One Year

How am I marking this one year anniversary of the WHO declaring the covid pandemic? It wasn't really something I've been intentional about, but rather seems to have been forcefully shoved into my face by both the media and my place of employment. 

And maybe it's not such a bad thing to be deliberate about taking some time out to reflect on this past year. It's certainly obvious by my lack of continuing with blog posts that I haven't done such a great job of processing in words how pandemic life has progressed. 

Today started with a poignant moment as my bus waited to turn a corner, and I watched a security guard at the St. Joseph's Urgent Care lower the flag to half mast. I don't really have the words to express what emotions I felt just then, but somehow just the watching of that unceremonious action felt like a good way to mark today. 

It's been an up and down day otherwise.  There were moments of grief brought on by both pandemic remembrances and by the losses of life that come when you least expect and cause you to blot tears while riding the bus to work and cry in your heart, "Why is it so unfair??"  But there were also moments of happiness, enjoying time spent with a colleague I haven't seen in a few weeks when I worked at other sites, and celebration for receiving a permanent part-time position in my department at the hospital (which doesn't change much in terms of my job, but does guarantee me hours).  

So I ended the day by looking back at my blog posts from a year ago. It helped inspire the words for this "one year" post. There's just too much to squeeze into one post, so many ways this journey has twisted and turned, and it all just messes with your head a bit. One of these days I might find the time to sort through it all, but thank heavens, spring seems to finally be on the way, and there's nothing quite like warm fresh air and sunshine to lighten the spirit.

The Song of Summer

I have a quiet morning to just sit for once. Today I'm working 3 to 11 after a three-day stretch of 8 to 4. It was good to sleep in. I'm taking the moment to enjoy my morning coffee on the front porch and breathe in the peace of a soft summer morning, the cloudless sky, the massive gloriously green trees that line our street only slightly moving in the breeze, and the chirping of so many birds. This is my favourite time of year. 

I figured it was also a good time to try and get some thoughts out into words and sentences, as it's been so long since my last post - and Covid time really does seem to have sped up in the last little while. I said to my coworker the other day, why can't July and August feel as long as March did?

But time continues its march, often at a quicker pace than I'd like. I want these summer days to last. Too often conversations are about school starting up (if? when?), and for now I choose to ignore those questions (although I probably should buy school supplies now while I can still find them at Walmart). Who wants to think about school when there's still 5 weeks of summer left to enjoy?

I'm working less often in the Covid call centre these days and more in my old job in the pathology department as surgeries ramp back up, the workload increases, and the plague of staffing shortages we were dealing with pre-covid only intensifies. It means more day shifts, more weeks of 4 or 5 days straight, more guaranteed hours, but more questions of how or if my job status will change going forward. As a casual whose job is to fill in the gaps, I feel the strain of being needed in too many places - and I remind myself I am only one person, and I can only do what I can do; let someone else figure out the rest. 

So it comes down to taking it one day at a time. But there's a balance there too, because I find one day at a time in a pandemic sometimes leaves me feeling like we will be in a pandemic forever, so occasionally when covid fatigue (yet another new buzzword for 2020) sets in, I remind myself to look further ahead than just six months or a year. The realist in me knows this isn't going away tomorrow or next month or really until there's a vaccine. But I try to find hope in a few years down the road, where Lord willing there is a fantastically effective vaccine that allows us to be out of this pandemic lifestyle. (I won't say return to normal as I think its unrealistic to expect life to ever feel the way it did before, as is the nature of change, but maybe we can go back to some of our old ways...)

And on peaceful mornings like this, I soak in the comfort of the nature around me. Let the cicadas sing their song of summer. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat...

AOYC 2020

Today of all days...this weekend of all weekends...needs words. For years we've lost track of, the May long weekend is convention weekend. It's a weekend where a thousand youth from across Ontario come together to worship and experience God, and a small group of production techs come together to be family. 

Last night, instead of putting on a headset and getting behind a camera to do my part of the worship session production, I put on a face mask and sat at my desk calling hospital wards and public health units to report positive Covid-19 results. 

This morning, instead of gathering for breakfast and laughs in the cafeteria with our crazy crew, I sat on my bed with a cup of coffee and watched the AOYC 2020 Live on YouTube (except it wasn't live anymore, because, well, covid and working).

And grief flowed heavy. 

My heart followed along with the worship coming through my screen while the pile of Kleenex grew beside me. I'd been ignoring the reality of losing this weekend, but it hit me this morning, and the tears fell hard and fast, and I just ached with the pain of missing my people and missing this convention experience that is always a highlight of my year. 

And now I finish my day with burning eyes and a lump in my throat, sniffling away at my desk while I write this at work, trying to keep still more tears at bay. Sometimes it seems these days that once you let them out they just don't want to stop. And I guess it is okay to grieve these losses, even necessary I suppose. 

But oh, how I wish we didn't have to. 

And I have just got to say, I am really, REALLY looking forward to the fantastic family reunion we will get to have when this ends, and we can have convention again. 

Working on Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day, and I'm at work. Because, well, Covid. I probably could have asked for the day off, but when my manager was making the schedule however many weeks ago, the thought didn't even really occur to me that maybe I should try to not work today. All the days sorta blend together at this point, and May 10 was just a date on the calendar. 

So here I am. 

I'm bored. 

This is a great problem to have, really. It means people aren't testing positive, and I don't have to call public health with the bad news. Every now and then the phone rings, and I get to try and answer whatever question the person on the other end has, and more often than not, I just end up transferring them to the lab techs in the back who know a lot more than me about stuff. 

But I get a lot of time just sitting and doing nothing. So I read some blogs. It's early enough in the evening that I'm not too tired to want to write some myself.  It's not even so much that there is anything in particular I feel like I need to say, but I know that writing is for me a big part of coping with life and with change, so I'm letting out what comes, and maybe somewhere in all this will be inspiration, or encouragement, or just something to make someone smile, or maybe in the end I will just have a bit of catharsis from having created with words. 

...

And now that I've said all that, I've been sitting here for the better part of 15 minutes with no clue what to write next. Random thoughts float through my head, and I can't figure out if they are worth fleshing out into concrete terms on paper or if I should just leave them as random thoughts. 

There are some pipes making incessant banging noises here in the office that I debated ranting about. Normally I am good at tuning out annoying background noises, but for some reason these pipes are driving me bonkers. 

I've also considered a discussion on mask-wearing because, well, they're a big thing nowadays. For all y'all who only have to wear one at the grocery store, let me explain a few things. It is not fun to wear them for any sort of long duration. Your nose feels forever squashed (even after you take it off, although WHAT a relief it is to remove the damn thing at the end of your shift), if you wear glasses they constantly get fogged up, and breathing recycled air gets really old. You know how we all got super intense about hand hygiene when all this hit? Yeah, if mask-wearing becomes more prevalent, I predict oral hygiene will be the next big deal...

All that aside, I am thankful that I actually have masks to wear at work, as well as everyone else I work with. I do think they are necessary, especially as we are not always able to maintain 6 feet of distance in the office. But I don't have to like it...

I think I'm done with the verbalizing thoughts now...  Sorry for rambling and being random...

Up and Down, Round and Around

It seems I am not one of those with lots of spare time on their hands during this quarantine. Good intentions to write more and sort through this roller coaster of emotions have clearly just been that - intentions without follow through. I decided to force the issue today as I'm starting to go a little crazy with all these part posts running through my head with no outlet. Forgive me if this gets long as a result...

I am so done with this horror of a theme park that is the year 2020. It feels like we'll never escape this constant whirl of spinny rides and ups and downs and whipping back and forth that is navigating this pandemic. And while to a certain extent the initial shock and anxiety of the beginning has worn off, it's only led the way to forever flipping back and forth between "this really isn't such a big deal" to "my God this is terrible; when will it end?!" 

And we try to settle into something resembling a routine, a new normal per se if only to find some reassurance and way out of the panic, but dear lord, there are days when this new normal royally sucks. 

Maybe it's just my introverted need for isolation peeking through today. And that sentence in itself is ironic, as so many are feeling the isolation too strongly right now. But for me, with three kids at home, my only isolation comes when I'm alone in the office when I'm working evenings at the hospital, and I dare say, that very much does not count as introvert recharge time. 

So I'm exhausted. I tell myself I'll take it easy on my 2 days off before going back to work for another 5 days, but that's a pipe dream. There is no time off to be taken with 3 kids to homeschool, mountains of laundry, meals to cook and a house to be cleaned. 

And here I sit, wasting precious laundry-folding time to vent off some steam about the crappiness of this new life we find ourselves unceremoniously shoved into. 

And I wish I could say, this too shall pass, and I'm sure it will, and as this roller coaster continues, I'm sure in an hour I'll feel completely different, but for now I'm wallowing, and allowing myself to dwell on the misery for just a little. My unfortunate brain takes me down roads of knowing this won't be over any time soon, and while we might resume some of our more usual activities, we will be living in this pandemic state for many more months. 

So I know I need to get used to this. 

But I wish I didn't have to. And I wish it was easier. Cuz yeah, this is hard. 

Did I mention I don't really like roller coasters?

Currently

Remember when blogs were a thing, and I used to write one? Or maybe you don't, as it's been six years since I last wrote, and I've made some new friends over the years. If that's you, feel free to sit a while, connect with my past and learn a little more about who I am (or was).

Some of my favourite people have started blogging again, and that, along with our current world order, has combined to give me an urge to write, if only just as an outlet to process all that's going on. Because these are times that need to be processed. And who would have ever thought we'd find ourselves here? Somehow life turned into one of those movies we always watch with a measure of horror and fascination, never really thinking it would happen to us. And yet...

Truthfully, it's been weeks that I've been thinking I need to write to sort this all out. But time has both slowed to a crawl and flown by surprisingly fast. Between adapting to a new life routine with kids doing school at home, learning a new work routine with a pandemic specific job (calling positive Covid results for the lab), and just generally coping with this odd combination of seeing nobody yet constantly connecting via social media and cell phones, somehow finding the time to actually sit down and put into words the random thoughts that float through my brain just hasn't happened. 

But I want to get better at carving out that time if only as a way to preserve my mental health and prevent too much bottling of the emotions. As an introvert, life needs to be processed, ruminated over, and typically for me, that takes some significant alone time, which I am most certainly not getting while staying home with three kids and a husband. Time to myself is in short supply these days. 

So I will try to find time to write, whether that's times like now, where every other sentence is interrupted by me giving the kids instructions on their schoolwork, or maybe it will be on an evening shift where there aren't too many calls to make (please!). Either way, I'm hoping it won't take another six years to post again. 

Ramblings and Ponderings

I read a few blogs this morning that I hadn't checked in a while.  It made me want to post again.  Maybe the key to me writing more is to read more blogs...  I've had bits and pieces of blog posts in my head for ages, but getting them out is always the hard part.  So...some ramblings...

I think I forgot that anti-depressants are not a magic happy pill.  When I first started on them and felt so much better at first, somehow I think I was a bit lulled into a sense of this was all it was going to take to finally get through this journey of depression.  Naive, oh, so naive.  And of course, just proof of how there is such a learning curve to all of this.  My hope is that I've just been overwhelmed after having all three kids home full time over the summer, and now that school has started up again, my introverted self might actually get a chance to breathe again.

But there's still this constant battle to balance, constantly weighing how I'm doing, and I take those three little pills every morning with my breakfast and wonder if they're really helping enough and if the side effects (which have faded to a certain extent but still show up every now and then) are worth it and consider if I may need to up my dose or do I need to switch to something else and what a long and challenging road this is.

And sometimes, (but not nearly often enough), I ponder grace.  How God's grace is and needs to be sufficient for me.  And how it is such a part of every day.  The little gifts in daily life that He uses to show me His everlasting love, the grace to forgive my children for just being children even when it drives me crazy, and the strength to ask for their grace when I so very often fail as a mother, His grace - forgiving me always and remembering to be thankful for His grace instead of feeling guilty for always needing it again and again for the same things.

Sometimes I wish life was easier.  And I know He never promised it would be easy, but that He is always with us and He has overcome.  But I always wonder why I find it so hard to get through this business of making it to the end of the day.  Which of course is half the lesson, to figure out how to stop asking why, accept it, find a way to rely on God's grace, and move on.

*sigh*  oh ramblings.  oh brain. 

Glimpses

  

 

Reminiscing

I was awake too early this morning.  I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't.  Then Nathan woke up at about 5, and while he very easily conked back out in my bed, I lay there tossing and turning and fidgeting.  So I got up.  I figured I'd have my morning coffee in peace for once.  And then I realized that this is the perfect time to blog for a change.  This is how it used to be, quiet mornings, me and my laptop, words flowing through my fingers through the keyboard onto the screen.  Oh the feeling of nostalgia.

You'll have to forgive me for a slightly more melancholy tone this morning.  Yesterday I finally came out of denial about the inevitable that's been coming for quite some time now.  This weekend will be my last visit to my parents' old home in Chatham, and I will be saying goodbye to my childhood home and my adulthood safe haven.

There are so many memories in that place:

forts in the backyard trees
rolling down the hill on wooden wheels
tobagganning into the fence so we didn't go into the creek
skating in the winter
Rocky
the tiny first kitchen
all the renovations
so many Christmases
the laughter
the tears
the fights
the games
the celebrations: birthdays, graduations, weddings, births
being a family

If you have ever had the opportunity to be at my parents' house, then you may know some of what I'm talking about.  Both the house and the yard are beautiful, truly a place to rest when the storms come and a place to relax when life brings joy.  I look forward to the new memories to be made in their new house, but the old house will certainly be missed.  I only hope that I can do half as good a job as my parents did at making my home with my little family a somewhere that is so loved.

Immanuel - God With Us

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm alone in the house while the rest of the family has gone to the evening church service.  Nathan has a bad cold and wasn't going to make it through the 45 minutes that started past his usual bedtime, so I elected to stay behind so I could have a shower and some peace amid the bussle that is the holiday season.

I know it has been quite some time since I've posted.  I figure that could say a couple of things.  I'm probably very busy...maybe even too busy.  Which is definitely true.  Getting Reuben out the door for the bus by 8:00 every morning definitely makes morning blogging impossible, and by the time the kids are in bed at the end of the night, I'm just ready to crash on the couch.  Or maybe my brain is in one of those dim places where I don't even think in blog posts any more; the inspiration to write is dulled out by busyness and life.  My hiatus from blogging is probably for both those reasons.

But today?  Why the post?  I have a few moments of rest.  True rest where I've told myself I'm not doing anything work related until after Christmas (maybe even after New Year's...)  I don't have any deadlines looming over my head.  The house is completely silent, and I don't have anything on TV distracting me.  It's amazing how my brain can suddenly kick in when there is quiet.

Christmas is my favourite time of year.  I love the time spent with family, the fun of decorating the house, the yummy goodies that get baked and shared, and I love that I have a reason to celebrate, a real reason, that this Jesus I love came down to earth, and we get to remember that in this special time of year.  I was reminded a few weeks ago while driving to work how He is called Immanuel - God With Us.  And it was like I had a little light go on and I felt the true meaning of how important and wonderous it is that God came down to earth in the form of a baby, this baby, Jesus, to be God With Us.

It feels me with joy to know He is with me.  He reminds me that He has loved me with an everlasting love, and His love keeps me going, through the busyness and the hard days, and through the quiet and the good days.  May you, dear faithful readers, remember His love and the reason we celebrate Christmas.  He is with us.