Kris's Covid Pandemic Blog

I said I was going to blog Thursdays and I didn't even make it one week. But James and Max have been invited to go watch a movie and eat pizza with the neighbors (which feels BIZARRE...I am not used to people going anywhere, but they play together through the fence all the time anyway so it makes sense) and now I finally have the time.  Turns out there is one living being that loved the heat wave we had in June and that was our peach tree. Peaches aren't supposed to grow in this part of the world but we apparently have a nice little microclimate. In a typical year we'd get a couple of dozen maybe. Last year we had lovely blooms but no peaches at all. This year...this year we have picked two boxes plus dozens to just eat outside and given bags to two neighbors and a visiting friend...and I STILL have a box of peaches on the porch waiting for me to deal with them before they attract every fruit fly on the planet. They don't get particularly large...it is the wrong climate...

 I'm gonna quit apologizing for updating this since I literally only did it for myself. If you're reading, hi, you're awesome, I hope you get something from this, if not talking to myself is 100% my speciality. It's been summer. During the course of the summer the trend of the pandemic and everyone's general mood has shifted dramatically. In June we were all embracing full vaccination and return to school and we were going out and doing things...in small numbers and slowly. Now the Delta variation is all over the place, too many people are still unvaccinated and it feels like January again except this time with the need to reopen. So....yeah. I'm going with caution but moving forward. James will start school five days a week in two weeks with masks and they just announced a vaccine mandate for school personnel. I kind of hate the idea of a mandate...I'm much more libertarian with stuff like that than most of the friends I hang out with...but I do understand ...

Huh. Okay. Where were we? When I started this, I wrote every day because there was NOTHING ELSE TO DO. It's funny that as life starts back up again that changes. I actually had to start keeping a calendar in May because enough was happening that I couldn't keep it in my head. That...hadn't happened in awhile.  So since I wrote last I received both my vaccines and joined the ranks of the fully vaccinated on June 7. Which means I can hug my friends which is nice. We've eaten at a few indoor restaurants and I signed the kids up for swimming lessons starting June 28 but it hasn't changed our life that much. I still wear my mask to the grocery store even though I'm not required to anymore. I still wear it most places. We still haven't been anywhere with a giant crowd. My dad wants to go to a baseball game. I like the idea of it, but it's also kind of terrifying. My family and close friends are all vaccinated now except my kids who still aren't eligible. C...

Have I talked about Mother's Day before? I dunno. All of it is blending together into a mixed up soup. My mother passed away suddenly in June of 1995, just a few days after Father's Day and about two weeks after my older sister's high school graduation. I was 16. In early years, I had no idea how to escape Mother's Day. It's everywhere and it felt like there was no place to go to be away from it. I didn't know how to honor her or deal with it at all. Then in February of 2000 I gained a stepmother. I was 21 at the time and the only one in the family still in school. My sister was living overseas and engaged, my two new stepbrothers were older than her and starting families of their own. I was an adult, but still in college and the only one in the family who ever lived with them for extended periods of time.I lived with them in multiple month stretches a couple of times after graduating from college but never longer than six months. The final stretch was over the ...

 Got my first vaccine (Moderna) on Monday. Super easy process. I surprised myself by how emotional I felt when she was doing it. I'm sure they get this a lot but after over a year of this getting that shot in my arm brought up some feels. The shot didn't hurt, my arm ached a few hours afterward but I've slept on it and had no real issues. Woke up yesterday dizzy and my head felt heavy. Ibuprofen and water helped. Still quite a bit headachy today, could be sinuses, headaches aren't uncommon for me this time of year. Ibuprofen helps but doesn't totally shake it. I'm a little worried about the second shot because that's when the big reaction is supposed to happen and since my first shot reaction (if that's what it is) has been bigger than a lot of people's maybe that one will suck. On the other hand, maybe it will be better and it could be the headaches aren't shot related at all and just the effects of being a mom in the time of allergy season. Any...

 I did something big and scary yesterday. I started writing a novel in verse. I LOVE novels in verse. If you've not read one or have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a few to start with so you can get the feel. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai Sold by Patricia McCormick The ones I listed are all young adult or kids books. The idea of a novel in verse is not new, there are some from way back, but they've become, for a variety of reasons, much more trendy in children's and young adult books over the past several years. And I love them. I really love reading them. Something about them speaks to me.  I've learned over the past couple of years that I actually enjoy writing poetry, which is something I never expected, particularly free verse which is generally the choice of novels in verse.  I dabbled with novel in verse a little bit for my 2...

When you put off doing something...like writing a blog post...long enough, it's hard to figure out where to begin. I have been very much wanting to write but I've been so exhausted by the end of the day most days that even getting up to come downstairs feels like a challenge. Plus my computer got a virus it couldn't shake and I had to back everything up and it had to be basically wiped and rebooted. Good times. Both the desktop and the laptop are 100% operational now, yay, technology. So I'll start with the present and work backwards. It's Friday night and we are wrapping up a week of spring break. It's been an odd one...the governor's mandate to reopen schools had no flexibility for spring break so instead of starting the hybrid school schedule the week after spring break as planned they had to start it the week before. Which meant that none of the last three weeks has had the same schedule. After a second week of "bridge" days where he went for 2...