Difficulty in Getting COVID-19 Testing

I live in a state that supports COVID-19 testing, yet I found it very difficult to get a testing appointment last week. Here’s the situation. Four of us were exposed to someone who tested positive. I went online to schedule a test and after trying over twenty-five locations that had no appointments available, my primary care physician’s office came through with an appointment. Unfortunately, there was no way for the four of us to be tested at the same time. I can understand that appointments have become more difficult because of the recent spike in cases, but it was disconcerting at how difficult it was to navigate through the system. The good news is that the test went quickly and painlessly. My son who lives in another state got tested recently before surgery and had to suffer through a long probe up his nostril. Mine was a short swab that I rubbed in both nostrils. The whole process of waiting in my car and getting tested took less time than driving to the site and back. The test results aren’t in yet, so I am awaiting the outcome.

Author Events in Limbo

I was scheduled for a number of author events in April, but these were all cancelled. My last in-person contact with readers was the one day at the Left Coast Crime Conference in March before the remaining days were cancelled. I also planned to go to Bouchercon this fall, but it is now a virtual event. Men of Mystery in November in Long Beach, CA, is the only event still on my calendar, and I haven’t heard if it will take place or not. Usually, I have a number of speaking engagements scheduled with libraries, book groups and service organizations, but these are all on hold. We’ll have to see what is practical and when these types of events can be held again.

Lessons Learned With a Four-Year-Old

I continue to enjoy my time with our four year old grandson. We are learning together. One of the things that strikes me is that although he can’t go to school in person, go to the playground or play with his friends, he has handled himself amazingly well during the pandemic isolation. He gets enthusiastic about so many different topics. In addition to planets, dinosaurs, trucks and blocks, he has become interested in flowers. Each weekday when he comes over to our house, he asks to go on a tour of the flowers in our yard. Whenever he spots a new rose bud, he shouts for me to come see it. There’s a tree growing in the planter in our backyard. We have no clue what it is, but it’s tall and skinny. Our grandson calls it a palm tree and gets excited every day at how tall it’s growing. He’s an inspiration to me: his enthusiasm and his desire to soak up new learning.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old (redux)

My grandson and I had an interesting conversation recently. He had received a packet of material for his Zoom pre-school that included punch-outs of the planets in the solar system, one of his favorite topics. The circle for Uranus was smaller than the circle for Neptune. In a discussion about the size of planets, he stated that Neptune was larger than Uranus. I told him that my recollection was that Uranus was the larger of the two. He became very insistent that he was right and I was wrong by pointing to the size of the punched out circles. We then went on the Internet to settle the debate. I also reminded him that when we did the planet walk at the El Dorado park, the written description accompanying the sidewalk image of the planets stated that Uranus was four times the size of Earth and Neptune was slightly less than four times the size of Earth. What we finally concluded from our research was that Uranus was slightly larger in size but Neptune was heavier. I was proud that after reading several credible sources together, he changed his viewpoint. He then told me that his teacher was wrong. I said she wasn’t wrong, but the company that made the punch-outs had not scaled the circles to the respective sizes. As another example, the circle for Mars was the same size as the one for Earth and he knew that Mars was smaller. All in all an informative discussion for both of us.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old (continued)

I continue  to learn new things along with my 4-year-old grandson. He’s very interested in the solar system. He knows all the planets, and together we visit a sidewalk in El Dorado Park, Long Beach, where we walk from the sun to Neptune in a scale representation of one foot being a million miles. Here he is with Saturn:

 We’ve also learned together about dwarf planets. He’s particularly intrigued that Pluto got demoted from a regular planet to a dwarf planet. Other large dwarf planets are Eris, Ceres, Makemake and Haumea. Our favorite is Makemake. It makes a great chant.

Learning Together with a Four-year-old

I’ve not been bored during the stay-at-home period. The reason: my wife and I take care of our four-year-old grandson every weekday while his parents work. His preschool got cancelled in March, but he now meets with his teacher on Zoom three mornings a week for an hour or so to practice reading, writing, arithmetic and geography. What I have particularly enjoyed is his insatiable curiosity and the fascinating questions he asks. One major area of his interest lately has been large sea creatures. One topic has been whales with a focus on blue whales since they are the largest. He also heard about the megaladon, an ancient large shark. Together we do research on the Internet to answer his questions. I may not have all the answers, but I can find them. At the beach last week, he found a whale-shaped rock. This is now a prominent part of his rock collection.  

Reactions to Health Directives

Once again, our country seems locked into polarized reactions to something that should not be controversial. In this case, it’s health directives. Suddenly, wearing a face mask or not becomes a political statement.

One side says wearing a mask is important for protecting the health of everyone, and the other side says it’s not needed and don’t want to be told to do it.

I’ve heard the statement to act like we have the virus (wear a face mask to protect others) and act like we don’t have the virus (social distance, wash hands, etc.) to protect ourselves. This is what I’m trying to do