the best of times

 Against the odds, I am having the best of times.   

Not in my favor: a very ugly rise of pandemic that is killing people and causing such stress to healthcare workers.  My heart goes out to them (the workers and few breakthrough infections; the people who refuse to vaccinate, not as much).  

Also not: the August heat.  I swear everyone that heard I was coming back in May said: "But that's before summer!  Ugh!  Come back after summer!"  And it is miserably hot and it is impossible to restrain the jungle in my front yard with the heat and rain.  

And I'm unemployed, so not enjoying the benefits of work (like a paycheck and health insurance).  And of course my chronic fatigue and pain is still with me. 

Despite these things, I'm having the best of times.  I love being unemployed, and I fill my days with fun activities like harvesting and picking clean gallons of elderberries, volunteering, home improvement tasks, gardening, and doing random truck errands (today I'm picking up furniture from a friend to provide an antique rocker to a refugee new mother and a table to migrant house; this weekend I'm hauling compost from a friend to a woman who is setting up to grow tons of seedlings to distribute mutual aid style).  I'm meeting great people, reconnecting with friends (who live near me - I have this bizarre aversion to traveling "Uptown").  Today I'll take honey to a friend who's making heaps of elderberry syrup to distribute mutual aid style and get seeds he saved while connecting with his wife whom I used to work with and am also very fond of.  

I'm taking a lot of COVID precautions, from always masking and sanitizing, to reducing my exposure through staying at least 6' away from people and being outdoors, and not going into places very often.  A friend asks if I want to go to coffee; I suggest we forage for berries instead.  There are ways to socialize that reduce risk, if not entirely eliminate it.

My volunteering with migrants has slowed down; in part because of the system (fewer people coming through), but also because of my COVID fears.  I do want to host, and the Catahooligan would love it, but that seems a pretty high risk and I'm not letting anyone in my home.  And because hosting is on more of a back burner now, I have a gazillion unfinished tasks and the tools and supplies lying all around.  I need to take tomorrow to get on top of things because it's getting stressful to be in such clutter.  

In addition to getting the house under control, I need to focus back on my PhD.  Need to pay my tuition bill today and get in touch with committee to make a plan.  I also need to get vegetable garden beds put in to start growing heaps of food to share.  I think I have the bed plan and strategy (old fenceboards and blocks), and I've hauled 1/2 cubic yard of garden bed soil, but now I just need to do it.  The weeds are so adamantly in control.  I even have bidens alba growing in the concrete around my front steps, threatening that if I don't make it all into medicine that it will move into my house.  I have so much of it that it would be enough medicine for the whole damn city, but I make a quart of oxymel to pass onto a friend who has dropper bottles and a good mutual aid distribution system that he worked out last year.

Times are about to get tough.  Let's all dig in and help, and maybe we'll have happy memories of getting through.