How is everyone holding up?

My Fluther family is helping. I’m finding common ground with people I butted heads with in the past. We need each other now.

Real life sucks. I’m happy to have all of you.

Same here.

It is almost like that hypothetical where the only thing that could join us together is an alien invasion. Time to join hands and do some work to fight the real fucking enemy.

This is our alien invasion.

edit :: And I totally edited my original comment in a major way.

@JP, I hope you have lazer pointers. Five cats in a big house, it’s mandatory to have lazer pointers.

Do any of your cats talk?

@Patty_Melt :: We have three dogs (and five cats). One is a two month old hyper Australian Shepherd. That puppy is a nightmare. My sister took all three dogs to the hotel. So when I think it is bad.. I just remember that she has three dogs in a hotel and I belly laugh.

We have a duck pond, cats are easy….

5 cats?! I’d be popping Benadryls like jelly bellies!
We are doing fine. While I have the capability I often don’t leave my zip code or my road. I like taking care of my fish pond in the morning: checking on the fish, scooping out leaves, cleaning the skimmer, replacing the filter bag, etc. At night I feed the fox family and friends and check the trail cameras for interesting critters that pass through. It is relaxing and I can pretend it is exercise.
Now that my son, DIL, and grandson,(SDG), are here it is fun to play with the little guy and see what he learns every day.
I’ve also learned that the stock of supplies, that I thought would last a long time, should include more paper products of all sorts.
In this situation we are fortunate to be living out in the open and across the street from a wildlife management area.

I’m still having to go into work most days. There is talk that they may sequester us and have us live-in at work if things get bad. I’m not really looking forward to this. My wife got laid off yesterday so she is getting to enjoy the social isolation except that she is very extroverted and can’t stand a minute of it. On the flip side I’m taking a couple of days off and the weather is going to be nice. Spring is here in full force and time to get a lot of yard work done. We are working on our own little fish pond to help pass the time. I have a half built garden shed that has been waiting to be finished since last fall.

@LuckyGuy :: My sister gets a bit obsessive. She saw my lame 20 gallon tank with three feeder goldfish. Goldfish I have had for years. 21 cents worth of fish. Goldfish I can easily care for. 20 minutes a week. My routine is strong..

But my sister loved my fish and wanted her own. A 10 gallon tank became a craigslist obsession. She ended up with three tanks. One of them was 50 gallons and she had fancy ass fish. She obsessively did water changers. To the point I was all “STOP FUCKING CHANGING THE WATER” you are distressing them and destroying the bacteria/slime coat.

Sigh….

But eventually she found a new hobby and gave away all her fish stuff.

My tank, is still going strong. Those fuckers survived me going through chemo. LOL

I kinda didn’t care for a few months but they are still alive.

And never LOL what you type. It makes you look desperate.

Fluther wasn’t working for me for a few days.

I’m doing ok. Working from home which means a few emails and phone calls every day. Today there’s some type of conference call at 2 for a committee that I’m on.

I must say I’m enjoying not having to rush to work in the morning, stressed out from the morning routine and the commute. I’m enjoying not spending 100 dollars a week on gas (about 80 mile commute round trip). I’m enjoying not having to stress about getting to bed by a certain hour so I can wake up well rested for the morning routine.

I’m also enjoying seeing shows that are no longer filmed live, instead filmed from the homes of the hosts. It’s fun to see what the homes look like. Kelly Ripa, Ryan Seacrest, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert.

We met friends for walks around their neighborhoods, while keeping our distance from each other. That was fun and good exercise. I’m used to being restless when I’m home and either running to the store or movie theater or errands, none of which are do-able now. I joined Disney Plus and am currently streaming “Little Fires Everywhere” and on Netflix I watched the 7 part documentary “Tiger King” which was very entertaining.

My 12 year old is off for probably the rest of the school year. Online school has only started Monday and there’s not a whole lot of it.

I’m about an hour north of NYC so my news is NYC news. I have been enjoying Cuomo’s press conferences even though I was not particularly a Cuomo fan. Ludicrous that Trump said three days ago that everyone needs to stay home and yesterday he’s saying America needs to get back to work. Obviously his business leader friends are pressuring him, saying “whoa, WTF? Our businesses are going in the shitter.”

Today one of my daughter’s friend’s moms will come over to pick up a check for Girl Scout cookies and then maybe we’ll take a walk in the neighborhood, keeping our distance from each other. I live on a lake, which is nice, and around the lake are a few communities which are very walkable.

I’m doing ok. Probably when I have to go back to work, I’ll be crying. I say that only half in jest. I can get used to this and I know it’s only temporary.

We are handling the quarantine pretty well. Went out today for the special senior shopping hour at the Giant (6–7 A.M. Seniors can sleep any time ~) There were signs saying stay 6 feet apart. and many of the shelves were empty, The apocalypse is here.

Here is a little humor while we’re stuck at home.

Sending love out to all my fellow jellies.

@jca2 :: Tiger King. .... I went into it ready for bed and thought I would check it out. I thought the premise was weird. Holy fucking shit. I marathoned it. That is th best most crazy thing ever. (it is on Netflix)

It is amazing how everyone is horrible and just fucking crazy. I waited for the good guy, but they never showed up… Florida.

I’m fortunate that I can work from home. My wife is a nurse, so she can’t obviously.

It’s been tough to get my boys to do anything resembling school work, but my daughter is still able to be productive for some part of each day.

We’re trying to play board games and get outside as much as possible, although I really wish it were nicer out (we got snow 2 days ago).

I’m really concerned about my family’s health, however. My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer right before things started getting locked down here. She was able to have her mastectomy, but they’re currently telling her that they might have to delay further treatment because of their concern about exposure. She also has MS, and this whole thing has been difficult. Not being able to be there for her in person has been upsetting.

Other than that, I think the only concern I have is that this family of 5 is running a little low on toilet paper, yet there still is nothing in the stores. I can only imagine there are hoarders with rooms full of toilet paper.

@hmmmmmm :: have you tried 7/11? The one buy my house has no TP but they, for some reason always have paper towels.

And I have immunotheropy on monday so I get the cancer game. This is all sorts of fucked up.

@johnpowell: That’s part of what was so enjoyable about Tiger King- that they all look like total lunatics.

Did you finish it yet? It was very entertaining. I encouraged a friend to watch it and I told her there’s no torture or mean treatment of animals, which might be a deterrent to people who might think bad things will occur. I try not to watch movies where animals will be treated cruelly or tortured.

@hmmmmmm: I forgot to mention toilet paper. I bought two 30 packs at Costco before the demand occurred. I have about 55 rolls at present. When I get down to one 30 pack, I may go in search of another, just in case. I buy paper towels from Costco in large packs so I’m good with them, too. I decided I should use regular kitchen towels to dry my hands at the kitchen sink so that will cut down on paper towel use.

Oh yeah.. I finished it through serious sleepies. I couldn’t stop. The cultish shit blew my mind.

So you had a Tiger rip your arm off but you just want it amputated so the fucking crazy tiger park doesn’t get more attention.

It is all so crazy and fantastic tv.

@johnpowell: For some odd reason, I felt bad for Joe Exotic when he was found guilty and got all that time.

I’m about to celebrate my third month at home :) Apart from a little stress with my thesis, I’m doing ok I don’t come here much btw because of the thesis. I’ve got a lot done these days.

The thesis makes me sad sometimes, and I hope to find someone to talk to…

Yeah.. The beginning was weird. His parents were anti-gay. But he was so he tried to kill himself fucking hes legs in a car crash.

So I had sympathy. Then in about 30 minutes I thought he was horrible.

They are all horrible.

Mimi? What is your thesis about?

I’m still going to work everyday as we are considered essential. I am pretty stressed about it. I have nightmares every night about running through tunnels, through streets, through houses. It doesn’t take a dream interpreter to know I’m running from the virus. I went to the ER with one of the doctors that I eat lunch with every day to have her tested for the virus. She won’t get the results for 4 days. I’m anxious as I have heart and lung issues.
I’m trying to stay away from news, but it’s very hard as my brother seems to think he needs to text me the latest news every half hour.

@chyna: So odd that we’re told to stay home for what is probably going to be months, and just a few days ago Trump said the same thing. Now he’s saying Murrica needs to get back to work.

@John it’s about language patterns of an autistic man. It was what I chose in the first place unlike a lot of people who just chose their topic to be done with the school year, so I have no problem with it. My problem is just that the process is more daunting than I thought. Fortunately my teacher is kind enough to let me do my job with my own pace :)

@chyna Your stress sounds much worse than mine. Sending positive thoughts and prayers your way. Please stay safe. PM me or message me if you ant to talk.

Frustrated as hell tried to file my unemployment and was told I have to provide more information and have to talk to an agent but can’t get through to an agent due to mass numbers trying to get EI, about ready to give up seeing I will be starting a new job mid April.