This is the year I came to the belated understanding that I am now elderly, at least in the eyes of others. I don’t feel elderly. The media and the Center for Disease Control continually referred to my age group in a somewhat deprecating and disparaging tone, assuming we had one foot in the grave and therefore…
Category: COVID
Getting COVID Vaccine
Getting THE vaccine became a hammer-and-tongs preoccupation! If I could get any of the COVID vaccines, maybe someday I would be able to move about the world freely. I have so wanted to find a way to return to some measure of normalcy. In that, I am no different from everyone in the world. It…
Working Out: Exercise, before the pandemic and now!
Every morning I used to try to walk to the ocean and back. If we were camping, I walked the dog around the campground. If we were visiting children, a brisk walk around the block was the workout for the day. I threw in chair situps and light weights for the arms. Now, I have…
Keeping Busy During the Pandemic
At certain points during this pandemic, I have wandered around, slightly unnerved by limitations of movement, no favorite restaurant dinners, few safe shopping opportunities, and feel vague and without direction. Oh, I can fill my time, but I have to build my daily schedule as a retiree. I do have a daily list of ToDos,…
Zooming
Until this past year, I never even considered zooming anywhere for maybe the past ten years. I used to work three jobs, and it took plenty of energy to zoom to work and then to teaching in the evening and home to writing all night long. This year I learned to Zoom. Really Zoom. Our…
COVID Vocabulary continued: Virtual Hug, Fist Bump, and Social Distancing
In the interest of documenting the changes in our everyday vocabulary, I periodically have been examining the common use of previously loosely associated phrases. I mean, for goodness sake, who went around saying to close friends, “let’s have a virtual hug?” Having a good squeeze was one of the loveliest expressions of caring between friends,…
I Got Vaccinated, WAHOO!
I did it! I was not sure that my resolve would translate into access to an appointment for the COVID vaccine. We showed up for the appointment at the FORUM in Ingleside, CA. Obviously, this is a mass vaccination site. It was amazingly well managed. It was easy to find the entrance and there were…
More COVID “new” Vocabulary
“The New Normal”“Semi-normal Times”“During These Difficult Times”“Getting Through These Tough Times”“We’ll Get Through These Tough Times Together” It would seem that in the 21st Century, it would be nearly impossible to create a new turn of phrase. Undeniably this time of our lives is not intended to become “the new normal” nor is it a…
Women and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Workforce
The current economy results from many factors, the most significant of which is the impact of the closures in March due to COVID-19. While the economic recovery sputters along, Americans are differentially impacted, with working mothers and Black Americans falling significantly behind. Of the over one million Americans who stopped working or even looking in…
Friendship While Quarantined
These months have passed quite slowly. For the longest time, I kept thinking I had stepped into another plane of the universe, as in the movie Contact. Perhaps if I looked closely enough I could find the wormhole to return to pre-March 14, 2020. What didn’t happened was actually a life-changing happening. The quarantine extended…
Life Gets Better 