A Dream of my Mom

It's been about five and a half months since my mom died, and I finally had my first dream about her. I want to write it down before it fades.

In the dream my mom had suffered brain trauma similar to the stroke that ultimately killed her in real life. But in the dream she had not died, but had recovered, in what could best be described as a lobotomized state. She was awake and ambulatory and aware of her surroundings, but could not communicate or be communicated with. If you spoke to her she might appear to be listening, or might just as often completely ignore you. She was living in a nursing home with a companion nurse who watched her and exercised her and generally took care of her needs. One of her greatest needs was a photo ID; she had lost all of hers and the only thing that came close to serving was a photo ad for the nursing home that featured her prominently.

One theme in this dream was me needing to get ready for work as time ticked away. I kept seeing a clock, with its hands showing later and later times each time I looked at it.

Another theme was me trying to get the latest COVID-19 booster. It turned out I wasn't eligible because it is only being made available to people over a certain age (which is also true in real life.)

At the end of the dream I heard my mother's voice. She said "Get up, it's nearly 10:15." I got up and checked the time. It was nowhere near 10:15.

I had sleep apnea three times last night. Bad sleep apnea, the type I used to get where I realize my airways have blocked, and if I can't unblock them I will die. I shoot upright in bed and force my airways open. It has worked every time, so far. I think I know what brought it on, and will try to avoid it in the future.

A night at the circus

One of our cats, Amber, developed a special closeness with my mom after another one of our cats, Babusz, died a while back. Babusz had laid claim to my mother for years; she alone got to sleep at her head, she would be the first to get pets, the first to race to the bathroom whenever she sensed my mom was heading there. Amber deferred to Babusz's seniority, and mostly kept to herself for over a decade. When Babusz died, Amber emerged and immediately claimed the position of "Mommy's Special Cat." She did all the things Babusz did, but more so. So when her mom went into the hospital in late December,  Amber was very distraught. When my mom came back home on February 3, she and all the other cats hid for the better part of the day - but that night, she finally emerged and let my mom know that all was forgiven. My mom left the house again on February 8, never to return. Eventually Amber came to realize this, and she has become intermittently inconsolable. I try to soothe her with pets and scritches and scratches, with extra treats (as my mom directed), and with words reminding her that I love her and her mommy loves her. Today, during one of these sessions, I suddenly thought of the unmasked ambulance crew that took my mom to the emergency room on February 8, which is the day that she most likely contracted COVID, and I began to curse out the idiots who, after I had isolated her and protected her fanatically for three years, hsd probably given my mother the COVID that caused her to start throwing blood clots that caused her stroke that led to her death. And I wept.

Keith Nelson (second from right) and the Bindlestiff Family Circus

A few days after my mom died I caught a commercial on TV about a circus troupe coming to the Kirby Center. That's neat, I thought. I wonder who it is? The commercial soon informed me that it was the Bindlestiff Family Circus, headed by Keith Nelson. I met Keith years ago at the penultimate Sideshow Gathering. The show was scheduled for a work night, but...I could take time off to do something for myself, right?

I wouldn't even have considered it while my mom was alive, not since the COVID-19 pandemic began. If there were no pandemic, I would have absolutely taken her to it; many years ago I took her to see Penn & Teller, and she loved it. (Someday I will find the photo of her standing next to Penn Jillette; she literally came up to his elbow.) But during the pandemic I would never risk exposing her at a crowded indoor event, even in a theater with fifty foot ceilings, nor would I go myself and risk bringing something home to her.

But neither of those are considerations anymore.

I was able to schedule the day off from work. I bought my ticket online - I agonized for a while over inviting someone else to go with me, but the few I had floated this past showed no interest, and I realized that even if I convinced someone to go with me, I would risk having them be bored or disappointed. So I decided it would be best to go to the show solo, as I had always gone to the Sideshow Gathering. And, of course, I would wear an N95 mask the whole while. Even with my mom gone, I have no great desire to get COVID.

I got there more than a half-hour early, before the inner doors were open. I looked around but didn't see any of the local regulars from the Gathering. The audience was full of children, which was great; I knew they were in for a treat. I could spot perhaps three other people in the whole theater wearing masks.

Keith and company put on a wonderful first half, full of juggling and acrobatics and unicycles and a Pennyfarthing. During the mid-show break, I spotted local performers Pat Ward, Harley Newman, and Michael Kattner, along with several other regulars from the Gathering. I hobnobbed briefly until the troupe took the stage again. The second half featured Keith presenting a bit of sideshow, namely sword swallowing, preceded by some light grifting of the audience. One little girl from the audience got to accompany Keith onstage and draw a bayonet from his throat. There were additional acrobatic acts and juggling to round out the night. Too soon the show was over, and Keith and the troupe greeted attendees and posed for photos in the lobby.

So. That was that. My first public outing in three years.

The story so far

As posted to Twitter and expanded on Facebook:

Well, COVID finally got my mom. After three years of keeping her a prisoner in her own home, a week in the hospital after her leg broke, a month in the rehab center, and five days back home - all without contracting COVID - she finally got it after a return trip to the hospital. She went to the hospital last Wednesday, was sent back to the rehab center on Sunday after multiple negative COVID tests, and then had one more test taken at the rehab center come back positive on Monday. Tuesday morning - Valentine's Day - she had a stroke, apparently caused by blood clots being shed by COVID while it interfered with her blood thinners. 

She is probably never coming home again.

I'm glad she got to reunite with her beloved cats, if only for a few days. I'm glad she got to see the Super Bowl - the first half plus the halftime show, at least. I'm glad I took up a bouquet of fake plastic roses and baby's breath with a "Happy Valentine's Day!" balloon on Sunday, rather than waiting until today. I'm glad I got to hear her rail against COVID last night in our final conversation. I'm glad for all the time we got to spend together, at home and on  hundreds of trips to see various doctors. But now it looks like that is all drawing to an end.

I really want to document and detail all of the above.

On Tuesday, December 27, 2022 my mom was going out with my sister to meet a friend at Red Lobster for a late lunch/early dinner. I disapproved of her leaving the house to eat in public due to COVID exposure risks, but she was OK with taking her chances. This was my first day back to work. They left the house around 1:30 PM, and I stepped into the kitchen to make myself a ham sandwich before starting work. A minute later my sister came back to tell me that my mother's leg had given out as they walked down the steps. 

My mom has had both of her knees replaced over the past few years with artificial joints. She's been very happy with her new knees. It turns out that the new knees were so strong that any stress applied to the knee was being transferred to the leg bones the knee was anchored into - causing her femur to shear, as was determined after she was rushed to the ER. She had surgery to repair her leg and replace the knee joint two days later on December 29, 2022. She was transferred to Allied Rehab (known by its old name, "John Heinz") a few days later - Tuesday, January 3, 2023 I believe. She fell out of bed a day or two later - I need to verify these dates - and wound up spending a day back in the ER on January 5. She returned to John Heinz and resumed her barely-begun physical therapy on Saturday, January 7.

Rehab was a long, slow process. My mom went through three roommates during her time there. The first was released just a few days after my mom arrived. The second one was there about two weeks before being discharged. The third, an avid FOX News watcher, was there for the end of January and into February.

My mom was in rehab for my birthday. A bunch of food milestones were piling up: we traditionally had lobster tail on New Year's Eve, and a dinner of pork on New Year's Day, and a cake for my birthday. Now we had lobster tails in the freezer, along with 2/3 of a long pork loin cut into thirds. I made a note to order a cake for her homecoming.

She was finally cleared to come home on Friday, February 3, 2023.

Unfortunately things were not ideal as soon as she came home. The cats took most of a day to forgive her for being away so long, and she was happy to have meals cooked by me, but she was showing signs of difficulty walking. Every morning she would get up and make her way to the bathroom with  her walker, and get dressed and out to the breakfast table without a problem. But as the day went on she had a harder and harder time walking without assistance. (We later learned this was because she was drinking far less than she had been at rehab, so she was getting dehydrated throughout the day.) The first weekend was bad, but after Monday I felt comfortable resuming my work-from-home shift. 

Tuesday, February 7 she had an issue minutes before I was to start work, so I called in an emergency FMLA day. Wednesday February 8 looked more promising. We coordinated her day better: breakfast around 8:00, lunch (a stew I had just made, one of her favorites) at noon, bathroom time at 1:00, then going down for a nap as I began work at 2:00. I woke her at my first break at 4:00 and asked if she wanted something to eat, and she said yes. I set her up at the table and served her a partial dinner before I returned to work at 4:15.

I don't know why she got up from the table at 5:50, but she did, and was about two steps from the table with her walker when the phone rang. For her, the phone is always the top priority, and this time was no different as she stopped to turn and answer it. She lost her balance, fell in slow motion, and hit the back of her head off the wooden chair at the dinner table.

I called 911. They advised me not to try to sit her up. She was cognizant and coherent the whole time. The ambulance crew arrived a few minutes later - unmasked - and they quickly raised her into a seated position on the chair, then got her on a gurney and out of the house.

At the hospital they determined she had no head injury from the fall - no neck fracture, no internal bleeding - but also determined she was dehydrated. They got her into a room and, based on poor performance on tests of her walking ability, made plans for her to return to John Heinz. I packed up the necessities we had just brought home a few days before, along with a week's worth of clothing, and got it to my brother. I was unable to visit her in the hospital until Saturday, February 11, 2023. We watched the Mass together, something we have done since the beginning of the pandemic. By this time she had tested negative for COVID once, and her return to Heinz was dependent on negative results on another test.

I left her on Saturday night at about 7:30 and stopped at a dollar store where everything costs $1.25. I have come to be amazed at the quality and detail of the artificial flowers available at this store, and had assembled several household decorations for her previous homecoming from flowers purchased there. I decided to assemble a Valentine's Day bouquet: roses, baby's breath, some onion grass as a background, a vase, some glass pebbles for weight, and a balloon on a stick.

Sunday morning, February 12, 2023 the results of her COVID test came back clean, and my brother transported her to Heinz. She was back in her old unit, and everyone was happy to see her again, though not entirely happy she was back. I went to see her that afternoon and presented her with her early Valentine's Day present. She looked fantastic. A nurse checked her temperature and found it to be slightly elevated - 100-101 degrees. She ate dinner and we watched the opening of the Super Bowl. Before she got out of the bathroom and ready for bed, the score was tied, 7-7. By the time I left it was 14-14. My mom is a huge football fan, and I hoped such an evenly-matched game wouldn't overstimulate her.

I called her Monday morning, February 13, 2023. Mondays are my day to work from the office, and I had preemptively taken it as an FMLA day. I asked her about her therapy schedule, and she told me that, because of her elevated temperature, they were isolating her until they got the results of another COVID test.

That test came back positive.

Now everything changed. My brother recommended that no one visit her until they released her from COVID isolation. I confirmed with the desk that I could visit but would have to follow COVID protocols - in addition to the standard mask requirement, I would need a gown, gloves, and face shield. I visited her for a shorter time, just a half hour. She looked absolutely fine. I called her that night after she was in bed and she was cursing out the bad luck of having avoided COVID for so long and then finally catching it. As I ended the call I told her I loved her and she returned the sentiment, as we always do.

The next morning, Tuesday, February 14, 2023, at about 7:00 AM, she had a massive stroke.

State of Decay

Well, the U.S. has essentially come to the consensus that they're sick and tired of COVID-19. They're done with it. Over it. So therefore, COVID is over. Masks off! No more restrictions!

This isn't over. I don't know if it ever will be. But the decisions that have just been made are going to result in a lot more deaths.

I had an appointment in Hazleton this week. It was the first time I've been there in many years. Hazleton is an oddball city: one of the largest cities in Luzerne County, but isolated from much of the rest of the county and situated practically on its southern border. It was once a wealthy city. A self-contained city, a place where you could be born, grow up, and die, all while being convinced you hadn't missed out on anything the world had to offer. It was also, I am told, once a Mafia-infested city, and the departure of the mobsters who once ran the place and propped it up financially can explain much of the sudden economic downturn the city has experienced.

About twenty-five years ago the ethnic makeup of the city started to change. Up to that point it was majority Polish and Italian, old-timers who had worked in the mines and ran the mines and owned the mines, and their families and their children who hadn't yet fled for greener pastures. 

The newcomers weren't there for mining. Many were immigrants from Mexico, looking to work as laborers in some of the remaining industries in the area. Their arrival was greeted with hostility. One local politician built his career on trying to drive out the immigrants. His efforts failed, repeatedly, at tremendous cost to the local taxpayers. These failures have not dissuaded him from continuing to run for public office - allegedly he is next planning to run for governor. Had he succeeded, Hazleton would today be a depopulated ghost town, as the old residents have died and their children have moved out of the area.

Hazleton has been a COVID hotspot from the start. There are several theories as to why. Regardless of the reasons, such a place should be approached with tremendous caution. At the endodontist's office I was the only one, aside from the doctor and her assistant, wearing a mask. I watched people go in and out of the pharmacy next door without masks. We're not gonna make it, are we?, I wondered.

There are two basic ways to get between my house and Hazleton. One is on Interstate 81, the major highway that runs through Northeastern Pennsylvania on its way from near Chattanooga, Tennessee to the Canadian border with New York. The other is PA Route 309. I took 81 there and decided to take 309 back. It's been years since I've taken that road, even longer since I took it in the daytime. I remember it as a scenic route through the mountains south of my house. (The other route, I-81, gives some beautiful views of the Wyoming Valley, though there are no scenic overlooks where you can park and really appreciate this.)

I got on 309 going the wrong way for a few miles. I realized I was going the wrong way when I spotted a landmark I've never seen before: an enormous, steep-sided culm bank located feet away from the road, feet away from at least two houses (one of which appeared vacant.) How can this be legal?, I wondered. And then I thought: This is Hazleton. This is NEPA.

It's over a quarter of a mile in diameter at the base. The sides have a slope of about 45 degrees. It's right up against Route 309. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

https://www.timesleader.com/news/1244206/another-tax-break-request-for-mine-scarred-site-coming-before-luzerne-county-council

I turned around and pointed the car home. Route 309 goes through the heart of Hazleton. Once upon a time Hazleton was a big, wealthy city, awash in coal money. Schools were big, churches were big, office buildings were big - by NEPA standards. That money dried up when deep mining in this area died in the aftermath of the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster, though some surface mining continues in the area to this day. Even twenty years ago, Hazleton still retained some of its veneer, though the end was on its way. On that day what I saw was a city that used to be: Schools still standing, their names seen only as shadows where there once were letters. Churches converted to new denominations, or standing empty. Vacant office buildings looking ready for business except for the orange plastic fences blocking access.

The ride out of town was just as bad. That part of NEPA has always been a bit odd, with residential houses freely mixed with businesses along the side of Route 309. But now many of those businesses are closed. For every two or three houses, it seemed, there was an empty business.

NEPA is changing. Everyone in this area knows that. When I went to college in Scranton in the mid-to-late 80s it was like a big, broken-down, abandoned amusement park. There were demolition sites everywhere as old, run-down buildings were torn down. Decades later Scranton has experienced a renaissance of sorts. Wilkes-Barre sustained horrific damage in the flood of 1972. It was rebuilt and revived in the 70s and 80s, experienced a decay in the 90s as Scranton's fortune rose, but has gradually worked itself up to a new state of prosperity. In both cases the fortunes have been largely tied to the rising fortunes of the University of Scranton, and King's College and Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre. Hazleton, on the other hand, feels like a city that has had its plug pulled, like a place where the people who once propped it up have taken their money and left. Where will it go from here? Time will tell.

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The Omicron surge has largely passed. New cases have dropped, and deaths are finally dipping. Still, cases and death rates are still as high as or higher than they were during the initial surge in Spring 2020. Nevertheless, many states are giving in to the demands of the "REOPEN EVERYTHING NOW!!!" crowd to drop any mask mandates and other restrictions that might in any way present an inconvenience. More people are going to die, especially the most vulnerable: the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. As restrictions fall away, anti-maskers are taking a more aggressive approach to those who are still wearing masks - some of whom have no intention to put up with any of their crap. 

Cases are dropping dramatically, in the U.S. as a whole and in Pennsylvania as well. In both graphs, case counts exceed where they were in Spring - Fall 2020 and much of Summer 2021:

Deaths, not so much:

And in the face of all this, everyone is declaring "RETURN TO NORMAL."

The world that we knew in 2019 and before is gone, along with millions of people we knew back then. COVID-19 and all its variants are here. Welcome to the new normal.

Filling in the gaps

Sometime in late 2020 I realized that while the COVID-19 graphs provided for free by the Financial Times were wonderful, flexible, versatile sources of graphic information, they had one flaw: While you could easily specify a starting date for the x-axis, you had no control over the ending date - it was always the most recent day for which data was available. Which means that, in the event something like the Omicron variant came along and dwarfed all previous y-axis values, you permanently lost the ability to look at the detailed variation of the past data. I realized this early on when data from early March 2020 was rapidly compressed to insignificance by the enormity of the numbers coming in beginning in late March 2020.

Unfortunately, my blogging hiatus in the second half of 2021 meant that the last set of graphs I posted before the end of the year were from July 10, 2021. Nearly six months of data, including the rise of the Delta variant, the failure of the Great Unmasking, and the coming of the Omicron spike were just...missing.

But not really. Just because I hadn't been posting these graphs didn't mean that I hadn't been saving them. Here are the relevant ones, the ones that tell the story, and present the data before it got crushed  to nothingness.

July 16,  2021, six days after my penultimate 2021 post.
The Delta wave was here, taking advantage of the summertime Great Unmasking.

July 22, 2021. Where just weeks before it looked like we were on a trajectory to grind COVID-19 into the ground, the Delta variant combined with the end of mask mandates to undo two months of progress.

July 31, 2021: while the nation was on an upswing, it wasn't affecting every state equally. This graph displays new cases per 100,000 people. The top states by far were in the South, while Pennsylvania was lurking near the bottom. This would change a lot by the end of the year.

August 7, 2021: The same sort of breakdown shows things getting worse everywhere, but continuing to be especially bad in the Southern states.

September 4, 2021: New mix of top states, still all from the South. Pennsylvania is climbing its way up.

December 5, 2021: The same sort of graph, but now the top spot is held by New Hampshire, with Southern states dropping low, and Pennsylvania vying for the top spot.

September 6, 2021: A tale of two countries, the United States and Norway. Cases per 100,000 people. Norway has consistently done better than the United States in dealing with COVID-19. Maybe we should try to do what they're doing.

September 4, 2021: Deaths per 100,000 people attributed to COVID-19 in the United States and Norway. We really should have been doing whatever the hell Norway is doing. 

So that's it. I wish I had captured more graphs. The data is still out there, waiting to be analyzed.

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The latest, using the same sort of graphs that are displayed above:

New cases in U.S. as of January 13, 2022. Continuing to set new records every day.

New cases by state, per 100,000 people. Sates in the Northeast now dominate, with Delaware just missing the cut below New Jersey, and Pennsylvania lagging a few spots behind. For some reason, Florida is right up there between New York and Massachusetts. Maybe Ron Desantis can explain. (He'd probably blame Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for visiting her mother in Florida last week.)

Norway vs. the United States, cases per 100,000 people. Norway actually led the U.S. by a considerable margin from early November through late December, but the U.S. raced ahead after that.

Norway vs. the United States, deaths attributed to COVID-19 per 100,000 population. Obviously Norway is doing something right that the United States is not. We need to find out what.

Goodbye, Wayne

One of my classmates from high school was buried today. He died of COVID, the first of our class to do so, as far as we know. I didn't go to the funeral, or the memorial.

I did go grocery shopping this afternoon. About half the shoppers and all of the employees were wearing masks, which is a big improvement over the last time I was there. I wanted to grab the unmasked people and say "We buried someone I knew in high school today. He died of COVID. Do you think you're safe? Do you think this is over?" I didn't. Instead I got my groceries and got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

COVID deaths in Pennsylvania, as in all of the U.S., continue to climb. This isn't slowing down. This isn't over. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask.

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The Omicron variant continues to make hay of all previous graphs. This variant is allegedly "milder" than previous versions, but can also walk through walls - vaccinations provide very little protection against getting it, but they do minimize its effects, allegedly. Even masks and social distancing seem to offer little protection. The official line is "everybody is going to get Omicron," which means that we've basically entered the "Fuck it, whatever" stage of the pandemic. (And the new catchphrase now is "It's no longer a pandemic, the disease is now endemic," which is a distinction meaningless to most of the people uttering it.) Schools are open, while at the same time many local (and state, and federal) offices are closed. Many people are being ordered to return to the workplace, where it's impossible to avoid being exposed to infected coworkers. These are the same schools and workplaces that closed in March 2020, when COVID cases and deaths were so low they don't even show up on current graphs.

The other view is "Not to worry, if you've been vaccinated and aren't disabled or have other comorbidities, you'll be fine, so everything is OK," which is not at all comforting to those who are disabled, have those comorbidities, are immune compromised, or are unable to get the vaccine for medical reasons. It feels like they're being written off as an acceptable loss.

Sometime soon this graph will be unreadable without a logarithmic y-axis.

The logarithmic version. I first started using this when it looked like cases were going to drop so low that the day-to-day variation would be unreadable. Now new cases are rising so high that the previous variation may soon be unreadable with a linear y-axis, much like the March 2020 data is now.

Far more cases of a less deadly variant have resulted in a fairly steady rate of deaths. It's math.

There was an upturn to the slope from December 2020-March 2021, and a downturn from March 2021-August 2021, but overall this has been a fairly straight line since April 2020. Assuming the dynamics continue as they are, we'll hit one million deaths by June 2022.
But it's not a safe bet that the dynamics will continue as they are.

First post-apocalyptic grocery run of 2022

Something seemed off as soon as I left the house.

I hadn't meant to go shopping today. Sure, sometime this week - I had a coupon worth $5 off a $25 order that needed to be used within two weeks of December 23 - but I still had half of a half gallon of milk left, and really didn't need much else. But my mom told me she needed bananas, and a refill for hand soap, and large Band-Aids, latex-free, so the hunt had begun. I drew up a list of a few other things we needed, geared up, and set out.

I heard a commotion in the distance as I walked to the car. It sounded like a crowd of people all shouting and arguing at the same time. The sound seemed to be approaching, and gradually took on the tone of a great many dogs barking excitedly.  I looked up and scanned the sky. Soon I located the lopsided V of geese high overhead, flying south. On January 2nd. Better late than never, I suppose.

The parking lot at the supermarket was crowded, but less so than on recent trips. I strapped on my mask, grabbed a cart, and headed in. I immediately started seeing faces - unmasked faces, customers and employees alike. As if there were no pandemic going on. As if Pennsylvania were not having its highest infection rates ever.

Pennsylvania is having its highest COVID-19 infection rates ever.

But that wasn't the weird thing. Not wearing masks has been the standard around here since the summer, when it looked like maybe we were about to beat this thing and the state dropped the mask mandate. No, what was weird was what I saw as I made my way past the pastries and baked goods, past the fried and rotisserie chicken, to the fruit displays - the empty fruit displays. Not all empty, just some. Maybe some fruit was now out of season, even for import, and the displays were being changed over for whatever would take its place? No big deal. All I needed were the bananas my mom had asked for. I headed for the banana display in the back.

No bananas.

No onions or potatoes, either. The whole area was empty, as if some accident had happened requiring everything to be thrown away.

Not to worry. There was another grocery store about a mile away. I could get bananas there. Maybe.

I ran through my list. I found almost everything on it. Store brand hand soap refills were nowhere do be found, but I was able to get a more expensive jug of the Softsoap brand. Still, among things I didn't need, there seemed to be random shortages. No frozen chicken, or so I heard. No My-T-Fine lemon pudding and pie filling. No Reddi-Wip whipped cream. No canned cat food, or almost none. I had promised my cats as I was leaving the house that I would get them something from the store, so I went to the cat toy section where I had just been the day after Christmas. The same things that were missing that day were missing today, including the catnip satchels that the cats had gone nuts for on Christmas. I remembered I wanted to pick up potato sandwich rolls. There were none. Well, none of the brand I usually buy, or my first or second alternate brands, or anything other than a lone orphan pack of generics that had apparently been rejected by everyone else. I decided I would look for them when I went to the other store for bananas. 

As I headed to the checkouts, I heard a vaguely familiar song on the piped-in music. It gradually resolved into "Hot Hot Hot!!!" by The Cure, from 1988's "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," a song I hadn't heard in about twenty years.

I hit the other store and picked up Reddi-Wip - which I had decided I actually needed -, bananas, cat toys, and potato sandwich buns.  (I found the brand I liked there, but only in slider-sized. I took them.) 

I got home and found out one of my high school classmates had died of COVID.  The first, as far as I know. Probably not the last.

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Small changes to the national COVID graphs since December 31, 2021:

Tomorrow, much of the country goes back to work, with many back in their offices. Many children will go back to in-person learning at school. Meanwhile, airlines continue to cancel flights due to weather - and COVID. Police in New York City are calling off sick en masse (well, nearly so) with COVID, which continues to be a major cop-killer, in part because of resistance to getting vaccinated by many members of the police. Expect to see infection rates in the next four weeks to soar well above where they are now. Expect to see deaths continue to climb, too.

2021: Good riddance

When last we met, I had just said goodbye to another of our cats, and we had gotten word that the church I had grown up with would be permanently closed. COVID infections had plummeted, though the "Delta variant" of the disease seemed to be threatening a late-Summer resurgence. 

Then I went silent.

But not really. I responded to the church closing in the way I usually do: I created a blog. I intended that it would be a place where I could share all of my photographs and memories of the church, and where other parishioners could do the same. But I quickly discovered that I had far fewer photographs than I remembered, and no one else was really interested in sharing theirs. I took my shot, said what I wanted to say, and stopped.

Babusz was the last of my animal friends to die in 2021. (Ray had died in the Spring, on the same day I got my second COVID shot.) We are now down to three older cats born in 2009, and Mama Cat (most likely born in 2017) and her babies who were born in 2019. All are ferals. Few of our ferals have lived much past 12 before cancer killed them. Feral cats select for fecundity, not long life.

None of my close friends or family have died of COVID so far. One person I know did die, in early September. (She is technically the second person I know who has died. I never met Fr. Tom Carten socially, at least that I was aware of - he once was a lurker at a gathering of bloggers - but my sister knew him well, and I was a big fan of his blog.) I met Joyce Dombroski Gebhart through one of the blogger/politician mixers that we used to have many years ago. She was running for public office on what looked like a pure Tea Party platform. She didn't win. We were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but somehow she became aware of my interest in space and backyard astronomy. She would frequently contact me through Facebook to let me know about interesting events, from planetary alignments to bright passes of the space station. I reciprocated far less often. I have no idea if she was vaccinated, but her politics leads me to believe she was not. She went on a family vacation in the Summer. She and one or more family members contracted COVID. They recovered. She did not.

Earlier in the Summer it had really started to feel like COVID might soon be over. I got together with some friends in late May, for the first time in a year and a half, just as the CDC was announcing the lifting of restrictions for the fully vaccinated. I went to my first poetry reading since February 2020 on June 19, 2021. This was also an opportunity to see a friend I had not seen in well over two years. But everything felt - wrong. Off. The readings ran too long. I began to feel uncomfortable. All I wanted to do was get out of there and go home.

Later I went to a family gathering held outdoors at a cousin's house. At that point the Delta upswing had begun in earnest. But other countries had experienced the Delta variant, and had seen a rise followed by a fall. Sure enough, the Delta spike peaked in September, then began its downward slide. 

I got together with my friends again in early November. Things seemed more uncertain then. What would the next variant bring? Booster shots had already begun, and I was the last of our group to get boosted.

Shortly afterwards the fast-spreading Omicron variant was announced.

On November 19 there was a lunar eclipse, exactly the sort of thing Joyce would have enjoyed.

My immediate family - with the exclusion of my sister, who lives out of state - gathered for Thanksgiving, our first Thanksgiving in two years. Shortly afterwards we met again for my nephew's birthday. The day after his party I met with some friends whom I had worked with from 1999 through 2007.  We are all getting up in age - I am the youngest of the group - and all have pre-existing conditions that make us much more susceptible to the serious effects of COVID. Even though the Omicron variant had already been announced, the restaurant was fairly crowded with few masks in sight. This has been the rule since mask mandates were dropped over the summer: whenever I go out shopping, which isn't that often, I am usually one of a small minority of people wearing a mask. It is hard to look at these unmasked masses and not think of them as poor naive doomed fools.

Some planets lined up in the post-sunset sky in December - Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter. Venus once again entered a crescent phase. Many people who might not have otherwise seen the crescent of Venus saw it because of the alignment. Once again, something Joyce would have enjoyed.

Crescent of Venus, December 19, 2021

Christmas came, and another family gathering, this time with my sister coming in for only the second time since we were all fully vaccinated. 

My mom and my nephew's friendly rescue pit bull

I decorated our small Christmas tree fairly enthusiastically this year. I am excited about taking it down and boxing everything up, because I am already thinking about decoration variations for next year. 

While COVID may feel like the dominant issue in the world right now, Climate Change is the most significant issue now and will continue to be so for decades - maybe centuries - to come. December tornadoes in the South, firestorms in Colorado driven by 110-mph winds, droughts, floods, and record-breaking temperatures month after month. Here are forsythia and dandelion blossoms in my back yard two days after Christmas:

There is no denying the absolute horror that the resurgence of COVID has presented in the second half of 2021. Where once it looked like COVID had been beaten back into nothingness, it has now soared to unprecedented levels both in Pennsylvania and the U.S. as a whole. Hospitals are once again overcrowded with the unvaccinated sick and dying, to the point that more routine issues like dealing with broken bones, cancer, heart attacks, and other non-COVID issues are being put on the back burner. Even the vaccinated are getting infected with the Omicron variant. The difference is that many of the vaccinated who get infected are not dying or even requiring hospitalization, though their long-tern prognosis is unknown. But in the meantime, Republicans continue to push rejection of any vaccine in favor of post-infection treatments.

Which brings us to here. The end of one year, and the beginning of another. Over 800,000 Americans have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic. Russian forces are massed on the Ukrainian border, ready to invade and trigger a confrontation with the U.S. and NATO. Kim Jon-Un is strangely silent. I continue to work from home, though how much longer that will continue is unknown. None of my cats are sick or dying. None of my family or friends are sick with COVID.

Betty White died on the last day of 2021, just two weeks short of her 100th birthday.

Good riddance, 2021.

Babusz, Summer 2006 - July 10, 2021

Babusz died at 10:45 in the morning on Saturday, July 10, 2021.

Cats are creatures of habit, and changes in habit can indicate a problem. Around Christmas this year - not long before Homer died - my mom placed a box on a generally-disused rocker in our parlor, a few feet from the spot where I have my temporary work station set up. It was a gift box that had contained pears and cheese shipped by one of her friends at Christmastime. It's a nice box, sturdy, about the size and shape of a thick attache case, and the plan was to use it to store Christmas ornaments or decorations. But Babusz had other ideas. She quickly claimed the box as her own, enjoying the slight flexibility of the lid that allowed her to comfortably lounge there for hours at a time. She also enjoyed pulling at the edges, not with her claws out, but more like she was massaging the pads of her paws. While I worked she would sometimes squirm around on the box and emit little "look at me" vocalizations, though she never wanted  - or permitted - me to pet her.

That stopped sometime in late May or early June. Suddenly she was no longer on her box. Nor did she spend any more time on the parlor couch, another favorite lounging spot. Instead she went into hiding, under a chair on one corner of the room or an endtable on another. She would stealthily emerge several times a day, race to use the litterbox, and then return to her hiding spot.

This went on for two weeks. Then, gradually, she began to re-emerge. She would go back to her box on the chair for a few minutes at a time several times a day, but would quickly return to her hiding spot. She also began making appearances in the parlor bow window, having laid claim to one corner of it. She seemed to especially enjoy being there at sunset, and would sometimes spend part of the night there.

It took about another two weeks for her to resume spending most of her time in the window or on her box on the rocker, and very little time in hiding. But now it became apparent that she was losing weight.

My mom tried to introduce tempting new foods into her diet to try to convince her to eat, but nothing really impressed her. A visit to the vet confirmed our worst fears: cancer. Nothing to be done. The vet offered to euthanize her on the spot. But at this point Babusz was still a vital, active cat. Aside from the lack of enthusiasm for food and recent hiding behavior, she did not seem to be in any pain or distress. After some cajoling, the vet agreed to send us home with an appetite stimulant and a hydration kit.

That was a week and a half ago. Babusz continued to lose weight since then. But she also continued to go where she wanted to go and do what she wanted to do, to spend time on her box or in her window, to continue to use her favorite litterbox. Even last night I found her in her spot on the window. Getting there required jumping onto a chair, climbing onto the back, and crossing over onto the windowsill. That's where she was when I went to bed.

This morning my mom found Babusz on the kitchen floor by the waterbowls. She was breathing but unresponsive. She continued like that for several more hours. She died in my mom's arms at 10:45 AM.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

The United States did not achieve President Biden's goal of having 70% of all eligible Americans getting at least their first COVID-19 vaccine by July 4, 2021, a failure the Republicans at CPAC (the second CPAC convention this year) are currently celebrating. Vaccine refusal rates correspond fairly well with rates of support for Trump in the 2020 election. Some states and broad regions have very low vaccination rates - 40% or less - and are seeing increasing rates of infection. Already their ERs are filling up and needing to take the same drastic measures that were widespread in the pre-vaccine days. Meanwhile, the "Delta variant," a faster-spreading, more aggressive mutation of COVID-19 has become the dominant version of COVID in the United States (as has previously happened in other countries) and is allegedly responsible for infections among those who had already received a vaccine.