Turning the blog over today to the writing of retired teacher and chaplain Kitty O’Meara of Madison, Wisconsin. Her poem “And the people stayed home” has been making the rounds on social media, passed along by the likes of Deepak Chopra and Oprah. It resonates, so I’m sharing it on this quarantine Sunday as an optimistic meditation on our moment in history.

Grocery shopping has become a whole new adventure. I’m shopping for three at the moment, even though I’m living alone while the Stallion cares for his mother in another city. It’s a simple thing to buy a few extra groceries for the immunocompromised friend and senior neighbor, but it makes a big difference in helping them to minimize their personal risk. Experts remind us daily at this point that the fewer excursions we all need to make into public space, the less likely we are to come into contact with the virus. But at some point, somebody has to go get food.

Nobody knows what day it is anymore. I woke up Thursday morning disappointed that it was only Tuesday. Today, a colleague tried to schedule a meeting for yesterday. There is so much happening right now — and so little at the same time, as we all find ourselves confined to our homes — that it’s hard to keep track. I only figured out what day it was this morning when my phone’s calendar alerted shortly after I woke up to remind me to leave some cash out for the housekeeper. The notification gave me a jolt: it was a time machine back to life before… this.

While I’m over here social distancing in Los Angeles today, I wanted to turn the blog over to a nurse friend in Toronto who has some practical advice on how to actually do the social distancing and quarantine recommendations we’re getting. She writes: This is hardcore, people! But we can do this. You can do this! We have the internet! Books! Games! Toys! Social isolation is seriously how we fight this invisible enemy. We have to do better and Lord knows, if I can do it, you can do it.

Canadians, as a people, follow the rules. The Stallion likes to tell a joke about it. I don’t happen to think it’s very funny, but that’s one of the things that makes it so hilarious to him. Q. How do you get 100 Canadians out of a swimming pool on a hot summer day? A. You say, “Please get out of the swimming pool....” [Ba-dum-CH!'] The first time he told it, it took me a few beats past the punch line to realize I was expected to laugh. I heard it as a simple statement of fact, not a dig by a proudly individualistic American at the deferential character of his northern neighbors.

It’s so quiet. Los Angeles has around 4 million people in the area strictly defined by the borders of the city. But this is a region of urban sprawl that goes for miles and miles, until it is forced to terminate at an insurmountable feature -- like the ocean or mountains or desert. Los Angeles County tops 10 million. Add the OC to our south and you’ve got another 3 million. Yet as I drifted off last night, there was just… quiet. No thrum of traffic, no rumbling planes, no clinking of glasses from a dinner party down the street. Even the neighborhood dogs are quiet, since they’re now at home with their masters fulltime and have fewer things to bark about.

“Not far,” my guide said when I asked him for the thousandth time in four miles whether we were close to our camp yet. “We’re nearly there.” I put my head down and continued slogging forward, counting each labored breath in and out. One, two, three... The air is thin at 17,000 feet in elevation. Each gasp delivers only about half the oxygen of sea level. It’s like being on the edge of space, with so little oxygen above you in the atmosphere that the sky stays deep, indigo blue all day, even as the sun hits its bright white peak. You have keep your sunglasses on so your eyes don’t burn.

They say the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Based on my unofficial survey of friends on FaceTime, people on social media, colleagues on conference calls, and television news, Americans are still working their way through the first four stages. I’m not sure anybody has come to accept this yet.

I accidentally hit the wrong button on a group text yesterday and wound up on a three-way FaceTime call with two of my closest girlfriends. We all live within 60 miles of each other, but we’re physically divided by the ocean of social distancing. I didn’t realize how much I needed them until I saw their faces and it felt really good to connect. As we talked together, our collective brows furrowed while we exchanged the latest from CNN on quarantines and economic fall-out, we were joined on the call by one of the girls’ young daughters.

I can’t stop thinking about my grandmother. I didn’t much care for visits from Grandma when I was a kid. She would arrive by plane from remote Western Canada with her boring news of relatives I didn’t know, and an energy that thoroughly disrupted the lazy peace of my existence. She was constantly busy, attempting to enlist me for all kinds of projects: deep cleaning the kitchen, darning socks, knitting, gardening, and baking tough little rhubarb muffins. I found none of it even remotely appealing. I was a child of the 80s. I had an Atari.

I got a text yesterday evening from one of my nearest and dearest friends in Toronto: “Apparently, Canada and the US are preparing to issue a statement in the next 24-48 hours suspending non-essential travel between the two countries so, if you wanna come home, come home now.” It’s not much different from the text I sent my mom on Saturday as I launched into my campaign to bring her home from Mexico. And it’s a real question I’ve been wrestling with: Do I stay, or do I go?

I cried this morning. Like, really cried. This sh!t is stressful. When my dad died in 2001, it was the first time I lost somebody really close. I remember the feeling of waking up at peace, having forgotten for just that early-morning instant that he was gone. Then my brain would catch up to reality and deliver the crushing realization that my world had changed forever. I grew to dread mornings because I knew what was coming: blissful ignorance and then the sudden plunge into the depths of loss... it was like losing him over and over again, every single day.

I started the morning trying to be normal. The boyfriend (Sorry: The Stallion) and I got into a flash fight about nothing. We’re both tense. He’s super stressed about his family. His mom, who’s in her 80s, lives in NorCal. And his 11-year-old daughter also lives there. We’re both touchy about the reality that he can’t be in LA and NorCal at the same time and so he has to leave soon. It’s the right choice. No question. I’m strong. I’m low risk. I’m resourceful.

I have a neighbor in her 70s who is solo and independent and she’s not going to like the latest that she’s being asked to stay inside. But I’m hearing reports of seniors at the grocery store at 5 a.m. trying to avoid contact and she needs support. I knocked on her door and told her that the Governor Gavin Newsom is recommending she stay inside. She didn’t miss a beat: “FUUUUCKKKK HIM!” I asked her to give me a shopping list anyway.

I decided to leverage my reasonably wide social network of a couple thousand Facebook friends to hear from people I know and trust what the situation is where they are. It’s changing rapidly, of course, but here’s the latest from around the USA and Canada today.

Mom needs to come home. But she doesn’t want to come home. But is she safe in Mexico? Things are changing rapidly and there is no reliable data. She could be forced into quarantine by the time she wants to go home. And what if they close borders? Cancel flights? Not only that, it turns out she doesn’t have any health insurance. She’s got to come home.

Contagion has been trending for more than a week so of course we watched it. I was in Toronto during SARS and it is clear that the movie was loosely based on that Coronavirus outbreak, so it isn’t actually prophetic. But, seriously: the first hour of the movie felt like a documentary of our times. Here’s hoping we can avoid the middle portion where the world goes all apocalyptic.

Every day, it seems, I say something that seems like it was written for a movie. “Hotels are closing.” “Vegas has declared a state of emergency.” “Restaurants are shutting down.” “Maybe it’s too dangerous, babe.” Even as I hear the words come out of my mouth, I struggle to believe them.

“We’re meeting more about working from home than actually working from home!” one of my colleagues said this morning. We’re stacked with WebEx meetings all day. But I’m stoked, because this is my preferred way of working. Since starting my new job in January I have begun feeling a little trapped in the 9-5 grind.

A company-wide e-mail came through half an hour into the workday this morning, with a video from our CEO attached. We’re on a work-from-home “trial” starting tomorrow and effective for a week… I think longer. The idea is that we’re to use this week to learn how to work from home in case we find ourselves in a situation where we have to. Like a fire drill.