Quarantine Diary #668 Making an Effort

We hiked on Sunday.

1/11/2022

How was your weekend?

Have you noticed that with this omicron iteration of covid isolation – if one is not an employee - it’s tricky to tell what is a weekend and what is not? I think about what my kids might be doing and maybe we call them and that is the main way weekends are different from weeks. By what other people are doing.

My daughter, son-in-law, and their little kids are about a week into Covid and are doing very well, which is amazing because they have been inside their house all this time. For our part, Len and I get to play dollhouse again with the 5-year-old. By late afternoon it’s good for everyone in her house if she goes to a corner of the living room by herself to hang out with us.

Sunday was hilarious. She asked for the story of Snow White. Sure, we can do that. I picked out her favorite little girl doll to be Snow White. Picked out another one to be the Mean Queen.

I asked who else we needed. She said woodland bears (this kid has vocabulary). We have bears.

Story launched.

Snow White is loved poorly by the Mean Queen. Mean Queen’s mirror says Snow White is the most wonderful in the land. Mean Queen sends her into the forest. Little animals find her and take her to a cottage in the forest i.e., the dollhouse on the dining room table. Everything inside the woodland cottage is a mess, so the woodland animals help Snow White clean it up. Then they have snacks. Then they are tired so they all go upstairs and find the various beds and lay down.

The Three Bears come home. Someone has been eating their snacks. Someone has been using their potty and knocked it over (Boy, was our kid laughing). Then they find Snow White and her friends piled up in their beds.

At which point I understand that somewhere along the way I switched from Snow White to The Three Bears and it is working. Grandkid is scolding. “No, Grandma, not like that!”

My daughter came into the living room to see what was going on. The child formerly known as grumpy is now falling over and giggling. So are Grandma and Grandpa.

So that’s how Quarantine is going. It’s not the story we planned for, but it is a story.

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Here’s a curious thing. My daughter, son-in-law, and the 3-year-old all tested positive and are coming through Covid. The 5-year-old has not tested positive, though she is totally right there, unmasked, in her home. She received her second vaccination two days before the rest of them tested positive. (They’ve done both PCR and Antibody tests.) Did the incredibly fresh vaccine protect her from Omicron? This sounds great but likely means their daycare will ask her to quarantine an extra week because she’s exposed.

It's always something.

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FYI: In case you have A-Fib or you take fish oil supplements, here’s a weird thing I read this morning. Read here. 

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“Make an Effort”

I can hear my mom talking with her friends. Someone they know, most likely another woman, is suffering through a hard time. Things are going poorly. Loss is happening. It’s going to be hard for a while.

But the woman they are discussing is enduring. She is still going to work, keeping up with her contacts, cleaning her house, organizing what she can against the chaos that is out there. She is using what energy she has to keep her life going in a good and meaningful way.

My mom and her friends say to each other, “She is making an effort. It’s hard right now but you can see her making an effort.”

Parts of our lives are not easy right now. Loss is happening. We can’t make gold from this dross.

But I like to think we can make an effort.