In the Interlude

Pardon me, life's been busy since Christmas. I wish I could say I'd been caught up in a travel whirlwind but reality is far more mundane. The Christmas covid episode grounded us in Michigan for 3 whole weeks--no trip to New Orleans, no indoor restaurant loitering, no hanging out in coffee shops. 

Mercifully, Paul's second case of covid was mild and he began testing negative on day 5. The rest of us stayed negative. So we swapped romantic meals a staircase distance away 

for walks in winter gear to downtown Rochester, walks in winter gear down busy city roads to the mall, walks past winter permafrost backyards, front yards, schools, walks. 

I saw three friends but at a distance: from 6 metres masked up in the youth room at my mom's church; in the backyard across a fire pit in winter clothes in -10 degrees. What unites us is the toll the last two years have taken--with family, with mental health, with work, with our personal journeys. But maybe that's just us getting old.

Home, Michigan, America is a complicated place for me. It's no lie (or secret) that I felt a huge sense of relief upon wheels down in London.

And then we ran pell-mell into Term 2 of our third year of pandemic teaching. Student attendance dipped and staff attendance saw an all-time low. Paul got sick with a different virus that hit him much harder than covid, rendering him briefly deaf in one ear, and we cancelled a weekend away out of London. I finally succumbed to omicron in early March and must humbly apologise to anyone at the school musical, my barre studio, the pub whom I passed the plague onto. Symptoms started on Thursday morning but I didn't test positive until Saturday and new 'live with it' guidance meant no quarantine until you test positive. Although it wasn't as rough as it could've been, I got it worse than Paul and missed four days of school. It's the first time in my 15-year teaching career I've missed that many consecutive days. 

Of course I tested positive the week before Paul and my weekend trip away to Amsterdam. I downed litres of water, crossed fingers and, against all odds, tested negative two days before our weekend away. And so, after three consecutive cancelled trips/part of trips, we made a flying visit to the Dutch capital. And not a second too soon.

I'm not sure about you but I've grown accustomed to shoving up long q-tip up my proboscis. In this pandemic world, I don't think there's a better way to wake up.