Well hello. Tis me. The one who has the inability to post with any type of regularity. It has been a minute since we last convened. 102 days since the start of pandalerium, I mean, the pandemic.

It’s a real shit show down here, not going to lie. People are more divided over to mask or not to mask than they are between Coke and Pepsi (always coke). Or Ford versus Chevy Trucks (Ford, duh). Our cases are on the rise, people are getting really tired of dealing with it and frankly, I’m tired of having to be on edge all of the time.

You know what? Masking does suck. None of us signed up for it. Know what I didn’t sign up for? Some a-hole family in Garden City bringing back some rogue version of the measles on their anti-vaxx selves and infected me when I was eleven. Eleven. That stuff caused some pretty big issues for me over the years and I believe that it has lead me down a path of some pretty big auto-immune issues. But you know, #science. I have had a number of people in the clinical world- doctors, nurses, PA’s, the dude that puts you to sleep during surgery that I can’t spell the name of, say to me “masks will help.” So, if I’m following basic logic and people that spent many more years in school than I did, I can glean this simple concept: I should wear a mask so that I can reduce my chances of either a.) being asymptomatic and spreading the junk around with my never-ending allergy cough or b.) not getting the direct blast of someone’s cooties as they hack/sneeze around me.

Cool. I like basic logic. If I can mitigate risk, I’ll take it.

If I don’t want to wear a mask, I just won’t go out in public.

I also don’t believe that a mandate/order/strong request is impacting any of my personal liberties. At all. I just deleted an expansion of this thought, but I do believe in that little concept of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. See, I don’t want someone hacking up their rona on me, and I don’t want to hack all over anyone else. That’s just neighborly. Not political. Not oppressive.

Speaking of neighborly, I need to order some more flamingos. According to my handy dandy date tracker, we’ve been doing this for 14 weeks and I only have 8 flamingos. Man, I need to get cracking.

What else? Oh yes, I’m writing a book. Or rather, I’m writing a series of essays that are going to be maybe published and then before the first is even done, I’ve started a second book. A series of letters to younger me, telling me about the glorious mistakes I should avoid (but won’t.)

Oh yes, I meditate now. I am one who meditates. Truthfully, I’ve been trying to meditate for about 20 days, but obviously, I am one with the universe. Or at least one with my Headspace app.

I’ve decided to challenge myself by taking on different food challenges during this period of time- I’ve made spanakopita, lox and tomorrow I’m going to try to make dolma. It’s been fun trying to do things outside of my normal comfort zone of food. I also am determined to master a hot fudge recipe- back to the drawing board tomorrow with that one.

All snarking aside, this has been an interesting chapter of life, not just for me, but for a lot of folks in my circle of life. Health issues abound. Career chaos. Divorces and breakups. People are taking stock of their lives and making adjustments. Friendships are shifting in the absence of constant interaction and social noise. People are also using this time to learn new things, to grow, to be more comfortable with a different slower pace. For me, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the future- retirement, real estate, and what do I really want to accomplish next.

Until next time,

-me