I had Alli take this pic a week ago as we dealt with COVID disrupting our travel plans over the holidays, but I didn’t post it because we were still trying to get out of town. I didn’t want to get cocky since things were looking good for us to just postpone the trip a week but then…I got the COVIDs myself and we were grounded once again for New Year’s Eve.
It’s been frustrating since the past few years we’ve been so careful and only recently had begun to relax some of our social restrictions that we’ve made for ourselves since the rest of the social world is mostly ignoring the virus that is still ping-ponging through our communities.
We’re what has now been deemed ‘heavy-maskers’ since we consistently wear masks indoors, but there’s only so much you can do when people no longer care to restrict what they’re doing- but also, like me, may be completely asymptomatic (at least, so far!). I am thankful that we have been pretty insistent on testing at home and going in for PCRs or else we would have gone back to home in Tennessee and NC, plague ratting our family there.
All this to say I had great plans for some posting and art-making as I was looking forward to 2023 – and while that hasn’t happened, I’m hoping to get in a couple before the next semester starts up.
For sure the line ‘Don’t Panic’ from Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has been my mantra these past 3 years and looks like it’s gonna be good one for the next.
But we have been lucky in what we’ve had to deal with, and I know a lot of you out there have dealt with a lot this past year and even just in the past couple weeks. Things will continue to change but as long as a Vogon doesn’t show up with a planet-dozing ship, we can work together to adapt and change ourselves and our communities for the better. So I’m optimistic- even typing this through the fog of my glasses quarantining in my basement- that we can make 2023 better… But I’ll still have my towel (and mask) packed, just in case!