THE VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE…
Back in January, I stood at the window with a hot cup of tea and thought that life could do with a good shake up. Had I known then, that this idle thought would manifest itself into the absolute cluster bomb that this year has become, I would’ve tacked ‘Nothing too dramatic though… ’onto the end of it. And yet here we all are in October, getting through it all, and although its too early to count the cost, we are (mostly) surviving, and adapting.
As Liam Gallagher snarls, you’ve gotta roll with it…! and I agree, but I wouldn’t be the most mentally rolly person around. I’m happiest when I have a list and a plan, and I get discombobulated when things are changed so there have been a lot of life lessons learned this year. I still make lists and plans but in the full knowledge that they will be torpedoed by the weekend and that’s ok. I’m learning to live with it. I’m an introverted extrovert (bursts of being sociable, followed by a few weeks hiding from people) and I’m an awkward hugger, so the ‘No touching people and stay in your house!’ orders are suiting me more than I like to let on.
Meanwhile, it’s now October, locking down in Autumn/winter will be a whole different ballgame, and what will we do about Halloween?! will children still Trick or treat? We could stand at the front doors, and with social distance and a good aim, we could fling sanitised flogs and bags of Banshee Bones at them I suppose…! I don’t know why it bothers me because Halloween was never my favourite holiday, but if nightly fireworks don’t make it sound like a war zone for a week beforehand and we don’t have to open the door every 5 minutes to gangs of toddlers dressed as cute little pumpkins at the door, it just underlines how far from the norm we are.
That and the fact that my 2nd born is attending collage in the front room. I lurch from one coping mechanism to the other, firstly listening to every word that every expert had to say about Covid and how long we’d be living under its gloomy shadow, but they gave me a headache(non covid related)and back in May I naively retweeted a study from some experty dude who said it would burn out in 2 weeks. Of course he didn’t say which two so he could still be right, but I’ve given up on the nightly diet of fear and conjecture that the current affairs programs have to offer and I’ve tuned my car radio back to a music station.
I call this the Ostrich approach. There is a third way though-It is quite Zen, which is an attitude I definitely aspire to, but so far I can only manage it in small bursts -What if everything is not falling apart, but is in fact falling into place? Hmmm?!
*nods head wisely while looking slightly smug*