Skip to main content

Tough time to be a Pollyanna



Remember when 9/11 was just a date or a number you called in an emergency? Our lives changed dramatically post 9/11. For weeks after that September day, we seemed to walk around in a fog, like the haze that loomed over the now-fallen twin towers. I remember trying to minimize my obsession with the news, trying to keep the three little Piggins away from the enormity of the disaster.

Remember when corona was simply a beer best served with a lime wedge? It now and forever will be instead associated with this virus that has upended our world in ways we could never have imagined. This tiny little, microscopic virus has brought the mighty to their knees. It has us quarantined and distancing socially (though I believe we've been doing this emotionally for years) and working from home. As anxiety peaks, our economy tanks. As toilet paper and hand sanitizer flies off the shelves, we are looking for new ways to stock our pantries. A good friend observed, "I never thought I'd see the day when buying toilet paper was more difficult than buying pot,"! 

I am on day six of quarantine. I've not seen anyone but my husband and dog. My children are on the east side of the state - Delaney drove from St. Louis to be with Michael and Carmen and Matthew is holed up in his dorm at UofM Law. Originally we thought they might come home; I imagined an extended snow day where we would bake cookies, binge watch some show, play games and make a holy mess and mounds of laundry. But the three not-so-little Piggins talked as Delaney was driving north and decided that it would be best not to potentially  expose me, with my MS, and John, with his heart issues. Both conditions put us in the immune compromised category.

 Today, I will  do more exercise than the diddly squat I've been doing. I feel like a slug. That may be inaccurate because I think I slug moves more. 

Have a great shelter in place day!

#msadvocate
#coronalime
#tomorrowisanotherday

Comments

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

The meaning of success and how

I sat down to write today about being cast/boot free. It is a joy to be back to my 'normal' state of mobility - which is to say that I stumble and totter like a drunken sailor but at least now I'm not wearing a big black boot. Ahoy matey! But instead, I came across the above quote and being easily distracted, I began to think about it instead. (Heck, I'm tired of the damn cast and don't want to waste anymore time thinking or writing about it anyway.) It's a quote my Aunt Bonnie first introduced me too when I graduated from high school and it's come on my radar many times since then, but today for some reason it has given me pause. I laugh often, to be sure. I'm like the uncle in Mary Poppins - I love to laugh. I surround myself with people that make me smile and laugh and am grateful for a husband that still knows how to make me laugh. I'm not to sure about winning the respect of intelligent people, though. I tend to think out of the box and...

The summer that wasn't

It's July 30. Summer, right? Wrong!!! In Michigan, we had our summer two weeks ago for about 10 days. Saw a recent post on Facebook that read:"You know you're in Michigan when you wear your bathing suit on Monday and your parka on Tuesday." We sweltered for a week or two and then were chilled again. That's where we are now. Chilling at 70. Weather aside, it no longer feels much like summer. The back-to-school ads, commercials, displays and talk have begun full-force. And I feel like I just got used to having the three-not-so-little Piggins home again and now I have to get them ready for school. Delaney has a little longer, but Michael leaves for Wayne State law in two weeks and Matthew for his sophomore year at DePauw in three.  I get the nest re-feathered and damn these 'baby' birds but they stay for too short a time then fly away. *sigh* Since this is the "glass half full" blog of a pseudo-Pollyanna, I will revert to thinking positively ...

The "I'll Nevers" of growing older

  Years ago as a freelance writer, I submitted an essay entitled "The I'll Nevers of Parenting". It was a list, mostly, of things I had said prior to having children and the crow I was then eating because of the stupidity of the claims. You know little pearls of 'wisdom' that only someone who hasn't experienced the joys of  parenting could utter, like: I will never yell at my child in public or I will never let my child eat dinner in front of the television or my children will never stay up past 9 pm. I yelled at my children (usually when we were both tired and totally irrational!) in public. One time, as we were in the drop off lane at school with a long line of cars behind us, the boys hoped out of the car but Delaney was insisting on something that for the life of me I cannot recall and I was insisting that she get out of the van. We crept along, van door still open, until I got to the end of the line and yelled at the top of my voice, "Delaney get the...