All week long, I’m thinking: “write a post, write a post, write a post” and then it’s the weekend again and the posts were only written in my head. I don’t want to sit down in front of the computer in the evenings to write a post when I’m sitting in front of the computer all day long for work. It’s a conundrum.
My brother called this morning and we talked for longer than usual, due to the fact that his family left to go for a walk without him at the beginning of the phone call. He’s longing for a vacation or a getaway at least, to somewhere other than their neighborhood. It’s crazy to think that the pandemic has been going on for a year now. He keeps seeing ads for “Swedish vacation homes” in his social media feed. Last week on the news, there were a couple of interviews with people from mainland Europe that moved to Sweden during the course of last year because they wanted to escape the pandemic restrictions of their home country and come live in a place where you aren’t required to wear a mask, where restaurants are still open, where you can go out if you wish. COVID-refugees, they called them.
And it’s true…life IS a bit easier here, in that regard. Even though more people are wearing masks now, it’s still far from the norm. But people are generally cautious here, I feel. We wash our hands all the time. Standing close to anyone is just not done. I go to the grocery store at off-peak hours when possible, to avoid crowding. We don’t go shopping for anything else than groceries, for the most part. We stay home and we don’t have people over, generally speaking. We HAVE had a few friends over during the course of the year, but we’ve been so careful every time. I HAVE been to the hairdresser and to my massage therapist. I’ve been to my office, though not much lately since we were sent home full time last October. So much of it is about carefulness and common sense. Of course, we’re all tired of it, why wouldn’t we be? But we endure because this isn’t over yet. Sweden is slowly vaccinating the populace, but the schedule is delayed due to issues with getting vaccine deliveries. Last I heard, the general population will begin receiving vaccinations in April sometime. Sign me up!
Karin’s roommate tested positive on Thursday so all three of them are in quarantine. Karin and Nelly took tests yesterday and are awaiting the results, though neither of them is sick. We saw Karin last Sunday, and she would have been exposed at that point, but neither of us are sick, either, so far, knock on wood. We delivered groceries to them on Thursday evening and she stopped by today, masked-up, to pick up some stuff, but will stay home from work all next week as well, awaiting the test results of the first test, and then taking another on Tuesday, most likely. Gah. I guess it’s a good thing that we did the February 5K last Sunday as otherwise, I would have had to do it alone, which is not nearly as much fun.
Martin and I are reading the fourth Dune book together, God Emperor of Dune. Or rather, he is listening to it, and I am reading the physical book. He had already done the first three, but waited for me to catch up before we started on this one together. I’m almost done…on page 354 of 423, and expect to finish it this afternoon. We’ve already had some interesting text conversations about it…religion, gender identity, government, politics, destiny. They are definitely not perfect books, but they sure provoke a lot of thought. After this, I have to get the book group book started as we have our Zoom bookworms meeting on Thursday. I suspect it will be slow going, but at least I will have made a start, and because it’s non-fiction, I already know the story and the outcome.
It’s sunny today and quite cold. I’ve already done my treadmill 20 but am going to head out for a walk in the sunshine when I’m done posting this.
What else? I’m sure there’s more, since it’s been over a week since I last posted, but I can’t think of anything.