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WYFP? Thanks To Work & COVID-19, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

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::sigh::

This month shouldn’t feel like this.

I love September.  It’s the month that fall starts, cooler weather sets in, the trees begin to turn, and I relax from the heat and stress of summer.  To quote the late, great John Pinette, I don’t do well in the heat; I lose my cherub-like demeanor.

But September has had its own stresses and aggravations, and the chief one of them has been the delay in OneRedShoe coming home.

See, OneRedShoe works for a seafood company up on the Aleutian Peninsula during the salmon season — May through the first part of September.  To pad profits this year, the company decided to extend the fishing season to include a couple of weeks for cod.  That meant that instead of me having my love back home by September 15th, I’m now going to get him back home on September 25th.  And that was something we both just found out today.

“Well, that’s not so bad,” I hear you say.

Well, no, and it could be a lot worse.  It’s just frustrating that the company took so long to tell anyone when they’re leaving.  Admittedly, they pay for OneRedShoe’s transportation up there and back home, so he doesn’t have to worry about shelling out $3,500+ on airfare from King Cove to Anchorage to Sea-Tac.

Throw in the fact that he has to take a small twin-engine flight out of the camp to King Cove, the only airport around the region, and you might understand why my nerves are ratcheted to the breaking point.  It’s practically winter on the Peninsula.  High winds, temperatures dropping to near freezing at night, bad weather all around . . . I can’t help but feel twitchy about all the things that could go wrong on his flight home.

And while we’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years now, it doesn’t make it any easier to bear with his absence for 4 months.  He’s my best friend as well as the love of my life.  Many of you have seen how we tease each other in comments; it’s because we miss each other, and more than one phone call per week would be frowned upon by his bosses.  Also, Internet service up there is spottier than all the pups in 101 Dalmatians.  We can and do email each other, but he doesn’t always have time to really read it.  And mail?  Even before Louis DeJoy began singlehandedly wrecking the USPS, mail service up there was a disaster waiting to happen.  Lemme tell you some day about an over-enthusiastic relative who decided to send a processor a care package that included fresh—excuse me, formerly fresh—eggplant.

“Okay, we get it.  You’re lonely and depressed and miss your boyfriend.  Is that your only problem?”

Well, no, not really.  My brother, father of my nephew Ryan, was supposed to come to visit me this September, and bring along a few things like my harp.  This will be the first time we’ve seen each other since I left Arizona in 2011.  It will also be just past the first-year anniversary of Ryan’s death from osteosarcoma, so it will be bittersweet for both of us.  But while my brother is leaving Arizona on the 21st, I won’t see him in Tacoma until the 24th.  Why?  Well, he has to drive up here in order to bring the rest of my belongings.  And because he has to leave for home on the 28th, I’ll get exactly 3 days to catch up with him, introduce him to Stefan and family, and maybe have a dinner or two out.  Not to mention that there are still many restaurants in Puget Sound that have ceased offering dine-in services.  And I’m grateful for that, but . . .

That brings me to the last bit of my problem:  how lonely I’ve come to feel thanks to the ongoing quarantine.  Governor Inslee has taken the appropriate measures to keep Washingtonians safe from COVID, from reinstating rules on large gatherings, restaurant dining, and a mask mandate.  My own employer has pushed back our return-to-office date from September 4th to January 2nd, 2022.  Thanks to my own health issues (Type II diabetes and a 3x-bypass surgery last December), I’m taking precautions on where I go and who I see, which means I’ve left the apartment to visit friends twice this summer.  I haven’t visited the in-laws because they’re both over 80, and FIL, while making a beautiful recovery from sepsis contracted 2 years ago, is also at risk.  OneRedShoe’s sisters have compromised immune systems, so no visits there.  I have friends in Idaho recovering from the Delta variant; I’d love to see them but . . . yeah, no.  Friends in Portland?  Newly arrived in Seattle?  Nope!

And while last year, I was able to comfort myself with the thought that at least people were following the regulations and masking up, I’m unable to do the same this year.  Washington is taking the overflow of patients from Idaho’s collapsing hospitals, as that state pays its human toll for not sticking to its mask mandate in favor of pursuing “freedom.”  We’ve got our own COVIDiots who insist the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus.  One woman I used to consider a friend has turned full conspiracy theorist, insisting that her right to refuse the vaccine is Constitutionally guaranteed, and we’re all mean for telling her she’s endangering the rest of us.  My best friend’s stepson is also a vaccine denier, which is driving his father up the wall even as he is sticking to his guns about not having anyone that isn’t vaccinated in his home.

Throw in the Proud Boys doing their damnedest to spread misinformation about the vaccines and COVID here in the PNW, and I am beginning to wonder if we’ll ever see an end to quarantine.  We’ve already got three variants — Delta, Lambda, and Mu — loose in the population.  How many more to Omega?  Hell, how long before we need to pick a new alphabet and start over?

Yes, dammit, I’m whining, but if the COVIDiots get to yowl about their “freedoms,” then I get to whine about the loss of mine.  I want to go out again.  I want to visit museums and libraries.  I want to go hiking in public parks.  I want to see the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, go eat at one of our favorite spots, have ice cream at a local parlor.  I long to see a film in a movie theater.  I want to buy tickets to a concert and know we’ll be able to sit and watch, laugh, and enjoy without fearing every breath we take will bring us to the ER in hours.  I want to see friends.  I want to talk to them without this searing knot of resentment in my chest that, thanks to all the QAnon-fed malcontents, we need to keep 6 feet apart and stay masked.

I want the people I love to be safe when I visit them, and vice versa.

I want life to go back to normal, and I don’t see that happening.  Not soon, not next year, not this decade.  Ever.

At least OneRedShoe will be home by Saturday.  That’s about as normal as life for us is going to get.


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