Pandemic

It's been almost a year since the world first heard of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. When I first heard of it, I really thought it was nothing more than a minor headline that would pass into nothingness before long.

I grew up hearing about mad cow disease. MERS, the first SARS, West Nile virus, and the ebolavirus outbreak of a few years ago all happened since I became a nurse. I worked through H1N1 and learned about Zika. I knew epidemiologists have been been warning about a global pandemic for - well, forever. But none of them had developed into that. This was probably the same kind of thing.

I did not believe it would turn into a thing I needed to worry about.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Within a week, public schools closed along with restaurants and the more "frivolous" retail services closed. People started wearing masks and stocking up on toilet paper. There was no hand sanitizer to be found any where. Concerts were canceled for the next month, and then for the next year.

I became mortally afraid for my grandparents and parents. Afraid for myself and my household, though a little less so, since we're all relatively young and pretty healthy.

And then I started hearing about relatively young and pretty healthy people becoming deathly ill. ICU stays and residual side effects. Mounting hospital debt and the long haulers.

I listened to podcasts wherein people described the loss and pain COVID-19 had brought into their lives. I cried on the way to work. I cried at work and at home. I cried and I cried about everything.

Facing the mortality of the human race heightened every emotion I could experience, both good and bad. So I cried over everything

I feel both closer to and more distant from the whole of humanity.

We are all experiencing the same thing right now. Some of us believe it's a hoax or blown out of proportion. Others are taking it seriously and believing science is doing its level best with the hand we've been dealt. No matter where one stands on that spectrum, it is what we are dealing with now.

So, while we stay in our homes and miss concerts and street festivals and museums, we can relate to one another in a way we might not have before.

I meant to keep up a journal about this thing. But this thing became so disheartening and so heavy that I stopped journaling about it. It all became too much to think about and I moved into more of a keep-your-head-down-and-put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-just-keep-moving mode. So I have no journal and no real documentation of what's happened.

I do have many thoughts about what's happened and continues to happen. Those will come out here as they come to my mind and as I have time to sit down and put them into my keyboard.

...

I haven't been here in a while. Quite a long while.

A long, long while.

How long, exactly, is a "while?"

However long a "while" is, I'm pretty sure I have not been here in many whiles.

Things happened. Life, I guess, is what happened. Life is what happens when you're making other plans, as a popular song says.

I moved houses -- a couple of times.

I bought a house -- with another person. He's pretty great, this person.

Susie, the Stupendous Subaru, died. I had to get a Toyota. She's alright, I guess; we're getting to know each other, I guess.

I left nursing, got a new job. I'm officially a lab nerd. It's kind of always been the dream job I didn't know existed, but was in the back of my head all the time. I'm okay at it and I'm trying to get better.

My kids grew up. Two of them are voting (!) adults with jobs and they're contributing to society. The third is a high school senior.

Somehow he's the third of my kids to become a high school senior and I'm still ... not believing it? How does that even happen?

I mean, I've watched it happen a couple of times already and I'm still, like, uh ... could you do that again, please? I didn't quite, uh, catch what you were doing there with that sleight of hand and all, so could you do it again? Just once more? You know, without the flashes and the spangles and the jazz hands? And maybe could you let me watch it in slow motion? That might help. Maybe?

But, no. 

No one replays these magnificent and humble moments for me. No one humors me, lets me savor the moments for a bit longer, or see them one more time.

I can't blame anyone. This is not a thing to be redone. There is no malice. It is just the way things are. 

Jazz band and marching band and tennis matches and report cards and final exams.

Homecoming dances and prom dances with dates and with best friends.

AP classes and college credits and chosen electives to match hoped-for careers.

Ordering graduation announcements and class rings and letter jackets.

Final sports and music celebratory banquets.

Ceremonies in Magnus Arena.

It is the period at the end of a movement of life. This is not a coda; there is no repetition now. The repetition might have happened when one of them were a freshman, sophomore, junior.

But no more.

Here we are.

I did not know where this post was going when I started typing. But here we are.

Here we are in the middle of a pandemic. More on that next time.

Winter Vacation

I love it so. 

Creative Serving

One must get creative when eating soup for dinner two nights in a row. One also might eat cereal from a Pyrex measuring cup in the morning. 

Garden Update

We grew this.

And some other things. But not very many things. It was a less-than-stellar output. It's a good thing we don't have to rely upon it for food for the winter. 

Piles o' Grilled Food

We took advantage of the beautiful weather -- on November 1st, what?! -- to grill kielbasa, burgers, hot dogs, and cabbage wedges. Yum. 

Driveway Brake Work

Bargain$

I bought all of this for $69. A few weeks ago I took some outgrown clothes to a resale shop called My Best Friend's Closet. They bought a few things from me and gave me store credit on a gift card. Last Saturday I took in a few more things. They gave me more store credit.

Then Solomon and Miriam each picked out several pieces of clothing they liked. The total should have been about $115. But I used the previously earned store credit and an electronic text message coupon to get my total down to $69. 

Between what they already had in their closets and what we bought last weekend, these kids' wardrobes are set for the winter. 

LOLZ on the Road

Privilege

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to how a person's current circumstances are determined by the privilege that person has or has not had in life. And that privilege is, more often than not, pure luck. Sure, personal choices and temperament have something to do with where one ends up. But some people, regardless of decisions made or personality traits possessed, will never have the opportunity to make particular choices.

For example, a child born into poverty and barely scraping through life is likely never to have the opportunity to choose to go to college. This child, as he grows, will be forced to make choices about how to acquire food, shelter, and other basic life needs. If he does make a stab at getting a secondary education, he's likely to be put off by the need to work more than he can study. Lack of education will be one more thing to keep him in poverty.

A child born into a middle- or upper-class family is likely to be expected to go to college. And when he does, the majority of his expenses will be covered by parents, loans, and maybe a part-time job. Nevertheless, once he's finished, he's much more likely to have acquired the skills he needs to break even. He'll not be 90% focused on meeting basic survival needs.

This is just one of many examples. (And there are outliers; I won't deny that. But this is not about outliers.)

The point was illustrated by two cases I came across at work recently. One is a 12-year-old girl who lives in a group home for troubled teens who've been kicked out of their homes and/or schools. A staff member from the group home called to make a post-run appointment for this girl. A post-run appointment is made after someone has returned from running away from the facility. During that appointment there are toxicology and STI screenings done to see if they have done any illegal drugs or contracted any infections from unprotected sex with who-knows-who. It's heavy stuff -- especially for a 12-year-old.

I have a 12-year-old.

Wanna know what he's into? Legos. Minecraft. Nerf anything. His iPhone. Making goofy faces. Fart jokes. Building and programming robots. The farthest thing from his mind is running away from any where. Unless the farthest thing from his mind is doing something that would get him kicked out of his home in the first place.

Because I cannot fathom ever kicking him out of our home, I cannot fathom what circumstances this young girl has come across that have put her where she is. But things in her life are vastly different from the things in my son's life. Most of the decisions these two children will need to make in life will be the result of where and to whom they were born. There is almost no changing that.

The other case that demonstrates the pure luck of the draw was even more personal. I met a young mother with a newborn. She also has 3 other children, all 3 and younger. She is living in a safe house because her newborn child's father punched her in the face, leaving her with broken bones. She is younger than I was when I had my first child.

When I stopped to count up all the strikes she has against her, I might as well have been counting up all the things I have had going for me. But for a few differences, I could be her. I'm lucky that my grandparents paid for nursing school. I'm lucky I didn't get pregnant a fourth time. I'm lucky my ex-husband didn't physically abuse me. I'm lucky that when I finally gathered the guts to leave him, I had a supportive family. I'm lucky that when all of that came crashing down on me, I had a few years more of life experience and emotional maturity than she does.

I'm unbelievably lucky and so are my children. And that, folks, is the essence of privilege.

I Hate Moving

That is all. 

Funnel Cloud

If you look very closely at the far right corner you can see a wannabe tornado. 

And then about 5 minutes later this one happened. 

Vacation

Upstate New York. 

Spades

Four conservative bidders. Super conservative, at that. We're only playing to 200, instead of the usual 500. After 7 hands we've barely broken 100. Pete said, "This is a game of attrition."

Brewing Beer

Summer Evenings ...

... might be my favorite thing ever. Small brewery. Patio. Good beer. Great company. Definitely one of my favorite things, at the very least.

Driveway Oil Change

New Restaurant

This place, Schoolhouse Libations and Kitchen, is fun. The menu is presented in an old school folder. The bar is full of books - and booze, of course. There are classroom style chairs and even some desks scattered around. And the drinks are served in beakers.

Garden

We planted snap peas, lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, carrots, and mustard greens in late March. The greens have done well and we're starting to eat some. The carrots were a complete bust; we've had zero. The peas were a delicious, smashing success. But they're all done now and we've ripped them out to plant cow peas. We've never planted cow peas so we're not sure what to expect. They look like green beans except they are purple.

Tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumbers followed in mid-May. The tomatoes and eggplant were all choked out by mint. (Mint is delicious -- we've made many a lovely mojito with it, but it grows in quantities which almost no backyard gardener can use.) We thought the cucumber was another mint casualty until we got into the patch today to rip out the mint and discovered a healthy, thriving cucumber plant in its midst. Much rejoicing followed.

To make up for the sad lack of tomatoes, Pete bought some pre-started tomato plants at the famer's market today. We plunked them into the ground this afternoon and we're hopeful that we'll end up with some good tomatoes by the time August rolls around.

July 4th

Ribs and potatoes. Mojitos. Playground. Fireworks after a drizzle. Oh, yes.