Day 31: Masks

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I’m counting from March 3, the day that the first person in New Rochelle was diagnosed, or at least when we were alerted in the news media that someone in New Rochelle had tested positive for CORVID-19. So it’s just 31 days.

And we’ve only been on a “stay at home” order for about 19 of those days. Only.

Tuesday we decided that it was time we each wore a mask when we were out grocery shopping. But what kind of mask, where to get one, how to make one?

We knew we were going to Seasons in Scarsdale early (like 7 AM early) to do some Passover shopping, so we needed masks ASAP.

I haven’t used my sewing machine in, oh, forty years (don’t ask why it has moved with me to every single place I’ve lived since college) and I didn’t think that this was the time to reintroduce myself to sewing. We found a YouTube video showing how to make a mask out of paper towels, aluminum foil and rubber bands—about our speed. It went well until we got to the part where you “just” take a hole puncher and punch holes (through aluminum foil, two layers of paper toweling and a sheet of paper). I wound up taking a barbeque skewer and practically lancing the damn thing.

They weren’t pretty, they weren’t comfortable, but hey, they were masks. And here’s mine.

The aluminum foil  helps to make a bridge for my nose and chin.

My mask-note the lovely red rubber bands

Okay, so they aren’t the most beautiful masks in the world, and it turns out that they probably aren’t even the best functioning masks in the world but we wore them.

And everyone at Seasons was wearing masks, too. The folks who work there. The other shoppers. All kinds of masks—surgical, home-made, and I think I even saw one or two of the health-care type masks, the N95 respirator masks.

I didn’t realize, until we got home, how this entire experience totally freaked me out. 

So it’s come to this—masks. Very quickly we realized that we were going to need real masks, and more than one for each of us. One to wear and one to wash.

Luckily some friends came to our rescue-Dawn dropped off two sterilized home-made masks this morning, and Joanne offered us two of the 100 she is currently sewing.

This is what it means to be alive during this pandemic. If you are over 70 and you need to go out, you need to wear a mask.

I never want to leave my house!

How’s everyone else doing?

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