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Month: January 2021

  • COVID-19 Journal Entry 44

    Sunday Morning

    I’m awake early on a Sunday morning. This is because I was awake early on all the days preceding and so my body is not trained to keep sleeping. On the weekends where I have a flex Monday I can sometimes sleep in a bit, but not much. It’s ok because it’s nice to be up early and start things and have things achieved by noon. Also, early weekend mornings are conducive to afternoon naps.

    Today I have ginger turmeric tea steeping. Ginger because my tummy is grumbly; turmeric because it’s part of the tea. It’s too hot to drink so far but I may have to removed the bag before long because the ginger will get too strong. This tea might also be good with some honey – but that’s all the way over in the kitchen and I don’t want to get up.

    I’m in my big comfy chair with my feet up. My feet art hurty today, and I have employed my two-socks-per-foot trick to make them feel better. I don’t know if this is a scientific cure, but now their complaints are muffled so I can work in peace.

    My feet are sore due to a combination of the following:

    1. My running shoes are likely getting old and not supporting my feet properly anymore. I have been wearing my running shoes instead of either of the two pairs of hiking boots because it wasn’t raining this week when I walked to work
    2. Contemporary dance class in a real studio on Friday evening. My feet aren’t used to being barefoot on a hard floor. My feet always complain after dance class. And during class. Not before class, though, because I don’t tell them I’m going. They don’t get any say on the matter. I’ve been craving a dance class on Friday nights right after work, because I’ve 100% had a dance class at that time for years. I was open to anything but am so happy that it’s contemporary because I can just go and relax (mentally, anyway). This week, unfortunatly, I stomped on my own foot during one exercise. The foot that was stopmed on was all like “Heeeey.” And the other foot was all like “Hehehehe…. I don’t think that’s where I was supposed to go…..”
    3. I went for a walk with Susan on Saturday morning all around and about her neighbourhood. She tour-guided me all around MacAuley Point park, pointing out wildlife and plants, and sharing history. A good walk and a a good visit with Susan, who I haven’t seen in person for a long time.

    Admittedly, much of 2 and 3 could have been mitigated by paying more attention to 1. But it doesn’t matter because I have plans to rest today. In my comfy chair. I have a few issues of Vanity Fair (the magazine) to catch up on. I thought I’d read them all, but then I found a hidden cache, most likely set aside when I was tidying. I’m working on September’s issue. Alternating with articles from that, I’ve started reading Outlander, the first in the Outlander series that everyone else has already read or watched (or in among the first? I don’t know if there are prequels, as sometimes occurs with serieses). I’ve heard about it for years, and know the gist of what it’s about, but here I am reading it now. It will be the second book I’ve read this year, and, should I finish, I will be well on my way to breaking my 4-books-in-a-year record I set last year.

    Reading Material, circa Jan 17, 2021.

    One of my favorite Sunday morning things is the CBC radio show In Concert, which is four hours of classical music. It’s usually themed, and the host will provide history or context of the music in between works, or do readings. It works well to have on while I am reading or writing. I also like to listen to it online and from a different time zone so instead of listening to it from 11am-3pm (pacific, and it’s proper broadcast time) it’s on from 8 until noon (from the Ontario time zone). I don’t know what the theme is today, or if there is one, because I haven’t been paying attention.

  • COVID-19 Journal Entry 43

    I’ve been thinking about time today. Truthfully, though, not so much “today” as just a few minutes ago when my mind drifted away from the story of the book I just started reading. It’s a new year and I’ve decided to read books. Maybe some, maybe lots. If I read 3 I’ll have read more than I did last year, and that’s my resolution.

    I considered my alarm clock this morning. It’s an actual stand-alone clock + radio that lives on my bedside table and not just the clock app on my phone – although the reception for the radio is only clear when my phone is resting on top. The alarm may be set so that I wake up to the sound of CBC Radio instead of a loud alarm sound, thus, I may wake up peacefully instead of scared. I do in fact wake up to the sound of the radio, even if some days I stay dozing a bit and dream the radio stories instead of hearing them.

    The key of this radio + clock deal is that there is digital clock on the front in a massive font so that I can see it without my glasses on, and so that I only have to open my eyes and/or turn my head to see the time (Instead of picking up my phone).

    There are two alarms I can set, and this is what I have was considering this morning. I set one at 7am and the other for 6:40. This isn’t like some people do, where they need two consecutive alarms in the morning to get up. I turn on the alarm for 7 for the first part of the week when I work from home and don’t need so much time to commute. The alarm for 6:40 is for the days when I go into the office and have to get ready and then walk in. I should note that these are the times I wake up, but not when I leave bed, which can vary, especially on days at home, when I don’t have to get ready to the same degree as when I leave the house.

    My schedule of things shifted at the very start of COVID and I thought to myself won’t this be fun for a little while, but has switched from that to just being normal. I have to get up earlier than I did when I went into the office every day because I walk instead of taking the bus. I have two separate alarms because I might as well take advantage of the extra time working from home allows, and this being two or three times a week. In the before times I would work from home just one day a week, or two, and I would wake up at the same time as when I had to leave the house anyway. Now I’m at home for most of the week.

    Time works different, too, when I have nowhere to be at any given time – very few appointments, and no after-work activities like dance or dinner out. This is causing problematic when I do have things at scheduled times as I’ve forgotten how to remember to do them. I’ve managed to get to all my in-person things, but I missed a video dance presentation I had a ticket for. I’m trying to “put things in my calendar” so I remember to do them. For a while last spring all the things I “put in my calendar” got deleted so I guess I forgot how to do that.

    Also, getting up at 6:40 in the spring and summer was much more enjoyable than it is now, but at least it’s getting sort of light again now when I leave the house just before 7:30 instead of it being basically the middle of the night. Unless it’s rainy, then it’s just dark in the morning, and stays dark all day long. I think I notice the dark more this year because, first, I’m out in it more in the morning, and then after work I’m not busy. I usually have dance, where someone always mentions how dark it is after the time change, and everyone notices and says Oh Yeah! but we are all in the studio where the lights are on and where we are presently going to dance. Or I have plays or dinners out to go to. So generally just don’t pay that much attention. This year, especially before midwinter, I found myself standing at my windows (all of them on separate occasions) just contemplating how dark it was at 4:45 in the afternoons.

    Now I contemplate how much time I used to spend reading books, and how I don’t do that anymore. In the short term my solution for this is to trade in the time I spend *watching silly internet videos* for book-reading time. A new year’s compromise. I won’t describe how long I have spent watching *silly internet videos* today, but to be fair, I only agreed to this self-imposed compromise about an hour ago and in that time I have not watched any.

    (I want to get back to my book now so I’m not going to proofread/edit this. I will no doubt regret this at some time in the future.)

  • COVID-19 Journal Entry 42

    It’s 2021 now. Good luck.

    When I started my COVID-19 Journal last March did I expect it to last until now? No!

    Did I expect to take a couple months off from writing about my experiences of the COVID year? Also no, but I did.

    • A) I was writing other things.
    • B) I am an inconsistent journaller anyway.
    • C) How much can I write about writing about myself staying at home? Well. Lots. And I shall continue to do so.

    It occurs to me as I review my past entries that I didn’t take the opportunity to write in October and November how it was a year since my trip to China – which ended up being my last overseas trip for a while. I did ponder this in late October: how it didn’t feel like it had been a year already, but how it also felt like way more than a year since I’d been there. When the pandemic started, it had only been a few months since I got back. In October the pandemic was still going on, but it couldn’t have been that long, could it? But it was.

    About a year ago today I was amazed at my good timing, leaving Asia just 6 weeks or so before news of the new coronavirus started coming out. Maybe it wasn’t a year ago today. Maybe it was a bit longer before I realized. I don’t remember exactly. Maybe it was Christmas. I remember at some point I opened Google maps so I could show Dad how far exactly I was from Wuhan during my trip. I spent a day looking at the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang, and that’s about 350km away, which was the closest I got. (However, as someone on my tour pointed out later, Wuhan was on a possible alternate route if our original plan went astray, but that part of the tour went according to the itinerary.)

    Three Gorges Dam Tourist Area Circa November 2019. I climbed up a high thing to take a photo of the view. I do not know what we’re looking at because I didn’t pay attention to our area guide. Bad Tourist.

    This week I’ve been thinking about February, 2020 or “The Last Normal Month.” Just in regular life I would have been going to work. We had settled into a schedule where we could work from home one day per week. My day was Thursday. Then I had dance three times per week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

    February is the last month in my calendar that has events that aren’t marked with a CANCELLED. I took to adding CANCELLED to things as they were called off in the spring as a sort of memento, but that was later, in March, April and May. In February, I saw a Kidd Pivot show in Victoria, and Dear Evan Hanson in Vancouver. I went to a Carlson’s School of Dance fundraiser for their Disney kids in Duncan. I think I saw a play at UVic, too, but I didn’t have it written down.

    At the end of Feb I had a dentist appointment, which led to a consultation with the endodontist at t the beginning of March, which led to half a root canal being done the next day because I thought it would be good to get it over with. I remember the endodontist saying that he’d be away at a conference that weekend, but there was an emergency line I could call if I had any issues The conference he attended ended up being the first superspreader event in BC, leading to all dentist offices being shut down for a while. My root canal wasn’t completed until July.

    I remember thinking at the start of February that I had a busy month coming up. Thank goodness that it was.