Plague diary 9/11
Nov. 9th, 2020 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livInteresting times.
33 weeks at home. 238 blurred together pandemic days. And four days of official "second lockdown", such as it is, though I was already being nearly as strict as what's now legally required. The main difference is that they have completely banned meeting people in groups, even outdoors. This makes it basically impossible for me to see my partners' children, and hard to see my partners in person (without disrupting their ability to parent said children). In first lockdown we kind of stretched the rules a bit and I stood at the end of their drive and talked to the family from the doorway, and that helped a lot to keep me connected. Now that seems to be more explicitly ruled out, so I don't know.
The first lockdown was promoted as 3 weeks and actually lasted 110 days; this one is supposed to be 4 weeks but I'm expecting another several months.
In the period where we were staying 2m apart due to rising case rates, but the rules were lax enough to let us make our own safety decisions, we managed a few walks in different combinations, and one last chance at sitting in the garden chatting between the announcement of second lockdown and it actually happening. Plus a decent amount of remote gaming, a long afternoon of Gloomhaven over video chat one weekend, some Dominion, some Mystic Vale on Yucata, and we've almost got Ticket to Ride working on Steam. I've also been playing Fortnite and a new, similar but more fantasy-themed game, Spellbreak, with the children.
Last week I took a few days off work, for no real reason other than to use my accumulated leave. But I managed to pick the week of anniversary of getting together with OSOs. So I had a lovely baking date withghoti_mhic_uait where we made kaberett's Swedish cardamom buns, at opposite ends of a video link, and played games while we waited for biology to happen. And I went on a long bike ride with cjwatson and we took a picnic; we were lucky enough to get actually good weather and it was super romantic until I got a flat tire. But jack rescued me and got me and the bike home, and we were able to use the third of my days off to take it to a bike shop. It turned out the actual tire was perished, which explains why it was chewing through so many inner tubes.
I read the Torah for the anniversary of my bat mitzvah (not the exact same section since we use the triennial cycle). And got my flu jab – the surgery was complete chaos, there were loads of signs contradicting each other and also contradicting the staff who all told me to go to different doors. And insisted I approach way closer than 2m because they otherwise couldn't hear me over traffic, saying, it's ok with a mask. A few days later I got a cold, my first since we first went into lockdown, and I'm pretty certain it will have been at the surgery that I picked it up, which doesn't say good things about their infection control. It's definitely a cold, absolutely classic cold symptoms in every way, so I feel a bit miz and now it's gone to my chest and I just hope it doesn't linger and lead everyone to think I have the plague.
This weekend we had a family video call in honour of my mother's birthday, and really enjoyed recreating our usual kitchen table discussions where everybody interrupts each other with many opinions. Sunday school started up again after half term. The children have basically stopped finding Zoom lessons a novelty, now they see a teacher on screen and they start behaving with classroom manners, putting their hands up to speak and asking for permission to go to the toilet and mostly staying still in their chairs. On the plus side they're all adept with the technology and can use it both to learn and to socialize without me constantly needing to talk them through the interface.
And the US election went far better than I expected; when Biden won the primary, I thought, that's it, we're doomed, and the range of my predictions was between the election being cancelled, Trump winning through cheating and voter suppression, or an outright coup. The last might still happen I suppose but it suddenly looks a whole lot less likely. And there is seriously promising vaccine news.
Even in the best case scenario I don't think we're going to have an actual vaccination programme before summer at the earliest, but having hope makes looking down the barrel of winter a lot more bearable. I hope it will not just be comforting to me personally while I'm being law-abiding and staying at home and not seeing anyone, but the prospect of a vaccine may make it easier for the general populace and the government to hold the line, to stick with restrictions for long enough that we still have a society by the time we have the vaccine available. Which may of course still not happen, promising early results doesn't mean everything is fixed, and our current government are entirely capable of making a bad situation worse even with an end maybe in sight. And I haven't suddenly got optimistic about Brexit or further deaths from the already out of control situation having gone into lockdown far too late.
33 weeks at home. 238 blurred together pandemic days. And four days of official "second lockdown", such as it is, though I was already being nearly as strict as what's now legally required. The main difference is that they have completely banned meeting people in groups, even outdoors. This makes it basically impossible for me to see my partners' children, and hard to see my partners in person (without disrupting their ability to parent said children). In first lockdown we kind of stretched the rules a bit and I stood at the end of their drive and talked to the family from the doorway, and that helped a lot to keep me connected. Now that seems to be more explicitly ruled out, so I don't know.
The first lockdown was promoted as 3 weeks and actually lasted 110 days; this one is supposed to be 4 weeks but I'm expecting another several months.
In the period where we were staying 2m apart due to rising case rates, but the rules were lax enough to let us make our own safety decisions, we managed a few walks in different combinations, and one last chance at sitting in the garden chatting between the announcement of second lockdown and it actually happening. Plus a decent amount of remote gaming, a long afternoon of Gloomhaven over video chat one weekend, some Dominion, some Mystic Vale on Yucata, and we've almost got Ticket to Ride working on Steam. I've also been playing Fortnite and a new, similar but more fantasy-themed game, Spellbreak, with the children.
Last week I took a few days off work, for no real reason other than to use my accumulated leave. But I managed to pick the week of anniversary of getting together with OSOs. So I had a lovely baking date with
ghoti_mhic_uait where we made kaberett's Swedish cardamom buns, at opposite ends of a video link, and played games while we waited for biology to happen. And I went on a long bike ride with cjwatson and we took a picnic; we were lucky enough to get actually good weather and it was super romantic until I got a flat tire. But jack rescued me and got me and the bike home, and we were able to use the third of my days off to take it to a bike shop. It turned out the actual tire was perished, which explains why it was chewing through so many inner tubes. I read the Torah for the anniversary of my bat mitzvah (not the exact same section since we use the triennial cycle). And got my flu jab – the surgery was complete chaos, there were loads of signs contradicting each other and also contradicting the staff who all told me to go to different doors. And insisted I approach way closer than 2m because they otherwise couldn't hear me over traffic, saying, it's ok with a mask. A few days later I got a cold, my first since we first went into lockdown, and I'm pretty certain it will have been at the surgery that I picked it up, which doesn't say good things about their infection control. It's definitely a cold, absolutely classic cold symptoms in every way, so I feel a bit miz and now it's gone to my chest and I just hope it doesn't linger and lead everyone to think I have the plague.
This weekend we had a family video call in honour of my mother's birthday, and really enjoyed recreating our usual kitchen table discussions where everybody interrupts each other with many opinions. Sunday school started up again after half term. The children have basically stopped finding Zoom lessons a novelty, now they see a teacher on screen and they start behaving with classroom manners, putting their hands up to speak and asking for permission to go to the toilet and mostly staying still in their chairs. On the plus side they're all adept with the technology and can use it both to learn and to socialize without me constantly needing to talk them through the interface.
And the US election went far better than I expected; when Biden won the primary, I thought, that's it, we're doomed, and the range of my predictions was between the election being cancelled, Trump winning through cheating and voter suppression, or an outright coup. The last might still happen I suppose but it suddenly looks a whole lot less likely. And there is seriously promising vaccine news.
Even in the best case scenario I don't think we're going to have an actual vaccination programme before summer at the earliest, but having hope makes looking down the barrel of winter a lot more bearable. I hope it will not just be comforting to me personally while I'm being law-abiding and staying at home and not seeing anyone, but the prospect of a vaccine may make it easier for the general populace and the government to hold the line, to stick with restrictions for long enough that we still have a society by the time we have the vaccine available. Which may of course still not happen, promising early results doesn't mean everything is fixed, and our current government are entirely capable of making a bad situation worse even with an end maybe in sight. And I haven't suddenly got optimistic about Brexit or further deaths from the already out of control situation having gone into lockdown far too late.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-10 02:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-10 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-10 11:07 pm (UTC)Here's to making it through to a brighter future.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-11 11:49 pm (UTC)