Breaking the Time Loop–CoronaLife Day 817

June 9, 2022 By Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but ever since the pandemic started, I have felt a stifling sameness. In the beginning, isolation gave every day the feeling of a life on repeat.

Even as things have opened up, I have not felt much relief. In spite of more activity, more interaction, this pandemic’s stubborn refusal to end has lent a sense of frozen eternity to my days.

Today, for the first time, I experienced time lurching forward again. A glimpse of a future free of this disease. All thanks to some 4 and 5 year olds.

I had the pleasure of attending our school’s first-ever Pre-K Step Up to Kindergarten ceremony. The children’s young innocence was a breath of hope. They embodied the limitless possibilities of the future, a future they will help shape.

They do not remember a life before the pandemic, but their faces radiated excitement, joy, and pride. There was no fear. This world is their world, and they will have the tools to navigate it and make it better.

For now, they are looking forward to summer adventures and making new friends in Kindergarten. But I look at them and see a future of unimaginable promise.

With them, time has started moving again.

Ups & Downs – CoronaLife Day 677

January 20, 2022 By 1 Comment

As the saying goes, life has its ups and downs. This week my daughter tested positive for Covid. She’s doing okay, mostly just congested. She had one day she felt terrible, with a horrendous headache, but that was the second day of symptoms and has eased off considerably. Now my husband and I are waiting to see if we get it from her.

So that’s the down.

The up is that the genealogy book I am working on is nearing completion! Remember how I had thought I would need to cut a whole lot of pages to fit it into an affordable price range? The text of this book was clocking in at a whopping 290 pages, while the earlier book I did was only 180. Therefore, I spent a few days trying to cut it down, despairing of ever getting close.

Then I had a bright idea. I decided to look at the final PDF of the first book, to see what the final page count was after I added all the photos, trees, and title pages. I almost fainted, because it was 500 pages! I immediately knew that even with all the inserts added to the 290 pages of text, this book would not be 500 pages. Which meant I did not have to try to cut any text out!

What a relief!

I will finish compiling the PDF tomorrow, then I need to upload that to the printer so I can get a cover template for the book. The final large project will be designing the cover once I have the template. I already know what I would like to do for the cover, so it will just be a matter of getting it done. Then I can send it off to be printed!

Almost there.

How’s your January going?

Happy New Year 2022—CoronaLife Day 663

January 6, 2022 By Leave a Comment

Happy New Year, everyone! I feel a bit like life is just on repeat: here in NJ we are in the middle of a COVID case spike that dwarfs the original wave in 2020. When the pandemic started, I began the counting of CoronaLife Days. I never thought I would still be counting the days almost two years later.

2021 was in many ways, a year of waiting for me. Waiting for illustrations for my YA book. Waiting for the proofread of my genealogy book. Waiting for this pandemic to end. Lots of waiting.

My hope for 2022 is that it will be a year of action as the waiting ends. I will get my illustrations. I will get my proofread. Both those books will be published. And I hope with all I have that we will also finally see this pandemic burn itself out, and life can return to normal—although with over 826,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more permanently disabled from COVID, life will never again be normal for many of our neighbors.

Living in the uncertain limbo of the last few years has been stressful for me. Many times I have just wanted to scream from sheer frustration. I am hoping this year I will find some relief, and that I will have the mental and emotional space to work creatively again.

I wish you and yours a safe and happy New Year, and hope 2022 will be healthy and productive for you!

Stamina–CoronaLife Day 607

November 11, 2021 By Leave a Comment

Every day at bedtime, my daughter complains that her legs ache. This is not a surprise. After 18 months of mostly being home, combined with being on crutches all of August and in an ankle brace all of September, she is tremendously out of shape. That 40 minutes of exercise in gym every day has her muscles balking.

I sit here watching her swim laps, working on her endurance with the rest of her class…and I realize she is not the only one in need of more stamina.

My daily fatigue has been with me since the pandemic started, and I attributed a lot of it to my anxiety levels being through the roof. My anxiety often manifests as deep fatigue. Add to that the fact that I often only get about 6 hours of sleep a night, and it made sense.

But now I think there is another factor. As we move back to a more normal-ish existence, I am going out more. Socializing more. Interacting more.

And my mental and social muscles are flabby. I have no stamina.

The 45 minute drive to my folks’ house, which used to be nothing, is a grueling trek.

Going to a meeting in person makes me want to hibernate.

Focusing for 4 hours at an online conference drains me.

I need to build my stamina again.

I find myself working in bursts, trading spurts of productivity with times of scrolling mindlessly online or napping.

Concentration and socializing skills need exercise to stay in shape. This is the “learning loss” I have experienced during this upheaval.

While my daughter works on her swimming endurance, I will continue to work on getting myself back in mental shape.

I hope I can, because I am tired of not feeling like myself. It will take work, time, and patience–which is just another way of saying stamina.

Illness in the Time of COVID – CoronaLife Day 572

October 7, 2021 By Leave a Comment

So on Friday my daughter started complaining of a sore throat, stuffy nose, headache. I had all the same symptoms, too. In a normal year, we would have just shrugged it off as a back-to-school cold making the rounds.

But this is not a normal year.

For all that many activities have begun in a more-or-less normal fashion, this year is still not normal. It is normal-ish. In many ways, having an “almost normal” year is more disconcerting and disorienting than having a wildly divergent year, like last year was.

When things are nearly normal, there is a tension you never escape. You cannot relax fully, as you could if things are truly normal, yet you feel like you should be more relaxed than you are. But this normal-ish environment keeps throwing small bumps and curves in your path and there are still challenges to be met and managed. It is almost more exhausting living in this so-near-and-yet-so-far zone than when everything was upside down. Or maybe it’s just differently exhausting.

So we both had colds—but all these symptoms are also Delta COVID symptoms. We took an over the counter at home test, which are not terribly accurate for non-symptomatic cases but should register something if you are actively symptomatic, as we were. Completely negative. A relief.

For school, though, if you have COVID-like symptoms, you need to get a negative PCR test (the really accurate DNA-based type you have to send into a lab). It was impossible to get one over the weekend, so I got one on Monday. Then we had to wait to see how long the results would take to come in. Even in a normal year, I would not have sent her to school on that Monday, because she was not feeling great, and on Tuesday I probably would have kept her home, too, just to let her recuperate. But I was worried that she may end up having to stay home feeling fine while waiting for the test results.

Luck was with us, and we got the results on Tuesday. Negative, so back to school on Wednesday!

This is illness in the time of COVID, especially when you have an unvaccinated person involved. Schools have to be extremely careful to avoid an outbreak, since most of their population is still vulnerable. In five weeks of school, we have had 3 (unrelated) cases. I am thankful for the precautions our school is taking, and also thankful we live where testing is easy to get and free of charge.

Here’s hoping we don’t need to do this again anytime soon!

RIP Zippy—CoronaLife Day 551

September 16, 2021 By Leave a Comment

The day we knew was coming arrived on Thursday. Zippy the fish expired in the night.

He was a true survivor. Bought on November 8th, 2020, as one of 3 fish, the other two succumbed to a mouth fungus within 2 days. Zippy avoided the fungus and roamed the tank at top speed, thus earning the name Zippy.

Zippy was our pandemic fish, helping my daughter navigate the isolation of quarantine and remote learning. He enjoyed being read to, especially Harry Potter, and my daughter says he was a good listener during her lonely times in the pandemic.

He developed an internal tumor, as one of our other fish had. He grew rounder, and his swimming became more difficult, but he never failed to come to the surface for his breakfast. This was a big change from when we first got him, when I didn’t see him actually eat for weeks.

As he grew in size, swimming tired him out. We would find him resting on the bottom, or on a plant leaf, or on the sponges of the filter. His favorite spot was the top of the bubbler, where he could set down and let the bubbles wash over him like a jacuzzi.

He still struggled to the surface for a single nibble of food, but then he would sink like a stone to the bottom. He spent more and more time at the bubbler, and we knew it would not be long. He showed his survivor streak, though, because he lasted several weeks longer than we thought he would.

Then Thursday morning came, and he was not in his usual spot atop the bubbler. My daughter spied him, in a front corner of the tank. True to form, he was considerate enough to die at the front of the tank, where he was easily found, instead of in amongst the plants.

My most lasting memory of him occurred about two weeks ago. The tank was having a bacteria bloom, and the water was so cloudy you couldn’t see the back (and it’s only a 5 gallon tank!). I was wondering if he was in there dead somewhere, when he came charging out of the fog toward me, with that particular wobble they get when they have a tumor, but in that moment it looked like a swagger. A little slow motion and dramatic music and he could have been a superhero fish, charging out of the mists.

RIP, Zippy, you will be missed.

Finding Our Footing—CoronaLife Day 544

September 9, 2021 By Leave a Comment

We have a few days of school under our belts now, and we are starting to find our footing. I am getting used to having time to myself again, after a full 18 months of remote learning/summer. So far I have not been using my time wisely, but that is typical for me at the beginning of the school year. It’s almost like having so much free time paralyzes me with choices. But I know that will settle down.

My daughter is also starting middle school, so that’s a big change for her. But she, too, is starting to find her footing in more ways than one. We are also transitioning from her walking boot to a walking brace starting today, and hopefully her ankle will be back to full strength October 1st, when the brace is due to come off.

Although I have been spending time doing a lot of “catch up” work (little things I never seemed to find time for while my daughter was home) and searching out last-minute school supplies that I didn’t realize we needed until we actually got there, I HAVE made progress on the genealogy book.

I should finish indexing the final chapter today. Whoo hoo! After that, the equally painstaking job of formatting the book properly, making sure the margins and page numbers are correct, and that page breaks do not fall at inopportune places, begins. Once that’s done, I will send it to my proofreader to catch all the mistakes I thought I caught but didn’t.

Finding our footing has been a bit harder this year, as we spent the last 18 months in a period where every day was much the same, and time seemed to stretch endlessly. Then, abruptly, on Friday, everything changed and we were back in the world. It is disconcerting and a bit overwhelming.

But we will get through it, as we do every September, and hopefully COVID will not hit our school and send us back to remote. Whatever happens, we will adjust.

We always find our footing.

Travel in the time of COVID—CoronaLife Day 488

July 15, 2021 By Leave a Comment

This past week, my family traveled to North Carolina to visit family and attend my niece’s wedding.

The wedding was beautiful—full of love and fun, which is no surprise given that the happy couple are loving, warm, generous, fun people. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves.

We had a great time at the wedding, and it was wonderful to visit with family we hadn’t seen since Christmas 2019.

But traveling with an unvaccinated child is fraught these days.

Rest stops were in and out fast. Meals on the road were eaten in the car. Hand washing and masks were a must.

North Carolina as a whole was only 38% vaccinated when we went down. The area we visited is likely below that average. At the wedding, only 3 people were masked—my immediate family.

So while we had an absolute blast at the wedding, I am hoping we don’t pay a high price. I am counting the days until we are past the 14-day incubation period.

We returned home to find our state’s case rate rising, the transmission rate at 1.08, and the dreaded Delta variant exploding.

I’m so sick of this.

Mask up. Maintain distancing. Get the vaccine. I don’t know about you, but I am ready for this to end. At the current rate of vaccination, we will not reach herd immunity until March 2022. A full 2 years after the world shut down.

Let’s kick this thing to the curb, so we can all breathe—and travel—freely again.

Summer Brain–CoronaLife Day 467

June 24, 2021 By Leave a Comment

A weird thing happened this week. My daughter ended school last Thursday…and my brain went on vacation.

I have been oddly unable to focus or scare up too much motivation this week, even after a decently productive week last week.

Some of it may be my change in sleep schedule–or lack thereof. With no need to get up for school, my daughter and I are sleeping in, making up for the sleep deficit we’ve been running on for months.

The advice is usually to keep to a regular schedule, and I expect that I will settle into a new sleep routine shortly, but right now it feels really nice to not have to get up at a certain time. To really SLEEP.

The last week and a half has been very social, too. Lots of people. As an introvert with more than a year of quarantine behind me, the sudden re-immersion in society has been stressful and exhausting.

So I am giving myself permission to let my brain be on vacation this week. Next week I will have to get back to reality.

School’s Out!—CoronaLife Day 460

June 17, 2021 By Leave a Comment

We have made it. Today is the last day of school. After this, we will be free of scanning, printing, posting, and Google- Meeting.

Remote learning is not for everyone. Many students struggled to stay engaged. My daughter was not one of those. She thrived academically. She had the best grades of her school career, and her standardized test scores were off the chart.

Socially was another story. Already shy and awkward, the isolation did not help. She really missed her friends, and even frequent phone calls just didn’t fill the void. As an only child, the lonliness was sometimes intense. When we swung by the school the other day, she yelled, “Mom, there’s people! Real people!”

Re-socializing next year should be fun.

But this year—this crazy, disorienting year—is finally over. We close that chapter and start another, this one a more-normal-than-last-summer summer vacation. My daughter is already wondering how she will fill her time, lamenting the loss of that everyday contact with her teacher and classmates.

We will find ways to fill the time, hopefully using the time to heal and rest from the enormously stressful school year. Hopefully there will be more outdoor get-togethers with her friends. Then she’ll be ready to dive back into regular school in September.

Will I be ready to get back to a real routine? To have enough time to myself to think, to breathe, to create? To finally start putting this pandemic behind us?

Time will tell. I hope so.

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