Odds & ends & updates

• An update to my recent post about the Elton John concert (originally scheduled for March 29,
  2020, then rescheduled for Feb. 15, 2022):  on Wednesday, SIL told me she'd received a Facebook events notification that our concert date had been rescheduled (again!!) and was now going to be March 13th.  I checked my Ticketmaster app, and yep, that was the new date. 
• I got an official email from Ticketmaster the next day about the change of date. It also said, "A voluntary refund window is available for 7 days for any fans unable to attend the newly scheduled date."  
• I talked it over with SIL... and we decided to ask for the refund. :(  There didn't seem to be a simple way to do it via the app, but the email did say "Questions? Please reply to this email" so that's what I did, providing our seat numbers, transaction number, etc. (albeit NOT my credit card number!). 
• I did eventually figure out how to request a refund through the app, and submitted that on Sunday afternoon. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!  (It could take up to 30 days to process.)  
• I figured that March 13th was still highly optimistic -- in fact, under the provincial government's current reopening plans (which are subject to change, depending on how things go...), capacity limits on large events venues (like arenas) will not be lifted until March 14th -- the day AFTER the concert!  Even if the concert did go ahead then, I just wasn't comfortable with the whole idea -- I just wouldn't have a good time, under the circumstances. As it turned out, SIL was of the same mind, so we decided to try to cut our losses and apply for the refund (total purchase, including taxes & fees, $566.75 -- not exactly peanuts). I had kept a printout of the transaction from when I bought the tickets -- Nov. 22, 2019.  We had NO idea then, did we??  :( 

• In a similar vein: our dentists' appointments, which were cancelled last Monday because of a snowstorm and rescheduled for this Wednesday, have now been moved up to Tuesday/tomorrow. The office called us this morning to ask if we could reschedule (again), because the new hygienist I was assigned to is "not available." (Whenever I hear this now, I immediately suspect covid.)  
• The thing about rescheduling appointments that annoys me most is that I still keep a paper planner/datebook (Filofax), and crossing things out makes everything look messy, lol.  I used to use white-out when I was still working and had easy access to a bottle at the office, but it's harder to find these days, and even when I do buy a bottle for myself, I use it so infrequently that it's usually dried out by the next time I open it up to use it...!   

• Back in October, I wrote that it had been 40 (!!) years since dh & I met at university. Saturday night was 40 years since our "official" first date. Searching my blog archives (I love that I can do that...!), I found this post from 10 years ago, describing that date 30 years after the fact.  As I said on Facebook, there's still nobody I'd rather share my popcorn with. ;)  (Even though we haven't been to a movie theatre in two years because, covid...)  
• We ordered in pizza for dinner and tried to figure out how FORTY YEARS (!!) can fly by so fast. As I said to dh, did you ever imagine then that 40 years later, we'd be sitting in a condo in this community, childless and retired, in the middle of a global pandemic??  (I don't think anyone could have...) 

• I thought of Jody Day's hashtag, the #friendshipapocalypse of childlessness, when I read this article in The Atlantic. Its focus is the difficulty of maintaining friendships with friends who have children, after pregnancy loss &/or infertility. Potential trigger alert: the author has a five-year-old son, but only mentions him at the outset, and there's an ultrasound photo as well as the photo of an empty cradle at the top of the story. Sample passage: 

For some people, realizing that they can’t become biological parents easily or at all reorients their entire life—including their relationships. “We imagine having children around a similar time as our friends and seeing our children grow together … and that’s the next chapter of our friendship stories,” Kirmayer [Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist focused on friendship] said. Not being able to continue in sync and suddenly not having as much in common can feel like another kind of loss, she added. On the other side of the equation, friends who are busy with new parenthood may lack the energy to nurture a relationship with someone they have less and less in common with.

Still, I want to believe that rock-solid, unconditional friendships exist. That they can weather the joys of parenthood and the brutal isolation of infertility. That they’re big enough for both the parent who’s overwhelmed by child-rearing in a society devoid of support and the person who would do anything to be in the same daunting position. That both sides have full lives, which are sometimes gratifying and sometimes back-breakingly difficult. 

• I listened to "Childless," the radio documentary/podcast I mentioned a few posts/days ago, featuring Irish journalist Hilary Fennell, Jody Day and several other childless-not-by-choice women living in Ireland (with those delightful accents ;)  ) sharing their experiences of life without children. It's an excellent 45-minute introduction to the topic that will hopefully open some eyes and spur further (much-needed) conversation on the subject. You can listen here. It's also available on Apple & Spotify.   
• Jody & Hilary will be hosting a Q&A on Zoom on Thursday, Jan. 27th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Register here to participate or to receive a recording of the conversation later.