Saturday, May 2, 2020

Gosh, it has been a year...

I write from Pandemic Oaxaca, really, Pandemic World. It has been a year since I sat down to blog. At some point in my future years I will be sitting with friends and we will be drinking something and saying something along the lines of, "Remember during The Covid, when we were on that Zoom call..."

Will I forever now have a shortness of breath and heavy chest feeling when I am in a grocery store with "too many people"?

Oaxaca has been about a month behind the US and Canada in our pandemic responses. First cases were identified in Mexico much later than our northern neighbours. We have watched and listened to our friends in the North. What kind of store should be considered an essential service (Jane's Scuba Store is likely a "no"...) and bemoan the lack of yeast or flour in the shops that are open (why open if you don't have flour or yeast?). We were behind. We had lots of toilet paper and flour and yeast were well stocked on the grocery shelves.

And then this week, only the expensive butter was available and only in 90 gram bars.

And then, "they" closed the parks.

In Mexico right now, we are not really sure who exactly "they" are. The response to this global pandemic has been disjointed. Cartels have been distributing branded boxes of food. Mask making projects abound. I do not for even a second envy the men and women who are trying to avoid the collapse of an economy already fragile with keeping its citizens safe. States have in turn created their own level of what they felt acceptable response was.

As have all of us, in our way. Bombarded with information daily, differing views, maybe more science that we sometimes ever thought possible, and then that, daily. I find we have made our own choices. I won't order take out but I do still go to the dog refuge. Two weeks ago I stopped going to the corner store but I only started wearing a mask when my state government offered to throw me in jail for three days if I failed to wear one.

When I was on a video call with some friends on Tuesday, we had been advised that we would be required to adhere to the stricter quarantine requirements until May 30th, and I said I needed some sort of thirty day challenge. Yoga? Running? Cooking? Painting/Art? As I have been wanting to get back to blogging for a while, I thought this would be perfect. Welcome to my 30 day pandemic blogging challenge.

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