We just don't know.

Our neighbors are roughly 80 years old, in my estimation. Really nice people who asked us over to their house for dinner last night - corned beef for St. Patrick's Day.

It would have been wonderful. They have been great neighbors and it would have been an opportunity to get to know them better. We didn't have any corned beef and Hubby would have loved a night off from cooking. (I have been under the weather for over a week and banned from meal preparation. Plus, it's tax season so I have little interest in cooking anyway.)

We declined the invitation. I haven't left the house since the 7th when Hubby and I took the grandkids out for dinner. With runny noses, they spent the night and went home the next day. I went out for pizza on the 6th and I went to the theater on the 5th where a man sitting two rows ahead of me coughed repeatedly. Somewhere in there, I picked up a bug of some kind.

Besides the fact that I am still showing symptoms of something (currently, I am a phlegm factory), Hubby is still going out into the wild on a daily basis - babysitting the grandkids who are out of school and stocking up on food and, now, cold and cough medicines. With regret, we explained that it seemed unwise to accept their kind invitation. Despite my symptoms and Hubby's forays, the likelihood that we are carriers of the coronavirus are probably low. Still, we don't know.

We just don't know.

What a strange time this is. Yet, octogenarians remind us that this is not the first time in this country that people have self-quarantined. Remember polio? Also, what about stock market crashes? Financial panic?

Knowing we've been there before doesn't make living with today's uncertainty any easier but at least we do know we'll get through it. Eventually.