next 12 weeks until they lay down another +4 or +12
6 Likes
Today was upside down alternate universe weird Christmas. My parents made a Costco run and scored toilet paper, paper towels and bleach. They shared their score with us. We saw them “live” and got within about 20 feet of them for the first time in weeks. I yelled “hello” and “thank you” and then returned to my insane work-from-home stress. I have stress and guilt about being stressed about working from home, when I know being privileged to work from home is not to be taken for granted. I really hate hate hate that my parents go out at all because they have some health risks and are approaching 70. It stresses me that their risk yields my reward. I continue to be a gracious and thankful tangled up ball of stress nerves. I am sure glad I saw my parents today.
17 Likes
My town took the swings off the sets today and signs up in the park.
6 Likes
I talked to my kids about being prepared for loss. They have four elderly grandparents and an ancient great grandfather (who has cancer)
I would rather talk about it now than surprise them. But it was really hard.
19 Likes
No one taught me about loss when I was a kid. I experienced countless funerals and was entirely traumatized. My grandma was rolled out on a gurney for our goodbye prior to her cremation. It was like something from a horror movie. As an adult I look back and I’m saddened that I didn’t process the losses so much as I experienced trauma and anxiety from the physical aspects of death. I’m 40-ish and still have to mentally gear myself up to view a body. Sometimes I can’t and I look away. I am hugely relieved to attend a funeral and realize there is no body, but the person was cremated. Anything a parent does to prepare a child for loss is a blessing. I was completely unprepared. Grief is natural, and normal. I feel like my ability to grieve was stolen from me and replaced by anxiety. In a very weird way, I’ve experienced some peace and healing by holding a beloved pet during euthanasia. Somehow it gave me a sense of peace about death. I grieve those losses terribly (losses of humans, too), but experienced the sense of grief in a way but felt normal and natural instead of the usual anxiety and fear about a dead body. Sorry for this tangent.
17 Likes
It’s not a tangent. It’s something underneath the surface of this for all of us. How we feel about death and loss. You’re just helping us all remember how important it is to face it head on 
@Smacky thank you for talking to your kids. I really wish more people did. You consistently impress me with your Momming.
14 Likes
So one interesting affect of the Covid in Australia is that it is forcing our right leaning government to embrace totally socialist and leftist policies.
- increased welfare - $1100/fortnight unemployment benefit) or $1500/fortnight paid to employees via employer to keep jobs - paid for by government
- universal support for unemployed with much reduced means testing
- free daycare
- massive investment in public healthcare
- heavily regulating private sector e.g preventing evictions, ensuring power doesn’t get shut off for non payment
It’s delicious.
13 Likes
I think free daycare is an awesome policy that should just exist free of the pandemic, at all times… but for me it raises an interesting moral point around profiting from the pandemic. Mr H and I don’t stand to lose any income (paid leave for the reduction in work hours to care for Ewok). We had to pull Ewok from daycare so we’re not paying for that; if we’d been able and willing to keep him in daycare we’d apparently not have had to pay anyway. Our mortgage interest rate has dropped. So… no decrease in income; considerable decrease in expenses. Kinda fucked up to think that we could profit from this horrible situation??
Don’t worry friends, we will find good charities and such to funnel extra money into. It’s just a really fucked up and interesting thought that people like us with good incomes and good job security still get the benefit of the measures aimed at those who are genuinely hurting.
8 Likes
We’ll be $180/week better off as a minimum.
2 Likes
I’m also kinda profiting from this - working paid overtime since I work in essential services and getting the “free” $1200 from the government.
But also, I live in america where profiting from healthcare delivery is the foundation of our whole medical insurance system, so it feels less weird.
5 Likes
But you both have good job security, right? Proving my point.
2 Likes
If you think Australia is making a swing about, come to the us where we managed to embrace, Mandated Paid sick leave, something that every other developed country has has for years - something we have Claimed is impossible to do in the US- we got
it passed in 2 days.
Wtf?
12 Likes
Yeah mine less so than Mrs PDM who is in healthcare. I have a heap of leave entitlements. So you’re right. We’ll be ok out of this. Hopefully come out with only investment/ retirement funds damaged.
4 Likes
Ah fuck. My job security is so high, they have line staff (me) doing other agencies’ workloads. Feels weird.
6 Likes
The daycare measures I suspect are less aimed at helping budgets and more at preventing the industry collapsing as more and more people pull their kids out.
Call me cynical, but doesn’t Peter Dutton (senior member of parliament) own a couple of daycare centers?
6 Likes