Friday, December 23, 2022

Christmas week odds & ends

  • Bloglovin' has been up periodically since Sunday (the 18th) -- sort of. The content is all a day old or older. Then I started getting some posts out of date order, including some dated July 2020 (!!). Now I'm getting a "502 Server Error" message. Sigh.... 
  • I am "home" for Christmas with my family -- arrived almost a week ago (!! -- already!), last Saturday. Freezing cold temperatures (currently -22C/-34C windchill  = -8F/-29F) and lots of snow... but we're here!  
  • I came down with a scratchy throat the night before we left to come here. (Of course.) I offered to mask and/or test when we got to my parents' house (actually, before we got into my sister's car at the airport) but nobody took me up on it, and frankly (I am ashamed to admit), I was too chicken to test. :(  "If one of us goes down, we all go down," my sister offered helpfully. I subsequently developed sniffles and a bit of a cough, but it was nothing anywhere close to the cold I had back in September, and I am feeling much better now.  So far, everyone else is fine too. (Whew!) 
  • My parents' neighbour -- one of the most covid-cautious people you'll meet -- has covid right now. His wife has banished him to the basement for the duration.  I also learned that a friend (a fellow CNBCer) recently spent four days in the hospital with covid and flu, on oxygen.  And Pamela at Silent Sorority is slowly recovering from her own nasty bout with covid -- go offer her some get well wishes!    
  • I found out another (second) cousin of mine died recently, far too young -- the second one this year (actually, the third! -- see my next point).  :(   His aunt -- my mother's first cousin -- wrote me in her Christmas card that he had died. I never met him, but I'd met his late dad (another of my mom's first cousins) several times and seen his photos. Good looking guy, a few years younger than me -- 55 when he died, of pneumonia. Not sure if it was covid-related. Never married, no kids. I feel very sad, even though we never met... and now we never will.  :(  
    • I don't think I wrote about the other second cousin, who was the second one this year to pass away (in November, from cancer). Again, her mom & mine were first cousins, and my mom used to babysit her and her older sister when she was a nursing school student in Minneapolis in the late 1950s.  I never met her (although I met her mom & younger sister when I was about 12), but my mom was in touch with her on Facebook. She was a talented cabaret singer and actress who lived in Chicago... single & childless, and gone far too soon, at age 69.  :(  
  • I found a(nother!) Substack that I couldn't resist subscribing to (free subscription) -- the title tickled my funnybone ("OK Doomer" -- lol). I have no idea who Jessica Wildfire is, but I read through some of her recent backposts and her views on the pandemic seem to align a lot with mine, so...  A recent post: "Everyone's Getting Sick, and We're Almost Out of Drugs:  Here's why, and what I'm doing." 
  • I know there's more I wanted to share, but I also wanted to get in another post before Christmas -- so this is it for now!  This can be a difficult time of year for so many people, for so many reasons -- hope you're all hanging in there!  xo

3 comments:

  1. So did you test in the end? Glad everyone else was fine though. My SIL had to spend Christmas Day in covid isolation, and now her husband (D's brother) has it, has pneumonia, but all the wards in Malaysia are full up. Even though people think it's over, it clearly is not! And wow, that article is scary. Take care!

    So sorry your are losing family members. It's a shock when they are people around our age, isn't it? It always make me realise how lucky we are simply to be able to enjoy the day to days of life.

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  2. I did not test. My mother subsequently developed a stuffy head for a few days -- but she has chronic sinus issues, so I was not too worried. She decided she needed to do do a covid test, and my sister & I helped her do it -- correction, my sister helped, I took a photo to commemorate the occasion, lol. It was negative. (The neighbour who has/had covid is feeling better, but still testing positive.)

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  3. Thanks for the well wishes! Just now on Day 36 of fighting upper and lower respiratory reactive airway infections and related breathing challenges. My wish for 2023 (now that there are 3 major respiratory illnesses circulating) is that the world finally wakes up to the importance of public health. Fighting infectious diseases requires a team effort!

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