Dad, are your spelling sirens going off from that title?! For anyone else reading, I am well aware that fase is spelled with a ph, but in spanish, it is spelled with and ‘f’ so *insert tongue-sticking-out emoji*.

Hello there!  I am coming to you bright and early (9 am) already showered, dressed, breakfasted, and ranned (runned?)…..went for a run ;).  I told Luis we need to take advantage of this pandemic to do things that are normally impossible to do, like going for a run before work without having to get up at the crack of dawn.  Since I am not working on Monday/ Tuesday, and Luis is working from home, we are able to go running at 7:45 or 8 am, be back by 8:30, and he can get started on work immediately and take a shower/ eat breakfast in between other tasks.  This whole pandemic is TERRIBLE, but I think it has done a great job of removing some of the unnecessary things we spend our entire lives doing (commuting, doing things for the sake of doing them, getting all dressed up).  On days when I have to be at work early (by 8 am, latest), going for a run before work doesn’t sound fun at all because I already feel wrecked getting up…and that’s usually not until 7:30 ish.  And then when I come home, my legs are completely shot, so running is usually out of the question.  Anyway, all of that to say that getting a run in before 9 am feels great….but I am also happy that I will likely just be sitting on the computer for the rest of the day and I can sneak in a little sofa nap a bit later.

So, anyway, we are officially in phase/fase 1 here in Madrid.  Other parts of Spain have already been in fase 1, but since we had the highest number of cases (I was thinking the other day about times when it’s bad to be number 1…or number 2 or 3….like highest number of cases/ deaths in the world- this is a bad race to be winning).  Anyway, we finally, FINALLY moved into fase 1 after it’s been postponed like…3 times.  Before this, we were in fase 0, which basically allowed us to do nothing more than before, except we could exercise.  We could go out for a walk, run or bikeride between the hours of 6-10 am or 8-11 pm, and that’s it.  Then in fase 0.5 (which they invented), we could go to stores without an appointment, but at limited capacity.  So you couldn’t just go for a walk, but you could, say, go buy yourself a dress in the middle of the afternoone because #priorities.  Now, in fase 1, you can do all of the above, but you can also go to the terraces that have opened (with tables at least 2 meters apart) and sit with groups of up to 10 people.  You can also be in the private homes of friends and family with up to 10 people.

Ironies of the “fases”:

1. In fase 0, you could go for a walk only up to 1 km within any direction of your house, but you can run and bike anywhere you want within the municipality.
2. In fase 0, you could walk with people you live with, but not run or bike.
3. In fase 0, you could go shopping with an appointment (like make an appointment at a clothing store…who does that?), but you couldn’t just wait in a socially distanced line outside.
4. In fase 0.5, you can go shopping in the middle of the day and can basically move freely, but you can’t just go for a walk.
5. In fase 0.5, they announced that it is mandatory to wear a mask anytime it is impossible to be at least 2m from other people, but this was never mandatory before.  (Side note: I biked to work (and technically, it is not mandatory to wear a mask when exercising), then parked the bike and walked to the shop and some lady stopped walking and waited for me to walk to pass her and then said (in Spanish): “we are not 2 meters apart!  It is mandatory to wear a mask if we can’t be 2 meters apart!  I could call the police!”.  I didn’t flip her off, but I wanted to.
6. When they made the masks mandatory, they also put a price limit on the masks at .96€ each, but these are the masks that you are supposed to change every day…at 96 cents each, how are people expected to do that?  Also, people are wearing the same disgusting gloves they have been wearing for a month. Why don’t you just educated people to wash their hands super, super well? Instead of asking people to put on gloves when entering a store, why don’t you just make them wash their hands?
7. In fase 1, it is still “mandatory to wear a mask in places where you can’t be 2 meters apart”, but now you can be with a group of 10 people on a terrace with everyone sitting right next to each other not wearing a mask (because they are drinking and eating), but not to worry….because you are 2 meters from the table next to you 😉
8. In fase 1, the parks are open, but only for walks!  No sitting with friends in the park!  But sure, go sit in their stuffy apartment with 9 of your friends.
9. in fase 1, you can go to clothing stores, but you can’t try anything on.  You can take it home and try it on, and then return it.  Or, you can pick it up with your grimy hands and then decide you don’t want it and put it back.

I know I sound very critical, and I am being critical, but I also very much recognize that there is no good way to handle this.  I think everyone is doing the best they can, but I also recognize that some of these rules are a bunch of BS.  Will there be another big spike of corona?  I hope not, but probably.  But what is the alternative?  Never go out again?  The world ends?  Will there keep being peaks and valleys of coronavirus for years to come?  That is a scary thought, but I don’t think it is entirely unlikely.  

Time to get a move on- thanks for reading my rant about fase 1.