RED LETTER DAY!

    . . .  How about that? I was sent a reminder this AM for my 11:30 vaccination appointment. The appointment was only made last night.  Getting my first shot a year after the pandemic shut us down – well technically tomorrow will be a year exactly. Biden’s addressing the nation at this marker.

Getting vaccinated only a year into a global pandemic, after 4 frackin' years of the Monster Previous working every day to kill us even before the pandemic, is a miracle, really.  But this lost time feels far longer, like, well, forever, which still has me socially stuck in shut-down torpor.  How will I be able to act after that’s not as necessary as it has been, due, literally, to life vs. death?  For one thing, maybe we can plan our promised Thanksgiving in the spring with Steve in Saratoga as in November we all realized it was not anything we should be doing. 

I can hardly believe it is only a year .... it feels like a massive time dislocation.  Will I ever be able to behave normally in a group of people again? I wonder ....

However. whatever, today is a BEAUTIFUL day, in every way, including weather-wise: 67°, sun shining.  Perfect.  If I stay in the sun, a short-sleeved t-shirt is adequate.  The market's up again.  That first endless super-long NOLA Reconnect 2 last weekend was successful, and the shorter weekend coming right up is in good shape.  Yesterday el V got his first shot (Pfizer) at a Walgreen's-Duane Read right over there on W 4th and Broadway.  I got my first one (Moderna) this morning over here, across Broadway, on the Lower East Side.  We both have scheduled appointments for the second ones, his on April 7th and mine April 9th.  So we're even pretty much in synch.

It sure didn't look like that was going to happen.  El V had gotten his appointment at the pharmacy, but the only thing we had found for me was at the Javits Center at the end of April. Also yesterday a whole more categories of people were declared eligible for vaccination -- including at least, FINALLY, thank goodness, front line public workers like those in supermarkets.  We got the JC appointment almost exactly at the moment 40,000 new appointments were opened.  By the time we got me through the process, about ten minutes, the number of appointments was down to less than 10,000 and they were for May. 

But some friends were determined that el V and I should not be that out of synch, and with el V, after dinner they just punched and punched the keyboards and the phones, and at 9 PM Dear Wonderful Treasure Beyond Price amigo, podster, biz partner and neighbor-across-the-street called me to double check my info.  He'd gotten through to the place where he'd gotten his vaccinations.  And just like that my life changed.  How would we ever get through all this without our friends?  In so many ways, doing so many different things.  And most of all, being there, staying there.

The community center where I got the vaccination was a billion times better experience than the pharmacy where el V got his -- which took forever.  Nor has the pharmacy yet sent him confirmation for his second appointment -- and somehow had never gotten around to doing it for the first.  We got to Essex St. this morning about 20 minutes ahead of my appointment and they sent me right on through.  It was so very very organized.  One felt happy and safe. The 15 minutes waiting to see if I'd have a reaction was spent setting up my second dose appointment. The second appointment confirmation was in my email when I got home.

I am so grateful to Our President Biden.  If Monster Previous was running things I'd probably not get a vaccination appointment until next year -- if ever! 

Yesterday was great too, with the passing of the Stim Bill and Garland's confirmation.  But I was having a hard time feeling it, as depressed as I was at the prospect of nearly 7 more weeks of this before I could even fantasize about something different. I cannot express the relief getting the first dose is.  And now B, S, el V and I can begin planning our Thanksgiving for April, the one we understood we couldn't do in November. That was our promise to each other then -- Thanksgiving in the spring.

By the way Postmambo/NOLA Reconnect's Saturday night in Port-au-Prince and the Hotel Oloffson were literally awesome.  Richard Morse, the bandleader of Ram, had flown home to Haiti for the pre-records and video in Port-au-Prince, and then came back to the house in Maine that has been in his dad's side of the family for generations.  Saturday was freezing up there in Maine, as well as down here.  Like Vermont, Maine is not very wi-fied.  So, after the music events, Richard sat in his SUV in a high school parking lot with his devices for hours talking to people via Zoom on the wi-fi connection there.  People were just melting all over from the experience.  They didn't want to let him get back to his warm house, they loved it so much. We didn't get into bed here either until after 2 AM.

A 2nd by the way -- there isn't covid in Haiti, for reasons that remain mysterious.  Haiti has loads of terrible problems right now, from the volatility and violence imposed upon people who want that toxic, corrupt, murderous so-called president installed by Hillary (and Obma) to stand down, but he refuses to accept losing the election.  But there is no social distancing, there are plenty of live concerts, where the people lose themselves for a while in happiness.

I cannot express the huge difference in how I feel today from how I felt previously.  Before this appointment showed up about 9 PM last night, I had fallen into the kind of depression I haven't felt since the year everybody died: my baby sister, one of my dearest friends and both of my parents.  It had been creeping on since December, but accelerated in February. Worse, the damaged sciatic nerve kicked back into major pain last week too, probably due to the cold.  Maybe now I can recover the energy necessary to begin re-arranging life that is a little more open than it has been for 12 months.

First things I’ll be doing once the time protocol post the second shot has passed is start buying groceries myself again, and do a big shopping at the CVS (masked, OF COURSE!)  – and find a new dish drainer and new pot holders somewhere. Then have a drink with K & C & B & el V, outdoors, in the sunshine.

Then we'll have Thanksgiving.