I have thought to myself, you should put up a blog for your children to read about that time in history about [those endless years with] that virus. It's as simple as it is complex. Yes, there have been inconveniences: I can't get my vaccine passport QR code to work, for one. Something about how it was entered in the system, is it L or Lynn, a comma after the last name? We tried it all and the lady at the insurance place wouldn't, for the love of God, open up her computer and compare it to my card despite my quiet-yet-assertive method of asking in three different ways. Would a compound-complex sentence help, or is simple always best? So I just have that flimsy little card that you get with the sticker: "I stuck it to COVID!" Like a punch ticket to get a free blizzard. So far it's worked fine. 

What else? Well, I have been sitting at home for a week practicing my fire-starting skills while my workplace passive-aggressively asks if I can find any other childcare options. No, I do not wish to pay a sitter to sit with my sick son while I am already paying for his daycare spot. No, my husband who does not get compensated for taking days at home with sick kids does not wish for this temporary unemployment. Subs are few and far between these days, something about fear in uncertain times. Maybe something to do with having to be vaccinated or show proof of a negative Covid test to come to work. Cue guilt for burdening one's fellow employees to cover one's classes in a time where words like mental health and stress are buzzwords on PD days. Benjamin has a cold and must be 48-hours symptom free prior to returning to daycare, per the regulations. In case you didn't know, the average cold lasts ten days, so you can imagine how often that is actually enforced. Not all professions are as accommodating as mine, passive aggressive or not. Did I shove a q-tip on a diet up his nasal passage until I felt slight resistance and turn it in a full circle for 3-5 seconds (definitely 3) while holding his arms down with my legs to make sure his sister isn't a close contact in order to make a friend feel comfortable having her in her house and taking her to her dance class tonight because Benjamin isn't allowed in such institutions while ill? Maybe. I mean, I didn't mind the science experiment either, the thrill of waiting to see if it's a single or a double line. He only cried a bit. 

In the beginning of things, the grocery shelves were cleared out. It was a bit eerie, but more annoying. It was the start of looking at one's neighbours and family members and thinking, why? My mother-in-law has turned into a food-and-dried-goods hoarder, canning carrots, potatoes, soups, instead of spending time with her grandchildren. Daniel, can you build some more shelving? At the start the kids virtually never went to Grandma's because she works in healthcare (or she's canning), so it could either come or go, but even with the vaccine, the habits have been made. Mom and Dad used to come to every birthday, but then one time they were sick, or maybe it was to try to keep our circle of germs smaller, being they're from a larger metropolis, and then this past birthday they forgot to send the present on time in the mail. It doesn't really matter, does it? 

I mean, it's everything and it's nothing. We stopped going to church. I have been fighting with acne on my face from the Norwex masks, because I was trying to be environmental, but it's just itchy and nasty, so I caved and bought a box of those trendy black disposable ones from Pharmasave, because the ones supplied at school hurt the back of my ears. I have to be a mask-police at work, on top of the sit-in-your-desk and ask-permission-to-use-the-washroom and put-your-cellphone-on-my-desk and no-you-can't-leave-two-minutes-before-the-bell police, but at least I don't have to be a social-distance-enforcer, like last year. Our emergency services have been reduced, gone, reduced. Maybe don't climb that latter, kids. 

In all honesty, I can't really distinguish the negativities that exist between starting full-time work in the fall of 2020 and Covid, because they're connected like a sexual disease, unwelcome warts in tender places-- never seeing family; stress and anxiety; avoiding friends and conversations; busy and tired; running spiritually on E (not making time for reading, yoga, nature, stillness). 

Of course I'm anxious. I haven't wanted to talk about it because it's all that's talked about. Are you getting your kids vaccinated? Have you heard that the world powers have conspired to be a totalitarian government and that you're all a bunch of Nazi Germany sheep? Is the vaccine passport and lack of citizen rights turning us into a communist country? If only those anti-vaxers would have just gotten vaccinated, like every other vaccination out there, maybe we could get rid of the masks with lower rates. I can't even talk to so-and-so anymore. Did you know that *spews a bunch of rancid diseases* will be common in children due to the vaccine? If you don't want to get Covid, stay home! If you don't want to get vaccinated, stay home! And, one of the worst: variant, variant, variant. I find myself seeking escape in books and TV shows: hibernating, pretending, waiting. 

A long time ago I made this sketch of a tattoo with a clock and "THE TIME IS NOW" scrawled where the 1-12 should be. It's been on my mind. Open up, strengthen a few muscles, get rid of the hunch, pet the dog, laugh. Shutting down is easy, human. Pull the blanket in on yourself and cave, gravity at work. But some of the wisest lessons come from young minds. You can view a snotty nose as a curse or a snack. Eating it doesn't make it not snot, but ignoring it only causes its slow descent and hating it doesn't get rid of it. If you don't water the plant it'll die, tick, tick, tick.