Living in northern New Hampshire, we’ve dodged the bullet for the most part with the COVID pandemic. Even as cases in other nearby states were exploding, the county I live in and the county north of us had very low numbers. The last time I seriously looked at the number, on Halloween, we had 156 total cases in the county. My daughter said something to me a little earlier. In 11 days we have gone from 156 to 198 cases. Coos County, north of us, is seeing an explosion of cases as well, and two deaths. There are 20 cases associated with a Nursing Home in West Stewartstown, 15 residents and 5 staff.

Right now there are 52 active cases in our county and 111 in Coos County. That’s a lot considering June 27 we had 53 cases total by that date. Coos County was way down and now it’s spiking like crazy there.

Our schools have still done well. There have only been 3 cases in the school and contact tracing and quarantining seems to have kept the school from having an outbreak. Still, if the numbers keep rising, I wouldn’t be surprised if remote learning happens sooner rather than later.

My son goes to the local hospital for his infusion of Remicaide on Friday. Even that has me nervous. We’re only using 3% of our ICU beds at the current time, so it seems that most of the cases aren’t serious. It’s more the long-term effects people are worrying about now, especially with the possibility of the Supreme Court ending pre-existing condition protections in regard to health insurance. The next two weeks before Thanksgiving will be pivotal for us.

The other big news up here is the loss of Marty, the cat that lived on top of Mount Washington with the weather observers. He was 14 years old and due to come off the mountain and retire next year when he died of an unforeseen illness. It hits home for me, because I have two of his siblings. All of them were at the Conway Humane Society in 2006 when I adopted my 2, Lilo and Stitch. Marty went to a home and then ended up back at the Humane Society 2 years later when he was chosen to go up on the mountain. They’ve had a cat with them up there since 1932.

We’ve had record-breaking warm weather for almost a week. It’s supposed to end today. Yesterday it was 76° here. I was wearing shorts in November in northern New Hampshire. The ski resorts are going to take a beating with this warmth. Normally they’re starting to make snow so they can open right after Thanksgiving. It’s going to be much later this year. It’s just as well – people should be staying home anyway.