Lockdowner

Thirty-six-plus hours without an Internet connection and this Lockedowner has gone from stir-crazy to full-on crazy.
I could not visit the local café that provides internet connection as the café closed at 2:00pm. And its closed all day Sunday.
Not having access to the Internet – adjusting to its absence and the involuntary changes forced on my daily routine – highlight my Internet dependence… although “addiction” might be the more apt term.
Neither a cigarette smoker nor a regular imbiber of alcohol, I sympathize deeply with South Africans involuntarily forced to forgo those pleasures due to Lockdown Level 3’s nation-wide ban on alcohol and cigarettes. (The ban on both items lifted with Level 2.) 

News blues… 

According to family and friends in California, air quality degraded to numbers well-above 280, into 300 in some area, on the Air Quality Index .

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Much of what must happen over the next few weeks and months - relocate my mother, deal with the Labor Department, distribute, sell, donate furnishings, rehome dogs, sell the house, return to California - must be carefully planned.
Planning and teamwork come naturally to me; for years planning and teamwork earned me a living as a project manager in California’s high-tech industry.
Planning and teamwork does not come naturally to my mother. For decades, she was a one-woman show. She was frequently indecisive and insecure, but she ruled her roost with an iron fist.
On the micro, intra-family level, our different styles offer potential conflict and misunderstanding.
On the macro, inter-cultural level, I’m handicapped by my limited understanding of – and hair-trigger frustration with - South Africa’s bureaucracy.
Layer a pandemic and Lockdown over an already complex situation and… I quaver.
Am I up to this challenge?
Can I be kind yet forceful, master my frustration, cope with the social isolation, ignore criticism of disengaged extended family, maintain my dignity and self-respect, and demonstrate compassion?
I hope so.