Post Vaccine Party Life
The CDC has put out a list of activities it considers safe if you are vaccinated. And of course there are some unvaccinated people who will continue to baulk at wearing a mask or social distancing as well as those vaccinated people who are more cautious and will continue to wear a mask in some settings probably due to the people in the first category.
I’ve also talked to some who enjoyed a winter flu season without succumbing to even the common cold this year, and they are planning on continuing prudent avoidance moving forward.
But for most of the country there is a rush to get back to the bars, cars and partying with strangers on a Saturday night. Even in our small atypical microcosm we have some people vacationing, prepping to return to the office, and brick and mortar shopping (pet stores count eh?)
I was the last eligible adult in the house to complete the two dose vaccine and two week wait period. And we decided to celebrate with pizza delivery. We were one of the abundantly cautious quarters who stopped ordering restaurant delivery for the last year+. We did order groceries online but always used mask and gloves to open all the bags outside and UV the contents in a three sided enclosed space. It was a family effort and one that met if not our collective concern then certainly the maximum consideration represented in our group of high risk people.
So how was the 🍕 pizza? Well. I for one hated it. But that may be because I don’t use sugarcane fiber in my actual CHEESE homemade pizza. And this was one of the “natural” ingredient places, I can’t even get my head around the analogue pizza cheeses that are commonly used. Seriously gross.
My son concurred, that after a year of exclusively cooking amazing family meals … he feared that even high end burgers would pale compared to his smash burgers or street tacos. And I’d bet he’s right.
Having said that, we will be celebrating tonight with our traditional Mediterranean restaurant that we have not purchased take out from since the end of 2019. Though I may make some hummus to add to the spread because we’ve come to really like our hummus … but their buttery aged long grain basmati rice is unparallel.
In the long and short of it, my small world doesn’t change dramatically in the post vaccine incarnation of life. I’m still chronically ill. I won’t be going out to venues or zen views unless they are in my backyard. I will greatly miss the abundance of live music concerts that were available to stream both paid or public. It was wonderful to participate in the world at large when the world was being small at home.
I hope post pandemic accessibility considers how we can do more on so many scales from remote access, distance learning, the mobile office place and more. Because we know now it’s always been technically possible. And for some of us zoom doctor visits have increased our access to medical care.
I also noticed recently, and not planned, discussed or intentional in any cognitive awareness way … that my husband and I kissed 💋😘. Not in a dramatic cinematic end of a movie fade to credits rolling. But the casual kiss good morning or I’m gonna go clean the pond filter, I’ll be back in a half hour kiss on the lips. It may sound odd (because we are together 24/7 and walking 45 feet to the koi pond may not warrant a goodbye for most people) but for the most part as we quarantined hard at the beginning on 2020 especially as the redneck fell very sick and we look back and assume he narrowly survived Covid… we had stopped kissing. We formally made a decision to stop wearing our wedding rings, but somehow in the mix of all that there was a subtle shift away from face to face contact.
And then like some unspoken intention after we were both vaccinated, it was as if the writing on the wall said it’s okay to kiss again.
