Woods walk, fire pit.

I think I’ll be a very busy retired person. I could fill my days completely with non-work related things. Butterflies to be released, cakes to order, closests to reorganize, walks to take, absentee ballots to submit, laundry to fold, estate planning to do.

I’m back down to working one day a week at the hospital which is mostly a dream. But it’s also somewhat of a nightmare when I’m at work – ever so slightly. I’m not practicing enough at being a nurse at just one day a week. So every shift, I’m ever so slightly out of practice and then it whallops me, even if it is totally manageable. I’m the last person on the unit wearing the full PPE – n95, surgical mask and face shield. Most of my coworkers are wearing just the surgical masks. I asked my charge nurse, hey so are we not wearing the face shields anymore? (She was not wearing a face shield.) She told me sternly – you keep that face shield on! Of course, since I’m the only one left wearing my very old, very reused n95 mask, I feel like it’s a nuisance. Hard to breath. Hard to emote. I don’t want to wear it. And I think I might have backed off because almost 80% of our patients were tested, but now, just this week, they opened up the unit to visitors from 2-6 pm. So out of my five patients last shift, I had 3 family members visit and stay the whole time. Am I spending upwards to 15 minutes in each enclosed space. I feel like the n95/face shield allows me to not worry about distancing with my patients and/or their families which is basically impossible to do anyways. I do not want to get sick. I don’t think I’ll die (but you know, there is always that worry), but I don’t want to at all be sick for a long time, or diminish/damage my pulmonary/cardiac system – even by a little bit (I like my pulmonary/cardiac performance diminishing at the regular aging rate, it needs no help getting worse over time) and/or throw a clot.

As I’ve been working less, I’m happily taking walks in the woods with Alice and Sofi. And setting up fire pits. So many things about the pandemic! I bought a fire pit. Never in a million bazillion years would I have bought a fire pit. And we sat in the backyard. I don’t think we’ve ever spent any time in the last 12 years of living in our house leisurely sitting in the backyard until last night.

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