A person in public without a mask during a

 pandemic is a walking septic tank.”

 ― Abhijit Naskar.

***This is just a little nugget of gold during the pandemic that I never posted.***

Until very recently I’ve thought that my days of writing were days of long ago. I was writing one day and the next day I fell into a big dark hole of nothingness. My last blog entry on September 25, 2020, entitled Beyond the Mask is about how my life was beyond typical Halloween themes and rewritten into a language that I still wouldn’t understand. Today I sit, one year later, with the latest ideas and revelations about my ongoing therapy. And realizing how sometimes the simple reasons for a smile would once been seen as insignificant.

A pandemic has a way of wiping the smiles off the faces in society. And sometimes society tries to force the pandemic out only for the pandemic to re-emerge with the upper hand. I fell victim to Covid-19 twice with the most recent adventure only a couple of weeks ago. This time, however, I had to cuddle with a blood clot in one of my lungs. How I contracted Covid-19 was sort of perplexing since I hate being in public to a point of phobias at times. And the seclusion for safety by the virus had me fearing everything that much more. So, these days I’m having to force myself to go in public even if it’s just riding in my vehicle or walking down the street. 

What I have enjoyed are the relationships with my cat Coco, my new cat Tinkerbell and my children. Copeland and Marshall have a healthy fear of the virus with comical threats “that they might not breathe again if they take their masks off.”   The boys tell me things like, “Momma I love you so much that I’m going to fart on you next time I see you.”  What boy mom doesn’t melt when her babies say things like that? “And when I see Coco, I’m going to fart on her too!”  Yep, we keep it real like that. I will take that any day over losing one of my children to the virus.

Coco has gone from my sweet kitten to a very voluptuous and very entitled cat. Oh, how I love my Coco! Me and the boys have renamed her as “Coco Momma Lita.”  These days we just refer to her as “big and beautiful.”  Nothing could’ve prepared me for the next little beauty in our lives……Tinkerbell. Or “Tink” for short. Early on I thought the scene might play out like it did for Marley the little kitten that I will never forget. Again, I adopted her from a vet clinic and again this kitten was sick with a big, bad dose of intestinal worms.

Me and this little calico beauty were just meant to be together. I had never seen so much diarrhea in all my life. The stress was unimaginably high for us both. I was headed straight towards psychosis and all she knew was play, play, play and poop. I was lucky in that she was able to hold her own until the medicine began working. But this little girl was determined to make it, and I was determined to somehow make it through a bout of psychosis. All you must know is that it’s scary and you can’t hear what I hear. 

While I took a break from writing my therapy didn’t end. I’ve continued to meet with coach, and I’ve found a new love for scrapbooking. And my “head mates” like that activity too. So, during this pandemic I’ve still found a way to give “my guys” a voice even on telemedicine. So, what has this pandemic taught me? Persistence.

“With COVID-19, we’ve made it to the life raft. Dry land is far away.” 

Marc Lipsitch, epidemiologist

**Don’t forget to watch the video!**

#thispuzzledlife