A Year In

I keep meaning to post an update here on how we're doing, for the three people who might read this. It's been a year--not half as long as I feared. John and I are double-vaccinated, considered fully vaccinated on April 21st; the kids will be vaccinated some time after the 19th.

That's a full six months sooner than I anticipated vaccines even to be available, and that, for the sickest among our society. I didn't really expect us to be vaccinated before 2022. I didn't know if we'd have a functional government. I didn't know if John, who needs human contact like he needs oxygen, would make it through months on his own at work. I feared the worst.

How happy I am to have been wrong, on pretty much all counts. We're vaxxed. Our government is once again functional. John made it through work, and is actually thriving. We have been lucky, lucky, lucky, and boy, do we know it.

More, we've saved a good deal of money since we've been staying home. We try to share our luck with the world through contributing to projects we believe in--the Portland Insight Meditation Community, to which we belong, and Street Roots, for example, as well as tipping rather extravagantly for us when we get take-out--and I encourage you to do the same, if you can.

I cannot wait until we are given the all-clear. Next year, we will be everywhere but here: Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Grass Valley to see my folks; Seattle to visit friends; and significantly, our first stop, next month, Astoria. Astoria was the last place we went to just days before the lockdown, and it will be the first place we go to when we are given the all-clear. We will stroll aimlessly through town, breathe the sea air, and just be, some place where we have no responsibilities and no deadlines.

I cannot wait.