So, in the midst of all my car drama, something else pretty important happened this week. Most of the COVID restrictions in New York were discontinued. Most of the capacity and masking regulations went away or were decreased considerably, and with it a lot of stores decided to do away with their requirements, primarily for vaccinated people. For some people, this is groundbreakingly exciting. For us, it honestly doesn't change much.
On one hand, we have unvaccinated kids. Jacob is eligible, but I'm still a bit torn on letting him get vaccinated. He had COVID and likely has some immunity as it is, and his case was so mild that I feel like he's not at serious risk. While the vaccine is likely safe, on the off-chance that some of these conspiracy theorists have any valid points, I'd rather spare my kids those issues if I can since their risk either way is low. The one thing that might change my mind is if it ends up impacting their ability to attend school (or attend unmasked by fall), as the benefit balance may then swing the other way. But because our kids are currently unvaccinated, we need to protect them. When we're with them, we will wear them for emotional support. When we're not, we will likely stay masked just because anything we bring home can still go to our kids.
The other problem is that I don't trust people. The fact of the matter is that places are not going to check vaccine status, and there are passionate anti-mask folks out there that think all of it (masks, vaccines, checking vaccine status, the virus itself) is wrong anyway, so I know they are definitely going to take advantage of the removal of mask mandates. If they're not masked and not vaccinated, they have a greater chance of catching the virus and passing it along. And while passing someone in a store likely won't be enough to catch it, it's still enough of a concern that masking feels important to us.
On the bright side, I went to Wegmans last night and 98% of the people I saw were still masked. I didn't expect that, so it was a pleasant surprise. The garden center today was on the other end of the spectrum, which was fine in the outside or partially enclosed areas, but a bit more disconcerting in the store part. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out elsewhere. Craig saw someone in the gas station store without one, and they didn't lift their store mandate so he got questioned. I think the variations in rules is going to be confusing and many people are just not going to care.
I try to keep in mind that cases are low, so the odds of ending up near one of those careless people (aside from the fact that many more might be asymptomatic) is relatively slim. I feel fortunate that things seem to have retreated for now and that we can be outdoors more often. It definitely makes things feel a bit more normal, even if all of these other returns to normalcy don't help us a lot.
Honestly, as much as I still feel a bit weighed down by this pandemic, I suppose I'm running out of reasons for that to be the case. We have one kid home from school for one day each week. Sports are back up and running for both kids. We go pretty much anywhere we please. We feel comfortable seeing our families. I don't wipe down my groceries anymore. We ate in a restaurant twice in the last week. But ultimately, we still mask and we still work from home, and those are biggies. Otherwise, most areas of life seem very close to what they once were. If nothing else, it is night and day compared to where we were a year ago, even if it's still not quite where it was before all this started.
The work part is this giant conundrum for me. On one hand, I miss the office and the relationships it offers. I can feel very isolated and distracted here, which is hard. On the other hand, being home allows me to sleep in, skip the commute, keep up with laundry and dishes, eat what I want, and wander into the yard to visit my flowers whenever I want. All of those things are great, and the flowers alone have been a much needed mental boost, so I sometimes wonder how I will function once I no longer have them and need to go back to the same old routine. I mean, things were fine then, but now that my eyes are open to all the other advantages, will it be that much harder to go back? Quite possibly.
A year ago we could only dream of starting to come out the other side of this. We hoped it would be sooner rather than later, of course, and thank goodness we didn't know how long all of this would go on. But now that things are starting to happen, it's harder than I imagined and it's a lot more to process than I expected. It's not so much a fear as it is a simplification of life for us and a desire to keep others safe. I worry so much less about the virus itself and more about just making smart choices so we don't have to worry about the virus or things like quarantine. For a long time it wasn't clear what those smart choices were, so after all this time that part is a little easier. I still worry about Jacob playing basketball, maybe more than anything else, but the benefits seem to outweigh the risks. School is a slight worry, but not enough to keep them home. We're not afraid to eat in restaurants, but where the kids are involved we're still keeping it to when it's truly convenient or needed. Particularly now, we don't have time to be quarantined, so if we can avoid that (and the virus), I'll take a couple extra steps to up our chances of staying safe. It's not a big deal for us. Others may feel differently, but for now we're okay. But reopening is definitely a lot different than I thought it would be.
I'm definitely trying to keep perspective on life these days and be grateful where I can. The accident felt pretty big, obviously, but even within that there were a lot of things to be thankful for. I'm safe, I was alone in the car, the car can be driven until we can get it in for repairs, and we have insurance that should take care of everything relatively cheaply (compared to what the repairs would be, anyway). I've been on the worse end of things before and it was horrible, so in comparison this seems much more manageable. If that wasn't enough, I had extra doses of perspective this week, too. On Thursday I took Carter to his therapy appointment, and as I waited in the waiting room, I saw multiple parents with kids who clearly had far more severe issues, ranging from non-verbal and immobile to likely somewhere on the mid-functioning spectrum. It makes our problems seem tiny in comparison, since our kids mostly seem normal from the outside. We can at least fake it, but those parents have 24/7 hard jobs they probably didn't willingly sign up for. Our stuff feels hard, but nothing like that. Then today, as we were driving to Jacob's tournament, I saw that my former co-worker--one who got let go the same day I did and who I enjoyed seeing at Knighthawks games periodically--announced that her 13-year-old daughter has cancer. She's only about seven months older than Jacob. She's an adorable girl who thought she had a pinched nerve, but instead has sarcoma. I don't know the prognosis, but it's still cancer and it's still scary to know she'll be going through all that treatment. She's so young to live with the side effects, the life-long worry, and the risk of death. It's heartbreaking, even though it's clear she's going to fight it like crazy. She's a tough martial arts girl, so hopefully she can kick cancer to the curb. That alone makes our day-to-day stuff seem so simple.
On the brighter side, I'm almost done with round 2 of planting--my garden went in today along with our experimental pumpkin garden and some morning glory seeds that I'm going to try to have climb our lamp posts. I planted my Mother's Day geranium in the ground and last weekend's plantings are starting to grow little sprouts. If the weather holds out tomorrow after basketball I hope to lay down some mulch and plant some vinca flowers under our front yard tree. It only pops up shoots and weeds inside the edging, so rather than be annoyed all the time, I'm going to dig out what I can and camouflage anything else that comes up by having flowers already there. Some of this feels excessive (and expensive!), but I figure if we're still going to be spending a lot of time here, the least I can do is enjoy watching things grow again. Oh, and since we're having no luck finding a deck builder for our pool, we got lucky yesterday when my mom found a neighbor selling a nice pool ladder for cheap! We were hesitant to buy new stairs for this summer (after ours broke for good last year) since we'll likely need something else for the deck, but that temporary problem got solved for $20 (assuming we can fit them in the van)! So, much like it's been for the last year, it's the little things that brighten our days and keep us chugging along.
Speaking of chugging along, Memorial Day is next weekend, Jacob has just two four-day weeks left of school, and Carter is down to 4-1/2 weeks. Carter potentially has medication (!) and (voluntary, remote) summer school coming his way in the weeks ahead, and there are two basketball trips on the horizon for Jacob, so we won't be chilling out much at all coming up. After a quiet year, I suppose we're up for it all, but we're still taking things one day at a time. Some days that's all we can handle, but it's amazing how quickly they add up in the midst of it all. Even if all of this hasn't been the way we planned it, we have a lot of life to live.
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