This and That

[helwen]

Bought more food and stuff. It's sunny today, so trying to get outside. But I don't have enough room for the supplies, so at least part of the day I'm in the basement, trying to move stuff, re-organize, etc.

I should try to make the kung fu school's door curtain today or tomorrow... Today I'll move their crafting supplies into the minivan so I have room to move some of my stuff into that newly-vacated-space.

I have some stuff I was going to donate to the next local SCA group's fundraiser, but who knows when the next event will be. So I need to gather stuff together, bag and box it, put a label on it, and stick it in the trailer for now.

Turnip and Rutabaga seeds were planted outside, herbs inside.

Some hand sewing has happened... I'm working on my white dress that I started last year. Should be wearable this year. I need to work on the hat for that as well... easy but fiddly work because netting. But first, the dress.

The Fig tree is outside getting some sun and fresh air for the day :)

Comments

[inamellowmood]

We've got a pile of would-be donations that need to be wrapped in newspaper (because they're fragile), boxed up and set aside until the thrift store can reopen. I keep not getting to it because at this point it may be July before we can donate them. :-p (The state of RI is scared green of reopening. Sloths and slugs are whizzing past the current official reopening schedule. *sigh*)

On not re-opening states

[helwen]

Yes, I've no idea when we can donate some things as well.

Altho' we do have a local buy-nothing group, so I have to remember that in case we decide to give something away that someone in the area might want.

MA is supposedly going to re-open (ish) on May 18th, but we'll see what the governor says. He and others are at work on re-opening plans and he's been making decisions based on the latest information and happenings.

Re: On not re-opening states

[inamellowmood]

Yeah, we've done a very limited partial opening now, and will extend it on May 18, but they're still saying masks and social distancing must stay until September, places like museums, zoos, and concert venues can't reopen yet, and restaurants can only reopen with very limited outdoor seating.

Our state govt doesn't seem to understand the difference between an increasing number of confirmed cases due to increased testing, and an increasing number of cases due to increased transmission. Because RI was terribly short of tests until a couple of weeks ago, we're getting the former, but not the latter except in a couple of artificial hothouse situations where the virus got loose in close quarters and ran rampant --- in nursing homes, specifically.

Re: On not re-opening states

[helwen]

Nursing homes seem to be hard hit in many states. Probably says more about how they're run than anything...

Re: On not re-opening states

[inamellowmood]

It's definitely partly how they're run --- nursing home employees tend to be hourly wage, they're poorly paid, and they may not have paid sick time. Also, sanitation may not be the best, especially if the home is understaffed.

But it's also characteristic of a closed environment where most of the residents are elderly, in poor health, get little or no exercise, get little or no fresh air, get a lot of heavily processed food, have little or nothing of interest to do, and generally are marking time until they die. That's a recipe for lousy immune system function, and it shows. Any contagious illness rips through even the best-run nursing home like a grass fire, and kills a bunch of people, especially the ones who are already weak, or depressed, or comatose/non-responsive. They just waver and go out like a guttering candle.

Re: On not re-opening states

[helwen]

:(

Re: On not re-opening states

[inamellowmood]

I know; it's awful.

One thing I'm proud of in my time as a nursing home cook is that our kitchen manager made sure we served as much fresh, homemade food as the budget allowed. Real mashed potatoes, home-baked cookies, homemade spaghetti sauce, etc. We fed folks much better than the average nursing home does. The residents looked forward to meals, and we had less trouble getting people to eat enough. (That's a chronic issue in nursing homes; a lot of residents do't want to eat, either because the food sucks or because they have no appetite.) Now if we could just have given them more time out in the fresh air...

Re: On not re-opening states

[helwen]

Those were some lucky people, to have you as a cook!

We had to pull Lyle's mom out of one nursing home (post-surgery rehab) because their idea of GF was for her to put anything she couldn't eat to one side. That sometimes left her with a piece of fruit or a small yogurt. And not being at her best, she wasn't communicating the problem with family at first. As soon as my sisters-in-laws figured it out we were down there packing her up to go home.

Fortunately the next time she had surgery we were able to take her to a different place that did a better job.

Re: On not re-opening states

[inamellowmood]

Thank you!

Good gods, how awful! In most states*, that's hella illegal. Since a nursing home resident is in general unable to get up and go out to get other food, the home is usually required by law to provide a nutritionally complete diet and to abide by medically dictated dietary restrictions. They could get shut down, as in permanently and forever, for failing to do an adequate job of feeding residents.

And when somebody is recovering from surgery, they really really REALLY need good nutrition. That's just a huge failure. The usual excuse is that they can't maintain safe kitchen facilities for special diets, but that's baloney. I worked in a small kitchen, we had several residents with various medical conditions whose lives literally depended on getting safe food, and we could do it without a problem. One of the first things I got trained for in that job was zero tolerance: if the resident's dietary card says "no X", that means really no X, not even traces. Period. And we abided by it very carefully. That place totally could have fed Lyle's mom adequately, they just didn't give a rat's hat.

*States where the huge, wealthy nursing home lobby can't override the basic human decency of the legislators. Oops, did I say that out loud?