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Episode 017 Life Under COVID-19
Podcast Episode 17 - Life Under COVID-19

Episode 017 Life Under COVID-19

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In this podcast episode, we talk briefly about living under COVID-19 and provide some takeaways for coping in our current reality.

Links to resources referenced in the episode:

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hello! Welcome to the Sally in the Zen podcast. I’m your host Sally. I’m a Zen Buddhist caregiver to my elderly folks, and always in pursuits to find Zen moments in everyday living. If you’re returning, welcome back! Glad to have you.  If you’re not and you’re new to the podcast, welcome! Glad to have you too!

So coincidentally today’s episode landed on April 1st. Stop me if you heard this one. Dear God, please reboot 2020. It has a virus.

Today’s show is going to be light and quick and more of a touch base since we finished our Wellness series and just wanted to talk briefly about what’s going on in our world. So if you’re ready, let’s go.

First off, I want to say that I hope you and your family are doing well and taking precautions whenever you do go out.  My family, we’re doing good. We live in a county that locked down a day after the national emergency was declared so, national emergency was declared on the Federal level on Friday 13th — haha, Friday the 13th — and on Saturday the 14th, my county had a confirmed case of the Coronavirus and we were locked down.  We were one of the handful of counties in Pennsylvania to have that happened to. 

And since this is something that is unique and I don’t have any prior experience with dealing with something like this, but I know when I’m calm, Mom and Dad are calm. I can’t speak much for other older folks but, with my folks in particular, as they’ve gotten older, they’ve gotten more sensitive to change. Meaning, when change happens, they’re no longer as calm as they were when they were younger. They spazz out. My particular parents spazz out and I have to be the voice of call. And when they see me calm, they remain calm. So it’s like a vicious circle. When they see me calm, they’re calm. When I see them calm, I’m calm. Vicious cycle.

So that Saturday, while people were running around doing panic runs to the grocery stores and creating outages of toilet paper and whatever else is out there, Mom was gripped with needing to eat baked ziti. Perfectly understandable when you think about it because milk, butter and cheese make the world go round, so who am I to stop comfort food from coming into our house? 

So I ended up throwing myself in the midst of the panic runs but luckily, in my neighborhood, it wasn’t too bad because the rush already happened. So I had wrote a post with pictures of eggs being completely cleaned out, bread almost cleaned out, of course, the toilet paper was gone. But it was kind of surreal to be walking around the supermarket with Dad just going, wow, like, what the hell is going on? It was surreal.

So we just finished up the second week of working from home and under a stay at home order.  Our guilty pleasure that we’ve gotten into the habit of eating nowadays, so we’re stocked up pretty well on Whopper eggs and M&M almonds eggs and M&M peanuts and hazelnut spread. So those are comfort food for us at this point. I’d say, we’ve gotten used to the new cadence that is our lives now and it’s put more perspective for me, front and center, on what is important versus not important. 

So let me share some tips that I shared on Instagram from last week, as we go on with these days because we don’t know when it’s going to be over. 

Tip (1): focus on healthy eating.  An Arabian proverb: he who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.

Tip (2): release stress work out with an online class. Which is actually what I do from Monday to Saturday with an online class under Gaia and Les Mills.  This is not a push for them. It’s not an advertisement but this is what I personally do.

Tip (3): rest well. A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book and that’s an Irish proverb, and 

Tip (4): we’re in this together. Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet. And that’s from Aristotle. So please, please, please let’s all be patient with each other when we’re out there and especially online.  

And speaking of laughs, let me share with you what I found recently. So trending right now under social distancing pick up lines: 

  • Can I ship you a drink?
  • I have some toilet paper.
  • Is that Purell you’re wearing?
  • You come within six feet of here often?
  • And because we’re on a roll, here’s another one: if you need 144 rolls of toilet paper for a 14-day quarantine you probably should have been seeing a doctor long before COVID-19.

Now I just recently submitted an article to the Ascent publication, and the heart of the article, I can include the link into the show notes here, but the heart of the article was laughter is the best medicine, and I included some funny, funny jokes on there, that visually is more impactful than me able to, you know, articulate it.  Kind of loss in translation if I were to say it here, but I’ll include the jokes on the show notes and also a tip about meditation. 

Meditation, if you’re interested, I, there were two free YouTube that I found very very impactful that I shared in the article as well as if you’re not interested in meditating or learning to meditate, then breathing properly, deeply, slowly, can bring calmness to you instantly, and I guarantee it does. That’s pretty impactful, so I’ll include those in the show notes too.

And I have my closing quote: family is not an important thing it’s everything and that’s from Michael J Fox. So that’s the end of today’s episode. Hope you enjoyed it and had a little laugh with that. I wish you well wherever you are, and happy and safe and healthy.  And I’ll talk to you next time

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