Life Has Gone On

 Back on March 22, 2020, I started writing a journal of this pandemic (titled “Covert Corona and How Chris is Coping”) (how clever). Over the past year, I typed nearly 50,000 words, most of which I never meant for anyone to read. As you know, if you’ve been faithfully reading this blog, I have shared some of those entries. Here are a few more of the earlier ones.

On Sunday, March 22, 2020, at 4:09 pm, I opened with:

You would have thought that I would have been all over this long before now, but every time I’ve sat down at my laptop over the last week, I instead got sucked into every news report I could find on the internet, as well as scrolling through everyone’s posts on Facebook, as if they would be sharing news found nowhere else.

So, here we are, March 22, a week into the full-blown reality that the pandemic which we thought would never cross our borders has insidiously infiltrated every one of our states.

 Later that same entry:

Here it is a leap year, and the first person to die in the US from COVID19 died on February 29. At that point, from an article I just read from the Atlantic journal, only 472 people had been tested by then.

Two weeks later, everyone was sharing, “this week we change the clocks, there’s a full moon, and Friday the 13th, it’s like the perfect storm.” I can’t make this shit up. On Friday, March 13, the shit hit the fan.

Entry on Monday, March 23, 2020, at 6:46 am:

I am sitting here in my home office, done surfing the net for now, done reading about COVID19 for now, and trying to psych up to get ready for work, not knowing at all what my day will bring or how long I will be there. Outside my window, four of my deer are mingling. Oh, two more just came along. They don’t have to practice social distancing. And they better not; they need each other for warmth and protection in the winter. Even though I see some of them bullying the smaller ones. Then there is my lame deer, who is not out there now. She knows she has to practice social distancing. Because she is lame, all of the others chase her off when she comes around.

I don’t know if this makes us luckier than the deer or not. Hopefully, we aren’t giving up on our elderly or infirm, or worse yet, just plain killing them off.

But watching the deer out in the yard, as the snow is gently falling, I’m reminded that life will go on.

 I guess the good news is that life has gone on.

 In addition to my random ramblings, I kept track of the running number of cases and deaths. On March 25, there were already 426,000 cases world-wide and 19,000 deaths. In the US, there were 54,816 cases and 789 deaths. In my state of Wisconsin, there were 481 cases and only 5 deaths.

Today, the numbers are worldwide – 119,000,000 cases, 2,640,000 deaths; US – 29,900,000 cases, 543,721 deaths; Wisconsin – 568,000 cases, 6,500 death.

It’s tough to imagine the year we’ve all had when you look at those numbers. But I’ll say it again, life will go on.

I still watch the deer out my window, and 

the lame one made it through last winter and this one. 

Flashback Friday and COVID19 Update

 I started scanning old pictures again last week. Which always makes me feel melancholy.

My sister Pat and I were on one of our fabulous camping trips to the UP. It was the week of July 15, because we stopped somewhere so I could buy her an ice cream cone for her birthday. Then one evening, as we were strolling along Lake Superior, she snapped this picture.

I wish I could say that she stole my camera and captured this moment, but it was staged. I told her I would look out over the lake as if I were lost in thought, and blah, blah, blah. But whether spontaneous or not, it never took either one of us any effort to look out across that huge body of water and imagine all the years of our lives floating there.

We never could have imagined that the length of her life would amount to a mere puddle.  

I never would have thought thirty-nine years ago that this picture – one of those artsy ones I snapped all the time – would remind me more of the coronavirus than of a marigold. 

A week ago, I was all worked up about having side effects from my second COVID-19 vaccine. I didn’t have any sort of reaction at all. A bit of a sore arm and a headache, which I attribute more to the lack of sleep, in anticipation of the fever, chills and body aches which never happened.

The latest stress is the vaccine clinic we are hosting at my work this Saturday. It will be all hands on deck to efficiently and safely get those 170 patients in and out. And that number of patients is just a drop in the bucket compared to the lists of people in our area who still need the vaccine. I have no idea how they will all get vaccinated. I have no idea if it will make a difference in stopping COVID. I have no idea who that person is in the water.

Seems there’s more that I don’t know than that I do. I do know that I hope you all have a good weekend. Continue to be safe. Find what makes you happy. Chris