Eighteen Months of Pandemic Life, An Update; Seventy-Eight Weeks In

This week my younger son turns sixteen – SIXTEEN! – and so, officially, 75% of the Boyhouse will have had two pandemic birthdays. Well, if we include Barkley, 80%, but I don’t as his birthdays have been pretty much the same, pandemic or no. My son had a big celebratory dinner with his favourites, ribs and pie, last night, a cake and his favourite “weeknight” dinner will be served up this week, Friday will see his horde of friends having pizza and cupcakes and hanging out in our backyard, weather permitting, and Saturday will be celebrated with my parents, and will also include cake. It will be a week of celebrations, worthy of our newly minted sixteen-year-old, but it also reminded me that we are just ticking along, living our lives in a pandemic way.

It’s interesting how we have all adapted, in ways we never thought we would, and certainly not for this long. Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) had written about where her family is, at this point in the pandemic and I thought that I should record in my Dear Diary what is happening, pandemic-wise, in the Boyhouse these days. After all, it is exactly eighteen months to the day since our first shutdown. I recognize we are all in the same storm, but different boats, so to speak, and this is just a description of our boat, and how we are floating it and paddling and, I don’t know, putting up sails? I don’t know boats that much.

The General Situation

Our province currently leads the country in total Covid cases. That is not per-capita, that is not population-adjusted, that is TOTAL. We also lag behind the country in total vaccination rates; I think about 70% of the eligible population are vaccinated. Basically all Covid restrictions were dropped at the beginning of July, and cases spiralled out of control. The government announced at the end of July that they were going to end all contact tracing and “just treat Covid like any other virus” and what, why, no one knows. As anyone could foresee, this ended up being a complete disaster and now the hospitals are moving acute-care patients out to make room for Covid patients, the health-care system is near collapse, elective surgeries are cancelled, AGAIN, and we are fully in the fourth wave, the “wave” being more like a tsunami. But at least we had Stampede. Allow me to just take a moment to do some ujjayi breathing.

Just recently the indoor mask mandate was reinstated, and the government “strongly suggested” that unvaccinated individuals limit indoor social gatherings to a maximum of ten people or two cohorts, which, if I know anything about unvaccinated individuals at this point in the pandemic, this “strong suggestion” will go unheeded.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

My family, including my extended family and my husband’s mother and sister, are all vaccinated, with the exception of the children too young to be, as are my friends and my kids’ friends and their families. I do know a couple of people who are not, but only a couple and they aren’t in my day-to-day life. In any case, at this point I am completely uninterested in sharing physical space with unvaccinated people, indoors or out. If a person is unvaccinated at this point in the pandemic, it is a statement, and I am in extreme disagreement with that statement. I am a person who really does try to look at different perspectives, and to be “curious, not furious,” but I feel that eighteen months in, our decisions and behaviours are pretty much entrenched and unchanging. In any case, according to the school, our area of the city is 85% vaccinated; I do not know how they got that statistic, but I find it calming.

The Kids Are All Right

The kids are so much better off than they were at this time last year, when there was just so much strangeness and uncertainty. Things are still strange and uncertain, but these times are no longer unprecedented. I am not always happy with the Board of Education, but I currently am their biggest fan as they implemented a mask mandate for everyone in schools, and a self-reporting Covid notification process when the provincial government would not. The boys are at a school of about 2300 kids and last year there were Covid cases, but no in-school transmissions, which is a remarkable commentary on the efficacy of masks. Distancing, as we know in a big school, was largely impossible, although it was attempted, and there was increased sanitation across the board.

I feel good about them being in school, with masks and vaccines. Perhaps online school works for some people, but it certainly does not for my kids. They are so happy to be back at school; masks do not faze them much, and I just want them to have a semi-normal experience for the remainder of their time at high school. They eat lunch in a friend’s backyard, who lives very near the school; they hang out with their friends a lot – there is a big group of them, and they travel together like a gang – and they have spent a lot of time together this summer, but it has been almost exclusively outdoors. There have been a few times when one or two friends have been in our house, but it’s a far cry from the days when eight or ten of them would be lounging around in my basement eating waffles and playing video games. Last year they all wore masks outdoors as well, but I don’t think they are doing that anymore.

My So-Called Social Life

In general over the last eighteen months, I have seen friends outdoors only, with very few exceptions. We have been slowly reintroducing people to our home; we’ve hosted a couple of dinners with close friends that we feel comfortable with. We have visited my parents several times, and spent two weeks out-of-province visiting my mother-and-sister-in-law, although for that visit, as we always do, we stayed at our own house and spent a lot of time outdoors. I also visited with both of my brothers, and my beloved sister-in-law, and some of my nieces and nephews, which is notable as I had not seen them for the entire pandemic prior to this summer.

This, I think, was the most important thing to me, to be able to reconnect with friends and family, particularly my parents and mother-in-law, who are not getting any younger. I think we can all agree that being away from loved ones has been one of the hardest things about the pandemic. I am so fortunate in that my friends and family are similar in thinking, that no one is anti-vaccine or anti-mask or anti-science, because I cannot imagine the stress of dealing with that. I mean, it’s bad enough on social media.

Everybody’s Working For The Weekend

My husband is in the office three days a week now, but of all things this causes me the least stress. I know his colleagues are all stringent with health protocols, and anyway, everyone in the office wears a mask at all times, unless they are alone in their own individual offices.

As of this week I am going back to teaching. I will be teaching twice a week at a community centre, which is a very large space with limited class sizes; there will be three metres between mats. I will also wear a mask to teach, which is exactly where we were at this time last year, except now I believe all my students are vaccinated. The community centre sent a message to the members that they are following provincial health guidelines – such as they are – and that anyone unvaccinated should not consider the class to be part of their “cohort.”

I am not currently teaching online classes; I hit my mental limit with it, and also it is very difficult to teach on the days my husband is working from home. I feel okay about this, but also strange, like I’m on a holiday, but without the fun that comes with a holiday.

Masks Are The New Lipstick

As I said, the indoor mask mandate has been re-imposed in our province now, but I never stopped wearing mine in public. There were only a couple of times that I felt awkward about it – one in particular, when I went for a sugaring appointment and I was wearing one but the esthetician was not – but in general, the places that I visit seem to have an overwhelming majority of people also masked, like the grocery stores.

Of all the measures in this pandemic, I think that masks have been the most effective at keeping transmissions low, and I really don’t understand why there is any controversy at all about them, particularly now. As I said, I really do try to understand other people’s point of view, but this is one I cannot. It is truly the simplest, least invasive and most effective measure to take, plus it’s fun to coordinate mask to outfit.

Gym Rats

The guys have been going to our fitness club a couple of times a week. At this point – I’ve kind of lost track – I believe that masks are required at all times except when doing actual physical activity. Knowing the demographics of our club, I would assume that the vast majority of members would be vaccinated. I have only been to the gym once since last November, and when it’s too cold and snowy to run outside I may start going again, but then again, I may not. I managed all last winter without a treadmill – thank god for my Peloton and elliptical trainer – and depending on how things are I may do that again. The guys lift weights primarily, but I run and breathe heavily, which feels more risky.

Pre-pandemic, I really enjoyed spin classes, but I cannot see myself ever going to one again. The thought of all those people in a small room with a FAN GOING just makes me shudder. Also, I find my Peloton to be much more efficient and effective in terms of a cardio workout, and I can choose classes based on the playlist, music being very motivating to me. The sixty-second commute from my bedroom to my bike is a big plus.

It’s All About The Lessons Learned

The last eighteen months have really forced me to reassess my priorities and figure out what is important to me. There were things I never thought I could live without, and things I never thought I could do, but I did and I can. I feel like I could just sail along at this pace indefinitely; as long as the kids are in school and I can still see friends and family in a safe and limited way, I am happy. When it comes down to it, those are the most important things to me, and the pandemic has highlighted that. I miss travelling very much; I always loved going to new places and seeing new things, and I look forward to the day I can travel again, but that’s really the only thing I miss. Ultimately, I feel fortunate that we are all well and healthy and I hope we can stay that way. I hope you can too.

Pandemic Reading

Crying in H Mart. This is a very popular book, but I found it unbearably sad. You may say to yourself of course it’s sad, it’s a memoir of a woman who lost her mother to cancer but it’s more than that. This book addresses her very tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was completely obsessed with appearances and perfection, her father and his gross secret life, and the author’s many regrets. There were a few chapters that had me putting down the book and staring into space for a while. Should you read it? I don’t know. It was well-written, and if you are interested in Korean food and culture, there are some good tidbits, but it left me feeling very low. It was, to me, very unsettling and upsetting.

Not A Happy Family. I don’t read many thrillers, but when I do, I wonder why I don’t because I always enjoy them. This was a good one, it kept me guessing until the big reveal. A wealthy couple is brutally murdered, and their adult children stand to inherit millions…which makes the three of them suspects. It was a fast-paced read with lots of twists and turns.

Walking the Himalayas. My husband and younger son have been both recommending I read this for a while now. I am not generally a “real-life adventure” girl and also not a “books written by men” girl, and so I was pleasantly surprised by this book about a man who walks the length of the Himalayas, starting in Afghanistan and ending in Bhutan. The Himalayas are an area of the world I am very interested in but unsure if I’ll ever be able to visit, so it was enjoyable from that perspective. There’s a great message about it being the journey, not the destination, that is key to happiness, and to be in the moment, which I liked a lot.

Eighteen months, you guys, EIGHTEEN MONTHS. I can hardly believe it. We can do this. We are doing it. Stay safe, stay healthy, be kind to yourselves. xo