Let Me Entertain You With My Awkwardness Part ???

 I think it's only Part 2, technically, because I keep meaning to make it a series but haven't yet. 

So I mentioned that last week I took Eve's friend Davis for her fourth Covid vax shot because she has a tendency to faint and her mom, my friend Jody (HI JODY) is doing a very demanding very terrible training course at work and couldn't get away. The week before, Eve and I had gone for the same shot.

For our first couple of shots, I was pretty anxious about making sure we got there on time and did everything correctly and didn't do anything to mess up our chances of getting the vaccine that we really, really wanted, because we were a bit more naive about what the vaccine actually meant in terms of what life would look like afterward. I have no regrets about getting it, I'm just a bit more clear-eyed about the fact that we can't vaccinate our way out of this pandemic. By our third shot, I ran a bunch of errands with Eve beforehand and Matt and I showed up just on time and out of breath, after he took the time to change his t-shirt which he realized read "Killin' It" just before we left.

Our first booster shot was in December, which is quite a few months away now, and I was a bit anxious again (I also started an antidepressant booster medication (wow I'm saying 'booster' a lot in this post, or maybe just this sentence) which can temporarily increase anxiety). We left with lots of time, and picked up a giant pack of Timbits to give to the staff, because I appreciate what they do so much and always mean to do something like this but usually forget or chicken out.

(TMI alert): I always go pee before we leave to drive somewhere. Today I went twice, and by the time we got to the school, only about fifteen minutes away, I had to go again - like I said, anxious. I was annoyed but I figured I would just find the bathroom when we got inside. There was no line, though, so we walked right in, dispensed our Gratitude Donut Holes (they were very well received), and walked in to get our shots.

We had the loveliest nurse, who complimented my Sandbanks tan and gave Eve the last fun band-aid even though she's nineteen. When we were done, of course we had to wait the fifteen minutes to make sure we didn't faint or have a reaction. I should not have forgotten this, but I had. I left my daughter and my purse on the chair and went to find a bathroom.

After I had gone and returned to the gym and waited with Eve and we left, I burst out laughing as we were exiting the school. Eve asked me what the hell was going on and when I could breathe again I explained that every other time we had gotten our shots, when we were leaving we had to show our paper with our departure time at multiple checkpoints to make sure we weren't leaving early.

This time no one asked us anything and we walked right out. Which means that me telling every single person I encountered in the hallway "I'm just going to the bathroom!" was unnecessary at best, and aggressive oversharing at worst.

Eve said "oh great. You've gone from being the wonderful lady who brought all the Timbits to the weird lady who told everyone she was going to pee".

Heyyyyyy

I mean, I only blog once a week at most anyway. That means I've only missed, what - three posts? Four? I could miss that many meals and not die. I could forget to water my plants that many times and they'd recover. I could skip that many pills - wait, could I? I'd be snotty, and maybe have heartburn, and get restless legs, but I wouldn't die, or (even worse) get pregnant. It's NOT A BIG DEAL.

The happy news is that I haven't been not-blogging because I'm depressed, but because my funny adorable damned children and super hilarious stupid friends have been keeping me busy with summer fun. We went to Bluesfest! We went downtown to the market! We shopped in quirky little stores! We had gelato! We sat on patios! We drank wine in back yards! We coached baseball! (okay, not 'we' so much as 'Angus', but I'm doing a thing here). We read books outside! We built fences! (okay, not 'we' so much as 'Matt', and I'm starting to feel like I got the best of the summer deal). We did backyard beer tastings and sang backyard horrible karaoke! We chased spectacular sunsets! We went camping! 

Then summer lovin' came to a rude end (sort of) when Angus left for Ithaca on Monday, his little car stuffed to the veritable gills. He sent us videos of where he's living - they're called Circle Apartments, and they're in a ring around a community building with a gym and laundry. He has two roommates, and they all have lockable doors with a common living area and kitchen. It looks like a good set-up. He changed the family group chat name to 'Angus's grocery club' and included us all on his first trip for groceries as a kitchen-having self-feeding grown-ass man (Elmira College requires all students to live in residence and have a meal plan for all four years, which made sense when he had school as well as baseball). He took a really great cooking class in high school and last year when he was in residence alone on a break I talked him through making chicken fingers from scratch, so he'll do fine, but I'm fine with him asking questions because I remember how hard it was learning how to meal plan and figure out what to buy and how much.

Eve has almost two weeks left, a few precious days of which she is currently spending recovering from having four wisdom teeth extracted. Yesterday the first few hours post-procedure were pretty miserable, both from a pain perspective and because we both get pretty severe dental appointment anxiety and I think the adrenaline withdrawal was nasty. She started taking the prescribed painkillers and ate a little and has improved quickly.

Today I took Eve's friend Davis for her second Covid booster because her mom was on a work course and couldn't get away and Davis is a fainter. The nurse could not have been lovelier and they had little curtained areas where Davis could lie down for the shot and the fifteen-minute wait after, and the nurse just hung out and chatted with us. She mentioned that actually with Davis's low blood pressure some salt would not be a bad idea along with fluids, and on the way home Eve texted and said she thought she could handle some McDonald's fries, so we took that as a message from the universe and did french fries all around. 

So I've been thinking a little bit about whether I want to keep blogging, and how. I sometimes don't blog because I don't feel like I have an organized post with an over-arching theme, or I don't have time to load pictures first, or I didn't do anything terrible interesting that week, along with the ever-present reasons of laziness and inertia. I'm thinking I might sometimes just post a bit of stream-of-consciousness about stuff I'm trying to work out in my head. So if that happens, just rest assured that I haven't had a stroke (probably), I'm just trying something. (After I got Covid, people kept asking if I had Covid brain. I would usually say "yes, by which I mean I have the same brain as before but now I blame Covid for it"). 

Now I can go catch up on all your blogs without feeling guilty. I leave you with a picture of Lucy in my neighbour's yard, being The Most Interesting Dog in the World.