My Own Mask Mandate; Sixty-Nine Weeks In

The mask mandate in our city was officially dropped this week; when I went to the grocery store on Wednesday I counted six maskless faces. I will say I find it strange and startling to see actual faces indoors, which goes to show how quickly people adapt to their circumstances. After all, a year ago masks were still quite new, and now I feel strangely naked without mine.

I still wore my mask in the grocery store, and will continue to do so for a while. What can I say, I like to emphasize my eyes. I went to the post office and to pick up dog food, and I was the only person masked.

Also on Wednesday, we had a massive hailstorm which was not great for my garden, but if you are hale enough to garden in Calgary, you had better plant things that can deal with hail. Do you like what I did there? My flowers were pretty squished, but they have since perked up, and the veggies all seemed to survive for the most part, the zucchini, sadly, getting most of the damage. Well, you can’t keep zucchinis down for long, and hopefully I will still be stuck with a plethora of them at the end of the season.

I might be a little hesitant with the reopening of everything, but the boys sure aren’t. They are so happy to be able to do what I would consider very modest teenage things, like going to a movie (still masked) with their friends, and going to our fitness club. I feel like in the future we will see many theses and dissertations on the effects of the pandemic on the brains, behaviours, and well-being of all different age groups, and one thing I can say for sure is that, for my kids, being essentially cloistered for sixteen months gives a greater sense of gratitude for all sorts of fairly everyday things. They have been spending many hours at the club, working out and swimming, with plans to play badminton and bowl. We even shared an order of fries! one of them said to me, so thrilled with this tiny pleasure that it made my heart swell and break at the same time.

Well. I am happy for them, despite being somewhat nervous in general. Right now our Covid numbers are as low as they’ve ever been, but will that continue through the month, particularly with Stampede this week? Talk about super-spreader events; the Stampede is always a haven for germs. Also for pregnancy, divorce, STDs, and general debauchery. Maybe it will be different this year.

San (HI SAN) linked to this really great Atlantic article about the shift in the pandemic, personal choice and how it affects public health, and if you have ten or fifteen minutes, I encourage you to read it. It’s really smart and well-written, and also touches on things I have been wondering about, namely vulnerable groups and those who work several jobs to make ends meet. It also reaffirms my own personal mask mandate, even if the general one is dropped.

Outfit of the Week

It has continued to be hot and summery here; IT’S SKORT WEATHER, PEOPLE. God, I love skorts. This is one of the first that I ever purchased, and so it probably dates to 2015 or earlier. The tank top has made an OOTW appearance before, but never on its own.

Shoes, like all my flat non-running shoes, are Skechers. I have a tiny bit of a Skecher addiction, particularly of the Mary Jane variety.

Pandemic Reading

At Home. I love Bill Bryson’s work; his dry British wit coupled with incredible facts and anecdotes are unmatched! If you, like me, have ever wondered why we have salt and pepper shakers, of all the spices in the world, or how the modern house evolved – where did chairs come from? – this is the book for you. It focuses on the massive changes in day-to-day living in the nineteenth century. Let me tell you, the grimness of life in the Victorian age will make you grateful for the modern era. Maybe don’t read the section about how the modern bathroom came to be while you are eating, because the description of the sewer system in London, pre-mid-nineteenth century – when it was completely overhauled – is pretty gross. Having read The Body, I recognized some of the anecdotes in At Home, such as the discovery that cholera epidemics were connected with contaminated water, and how women’s health was dealt with (badly, very badly). Definitely worth the read, if only to pepper your loved ones with fun facts.

Good Neighbours. I enjoyed this kind of bonkers book about a neighbourhood gone totally…bonkers. It’s an illustration of how mob mentality works and things aren’t always what they seem. There’s an underlying theme about our environment and climate change, as the book takes place in the near future. It’s a very absorbing and thrilling read.

Wintering. “When everything is broken, everything is up for grabs.” This lovely book explores the concept of winter – figuratively and literally – and how to move through it, how to cope with, as Landslide, the seasons of your life. I suspect I would have liked this book better when it was actual winter, or when we were in the depths of the pandemic, but library holds come in when they will. Summer notwithstanding, this book is a beautiful tribute to listening to and living with different seasons of our lives, particularly the difficult winters.

This made me feel like the author was talking about me, personally: “…we make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that no longer fit and trying on new ones for size.” Also: “That’s the gift of winter. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We come out of it wearing a different coat.” Isn’t that a beautiful sentiment? “When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself as a favoured child: with kindness and love.” Wouldn’t it be nice if, when we started to feel down, we treated ourselves with kindness and love?

On that note, I hope your week is full of kindness and love, and that you treat yourself like a favoured child. xo