I sit and watch as time goes by

not original but seems to fit

It's been about six weeks since I wrote something, even though a few things were just published, that's on me and laziness and not paying attention. It's fall now, the weather has finally turned as I look outside and watch rain and wind and cold and decide to skip today's golf outing. There is a certain romanticism in the weather with the right person and fire place, and then sometimes there is a certain horror in just looking outside from home. It kind of depends on my mood and the mood of whomever I am with. Watching the leaves fall on the ground or stay in the trees and look nice is great when it is nice and sunny and warmish out. Or on one of the last golf days of the year when you are just happy to be outside and don't care your ball disappears just where you saw it stop. Sometimes there is a sense of peace and stability when you are doing normal things, I spent some time with people and in society in south haven and grand rapids and kalamazoo. It all would alternate between normal, like being at a beach or a park and just walking around and then not normal when you would see the masks hanging on people's faces, the parting glances when you get too close to someone who may be more afraid of getting sick(or maybe they just don't like how I look), and the sense that underlying everything is the fear and trepidation of just the world around us.

I still find myself noticing the little things, the sushi restaurant in Grand Rapids where we looked at each other and every filled table and decided, yeah, no. Carry out far safer and wondered how the place could even let that happen? Seeing the safety measures a hotel takes, the lack of daily housekeeping now, hearing the stories of the staff and their friends who are not and may never be called back to work. And it goes without saying the just plain horror of the election season and watching people just act like total idiots, almost defying every logical notion of safety just to prove they can, does acting like an idiot make you less of one?. I would like to say I would feel sorry if any of them got sick or even worse, but frankly I won't. We all have to take some responsibility for our own risks and actions, if someone is frankly dumb enough to go pack themselves in with a 1000 other people packing themselves in, well, so be it. Sort of like smoking two packs a day and asking for sympathy when the stage four diagnosis gets made.

Things are still hard, it is almost like waiting for a shoe to drop. As much as we hate it, this thing still pervades most conversations, how can it not? Will things shut down? Will we go back to working at home? Will they close the malls again, I mean the rank horrors of that is something I cannot even imagine.(I don't even go anymore which is even more strange) What is going to happen to all the restaurants when outside seating is over, and really those scary tents with heaters and flames and no ventilation are not really making me feel better about going out to eat. I see more stores closing and there is no let up in sight. More people getting sick, fewer dying which I guess is good, but I am not sure really if that makes me feel better.

What makes me more annoyed is the continued disruption in normal, I keep vacillating about going to see my kids. The last three years it was not even a thought, I'd get on place, and go. Now I feel almost ashamed to think it's a bad idea. What if I get sick, what if I infect my parents, what if I just get sick and cause myself issues. I mean I just wanna take my kids to dinner, buy groceries and come home, it should not be that complicated but it is, and there is nothing to do about it.

Which means we sit and wait for things largely out of our control to somehow miraculously just get better, which of course they will, but the fact there is no real end in sight is just disturbing, it makes for good dinner conversation but the reality is no one nows when or fi things will ever get totally back to normal, and what will normal mean? I am trying to arrange a meeting with someone, simple, normal it would be fine, meet you for coffee, sit and talk, do what we need to. Now that the weather has turned I am not sure how to do it. Can we breathe on each other? Should we get tested first? Do we relegate ourselves to meet outside and just be cold? My office now basically says don't let anyone who doesn't work here come for anything. And yeah, it is mostly too cold to meet outside. I guess I don't know what to do and setting a meeting for florida just seems a bit much.

So I guess we just keep going. Seriously the novelty of this has long since worn off