Changes Under Covid

I was musing on this as I was #coronacleaning up the back yard this morning — covering the furniture, digging out the dead annuals, planting bulbs last minute like a squirrel (2 weeks ago I was lovingly layering them and putting in bone meal and measuring and such, today I was digging holes and tossing them in and what do you want to bet these will look better?)

I was offered 2 sets of theater tickets to shows I wanted to see this weekend — A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie and the tour of Oklahoma at the Orpheum. In both cases I had to turn them down because there was too much packed into the weekend already. But I am not sure I made the right choice. I wonder if seeing one of those shows would have been better for (Beatrix's and my) mental health than poop-scooping the yard. But the poop-scooping needed to get done, and needed to get done now.

I don't think any of us like the pandemic changes. I suppose a few — like a new appreciation for Taylor Swift, or more time with family, or a love of puzzles — are pretty good. But the general grind of worry/(dread), of watching thousands of people die a week, or even of general inconvenience and things taking longer, of wondering about long-term implications, has gotten to be a grind for all of us. I don't know anyone who is their best self right now, most certainly not me.

I don't know how to recalibrate, but I think it's needed.

In the meantime, the yard is (almost) done. And many of the other things going on this weekend are pretty great, so it's not like I am just buried at home with weak tea and reruns of Fuller House. But as we settle in for the longer term of this, it give me some things to think about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Race?

Image
 (sign from a NOLA bar) Probably the world does not need another middle-aged, white, cisgender woman writing about race. But the world DOES need my daughter's take on it, and she doesn't blog, so here I am. When we first knew we were having a girl, we knew she would have blue eyes, because mine are blue-grey and Patrick's are blue-green. The genetics don't vary much on that one. Other than that, we thought, with dominant genes and some luck, that she might look like her Aunt Patrice. Which she actually does. Except for the tiny little issue that somehow my Nordic genes totally went dominant rogue and she turned out to be blonde and very light skinned. (age 1.5 in the Scow family christening dress) So since she's been old enough to communicate, she's had people confused about her racial identity. She's been told she checked the wrong box on forms, she's had teachers deny her ancestry, she's had government officials question her Global Entry, she's
Read more

New Year's Eve 2023

Image
I did not want to be laying in bed, wearing a fleece onesie and still shivering, while my husband and daughter headed out to the several wonderful NYE parties we have planned. I have a beautiful new dress that I got in Duluth for tonight, and was looking forward to the collection of friends we would be seeing. Our friend Whitney in particular is throwing the last party at her B and B, and it's breaking my heart not to go. But I feel logey and coughy, and more to the point, I have a low fever, and I don't want to mess around with possibly getting anyone sick. I'm still holding out hope that I'll miraculously feel better and the fever was a mistaken reading, but I doubt that. And I feel lucky to have 3 sets of people who want me in their lives tonight and who I don't want to get sick. As our yoga teacher Viv says, it's not like a page turns and everything is magic. You get some things that are good, and some that are not, and life is living in the middle. -- In 20
Read more

Choosing Happy

Image
This post is brought to you by a few thoughts from yesterday: First and foremost, Patrick's new book that he wrote for Beatrix for her sixteenth birthday. Available for a hot second before we leave for spring break tomorrow. The response of someone he knows on the internet, who wrote yesterday that he had decided years ago that he would never be happy (and reading his posts, he seems to be right.). It was one of the saddest things I've encountered in a long time. A friend's social media post, in which she discusses another person's comment of " I really think a sizable proportion of the population has become addicted to being angry" with the sage response of " I think a lot of them are doing it because it's more enjoyable to be angry than to be depressed." A nd we finally finished watching this season's Fargo last night. I won't give any spoilers, but it's extremely on theme with this post. So this is the deal. There's a lot on
Read more