Friday, May 22, 2020

Hi, again.

Hello. I keep meaning to check in here and state that I am still not dead, but I keep forgetting, or not bothering, or whatever. But, well... Hi! Still not dead!

Honestly, it's almost eerie how little any of this situation has affected me personally. I continue to go into work regularly. I have to wear a mask into the office, and there are fewer people there, but most of the folks I regularly work with when I'm on day shifts are still in at least some of the time, and it's pretty much still business as usual for me. We might have more people around starting the beginning of the month. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is at the moment, because they held the zoom meeting discussing it on my day off, and I was asleep. It did get recorded, though, so I'll watch it at work this weekend. Whatever changes they're making, it's still probably not going to make much difference to me, other than that presumably at some point they're going to stop paying me overtime for working on the skeleton crew.

Otherwise, the main impact on me is that I'm only going out to the grocery store when my milk starts threatening to go off, and that I'm nearly three months overdue for a haircut, which is not pretty.

Honestly, we've been very lucky here. Parts of New Mexico have been hit pretty hard by the virus, but I think there have been a grand total of two cases in my zip code. And even in the rest of NM, there is no doubt that it could have been a lot worse. Our governor did a really good job with locking things down very early on, and an amazing job of making sure people in the state could get tested.

I am, however, worried about what might happen in towns like mine, where we've had almost no infection so far, as restrictions are eased (which they are beginning to be in NM). This thing is still spreading, and I feel like it's just gonna be lurking out there, waiting to attack the infection-free pockets of the population as soon as our guard is down. Maybe that's why you get the secondary waves that historically always seem to happen with pandemics.

Anyway, that's about all there is to say from my perspective. Other than that I'm still finding it bitterly ironic that genuinely all I want to do is to stay home, but I'm not allowed to do so, while everyone else seems desperate to leave the house. And also that, wow, does reading/hearing other people's reactions to their own enforced isolation bring home to me how psychologically different I seem to be from most of you social weirdos out there. But I do feel for you folks who are craving face-to-face human interaction, anyway, whether I understand you or not. And I hope everyone who might be reading this is doing physically well, and psychologically as well as you possibly can, given the odd circumstances of our lives right now.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Betty. Glad to see you are doing well and Socorro is missing the brunt of things. I hope it stays that way. I find it ironic that many of us ultra-introverts end up being the people who HAVE TO GO into work at times.. I guess it is known we are the safest to not go up to everyone and say 'shake my hand' 'let me cough on you' versus 'leave me alone and I will get this done'. I hope you get some reading time in... I think the biggest thing I miss from this is going to the library just to avoid people. Good luck and stay safe. [And I would love a picture of Betty Hari [mispelled hair and decided that it was a character name.]

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    1. Unbelievably ironic! I would be so good at strict quarantining!

      I am getting some reading in, despite the cruel fact that I still have to leave my house and go do things, but my TBR, I'm afraid, is going up rather than down. Apparently I'm very, very, very susceptible to pleas to order books online so bookstores can survive financially until they can open their brick-and-mortar stores again.

      And you are not getting a picture of my pandemic hair, no matter how many fun names you give it. Trust me, nobody wants to see that. I don't even want to see it, but, sadly, I have hard-to-remove mirrors in my house. :)

      Anyway, glad you're still kicking as well!

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    2. Understood.. I feel like I am having to relive the late 1960's and 1970's in everything from the news to my hair.. the compulsion to buy doubleknit polyester clothing with extra large collars is becoming intolerable.

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    3. LOL! Try to resist that one as long as possible. :)

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