It's been a year since I hunkered down in the house to avoid exposure to the COVID virus. A long year of being inside and trying not to give in to the natural depression that is part of my nature. Y and I have come up with a routine that seems to work well for us, with me staying home and him doing all the errands that have to be done COVID or not, like grocery shopping and going to the post office to get the mail from my po box. At this point in time, I'm not sure how much longer I can "do" COVID protocol, but it has helped that once a week my girlfriends and I meet at a local park and, maintaining appropriate social distancing, share lunch and gossip. If it weren't for this interaction, I'd probably be a whole lot more depressed than I am!
Whoever would have thought that this would be a year's worth of worry? When we first heard about this contagious disease, it was easy to think that it was "just in China," as if that made it all better. It was a shock to learn that it was also in dozens of other nations across the globe, and that it was not going to go away anytime soon. I don't think that any of us ever imagined the staggering number of deaths that would result from "the flu," and having a "counter" clicking off the deaths on the daily news is just a grim reality of the depths of this pandemic.
I was finally able to sign up for the vaccination, which is this Friday. Seemed like every time we went on the website, the spots were all taken and so we waited for the next month to try to get on the list. Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that everyone needs two appointments, not just one. When I get my vaccine this Friday, they will automatically sign me up for the follow-up vaccination in 21 days, which means that all of this week's recipients will take up all the spots for 3 weeks from now. Not a very good system, to say the least, but until we get a vaccine that is one and done, we have to deal with the reality of the scheduling system.
I'm tired of the sameness of life, the boring routine of "doing nothing" because there is nothing to do. I'm a people person and used to interacting with others as part of my daily routine, so being in the house with Y and the two dogs just doesn't provide enough stimulation for my personality. I was a classroom teacher for 30 years, and used to have people in the seats and interacting with them in a very positive, engaging environment. Reading is too passive and for some reason I'm not able to do my handwork like I used to. I just don't seem able to follow the patterns, and my eye/hand coordination has deteriorated, which makes knitting and crocheting and embroidery too challenging to do. I have some projects waiting to be done, but they are going to have to wait a lot longer.
The good news is that I can still write!! Maybe not be the cogent, coherent compositions of my past, but at least I can use a keyboard. Maybe I should start writing that novel everyone thinks is a rite of passage for a former English teacher. I don't have a story inside of me waiting to burst free, so guess that's not going to happen either. My Mother always used to say, "This too shall pass," and it will eventually. Years from now everyone will be sharing their COVID stories with their children and grandchildren, embellishing the details to make it seem much more meaningful than it is living through it now. Sort of the old walking to school uphill both ways in the snow theory of storytelling that will have our grandchildren rolling their eyes.
