I am confident that there are better uses of my limited brain cells than storing the entirety of Dana Carvey’s “Choppin’ Broccoli” skit, over three decades later, but here we are.
I am overdue for a haircut, but I keep pushing my appointment date out due to the local spike in COVID cases, so I guess I’ll succumb to my inevitable final form as a wandering crone housing small woodland creatures in her tangled mane.
In the middle of the workday on Wednesday, I came down with the creeping crud rather suddenly. Coughing, sneezing, headache, congestion, fatigue … the works. I scheduled a PCR test for the next morning and drove home on a jarring mixture of fatigue and nervousness, certain I had finally succumbed to the plague.
It took a day and a half to get the result, but it was negative. Still, days later, I don’t feel significantly better, and I’m wondering if I should schedule another PCR test or just ride it out.
Since Wednesday, I have second-guessed all of the decisions I’m making, the few risks I am taking, and how many others are impacted by everything I do right now. Frustration rises in me because I know it was too early for federal, state, and local governments to drop safety requirements; I’m seeing it in the rise in case counts all around me. And yet we’re supposed to feel better about all of this because it’s “less fatal.”
Resentment does not come naturally to me, but I feel it rise inside every time I think about the past two years and all the ways we could have cared for one another better, all the ways we could have seen past our own inconvenience to keep each other safer. I’m including myself as an object of resentment here. I have taken risks like eating indoors in a restaurant that claimed to check vaccination status upon reservation but didn’t when we arrived, and we went ahead with the meal anyway, instead of turning around and leaving. I could fool myself into thinking that that decision was about not ruining a celebratory evening, or even that I wanted to make sure that a favorite restaurant got my business during an uncertain time, but really it was because I wanted to enjoy a nice meal out while pretending not to live in the shadow of COVID.
I wanted a night off of constant anxiety, and I was willing to take a risk to do it.
And this is what it is now, that constant calculation, that ever-present worrying: How effective is my booster anymore? What about my KN95 masks? Will it happen today, the thing I’ve been willing not to happen for years?
Even when someone declares it over, it won’t be over. Our brains have been rewired. I don’t know how not to think about it anymore. But maybe someday I won’t think about it constantly. Maybe that. I could look forward to that.
Criminy and Crivens make me so happy. They’re such lovey, gentle souls. When I am feeling rotten, I give one a cuddle and everything is a little better.
There should be a word for the feeling upon receiving a negative result on a PCR test. It’s overwhelming relief, absolutely, mixed with disappointment that it’s easier to catch bad colds again. 🤧
Freestyle Love Supreme was so much fun last night! If you get a chance, go see it. Don’t spoil yourself with videos. Just go, and enjoy!
Currently reading: Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner 📚 I checked out a Kindle loaded up with 28 (!) bestsellers from my library this week, and I’m still marveling at its convenience.
Currently reading: Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home by Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen 📚 As a fan of Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter “Culture Study” I’ve been looking forward to reading this book for quite a while.
New pen day! 🖋 I swapped a TWSBI Eco I don’t use very much for this Eco in Lilac. You know how I am about purple pens. 💜 And now my friend has a gently-used Eco in the color she wanted.
I made it through the first week of the six-week Whole Life Challenge! So far, the easiest habits to establish have been exercise and mobility. Unsurprisingly, nutrition has been the hardest; meal planning and prep is so much work.