kathleen_dailey

For the first time since the pandemic started, I attended an indoor social gathering of more than four people.

A close friend was hosting a life celebration for her recently deceased father (who was also a good friend), and I very much wanted to be there. So I braved up, masked up, and TTCed up to a location north of Bloor Street--not far north, just south of St. Clair, but still outside my normal grazing/shopping/walking area.

The good: I saw people whom I hadn't seen in ages, and I caught up on their activities, trips, and family events. There was stimulating conversation and a stunning buffet, and endless amounts of my friend's dad's favourite wine.

The less good: Out of maybe 30 or 40 people in attendance (age range from 30+ to 70+), I was the only one who was masked. A number of physicians and other medical professionals were among the guests, along with several people who were, I knew for certain, immunocompromised in one way or another. I was fairly sure that most if not all of the guests were fully vaxxed and boosted, but still. Anyway, I took off my mask for the purposes of eating and drinking and talking, and I left it off until the party was over.

I spent the next X number of days waiting for plague symptoms to appear. Thankfully, there were none, and repeated tests showed no Covid. But I was on edge for a couple of weeks. In most public settings these days, I'm the only one, or almost the only one, who's still wearing a mask. I wish I could decide whether to feel prudent or paranoid.

All of February, all of March, all of April--and it appears that I haven't done, read, or seen anything worth posting about. Hard to believe, but I can't seem to summon the energy to be creative.

The Covid lockdown hasn't changed my working habits very much, because I've been used to working from home for many years (that is, the years when I wasn't compelled by circumstances to be onsite at the downtown office). I'm distressed to know that the outdoor summer events that we usually anticipate so eagerly--Pride, the art fair, Caribana, the music festivals, patio season in general, etc.--are cancelled, and I miss being able to get together with friends for lunch. And having had to reschedule so many medical appointments was, as it were, a huge pain. But I can't really say that I'm hard done by in comparison with so many others who are having to suffer through this. We know one person who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus, but even he says that he feels fine (though he's been confined to his room at the retirement residence until he has two clear tests in a row).

Right now it's snowing (on May 9--how? why?) while the sun is shining at the same time. We'll hang around the house today and save our grocery trip for tomorrow or Monday. Until then, I'm working my way through Earthly Powers again. Funny, when I read it in the 1980s, just after it was published, I was fascinated; I could barely put it down. Now it seems more like work than pleasure; I'm trying to remember what I found so compelling about it.