Some random thoughts while sick with Covid.

I have it again. So why don’t I read?

I have a stack of unread books by my bed that violates OSHA safety standards, and Covid. Again. You’d think I’d use this enforced sick/downtime to read, but my brain prefers television when I’m sick. I watched the entire season of Fallout yesterday, which is campy and gory and absorbing and gorgeous, despite the grossness. I have no idea what I’ll watch today.

I managed to expose my entire family on Thursday. So far, two are down with Covid. The two finished the exposure job by hosting a family BBQ yesterday (from which I stayed home, being sick) (and then tested myself) (and then you can imagine the rest).

I’m alone in my house.

The three other people who live here have scattered to avoid contagion. The backyard bunnies are my only companions right now. There are two, I think, though you really can’t be sure, because General Woundwort might be making then eat in shifts or whatever. They come out in the mornings and nibble away. They seem young to me because their movements are skittish and herky jerky. But they are rabbits. Aren’t rabbits always fearful and quick to scatter?

I’m alone, but cared for, as my husband brings necessary things to the front porch, as a good husband does. I breathlessly await my Paxlovid, sweet nectar of the Gods, bring on the bad mouth taste because it will make me stop barking like a seal and running like a faucet.

I know there are people out there who have never had Covid. I wonder what that would be like. I also wonder if they have it and just don’t test. When I was talking to the clinic today, the woman helping me told me that she worked in what was previously the Covid clinic. In 2020, they would get 6,000 calls per day. What a nightmare, and yet here we are, life as usual, carrying on. Just, Covid is part of it now and probably always will be.

Social Security

It finally kicked in, folks. I am officially a retiree. This means I received the propaganda email from the Social Security Administration telling me that the “Big Beautiful Bill” had eliminated taxes on my social security. Except it didn’t. So if you got that email and said “Whoo Hoo!” your celebration was premature. Especially if that’s your primary source of income. You can read about that here: Nope.

I also learned that in a canny and cunning move, the Republicans have set the huge cuts to Medicaid and rural hospitals out after the midterms. So. The many people who aren’t paying attention–and this is all so exhausting that I don’t blame anyone for not paying attention–will only get the bad news about their health care coverage AFTER they can vote out the people who made it happen. Tricky, tricky. I bet FOX news isn’t covering that part.

We have to keep paying attention to the right things.

But in this thicket of bad news, how do we sort through the distractions to find those right things? I mean, sure, it’s horrible that the government is building concentration camps in the USA again, but then there’s the assault on freedom of speech through presidential lawsuits intended to keep us ill-informed. Trump and Elon had their big messy public break-up, but the gutting of various key agencies is the real news, yes? Not the social media insults traded by the two largest egos in the Western world.

How do you choose what to read about, to care about, to despair over? I’d like to say this is death by a thousand paper cuts but in truth these are more like sledgehammer blows, aren’t they? With this full-on assault on America, which hits matter most?

The Paxlovid has arrived. I’m going to go watch something mindless on TV, and wait for the miracle of recovery while sucking on butter mints, the only thing that really cuts that taste.