31 December 2020

No way around it: 2020 was a shitshow. And while I don’t even want to glance at it in the rearview mirror, I’m not holding my breath that 2021 will be any better, at least not the first half of it. I have hopes that we’ll reach the apex and quickly enter the denouement by mid-year, and can start a whole new story then.

I have selfish motivations. The Spouse Thingy and I both turn 60 next year, and celebrate our 40^th, and it would be nice to be able to actually do something, go somewhere, before the end of the year.

I’ll settle for no one else I know dying. No one else getting sick.

There were the bright spots, intentional attempts at bringing some light into the house.

We decorated for Christmas, a little more than usual. We rearranged the house, swapping my office and the front room, which had turned into a gym of sorts. Having that space to put the big tree in, and the other little touches, made it nicer. And we put the Whovimas tree in the living room, mostly for Max…even though he’s no longer here. It felt important, and a bit final. I don’t know that I’ll ever do another one.

I wasn’t even sure I’d feel like watching the Doctor Who New Year’s special without Max this year. But then the Who marathon on BBCA began and I tuned in to see how it would settle…and I kept watching. And now I’m looking forward to it, almost as much as I was before.

Speaking of Max…

We took down all the decorations this week, and when they were packed away and ready to be taken to storage, I pulled away from the wall these boxes we stacked to place a decorative polar bear on, boxes originally crafted to give Max a step up and a good view out the window. I had the vacuum in hand, going after wayward tree needles, and I’m damned glad I looked first, because waiting for me was a tuft of his fur.

I vacuumed there before we decorated. I wasn’t there before Thanksgiving.

It felt like a gift, one given enough time after his death that instead of making me cry, it made me very, very happy.

We have tufts of Dusty’s fur and tufts of Hank’s, and in the back of my head was the notion I would get some from Max and Buddah when the time came, but it didn’t happen. My only regret now is that we don’t have any of Buddah’s.

I should look under my bed. He hid there for a bit. There's a slim chance...

I miss those monsters.

So, definitely, I’m glad to be done with 2020, even if it is an artificial social construct tied around a calendar. It marks one of the worst years ever, and I'm done.

I had things I wanted to accomplish this year that fell by the wayside—no regrets because that was time spent caring for Max and Buddah, and I wouldn’t trade that—but I’d like to get to them this year.

2300+ miles biked. I hit 2100 this year but given that I basically stopped riding in October and didn't get as many in before that as I intended, I could have done more.

A book or two written. Don't even ask me how many I did this year; I know for sure two, might have been three, but my brain is mush.

At least two charity events (though I’ll be surprised if St. Baldrick’s is even held this year, it might be virtual) even if it means doing them on my own.

Milestones celebrated. We don't usually celebrate our anniversary since it's so close to Christmas, but 40 years feels important. It deserves celebration. In Disneyland, with the kids, even if we do it early.

And I desperately want to hug my son, my daughter in law, my mother in law, and my friends.

I just want the world to be okay in 2021.

I think we all deserve that.

 

17 December 2020

Better than Christmas for us…when the hospital where the Spouse Thingy works received their first shipment of Pfizer vaccines. I’m talking 8-year-old-kid levels of excitement, knowing he was in the first tier to be vaccinated. They made it clear that the ER and its staff were priority—and we both agreed with that—with other essential providers to follow. ER, ICU, COVID ward, then the OR, all considered first tier, in that order.

The email to personnel went out and the scheduling of appointments began; based on the info in the email we thought he would get his first shot next week. But there was a little notation: there may be a small number of walk-in slots available. Yesterday morning he had business to take care of in the area, so he decided it wouldn’t hurt to pop in and see what the odds were.

The odds were in his favor. And thusly, I learned on Facebook that he’d gotten his shot.

Yes, I know where I rank.

In three weeks, he’ll get his 2^nd shot, and two weeks after that, he should be good to go. Still masking, still taking all the precautions, but that deep worry about a patient who tested negative but was exposed and might have it anyway, who will somehow cough on him or breathe on him, even with all the PPE (and he is geared up while doing a case)…that worry becomes so much less.

You can bet that I won’t hesitate when I’m eligible to get my shots.

Do I worry about the speed with which this has been rolled out?

Not one bit.

Look, I know it seems speedy, but it really hasn’t been. There’s solid research behind this, over 25 years’ worth. We could have had them sooner if not for the absolute necessity of dedicated phase testing—there was no way around that, no matter how confident the companies producing the vaccines were in the efficacy of their production.

BUT THIS VIRUS IS NEW! YOU’RE NUTS! It’s still a coronavirus, which is not new. Look at the common cold—there are four common cold coronaviruses, and over 600 variants. There has been research into those as long as people have been looking to cure the common cold. And until someone cut the funding in the US and closed it down, research into coronavirus was humming along nicely; how much faster might this have been if it hadn’t been?

WELL, THE PRESIDENT ISN’T GETTING IT SO WHY SHOULD I? He’s not getting it because he’s had COVID recently enough that, while he could get the vaccine, he’s choosing to wait. And this is one thing I agree with him on. The recommendations are that if you’ve had COVID within the last couple of months, you can wait; if you had it early on, get the vaccination. He’s not getting it, thus saving that dose for someone else, but the Vice President will, and he’ll do it publicly.

BUT WHY BOTHER IF THE ANTIBODIES ARE GONE IN A FEW MONTHS? Because that’s how inoculations tend to work. You get the shot, your body detects it as a foreign invader, creates antibodies to fight it, and basically writes the instructions on how to combat that foreign entity on a cellular level, and then sheds the antibodies. When reinfected, your body already has the instructions on how to fight it off, it creates new antibodies, and the cycle continues. It’s why you only need some vaccinations once in your life—like smallpox or chicken pox. There’s no reason to think this will be different.

Will there be a variant strain that will require boosters? Possibly. We get flu shots every year because the strains change. But that’s a lot less of a hassle than actually getting COVID. It’s just a shot. We get those all the time.

BUT I HEARD GETTING IT CAN MAKE YOU SICK! It might make you feel awful for about 24 hours, but you won’t actually be ill. It also might not make you feel off at all. Your arm will probably be sore…just like with a flu shot (that’s all the Spouse Thingy has, a sore arm. No calling off work for him.) But if you get those side effects? That horrible feeling is a good sign; your body is producing antibodies. Embrace it, because it will be over with quickly.

Remember when I had that awful bout with colitis a few years back? And a couple of lesser bouts since? That’s how I got through it, telling myself that it wasn’t forever, this was pain and sickness that would get better, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Pain and illness sucks, but it’s a lot easier to take when you know it will get better. The side effects from this will ease up.

Lingering effects from the virus might not.

We’re never going to achieve herd immunity if we don’t get the shots, not without killing millions of people.

So, yes, I am thrilled beyond belief that the Spouse Thingy was able to get his first shot so soon and that it’s just 21 more days until he gets the next. And I’ll get it as soon as I can.

I am freaking excited at the idea that it won’t be much longer. I’m gonna let them stab me right in my Superman tattoo.

 

13 December 2020

Trust me, I miss those posts, too.

I miss the bike ride over there, taking the long way around, dodging inattentive drivers, mumbling under my breath at kids who run into the street without thinking.

I miss feeling bitchy that I didn't get the good table (though to be fair, since they remodeled the store, there is no "good" table) and I miss getting itchy about my bike being locked up outside.

Not having Starbucks as a ride destination and a place to work away from home has seriously cut into my blog fodder and my chance to people-watch just to keep in touch with how people talk, how they move, how they act. Our county is one of the few around here that still has outside dining so I theoretically could ride over there and sit on the patio, but the tables aren't far enough apart for my taste, and it's just not the same anyway.

I'm taking this seriously. I don't wander around for fun, I don't hang around anyone outside my bubble (which is really only the Spouse Thingy) and when I'm out I try to stay as far from others as I can.

I haven't seen my mother-in-law since February.

I haven't seen my daughter-in-law since a short visit while standing on their driveway in early May.

I've seen my son all of four times, and two of those were because he was kind enough to come over and take the leftover cat food and other things I really needed out of the house. He stays masked up and keeps his distance, and I haven't been able to touch him.

The closest I've really come to other people is handing off my cats at the vet, and being in the room while the vet helped them die.

It all sucks. Everything has sucked since March.

But...as much as it sucks, what bothers me even more are all the photos I see online of people who still get together, still go out to restaurants, assemble in large groups for church, still refuse to wear masks because of reasons that don't make sense beyond a toddler's petulant You can't make me. We're still where we are in the US because of everyone who doesn't think the suggestions to stay at home pertain to them. Because they don't think they can get COVID or if they do it won't be "that bad." They don't believe the science. They think God and Jesus will protect them.

This is the Spouse Thingy at work.

Y'all know he works in a hospital, right?

He doesn't gear up like this for shits and giggles. He does it because COVID is real, he doesn't want to get it, he doesn't want to pass it along to patients, he especially doesn't want to bring it home. 

Every time you gather in groups, go to church and sing, eat inside at restaurants, you're spitting in his face.

"But this might be Grandma's last Christmas and we need to see her!"

Yeah, sunshine, you might be guaranteeing it's her last Christmas. You might be COVID+ and not know it, remain asymptomatic, and be the one who passes it along to her.

"Jesus will save me!"

Yeah, well, not in the sense you seem to think. I imagine right now he's doing a major face-palm because you should be using the common sense God made available to you. The Good Lord is not going to sweep down and save you specifically because you're a good person; a lot of really good people are dying from this. But if you believe, if you have faith, you understand that man's ability to make sense of science, to find the root causes of disease, and then the treatments, are OF HIM, and should be treated with the grace He deserves. As far as I'm concerned, when you deny science, you're denying God the credit for the gifts He's given us.

"Screw it, this only kills 1%."

And that's bullshit. It kills 1% of those who seek medical treatment. It kills upwards of 10% of those who don't. There have been 72 million cases of COVID worldwide; even at 1% you're saying that 7.2 million deaths are acceptable? Right now, the death rate is 1 person every 40 seconds. How is that in any way acceptable to you? And of those 72 million cases, those are the ones we know about. The number of untested asymptomatic elevates that number significantly.

I am astounded at the staggering levels of selfishness I'm seeing, peoples' unwillingness to inconvenience themselves for what will, in the grand scheme of things, be a short amount of time. 

I am angry. 

Hell, yes, I miss being able to ride to Starbucks and spend a mindless hour pretending to work while I watch people. But I can live without it, will live without it, for as long as it takes. You can live with one holiday season spent without gathering extended family; trust me, the military made sure we did it often enough, and it was not the Big Horrible you might think.

Just stay home, mask up when you can't, stop gathering in groups, give people healthy distance when you have to be around them, and be a freaking grown up for a while. It's that simple. It's that easy.

12 December 2020

TIME magazine missed the mark with their Person of the Year this time I think. Joe and Kamala just did what politicians are gonna do: they played the game, read the room, and won. And while I'm glad they did, for no reason than to clear out the dreck, there were others far more deserving of that designation.

This mockup created by (as far as I can discern) people on Imgur, would have been far more appropriate. The nurses and doctors and technicians working soul-crushing shifts trying to keep people alive, the cooks and aides feeding the sick, the cleaning staff risking their lives to keep patient rooms and hospital hallways as sterile as possible...the people that are continuing to push on when it seems like the rest of the world is doing everything they can to make their jobs that much more difficult.

There are hundreds of people who worked and continue to work their asterisks off to keep food on tables and in bellies, volunteering to get necessities to those who have found themselves out of work and out of money, from grocery store employees to truckers to food pantry volunteers...all would have been good choices for the cover of TIME.

I like Joe and Kamala. I look forward to breathing a sigh of relief when they're sworn into office. But there was a better choice to be made for a distinction that carries weight and merit, and TIME dropped the ball on it.

9 December 2020

I tried to be upset with myself over the weight I gained between mid-July and late November, but the most I could do was shrug. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that mattered to me was not gaining anything else, lest I creep back over a number on the scale I swore to myself I would never see again.

There was no epiphany type moment where I puffed out my chest, hands on hips, and declared “I SHALL DIET!” Diets of the fad sort don’t really work for me; common sense does. I went back to counting calories, 1200-1400 a day (because I am not beating myself up if I go over that 1200 every now and then) and…that’s it. I re-started tracking my food with My Fitness Pal, and nothing else.

I stepped on the scale yesterday…and was down 12 pounds. That tells me a lot of that weight was water, but there’s still a little fat loss in there. It puts me only 3 pounds from where I was, which is fine. I’m still 35 from where I would like to be, the weight where I was the most comfortable, but I’ll get there or not, and my life will go on just fine.

I really only have two reasons I want to get my weight down: 1) I want to be healthy and getting more fat off will help with that, and 2) I want to be able to wear a really tight t-shirt and not be self-conscious about it.

No, for real. That t-shirt thing is a motivation. I don’t need washboard abs, I just want to be comfortable.

I’m ready to get back to work, and have pounded out 15 pages of the next Wick story, I’m ready to eat better, and I’m ready to move a little more—yesterday the pain cave was set back up in what used to be my office (and is, technically, the dining room though no one has ever dined in there. Unless eating a few cookies while I was at my desk counts.) The pieces are all there, I just need to fit them together.

Rower, bike, squat, treadmill...should probably plug that treadmill in if I want to use it

I’m still not sure what format the next Wick stories will be published in. I’m not worrying about it now. I just need to get back to work, finish the things planned before 2020 went to shit, and then give weight to the idea of moving on to something else. I have the good fortune of an understanding editor and publisher, so there’s no pressure.

But for sure, I’m not ready to let Wick go, I may never be ready to let Wick go, even if I just tell his stories online and save print for other things.