What Have We Learned?

Is there anything that you have learned from this current drill? Is there something that you wish you had done differently?

The only thing I wish I had done differently is to include more cheese.

Jeanette Isabelle

More food. I have a month or so worth at all times.

More entertainment for very bored kids.

More Xanax for me as I stay HOME with bored kids, sigh.

I learned that in general for this particular drill we were okay. For us TP and paper towels were never an issue. Food was fine and we were able to restock as the stores recovered from the initial panic shopping.
We had health items like vitamins/minerals in stock. (Vit.C, D3 & zinc are apparently very beneficial)

Staying in good overall physical condition seems to have been key to this “drill”. FoxNews presentation yesterday spoke to the stats of people who died as having underlying conditions such as diabetes (and pre-diabetes) with BMI’s over 30 (ave. 33). So watch your diet and particularly processed sugars (simple carbs). All that walking in the hills around here was a good thing.

Mentally, I’m doing fine because I’m still occupied with work. That said, in case the situation deepens or is extended, I’m looking to relearn a musical instrument from my long ago past. I haven’t played in 50 years, but I can still buzz a trumpet mouthpiece so I’m going to relearn the basics and then maybe start playing some jazz. Honestly, the trumpet music for new students sucks, but there are some tunes that for me are much more interesting. This will be good for me regardless of the lockdown, but for my better half I also bought a new mute so she won’t go insane listening to me do scales.
I understand that learning a musical instrument builds new neural pathways — I wonder if that’s true of relearning...

No bored kids here - the li'l Hikermor is at UCLA and we have been helping her and her BF with stuff which has been beneficial to all.

i am fortunate because I was anticipating home confinement as the result of hip replacement surgery, now postponed until ??, so I made plans to help remotely with volunteer projects I am working on. Doing real meaningful work is really beneficial. I have also been able to get outside in the sun and work a bit at yard chores. The fresh air and sunlight have been helpful, as is the recently purchased exercise bike. I really need that cardio workout.

And there is no one on this green earth with whom I would rather share home confinement than Mrs. Hikermor.

I reevaluated my stored items. The food would probably last for 2 months, 3 months if I stretch it a little. Articles for hygene would have lasted for 3 weeks to half a year depending on the item (TP reached the restock level).
There was no real shortage of anything. People panik bought a lot of the cheap stuff. Items in the midpriced or higher range were still avaiable. It was interesting to see that some of the higher priced stuff (e. g. salmon) got cheaper. I took advantage of that when it was food I liked. Things that also stayed available were larger paket sizes. Monday afternoon 500 g packets of spagetti were out, 5 kg packets were still in the shelves.
I also had plenty of cheese.
I have a monthly delivery from Amazon that includes food items. They had everything and delivered on time. That spares some trips to the supermarket.
For most szenarios I might be fine.
I am contemplating to offer some volunteer time for neighborhood help like assisting with shopping.

I guess things have gone as well for me as I could reasonably expect. I have enough food on hand for probably a month or two although it's not going to be keto friendly. The stores aren't really out of any foodstuffs that I normally buy. The pasta and dry beans are low in stock as is rice but I avoid those foods anyway. Probably one "prep" that might have been nice is a chest freezer but I don't really have a good place to put one if I had one. Could have had more canned food on hand but again it's still available in all the stores.

Bleach, could have used more of that. And hand sanitizer too although I never really used it in the past with any regularity.

Been disabled/retired for ten years now, so I have lotsa time to work on preps-gasoline cache in a shed, 12v solar charger/battery inverter system in another shed, water supply and triple backup filtration systems in place, not that any of those things are in foreseeable play.
Had lots of paper products, with rag/laundry backups due to a couple of elderly incontinent dogs. Chest freezer and a 15 pounds of emergency oatmeal should see us through the ups and downs of logistics.
The garage holds a rich array of metal and woodworking projects, so i work at the forge or bench everyday.

A few years ago we left a small denominational church and joined a non-denom evangelical megachurch, televised sermons, christian rock and roll praise bands, 10 sites and 27000 members: my wife loves the place, I go where she goes. Their theology and politics drive me nuts, but the love is there. We get daily emails, texts, instagrams, live facebook and website presentations and website services. Lots of mission stuff going on in the community...and it all matters. The community, whatever the source, is the part that contributes most powerfully. The church provides a digital village. So does this forum.
Thanks for that.

The second part of the "buy what you eat, eat what you buy" mantra means that some of my stocks happened to be at a low ebb when the panic buying started, but realistically I don't think there's much that can be done about that. I have enough of the stuff that matters. Mostly I feel vindicated. I've been using a machine to make bread at home for decades, and flour etc is something I've always kept on hand, so that's fine. I switched to a cheap plastic hand-held bidet about six months ago, so now use very little toilet paper. I'm not expecting power cuts or similar. Here people who show symptoms are being asked to self-quarantine for 7 days, and even if that stretches into two weeks it's not very long in the scheme of things. Longer than that and I'll probably be hospitalised anyway.

I sort-of regret not keeping my push-bike in better order. It's not been ridden for 5+ years. Tyres are flat, and probably perished. Part of me thinks I ought to get new tyres. The other part says the last thing I need now is a cycling accident.

Apparently having fat around the face and neck makes it significantly harder to insert the tubes for a ventilator. Probably too late to do much about that now.

A beard can make it harder to get a good seal around an oxygen mask, if that should be necessary. In normal times hospital staff would shave you, but during a pandemic they are going to be very busy and you might not want to wait to start breathing, so if you have a beard I'd recommend you shave in advance. Maybe not immediately, but if you get symptoms. (It takes a few days for symptoms to become so bad that you need to be hospitalised, if that happens at all, so you should have time.)

I am an introvert by nature, and have a big home library. So, all is well with me personally, except for worrying about the kids and worrying about my perscription meds.

Having said that I Learned quite a bit in this drill . A few DIY home projects finished sooner proved very helpful in this situation, and proved the saying : Do not postpone todays job until tomorrow!!

Some other great ideas were not really planned, they just came by coincidence. It is my philosophy to keep old stuff as long as they are working fine. So, all our TVs at home are older models. Mrs. Chisel isn't happy about it but she knows our financial plans and financial restrictions. This last Mother Day, the kids bought a few gifts for mom, and my gift was a 50 inch TV, which she extremely liked. It has become very very useful since it connects to Wi-Fi and the kids run older (more funny) Tv shows which she likes alot. This fills more of her stay time with laughs.

What I've learned: I am "prepped enough" to survive the coronavirus. But I am not prepped enough to not survive the cornovirus.

My wife and I both know how to take care of our household in the event the other dies. But in the case of my wife and I both dying, our children (or my sister or her brother) would have a hard time taking over our stuff, let alone take care of my mom who is currently on her own (forced lockdown) in a senior living facility.

Yes, we have a solid estate plan (trusts set up, wills, powers of xxx, etc.), but what we found lacking was consolidating all the important stuff our kids would need to know into one place. A "parents box" I'll call it. he way things were before this coronavirus, the kids would have been searching through file cabinets, in safe deposit boxes, on our computers, etc. to put all the details together. It is all pretty much documented, but not collected into one place. We are now busily consolidating everything into a "parents box" that I will probably paint bright red or something, so it will stick out as "the important box" if it gets mixed in with other boxes. We have sent out electronic copies of this stuff to the kids, but we found some of that was two years out of date. And can we trust the kids to be able to find the files we sent, and remember how to decrypt them?

So we are making a physical "one-stop-box" that has everything from estate plan, to bank account access details, to medication lists, to typical monthly bills and how they are paid, to insurances we have, to the strategies behind our investments, to lists of who to notify in case of our deaths, etc. Again, all this documentation exists already - just spread out. We came to the realization that we could massively help out our kids if they only had one single place to look.

Absolutely terrific idea. Having been on the "surviving" end... there is no substitute for a good, clear, inventory and map.

I put together something like that as I anticipated an evacuation before hurricane Irma.. I'm single, retired, and have a simple will going to a relative...

will, living will and surrogate of health care declaration

NFA trust

car title

birth certificate, passport, copies of teaching certificate, and BA from UF

deed to house, and deed of sepulcher to funeral plots

combination to gun safe

credit union account number and PIN

5 signed checks for transition funds

latest quarterly statements from financial institutions, with brokers names and addresses affixed... spreadsheet of finances

historical wills for Mom and Dad to show ownership of house

directions for continuation of small scholarship in Dad's name to high school

documents are contained in a 50cal ammo can, in a grab and go location

One thing we found with our previous relatives who died - you can't always get to their money (for funeral's, etc.) immediately. in one case, my wife was her aunts sole beneficiary, had all Powers of XXX, was the only person listed in her will, had her "Conservator and Guardianship" (the aunt had Alzheimer's and was incapacitated), had signing privileges on all her accounts, etc. You would think all that would pretty well cover things. But when she died and my wife tried to withdraw funds for the funeral, no dice. She was blocked 100% by the banks. We paid for the funeral out of our pocket. Eventually getting reimbursed later when the inheritance was finally made available to my wife.

Lesson learned by us. If you are legally set up to withdraw funds from your relatives accounts, and need those funds to pay for their funeral, withdraw what you need VERY QUICKLY after death, before the banks put a freeze on it, even though the money is technically yours.

We were fine paying for a funeral out of our pocket. They're ridiculously expensive, but being older ourselves, we had the cash. I know my kids would not have the temporary funds to pay for my wife and I's funerals. Hopefully all the assets we put into a trust for the kids would work, but who knows - some stupid bank may freeze up the trust for a while. Pre-paid funerals may be the way to go, but we haven't set that up yet.

Yep my sister in-law was on the joint account, and had to get a lawyer. Greedy banksters .
Be very careful on prepaid a lot of scams in that business

that is the reason for the 5 signed checks.... so those funds may be used from my checking account

The problem is, the bank may not honor them, even if signed. In my wife's case, she was a signer on her aunt's account and the bank would not honor her signature in the immediate period after her aunts death. IIRC, the bank froze ALL transactions into or out of the accounts upon learning of the death. Doesn't matter who was signing what, every transaction was stopped.

So you should probably instruct those who you expect to be cashing your checks to cash them FAST after your death, before the bank becomes aware that you have passed. I would still rely on speed as my first defense against banking bureaucracy.

When my wife's dad died, she remembered the aunt's banking ordeal, and immediately withdrew $20k from her dad's accounts. No problem - she got the money out before the bank started in with another account freeze. Nothing illegal there - she had all Powers of XXX and was a legal signer on the account. She just beat the bank bureaucracy at its own game in this second go-round, that's all.

It might be instructional to call your bank, before you die, and ask them exactly what will happen to your account, and for how long, after they are notified of your death. Including how they will handle checks that were signed before your death. What they say might be an eye-opener. Or maybe you're lucky enough to have a good bank. Asking first would be a good first step to knowing the details. What I'm betting you'll find, might be that having blank signed checks sitting around is a huge risk for you while you're still alive, but useless to anyone after you're dead. That's just my hunch.

I use one of these for that:

Honeywell Fire Safe Waterproof Box, Medium, Model 1103

It's pretty distinctive, i.e., doesn't look like any of the zillion Banker's Boxes around my place - so it's easy to describe to distant relations how to find it.

About 50 bucks. It's not an anti-burglar "safe" - it's easy to open it up. Anyways, it's not that heavy, and it has a handle, after all.

Its purpose is to preserve the contents, until the Fire Department shows up. Compare the rating of the fire chest (this one is rated at 30 minutes) with the response time of your local FD (mine is about 5-10 minutes) to see if it's a match for your needs.

A few years ago, I started preparing a 'guide' listing al my bank accounts and passwords ..etc. but was slow in updating it. A few months ago, visiting a number of clinics for various medical problems, I started working on the file , then printed it and gave it to my oldest daughter.

If anything happens to me like corona, I wish to have the time and ability to transfer to her account a large sum from my account. Dealing with this stuff after "not surviving" is complicated enough.

Do not include store-brand lawn and leaf bags in your preps. Buy something that you can depend on!

Jeanette Isabelle

Just learned to cut my own hair

After this whole thing is over, barber shops are likely going to lose customers who found out that self hair cut at home is not that hard after all.

I, too, need to get my hair done, but I'll wait for a professional.

Jeanette Isabelle

I wear a goatee, and try to have a trim, professional appearance. I work with phsucians and pt's at my local VA hospital and appearance is important. Even learned to trim the hair over my ears with a sharp paur of scissors

I learned cutting my hair a long time ago. I tend to have it short. The equipment cost about as much as 4 haircuts and lasts for years.
I can effortlessly cut it like a Hollywood star would have it (Telly Savalas comes to my mind).

How do you cut long hair?

Jeanette Isabelle

I just did my own too! I'm happy with the way it came out (but us guys aren't known to be too picky). The only part I didn't try myself was shaving the hairline at the base of my neck. I had the wife do that later, when she got home from work. I will say, it did take me a while, quite a bit longer than when a normal barber does it.

The hair should be damp. You straigten it and get it parallel with a comb and cut it to equal length along the comb. Gage the length for successive cuts against the hair you already cut (about half of the strand should have the new length). When you Do not snip off too much in one go. You can always cut off more.
BTW:
Telly Savalas is perhaps best known for his role as Lt. Theo Kojak. His hair would not exactly be considered as long .

I'm not that brave to try it. I'll wait until the quarantine is lifted.

Jeanette Isabelle

Still living with my barber after 46 years! So, quarantine changes nothing in this regard....

It looks like she knows what she's doing.

Jeanette Isabelle

and our hair is usually shorter.

So, it is easier for wives to do our hair, but we wouldn't dare do our wives' hair.

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