Sorry but I got up at 0-skunk-30 after a difficult night. I mean, I was fine, I just didn’t sleep all that consistently. I know I DID sleep because there were some bizarre REM dreams, like one that featured a man who came to the door of a weird version of my childhood house in the middle of the night with ONE big blue eye in the middle of his face, like directly above his nose? No, you don’t wanna know. But there was also a fair amount of calm wakefulness until… My plan was to get up at 6:00. Wouldn’t you know, at 10 of six, I started seriously dozing.

I did get myself up at six and when I checked my email, apparently a whole bunch of people who went to the annual national flute convention came home with COVID. A convention where people are flying in from all over. (I am not an active musician these days but have long lurked on a flute email list.) Um, duh. Really? You are surprised that you got COVID? You are vaxxed and double-boosted and masked MOST of the time? Except when you are eating? Or playing the flute? Um… When you play the flute, you are blowing air ACROSS the mouthpiece and OUT INTO THE ROOM. And if you are playing in a group (duo, trio, octet, flute choir)?

To be fair, these people were all polite. Some of them DID mask comprehensively and one woman reported eating all of her meals in her hotel room. That’s what I’d’ve done and she did NOT get COVID. One person opined that it was “not any worse than the common cold” and we all need to “get over it”. Well. It was NOT worse than the common cold for meeee and probably many others but there ARE people who struggle. Including a co-worker (vaxxed and boosted) who didn’t need hospitalization but felt like they were run over by a truck for about a week.

And about this vaxxing and boosting? I think by now it’s pretty common knowledge that vaxxing prevents SERIOUS disease in MOST people. But it doesn’t stop the virus from spreading. Testing is fine but we have discovered first-hand that home antigen tests are not always accurate.

It seems to me (and I am NOT AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST so this is just MY humble(?) opinion) that vaxxing is very important but MASKING is one of the major tools we have to prevent spread. I certainly did not get the disease all those months I was masking during my quick early-morning grock runs (I still do those). I got it after sleeping with my dear darling [snort] mask-averse covid-positive negative-testing husband for three nights. (To be clear, this was last January. I don’t have it now.)

Anyway, that all annoyed me to no end but then I saddled up Cygnus and hit up the farmers market (masked) (whole chicken, lamb stew, corn, eggplant, carrots, red onions, and I fergit what else). Then the Plum (masked) when it opened. I LOOOOOVE when I get over to the Plum and Oriole is in the parking lot because that means I will likely see my (always *double*-masked) grock worker. No, it doesn’t take much.

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