Well, I'm no longer flat on my back with bronchitis and a sinus infection. I have a lingering cough and a bit of sinus drainage but it's a lot better than when I last posted. Yesterday, I felt well enough (and the kids were healthy enough) that we went out trick-or-treating for the first time in about ten years. Over the last long period of time, somebody was sick or the weather was down right awful. We lucked out yesterday. It was a strange experience to go trick-or-treating during a pandemic.
There were several bowls of candy set outside of doors for children to collect from. They were mostly full by the time we got there. We only saw one other set of children out collecting candy, they were coming home. I honestly thought we missed all the other kids out trick or treating (which the CDC said was a relatively safe activity as long as people maintained social distancing). The kids, however, weren't aware of the weirdness of virtually no one out. They were too happy to wish every possible person they met, regardless of if they were giving out candy or not, a happy Halloween. They decided that the doors with no candy were the 'trick' doors and the ones with candy were the 'treat' doors. They had a pretty good time, despite a minor scare with a little dog that was freaked out by smaller than adult humans.
The kids decided that they had a good time because we got to get away from some of the street lights and do a little star gazing despite the patchy clouds and, hey, there was candy. For my part, I was recollecting the times where I went out trick or treating as a kid and how just about every house along the street in the town next door (I grew up on a farm just outside of town, no sense trick or treating at fields full of cows.) was lit up and people were at the door giving out handfuls of candy. We even had gone out in a blizzard to go trick or treating (my brothers insisted, I was freezing and got the least candy because I was too busy trying to keep warm). Despite the snow and blowing wind, people were still just as warm and good hearted about throwing candy into pillow cases and plastic bags.
This year, people were peaking out their windows and only opening the door up a few inches to either hand out offerings or tell us they had no candy. We stayed back a good distance to keep everyone safe. It was surreal. So many people around my neighborhood are clamoring to unmask kids at school and insisting that the vaccine is enough to protect us from the covid-19 variants out there. And yet, they were hiding indoors and basically throwing candy out from the safety of their home to the kids looking for it. My family were practicing safety measures as per usual for going out in public. The boys insisted that their covid-19 masks were keeping their faces warm despite the chill breeze, so there were no complaints.
I have a feeling that there's going to be a sea change in how people look at this pandemic. The school district is operating on a 'substantial transmission threat' status, despite the fact that there is no evidence of covid-19 spreading in the school. This is because of a combination of the fact that our county is in the 'high transmission threat' status and the fact that there is a cluster of students that are sick with covid-19. No evidence via contact tracing that they caught it at school. All signs point towards parents refusing the mask up and taking their kids maskless out in public as if the pandemic ended last year.
We're entering the beginning of cold and flu season. A nasty cold (which gave me the damn bronchitis and the stupid sinus infection) blew through the school at the same time that cohort of students came down with covid-19. It's going to be a long winter. I'm trying to figure out how to schedule the flu vaccine shots for the family. It's challenging right now because we're in a position of waiting for our car to get fixed. A damn deer decided to use the hood and the windshield as a trampoline a few weeks back. It's at the repair shop right now and theoretically it'll be fixed sometime around the end of this week or the beginning of next week. They're waiting on a windshield and a hood to come in. In the meantime, we're borrowing a car from a generous family member so that Beloved can go to work. It's been a bit crunch here.
If Halloween is any evidence of how people's attitudes are changing, I think we're going to see more people wearing masks again. Over the last few months, while the weather was warm, there were a lot of people running around with out masks despite the high transmission status of the county. Meanwhile, we've been getting dirty looks for our masks. We've taught our kids to keep their heads held high and wear their masks with pride because they're keeping themselves and their family safe. When school pictures came along, the kids had the option of taking off their masks and they kept them on. I have a feeling there's going to be some grumbling by some family members over the fact that they can't see the kids' smiling faces behind the masks. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to say if that happens. I can't exactly be sure that it's going to be something tender and coddling their outraged feelings about how masks are 'oppression'.
We make a point of not discussing this stuff with them. And yet, Thanksgiving is coming up and I know, down deep in my bones, they're going to be ranting about this. I'm going to have a hard time keeping my tongue in check. It's been grating on me over the last year or so to listen to people bitch about how they can't go to church because of Covid-19, how they have to wear a mask, and they can't get right up close to people in stores when they're in line to check out. I swear, if that plague doctor mask fit me properly, I'd be wearing that thing everywhere. I would be the specter of death on the street. Because apparently they need a visceral reminder that this shit is killing people. This is the new normal. There is no going back to pre-Covid-19 life.
I've accepted it. A lot of my neighbors and a good number of relatives haven't. There's a reason why I don't talk to a bunch of them. They claim oppression and then fuss about the people who are involved in BLM, insisting that their mask oppresses them more than a systemic policing problem that is killing black people and people of color way out of proportion of the rest of the population. But, you know, they can't breathe comfortably in their mask and their glasses fog up so the inconvenience is more important and immediate than some black man who got murdered in police custody. /rant
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