And then I got it…twice.

I made it through the pandemic without getting Covid. I had all the boosters available to me, including one last September. I carried hand sanitizer and wipes. I avoided crowds.

But last October, I had Depeche Mode tickets. DM has provided the soundtrack of my life. I’ve seen them before, three times, albeit twenty-something years ago. But learning about Andy Fletcher’s death made me beg my hubby for tickets. I didn’t care how much they were, because let’s be honest. Memento Mori may very well be their last tour. And tonight is the finale in Cologne, Germany. Gee, I’d give anything to be there. But I digress.

My friend and I hopped on the train to NYC on that exceedingly warm October night. For three hours I stood, sang, and danced with thousands of other fifty-somethings like me. MSG was filled with voices singing each lyric while music pulsed beneath our feet and through our bodies. I hadn’t felt so alive in so long that I didn’t want it to end. The energy was palpable, and I was twenty-three again.

Until three days later when I was suddenly achy. I was a bit nauseous. My throat was sore. So I took one test, then two. The two pink lines showed up before the required fifteen-minute wait time.

I was terrified and ran to Urgent Care. Their rapid test came back negative. I called my GP to let her know about the home tests and ask for Paxlovid. And then came the rapid-fire decisions one makes when having Covid. Where to isolate. Notify work. Let my friends and co-workers I had been in contact with know I could have passed it on. Figure out who would take care of the dog, the cats, our teenager, my hubby. Write work plans. Order groceries and all the other things one does when one feels they are the household CEO. I had to return to Urgent Care for a PCR test for work. That came back positive…

As the CDC suggested, I shut the door on the world for five days. At first, I was restless. Then I was tired. Next, I binged some Netflix series, read a bit, colored in my mandala coloring book, and doom scrolled through the hours. By about day three, I was content. My world had stopped and I could take a breath. I almost didn’t want to come out. Day four was cleaning day. On day five I emerged from my cocoon, happy to be with my family again. Day seven, I tested negative. No more Paxlovid iron taste in the back of my mouth, just the plastic air from the K95 mask.

No one else in my house got Covid.

I figured I had won.

Until our son got it for Christmas. And my hubby got it on Valentine’s Day. And despite spending five days on the living room couch, I got it a second time.

The insurance company denied my request for Paxlovid, despite this time I was wheezing so bad that I could hardly talk. It took two days, some threats, and two hours on the phone to get the script. A work friend suggested I come in masked since I was fever free. I thought they were joking and stayed home, blowing through most of my sick time.

No one seemed to care that I could be contagious.

Who gets Covid twice in four months? I did.

Work is a cesspool of germs. And the protocols once offered don’t exist anymore. There isn’t any hand sanitizer or wipes available in the classrooms. And so many kids come to school sick. Worse, some people admit that they don’t bother testing their kiddos anymore, I mean the pandemic “ended” years ago, right?

Then three weeks after having Covid, my husband had a cardiac event. We spent some time in an emergency room. Did you know that Covid can affect your heart muscle?

But Covid’s over, right?

My favorite track on Memento Mori is “People are Good.” “Keep telling myself that people are good. Whisper it under my breath. So I don’t forget.”

I hope we do a better job of caring for one another. Less “me”, and more “we”.

Screw You Google!

It finally happened. Google’s algorithms connected my Googling with my shopping, and the results stunned me. Vera Bradley had emailed a coupon, one too hard to resist. So, I started to peruse the latest patterns and styles. When I clicked through to see what the bag might look like, something like this popped up.

Gone were the svelte models swinging their bags over their shoulder with a look in their eye that said they had it all. Now the model, who has a normal body, is swinging the bag by her knees.

Now don’t get me wrong. This model is beautiful.

It’s just that I don’t see myself as begin overweight. The “o” word lurks behind me in the shadow of my consciousness. But I have struggled with my weight for most of my life, especially since we came out of the pandemic and into the endemic. Lately I have realized that my safety cushion is a relic from a traumatic childhood. And it is going to take more than just dieting and working out to get rid of it, especially since my cortisol levels must be sky high for fear of Covid 19. Not to mention my stress levels….ugh.

I’m working on it. And I have made a promise to be gentle with myself. It’s been quite a year.

But seeing heavier models whenever I look online for clothes has made me stop shopping. I prefer to keep my oversized shirts and pants.

Seeing a model who looks more like me felt like an invasion of privacy. Was Google sending Vera Bradley messages about my weight? Who else were they sharing my “how to lose weight after 50” searches?

Weight challenges are personal. But I felt that suddenly my issue had become public property. I know that privacy doesn’t exist on the internet, yet this felt like a purposeful violation.

Did I say I stopped shopping for clothes online?

Which means that Google has inadvertently done the opposite of what advertisers expected.

That’s ironic, isn’t it?

Namaste

Getting a Covid 19 Vaccine in NJ is Like Playing LORD OF THE FLIES.

I’ve heard lots of comparisons between getting a Covid vaccine appointment in NJ and The Hunger Games. But those are wrong. It’s more like living The Lord of the Flies.

The first problem is with the state’s registration system. And the second was with the changing CDC recommendations on who should be vaccinated. The third problem? New Jersey residents.

I was invited to “preregister” for a vaccine some time late last fall. I couldn’t wait to register, despite being cautious since the process to create the new vaccine seemed too quick. But my physician has made it clear that I would have negative outcomes if I did come down with Covid because of asthma, being overweight, and being fifty. None of this was reassuring as I went back last Fall into the classroom for our district’s hybrid schedule. Case numbers rose, and within a few weeks, I was teaching remotely again.

After the holidays, I was supposed to return to the school building. So I jumped at the chance when NJ got the first vaccine shipments, and I believed that I qualified because of my medical challenges and being an educator.

But the rules changed just before Trump left office. Smokers were granted access before those of us who have asthma. Educators were no longer on the list. The CDC stated that schools could open without vaccinating the entire school staff. To say I was pissed was an understatement. So I jumped into the fray of trying to get a shot, taking my fate into my hands.

First, I registered with all the mega sites and each independent provider I could find. Also, I reregistered with the state. Others I knew started to get appointments, and my deadline to return to the school building was fast approaching. My stress levels increased.

At this point, CVS and Rite Aid had vaccines. I found this really great group on Facebook called New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info. There I learned about staying up past midnight for CVS appointments, and getting up before 6:00 a.m. for Rite Aid. I spent hours and hours refreshing screens and checking numerous websites. Some nights I stayed up until midnight. Others I went to bed early to be awake by 5:30 a.m. The quest for an appointment became addictive. My phone was always within a few inches of my hand so I could grab it and look. Then friend offered to help me. She and a few women were booking for others. I felt a ray of hope and we came close to securing an appointment, but failed. Finally, I received an email from the state with a lucky link.

But by that time you couldn’t cross county lines to get a shot. Most of the sites with appointments were blocked to me. Shocked, I lashed out online. I called the state hotline. They did little to quench my rage. My county’s board of health indicated that they get 600 doses a week. There are over 235,000 people who live here. The only place I could go was a mega site nearly two hours away. I accepted an appointment, but continued to search.

A week before my two-hour trip, I received another email, one with a link to get the vaccine in two days at a site forty minutes away. I jumped at the chance and canceled the first appointment. In a few weeks, I will have my second shot.

So why Lord of the Flies? Because I’ve learned that while some people are helping others, especially the elderly, get their appointments, others are just securing spots for all their family members and friends, whether they are eligible or not. I’ve heard stories of people walking into sites at the end of the day to get leftover doses. There are tech savvy citizens who can use back doors to see available appointments. I heard that others lied on the forms because the sites don’t ask for proof. And there are rumors of pharmaceutical companies injecting their staff, no matter whether they qualify or not. There was a scandal reported about Hunterdon Health Care vaccinating their workers and their families before patients. And these are just a few of the ways how people used nepotism to get vaccinated.

Once I got my shot, I worked on getting one for my husband. While he works from home, he does travel to job sites every once in a while. The last time he went, he was told to quarantine because of possible exposure. A few of his co-workers have had the virus. One infected other members of the household. Luckily, I was able to get an appointment through Rite Aid for my spouse, who was feeling desperate since many of his co-workers had gotten the vaccine, one of which lives in an especially affluent town.

But a friend asked me how DH qualified? And I threw back, how did her friend’s husband qualify? She explained that he was involved with pharmaceuticals. Since when do pharmaceutical sales reps qualify more than teachers? Getting vaccinated has gotten political. It is also suggestive of social status. Instead of looking at the process as a community effort, it has become who gets it first matters most.

Getting vaccinated in New Jersey is a game with unspoken rules. You need to know when the state might get a new shipment of vaccines. Being tech savvy is a must. You need to follow the sites on Facebook and Twitter that let you know which platforms are open when. Better be ready to give up sleep. From my perspective, it was better to do this on my own rather than wait for my district to attempt to get doses, or to wait for the state. I spent hours searching for appointments, and I am grateful I got one.

Because now I can see my family at Easter for the first time in 18 months. I will go to work feeling a bit more protected. Even better, I see a glimpse of light at the end of a very long, dark pandemic tunnel. I am grateful for my good fortune.

Good luck to you if you choose to try an get an appointment.

Covid, Variants, and a Snow Storm?

Tonight in New Jersey, there is nearly two feet of snow outside my frosted windows. It’s pretty. But Merlin, our ten month-old Westie, finds all the fluffy white stuff frustrating.

Truthfully, I found it a little frustrating too. Since we are having remote instruction right now, we were informed that today would not be a snow day. I watched the snow whirl and listened to the wind howl against our windows throughout the day as my students dutifully showed up to class, looking out their own windows. Today’s kids have lost a lot of their childhood during the past eleven months.

Snow days are a fundamental experience for kids in school. There are many things a student can do to invite a snow day: wear the pajamas inside out or flush ice cubes down the toilet are just two of the well-known superstitions. Just the excitement of hearing snow can be enough to make a kid smile. Those of you my age probably have fond memories of those days. So why are adults opposed to giving the kids a day off from school? Kids have lost a lot during the pandemic. Give them a snow day and watch them smile.

And smiles are so important these days. With news of Covid variants and the struggle to get vaccines, being happy might be a good defense against getting sick in the first place. But how do you stay happy when you have been looking out the same windows for nearly a year? How do you make yourself smile when every trip to a story requires a mask or two?

Maybe we should think like a kid. Play some video games. Take a moment to call a friend. Play ping pong on a dining room table. Watch modern versions of favorite childhood cartoons. Go outside to do more than just shovel snow. Take a leap into the piles of fluffy white snow and spread your arms like an angel.

The wind has begun to howl again outside my window. Despite shoveling four times today, the paths we made are covered in white again. Tomorrow we will have to go out again. We still have a car to clear out. And we still have to deal with Covid. Pandemic fatigue is real.

But I promised myself, and my son, that I would take the time to build a snowman, or maybe have a snowball fight. I promised myself to take some time and enjoy slowing down.

At least for tomorrow I will think about snow, and not so much about Covid and its variants.

Library Books and Food: Fear, Hunger, or Both?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’ve been reading HUNGER by Roxane Gay late at night. And there is something ironic about reading her body memoir the week of Christmas. I also read an article on cortisol and the brain which seemed to justify my need to keep the Amazon app on the home screen of my phone. But there I exhibited some rare self-control, and chose to run to the local library instead of adding to my 800 book collection.

Three weeks before Christmas I chose to start hording library books. One of my early visits prompted the librarian to let me know that there are no late charges at this time, which was all the permission I needed to take home two, then three, then five, then a few more books. Things were getting dicey in NJ and all I could think about was a possible state lockdown, such as the one we had last Spring. Since few of the 800 books at home would keep my attention, I wanted “new” titles to choose from during the impending isolation, which hasn’t happened, of course. I love the smell of books, the feel of paper sliding between my fingers, the cuddled up position I take when cuddling paper puppies as my mind slips away from 2020 craziness: Covid, election, economy, etc…

So now my piles of books sit in the blue room, the bedroom, the living room. And I am beginning with Roxane’s memoir.

Which leads me to food.

This was the first time I was tasked for cooking Christmas dinner. Every other year, we’ve been at someone else’s home, bearing wine, or cheese and crackers. I was the “wine, cheese, and crackers” guest. Four days before Christmas, I started to plan. I pushed aside my anxiety and started googling: garlic mashed potatoes, roast beef, popovers, scones, honey glazed sweet potato. My printer cringed as I printed out recipe after recipe. Then I sat back in my chair and studied the ingredients as I first placed a Peapod order. I groaned as I saw I couldn’t get delivery until Christmas Eve. Which led my back to my Amazon app and Whole Foods. I couldn’t get a fast deliver from them either. But they could come before Thursday. Monday morning I was anxious about not having enough food…for three. And then there was the wine I wanted, and the fresh fruit, breakfast supplies, and other “necessities”.

Tuesday afternoon, right after work, I found myself on line waiting to get in at my local Wegmans. Ridiculous right? Not as ridiculous as the amount of money I spent on food this week. It took all three sets of groceries to get ready for Christmas dinner, and I only made two of the six recipes I printed.

After all the cooking was done, I sat with a glass of red wine wondering what had driven me to this insanity. Was it hunger for the perfect dinner or the perfect book? Or was it fear of not being able to get what I wanted when I wanted it? Or was it desire or the normalcy of life before Covid? Truthfully, having all the food in the house and all these books has not made me happier. I am still reading Hunger.

It’s been a long year…

• 

  DUKE FARMS, HILLSBOROUGH, NJ

So here we are: December 2020. The holidays are here, and it feels quite a bit like Easter did. NJ had over 5000 new Covid cases today. The death rate has dropped to 21. And the rate of transmission is back to 1. Vaccines are here.

But what does this mean? Last week at a meeting for work, someone said that no one expected the pandemic to last this long. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Haven’t you checked out the Spanish Flu?” But I bit my tongue. I had already said too much about having to make the choice between my health and my family’s financial wealth. This pandemic isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Which may be why I started seeing notifications that more people had been reading this blog, specifically the first 40 days of Covid 19 in NJ. So here I am again. Month 10.

I am high risk for negative Covid outcomes, according to my GP. This is somewhat ironic as I have been the only family member leaving the house with any regularity. While I was provided a few accommodations at work, getting up and getting there has been especially stressful. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing my colleagues from six-feet afar. But watching students gather in the hallway, or seeing some colleagues alone in their rooms without masks made me twitch. The stress of going in to teach most of my classes, then running home, changing and showering before teaching my last was exhausting. Worse, I was compelled to check our Covid numbers with such regularity that they only increased my stress levels. There is nothing normal about this school year.

Perhaps the most damaging message is that our children are being left behind. Left behind from who? The wealthiest of us who can afford to hire a retired teacher as a private tutor? Perhaps. But our kids’ mental health should be worth much more than an SAT score. As I said, there is nothing normal about this school year.

When we are stressed, cortisol enters our brain. Then we have challenges recalling and acquiring new information. The same goes with kids. You may want your teachers to shove curriculum down children’s throats, but that isn’t as beneficial as giving your kid a hug.

Now I get to hug my son daily. I am thrilled to teach from home. And I hope to be in a classroom with my students some day…when it is safe for all of us.

I chose this picture, which I took in early Fall. The rocks’ reflection in the water teases the eye towards the waterfall. Reflections are funny that way. How will we reflect upon this year? Covid has provided a time for reflection.

We will be alone for the holidays, for the first time in my 50 years. But I will be safer than if my family chose to gather, which they haven’t. I cry for my 101 year-old grandmother who remains stuck in her little box at an assisted living facility. I pray for the chance to sit with her again at lunch. I pray the sadness she has doesn’t drag her too far down. She is living in hell.

But this is 2020. Events feel as disjointed as this blog post.

Be well, friends. Be safe.

J.Monell

Death During Covid

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

It’s funny how when Death comes knocking, time slides to a sludge. Despite the bright blue sky and the warm summer wind, there is a chill at your back, and something has grabbed you by your ankles, slowing you down.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled onto the fact that two older friends, with whom I had lost touch, had passed. One in December, the other in April, and I didn’t know until that Tuesday in July while I was looking for webinars to help me in September.

And that was just the beginning.

My mother-in law passed a week ago. For two weeks, our family has been wading through emotional sludge as we have taken steps to say goodbye. Covid took a back seat to a surreal season of grief.

All the while, famous folk passed away as well from John Lewis to Regis Philbin, Olivia De Havilland, Grant Imahara, Kelly Preston, and the list goes on.

But for us, Death had a more personal impact. It required that we travel out of state and stay in a hotel. We attended a wake, a church service, and ate a meal in a restaurant, all things that we have not done during the pandemic. Even though, I brought my own Clorox wipes, and four masks a piece for each of us for two days, and enough hand santizer to bathe in, Covid fears slid under my grief and greased my nerves with anxiety.

I watched the people around me and found myself backing into corners and offering elbows. I told our son, “Don’t hug anyone.” Our Covid precautions highlighted our otherness. A few understood. A few scoffed. I wanted to scold my husband for hugging family members, but how could I?

NJ is a great place to be these days when it comes to Covid 19. Each of the activities we had for the family member’s funeral would not happen the same way in NJ. The state we were in is not on NJ’s must quarantine list, but their rate of infection is higher.

We have decided to stay home this week and self-isolate. It is the responsible thing to do, because honestly, we did not adequately socially distant ourselves. We didn’t even know many of the people we were exposed to, so how would we know if they were Covid safe?

Never before has it been so clear to me that we need a National plan to deal with this pandemic. Local and state plans just aren’t good enough for the whole country. Not when we can travel readily from state to state. Not when some of our fellow citizens continue to believe that the pandemic is fake, or they don’t care about the others who live in their town.

We are all in this together. “United we stand. Divided we fall.”

Namaste

The Pandemic and Human Doings

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

Today my anxiety crept up and wrapped it’s grimy hands around my neck. My asthma kicked up a bit, and my stomach’s acid boiled enough to send me rushing for the medicine cabinet. The Teacher Twitterverse was filled with messages about updating wills and increasing life insurance. Speculation about going back to school during the pandemic fills my social media.

After a few hours staring numbly at various screens, I decided to look for some PD about SEL and blended learning: teacher jargon for the latest pedagogical acronyms for 2020. It was then, while looking for a webinar, that I discovered that two of my friends had recently passed away.

Both were older woman. We had worked together on committees related to teaching. I had been to one of their houses for hours on end, planning workshops, conferences, and budgets. The other I had shared a room with when we had attended a national conference. I remember her husband had been so kind to buy me a glass of red wine as we sat in the hotel bar waiting for the next meeting. Turned out that the weekend would be my last bit of fun for a while, since the following week I discovered I was finally pregnant.

I can’t tell you how many times I thought about picking up the phone and calling, or stopping by the house to say hello.

Only I didn’t.

I was too busy juggling job, home, son, husband, family, and me. The image of being a fuzzy white and brown hamster spinning in a plastic ball while being on a treadmill comes to mind.

I was too busy being a human doing.

I missed my friends’ demises.

I regret that .

Even though we are living in a pandemic, please don’t hesitate to reach out to those you know. Help those you don’t.

Be a human being.

Pandemic: Wave One/ Part Two

This picture was taken back in late March. I can’t believe it is the middle of July. The last couple of months have gone by in a haze of fear. But as we made it to June, things felt almost normal in NJ. Our COVID 19 numbers were lowering, and stores began to open. I almost cried when I was finally allowed into our local Barnes & Noble for the first time since March. We picked up our new puppy, Merlin. The school year ended.

And then, there was the emptiness.

Somehow it seemed easier to exist when I had some sort of a schedule and a longer to-do list. As work came to a close for the year, my life slowed down further. The puppy kept me busy, forcing me to wake-up earlier than I had in months, tracking his movements to make sure he didn’t take another dump on the blue, oriental style rug in our living room. But there was little else.

And then COVID 19 blew up in our southern states. The news once again showed images of over- crowded hospitals, and long lines for testing. Covid Death had come to a new part of the country, a part where some had watched NY and the rest of the northeast with skepticism. Wasn’t Covid just a bad flu? Weren’t the numbers exaggerated? My own sister, who lives in Tennessee, sent me articles stating that my local news was lying to us.

Watching what happened to NJ and the rest of our area happen in the South has triggered my anxiety. Combined with protests about racial inequalities and images of “Karens” behaving badly refusing to wear masks, FEAR has a stranglehold again. I had been hoping that NJ and NY would be the only severe outbreak spots.

And September is coming. Suddenly my job is a political football. I will be a front line worker in a classroom in a couple of months. This year, “Back to School” is not about cool new clothes, or school supplies. It’s about our President declaring we will go back despite new infections and our Vice President stating clearly that we need to reopen schools for the economy. What?

I won’t know what is expected of me until maybe the first week in August. The school I work in has twice as many students as the building is supposed to serve. It’s a fifty to sixty year old behemoth with no ventilation, crappy plumbing (the toilets exploded many times last year) and hallways so crowded that you’re often shoulder to shoulder moving during passing time. Will we have A/B days, weeks? Half days? Last year I had 128 students. How many will have I have this year?

And how will that number increase my risk of exposure? Being 50 with asthma makes me high risk for COVID. Besides the students, there are over 200 staff members. Are we going to contact trace each other?

How will I survive teaching all day with a mask on? Who will provide the mask? I have already bought thirty from Old Navy. But the thought of teaching in a 85 to 90 degree classroom in September with a mask on makes me gasp.

These are the thoughts that haunt me and normally I don’t think about school until August.

I’m afraid we are just in the beginning of this pandemic unless we can come together as a country and a world to deal with it. That seems so unlikely as we appear to live in a country that is either red or blue. Where’s the purple?

There’s an old saying that life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react. The problem for me is that I don’t deal well with uncertainty.

Guess I’d better learn how.

Namaste

Day 72: Is it over yet? Or…should we or shouldn’t we?

How was your Memorial Day?

Here in NJ, the beaches were open, and Governor Murphy made a last minute decree that groups of twenty-five could gather outside, if the individuals practiced social distancing. And of course, masks are strongly encouraged.

To give some context, we have nine million residents in NJ. There have been a little over 11, 330 deaths. 156, 628 people in the state have had Covid 19. But the number of deaths is dropping, as well as the number of hospitalizations.

You can feel a change. There are more people on the roads. My local grocery store is less crowded, but the Home Depot is more crowded. I have glimpsed gatherings on all sides of us. And we have had our own outdoors social distancing gathering too.

That might shock some.

But the truth is our mental health needed it. And for those few hours, life felt almost “normal”, the way it used to.

This is especially true for my son. Just the other night we spoke about his Covid anxieties, which are largely driven by wearing a mask, and glimpses of news coverage on the television. His eyes had grown dark bags, and his complexion was pale. Too many hours indoors, and too much screen time, for which I kinda blame myself, except…it is the only social interaction he gets. His Tweenish self was often grumpy or downright distraught.

This weekend, that changed. He had a bike ride with a friend. Six feet apart. Another friend came over to swim in our “ghetto pool”, an inflated monstrosity that just allows you to get wet, but you can float in it. He went to another friend’s house to play outside and ride bikes.

And I know that there are those who are thinking “WTF. Are you crazy?” Maybe. But gone are the black bags under his eyes. He slept better over the weekend than he has in months. He is smiling again.

And I did too.

Parenting in the time of Covid may be the hardest. How do you know what is best? Yes, you can keep your munchkin locked up for the next God knows how long, or you can loosen the rules a bit and practice social distancing. With summer camps being canceled, and kids having nothing to do, each of us has to make some tough decisions.

Forget summer. I’ve been thinking a lot about September and what that will look like. One thing is for sure, with our overcrowded schools everyone can’t attend at the same time and practice the social distancing rules. We are going to need more than one mental health expert in our schools. Academics needs to take a back seat. Kids don’t learn when they are stressed. And Covid 19 has stressed many of them to the point of breaking.

In the meantime, I write on our calendar the names of the kids our son has been in contact with. We only allow one kid to come over at a time, and right now, it looks like we might have four possibilities throughout the summer. I cleaned the bathroom after the one child came in and used it. I Clorox wiped the kitchen too…just in case. And I Lysoled the outside furniture enough to scare off the bugs.

My kid has been to Petco once since the pandemic began. Today I took him for ice cream. And that made him twitch.

There were only a handful of new cases in our county today. And as long as this seems to be the trend, we will continue to provide opportunities for him to hang out responsibly with his friends. This necessitates delicate conversations to establish the other families’ comfort. A few have said okay. Some have said “let’s wait”. It’s only May. I hope we will see most of them before the summer ends.

But if things should get bad again. We will lock our doors and pull up the drawbridge to our mote…just kidding. But we will retreat to our rooms and devices and wait, hugging each other until happier days arrive.

Namaste