How Sick am I?

The answer at the moment is "not very." Dry skin from hand-washing seems to be about it.

However, I find it difficult to avoid feeling like an absolute invalid, perhaps a plague victim, during the current panic.

• I'm an old guy, and family members seem to think that leaving my front door is suicide. I might as well just jump off a cliff.
• Just not supposed to go anywhere or do anything.
• When I sit in the same chair 24/7, I tend to get very achy, and by itself that makes me feel sick.
• I recently figured out that I must be lactose intolerant, so I'm trying very hard to watch what I eat. Looking at every label and saying, "Gee! I can't eat that either," doesn't really make me feel robust.
• Finally scheduled cataract surgery for my right eye. Reading everything with one eye closed to avoid the blurring doesn't make me feel young and robust either.

Add to all that the rather obvious fact that, in fact, if I escaped the apartment and went out, there would really be no place to go. And the fact that some of the things I would really like to have (orange juice in the morning, for example) really cannot be had because the hoarders cleaned out the store.

It's difficult to not feel like the sick one (and after all, the public health people tell us that it's prudent to act as if I am sick, so the few times I go somewhere, I address people from ten feet away). Unclean! Unclean!

I look at the weather report and it gives me hope that in a week or two, the temperature will soar above 50 degrees and the rain will stop. Then I'll get on the bike (hoping that I haven't lost much muscle mass from a month of enforced idleness) and stay ten meters away from any living human.