And now it’s January.

We’ve been enjoying cat sitting and dog sitting. They are becoming friends in a very entertaining way. It’s nice to watch an interspecies friendship develop. Emy came in last night from ABQ late last night, spent the night and took Ivy home with her this morning. We are reimplementing masking in the house – so we masked with her.

As last week was the first “normal” week since Alice’s death, it was the first time I’ve had time to myself without her. I probably spent 5 or 6 hours a week walking or talking with Alice during the last year of her life and now that she’s gone, I miss her terribly. I think I (personally) do a lot of preparatory, anticipatory grief (I know this isn’t what a lot of people do – Jeremy, for example – is optimistic, optimistic, optimistic until the known bad thing happens and then he’s a wreak) – I mean, we both knew what was going to inevitably happen – so I kind of prepared myself for it and I didn’t cry the whole time she was in hospice or the night that she passed away (which I can get angry at myself for), and then the holidays were stressful/busy and now I want to “get back to work” or whatever, but I am lost and slightly adrift and morose. And the pandemic is just hindering things – I haven’t invited Mike/Sofi over for dinner, we haven’t gathered her pals around for a service. Am I allowed to? So many neighbors are sick with covid but recovering well, I don’t know what to do.

We’ve also been keeping Edda home from school since we’ve gotten back. I’m not sure what I’m suppose to do about that. The first week was because after care was cancelled and we needed to readjust. The school system promised to publish numbers every night, but they got so high (some schools reaching 10%), they stopped doing that on Jan 7th. They said the threshold for closing was 5% or greater, but over 100 schools blew past that by Jan 6th. They are short staffed. I want Edda (and the rest of us) to stay well until the 19th. That’s when Jeremy has minor outpatient surgery scheduled.

Vince’s school went virtual for a month and they asked kids to stay on campus, but most people went home. So now Vince is in a situation common to the fall of 2020 where he’s in his apartment by himself – though now in his online classes, he knows people on the list, I guess. Now they are trying to reimplement in-person labs only, but this is confuses everyone.

I’m trying to choose hope and optimism. But it’s cold in January and we seem stuck at home. But I saw this full rainbow in the sky over the weekend – so that’s something. And maybe it was an ever so slight double rainbow now that I look at the photo.