Five Years Passed Quickly

 It’s five years to the day of the first day of “lockdown,” I guess. Five years since Friday the 13th, 2020, when we’d just finished setting up Canoecopia (actually that was Thursday), and Darren called off the show.

I almost wish he’d done that this year. 

We had a great Canoecopia this year, pretty near flawless as far as Jim’s tech went. Busted ass all four days, I logged 36-ish hours and 53,137 steps. Had a great time with Lili and Gordon Colby, visiting from New Hampshire, repping for Mustang Survival. We ate great food together and apart. It was Jim’s last Canoecopia ever, thanks ever so much. He’s retiring. Darned good weekend.

Until Monday night into Tuesday morning.

I’m post-menopausal, so hot flashes in the night are nothing new. This was no hot flash. This was a fever.

Okay, I’m just tired, I’m thinking. Or it’s the flu.

Nope, Jim was feverish too. Both of us felt like crap in the morning, and I called out of work. Felt bad about it since boss’s husband was going in for surgery that Tuesday morning. Terrible timing.

More fever on Tuesday night into Wednesday. I masked up and trundled over to Walgreens for a set of Covid/Flu tests and took one, fully expecting it would be the flu. I felt pretty awful, it’s got to be flu, right?

Nope. A tiny, faint little line broke my FIVE YEAR STREAK OF NOT HAVING COVID, EVER.

I had such high hopes of never getting it.

I’m now feeling a little guilty that I’m so privileged to never have had it. I had the luxury of being home for so much of the pandemic, and I was able to be away from people, able to mask up and not be “essential.” 

Anyway. That guilt aside. Covid sucks, y’all. Sorry I’m a late bloomer on that one. And I’m particularly sorry that Covid is Jim’s (basically only) parting gift from 29 years of Canoecopia.

Fuck. That. 

My brain has energy but my body does not. And there are times when I feel so distracted, like I’m on anti-depressants, ooh look, shiny. And I feel terrible for Jim losing his sense of smell and taste again, and I didn’t have a lot of compassion for it back then. I don’t know that I’ll lose mine, but it is a bit muted. I do understand the loss; I lost my sense of taste when I had Bell’s Palsy back in 2018, I think it was. Cheese was TERRIBLE. And I love cheese.

So I’ve just been thinking about what it was like back then. 

The world was a dumpster fire of a pandemic. 

It’s also a dumpster fire now. Trump is fucking up shit seven ways from Sunday with his pony boy and all his lackeys and cronies and all the people who won’t stand up to him. It’s disgusting. And I can hardly believe we are in that same situation now as then, only worse. Some mutherfuckers just don’t learn or listen.

Today I ordered groceries through the app, drove up and had them delivered into my trunk. They’ve improved the system since then, let them know through text or the app that you’re on your way, they texted me to let me know my order was ready ahead of schedule. I was in a nap then, but I digress. I’m lucky to have that store so close by, and grateful for that service. Yet I always forget there was one other thing I needed maybe. And that grocery is not the store it used to be, not just because of inflation, but because Kroger is a greedy b*tch. Maybe that’s not fair, but here we are.

And just because I could, I took a little longer way home, basically parallel to the main thoroughfare. I suddenly remembered that that was the way I took pretty often to get to the store during lockdown, because the main road was under construction then. Huh, memory lane.

It was a nice March pretend-spring day today, with rain tomorrow and maybe snow later this week. We sat on the porch and drank a beer in the sun. Talked about our plans for the summer camping trip which might fizzle because of time constraints.

I thought I had a better plan for this, but I’m rambling a bit. It’s okay. Covid-brain.

Truths:

Covid sucks. Trump sucks. There’s just as much uncertainty now as there was five years ago, which should be no surprise to me. (The only surprise is that anyone voted for that bastard.)

The only constant is change. 

I’m grateful for our basement pantry with a lot of staples to get us through. I’m remembering how we’d order groceries and not get some of the basic things we wanted. I think I remember crying when we finally got a cabbage. I definitely remember walking through any store to see toilet paper and cleaning supply shelves completely decimated. Land of milk and honey, sans milk, sans honey.

I’m grateful for our regular two dogs and the one visitor dog we have with us for a while, Miss Vega. They are a LOT to deal with on the regular, but have been extra-extra these last few days. They’re not used to having us both home and maybe they sense we are unwell. Chewy-bones have been useful today, maybe Kong toys tomorrow. Walks are good but never enough. And maybe Bud isn’t wrestling with her as much as she’d like. Goofy Golden Retriever.

I’m grateful for movie streaming services and for the overly-long-and-involved course I need to finish for our new learning management software, Brightspace. I hope I remember anything of what I’ve clicked on. It seems an intuitive-enough system, I know I’ll get the hang of it. 

I’m grateful for therapy, which I got myself into not quite a year ago. I had a shitty time with teaching a course I did not love, could not make myself love, could not convince myself I was at all good at teaching it. I did my best. But I was burned out AF after years of lockdown/pandemic stress and I’m so grateful to have that off my plate. To have a therapist who said hey, good enough is good enough. Lighten TF up on yourself.

I hope you’re grateful. I hope you’re also pissed off at what’s going on. I hope we can figure out how to stop that asshat in his tracks. I hope free speech and democracy and all that’s good and right in this world, prevails. 

Post Script: now our nephew has Covid, and at least two other folks that we know of who worked the show have wCovid. I’ll reiterate: Covid. Sucks.