Pandemic Journal - Day 255

Thanksgiving passed quietly here. We had no company and I sent my mother-in-law a plate. She did not complain about eating alone after having had to quarantine because she'd been to church with someone who a day later tested positive for Covid.

Also, a cousin close by has Covid, so we are all being careful and trying not to fall over one another. Not that we would, but now it seems even more incumbent upon us all to be careful.

I know people are being careful. I also know people are not being careful. Those are the ones I worry about. Then there is the decision about what "careful" entails. I am not going into the stores - but I will have to go into the pharmacy late next week to pick up my medications. The store I use doesn't have a drive-thru. While we are mostly doing food pick ups now - I call it adventure shopping - sometimes one of us has to go into a store.

My chiropractor is not seeing me now except in emergencies, at my request. I do better when I see her regularly, but I will have to get by as best I can. I am still having back issues and trouble playing the guitar, which is frustrating. I pulled out my little guitelele (which is like a six-string ukulele) and have been playing that. However, I put new strings on it and the thing simply will not stay in tune long.

Then there's the question of haircuts. I haven't had one in six weeks. I am contemplating one final trip to the hairdresser for this year and asking for a short cut. The woman I have decided to use assured me she could make me her first customer of the day and get me in and out in 20 minutes. We'd both be masked. No one else would be in her shop.

I do not speak often of how I feel about the pandemic and the things going on me. Not on a deep level, anyway. I am most fretted by my inability to simply pick up and go - make a stop at Walmart, for example. I haven't been in a Walmart since this started. Or go to the bookstore. I did not, as a rule, regularly visit people, but I did stop in and check on my mother-in-law and now I don't do that. My husband checks on her. This concerns me because he is a guy and they don't always get the hint that something needs to be fixed or changed. 

People who do not take this seriously frustrate me. Yes, I know the survival rate is 98%. That means that two people out of every 100 people you know will die. Which two are you willing to sacrifice? Go to your Facebook page and look at all of those people who are Facebook friends with you. Which two do you want to see dead simply because you won't wear a mask or wash your hands, or stay home for the holidays? Odds are good that two of them will die. Will it be your fault?

Obviously, people don't think like that. I think like that, but it's an established fact that I'm not the normal sort of person and never have been. This is not a bad thing - it would be a boring world if we were all alike.