Sometimes it’s really been a year.
Like right now. Right now, it’s really been a year.
I took tomorrow off from work, so the holiday season officially begins for me again tomorrow. How are we going in?
I’m ill and have been for most of the week. Cough, sore throat, fever, congestion, dizziness, aches, all the seasonal stuff. My son is ill, too, only he’s really ill, as in twice to the emergency room, batteries of tests, miserable and in pain ill, and we’re heading into week three of that situation.
Work feels unstable, and also I feel desperately behind at it. There are a million things I should do on the car. And the house. Oh, the house. The house is a mess. I’ve just spent four hours stumbling around the house trying to clean while hacking my lungs out and wincing at the throat pain before reminding myself that my son has it much worse right how and I ought to just be thankful.
Everything is amiss, and that’s how we’re going in. Happy holidays.
— § —
The year blew by. As in—blew by.
The entire year was adrenaline. We went into it trying to recover from COVID. Everyone got it. Even the dog. And there were significant effects and injuries. And now there is no dog. So last Thanksgiving was a mess as well.
Christmas was still about recovery, January and February were about trying to catch back up in school and in extracurriculars that essentially were ignored for three months.
Then we immediately headed into tournament season and for the first time ever, daughter wanted to seriously travel and train, as in hotels in convention towns and what seemed like endless 5:00 am training mornings.
That went the entirety of the summer and was exhausting and financially draining and then, just as we thought we’d get some relief, son got injured at school right at the beginning of school doing a school-sponsored activity and we entered three months of physical therapy, from which we only recently emerged.
And we emerged into middle school dances and holiday activities, big work changes, birthday parties, and of course, illness.
— § —
The year really has felt like it passed in a few minutes.
A few stressful, panicked, how-are-we-going-to-manage and oh-no-will-this-be-okay minutes.
We’ve just been racing through the whole thing trying not to lose our balance or our composure. And now here it is, a year later. A year after the COVID disaster.
Everything has happened, and yet I have so much trouble hanging on to or remembering it all, I almost want to say that nothing has happened because I didn’t get a chance to live any of it, not really.
— § —
But whatever.
That’s all the cleaning I’m going to do for the night, it’s time to go and lay down and cough my lungs out before we plunge headlong into the holidays tomrrow.