Day 276
2020 December 18th
Friday
6:40 pm:
It’s the middle of December. Christmas is a week away and the kids are officially “On Break” for the next couple weeks, but we’ll be picking away at the remote learning packages anyway. The upside of doing that is it will spread it out so the kids feel like they’re hardly doing any school at all until mid-January.
Numbers are still trending up in my health region (LGLDHU) -- we added 12 more today. 148 new cases have been added in the last month. 121 of those have been added in just the past TWO WEEKS. (Weekly chart at bottom of post.)
Dec 12 - Dec 18: 59 cases
Dec 5 - Dec 11: 62 cases
Nov 28 - Dec 4: 23 cases
Nov 21 - Nov 27: 4 cases
I continue to be frustrated by the very loud and obnoxious (and selfish) demographic that screams about "personal freedoms" but is incapable of taking any personal responsibility for why lock-downs are becoming increasingly necessary.
Depicting them as a Venn diagram would end up as an almost perfect circle.
The kids are bopping along. Our youngest appears to have shoved something up her nose again, so I made an appointment to get it checked out. While doing so, I made an appointment for myself.
I’ve been feeling “off” for awhile now and while it doesn’t feel like depression (or how it manifested last time, anyway) I want to rule that and anything else out. Personally, I suspect my anxiety is the problem, as having everyone home all the time for almost the entire year has exhausted my coping skills. As we’re headed into the depths of Winter (I’m not a fan), I think I need to be proactive and put myself first this time.
Along with irritability, racing brain, inability to focus, poor sleep, and fatigue, I have also developed a terrible forgetfulness and absentmindedness. This is out of the norm for me, and I don’t like it. I feel a big portion of my problems stems from our now overly flexible weekly framework — we’re no longer tethered to our old routines of leaving for work, waiting for school buses, etc. With the loss of framework comes a loss of context. My days no longer slot into comfortable and predictable chunks. Every day feels like the next.
My weekend job now defines my week, whereas before it was a welcome afterthought.
And, like so many of you, I’m exhausted.
I am tired of things being different. I’m tired of wondering what will happen this Winter. I’m tired of being angry others prefer to claim this a scam and buy into conspiracy theories, instead of getting with the program and working with the rest of us to get things back to a new normal. I’m tired. So tired.
There are upsides to it all, though. My poor memory means I’ve been doing Christmas stuff as soon as I think about it, so my parents’ parcel was mailed to Nova Scotia 2 weeks earlier than usual. We’ve been doing more daily holiday related activities and — a week before Christmas — have absolutely all our holiday shopping completed. That’s unheard of.
I’m pretty happy about that, if I’m honest. It means next week can be dedicated to doorstep drop-offs of Christmas gifts for local friends, baking, prepping elements of our holiday meals in advance, and decorating. I’m kicking it off with making some Ginger Chews tonight.
This might be the first year where I feel the holiday pressure has been turned off, and I kind of love it.
I will miss visiting the few local Folks we usually see over the holidays, but there will be no shortage of hustle and bustle here with the 8 of us. Movie marathons, puzzle building, and board game days are already being planned, and I can’t wait.