Skip to main content

Aggravation



If COVID-19 is producing the stages of grief for most of us, then there should be a sixth stage by now – aggravation. I certainly don’t support the small, but loud, group of protestors, as I think states and cities have reopened too soon. We’ve already lost 100,000 people and surely won’t have a vaccine any time soon, regardless of what Agent Orange claims.
For me it’s just the daily annoyances of what the new reality is that’s beginning to drive me crazy. While many of my fellow citizens are choosing to chuck their masks, I’m still holding firm. But now that it’s feeling like summer in the Midwest, even walking around in a mask is fairly unpleasant during much of the day.
Yesterday, on a trip to the pharmacy I went through the drive-thru, and luckily noticed before leaving that there was an error. It seemed to make sense to me at the time to actually go inside, but that, I found out, required not just the mask, which I was already wearing, but also I’d need to have my temperature taken, and with a device that had to touch my skin rather than just be pointed in my direction. Unlike one of Ohio’s loopier politicians, who’s convinced that such a check is a violation of her privacy (I wonder if her fellow representatives will agree with her if she gets the virus and then passes it on to them), I submitted to the temperature check, and hopefully straightened things out (we’ll find out when the pharmacy’s shipment arrives today).
Somehow the event managed to give me a headache that followed me on to my trip to Trader Joe’s. I was glad the heat was still low, as I waited in line to go in, but managed to get confused about their new social distancing dots near the cash register that weren’t there a few weeks ago. I also realized that I had forgotten one of the items I wanted to purchase, as I loaded the loathsome paper bags into the trunk (since they won’t let us use our own bags now out of caution). In the “olden days” I would have gone back into the store to get that other item, but seeing a longer line than I had originally been in, I decided I could go without.
All of these little petty annoyances shouldn’t be so problematic, but accepting this new normal doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t plan on yelling at store clerks or having a public meltdown (boy, do I hope that doesn’t happen), but I foresee more headaches ahead for all of us.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Clueless White Privilege

I should state up front that I am a white woman, and compared to many in this country I would be considered privileged. There have certainly been times in my life that I didn’t fully grasp that and said and did things that make me cringe now, wondering how I could have been so unaware, but I never had the power mixed with that cluelessness to affect the lives of so many people in such drastic ways. The U.S. Supreme Court does have that power, and appears to have a majority of clueless wonders that are about to do just that. Depending on what poll you look at, anywhere from half the country to three-quarters support the right of a woman to control what happens to her body (i.e. get an abortion), yet it looks very much like that long-held civil right will be taken away by what, I view, is absolute cluelessness of the world we live in, and with five of those justices being white, it really is impossible to not proclaim it white privilege after hearing their comments...
Read more

The Little Things

I still keep seething, not just about this election, but also the 2016 election. Last night I was on a webinar with other heartbroken women, who thought this time would be different. One woman mentioned that this all felt like PTSD. The meeting tried to focus on healing and giving space to mourn before getting out there again. And while I understand that need, it was not resonating for me. Just like the many ( many ) posts on my social media feed that keep spotlighting positive quotes and talk of self-care end up making me feel more angry. Instead, I find myself ruminating back to another election, not to 2016, but 1984. I came home from junior high one day to have my mother tell me that my father had registered to vote for the first time (if you know me and you’ve heard me tell this story or read a previous post about it, I’m sorry, but we all have things in our lives that get stuck). I think I hadn’t even realized he wasn’t registered to vote. It turns out he wasn’t excited to go vot...
Read more

Pro-Death

  I grew up in an evangelical church, and as soon as I could escape it, I did. I remember my mother talking longingly about the mansion she would have in heaven and, even at a young age, I felt uncomfortable hearing her talk about her life when she would be dead. It was as though she’d given up on anything good happening in this world, and only had the next life to look forward to. If you read the recent rulings from the Supreme Court it’s as if they’ve given up on anything good happening in this world too, but also are trying to hasten us all, in one way or another, to the “next world.” If the baby that you shouldn’t be carrying doesn’t kill you then the guns that they made even easier to get, and easier to carry around, will. Or if neither of those situations do you in, then tying the hands of the EPA to reign in pollution and other hazardous-to-our-health chemicals will. One of my own coping mechanisms may have some similarities – dreaming of living in another, better, count...
Read more