I so very much do not want to begin numbering my blog entries in relation to COVID again. The first day of school is fast approaching now, and the daily news surrounding the delta variant is coming at us all hot and heavy. So many (overwhelmingly) unvaccinated people are getting really, really sick, and a small number of vaccinated folks are as well. More kids than ever before are getting COVID, and in some states, pediatric wards in hospital ICUs are near or at capacity. This is the disease that doesn’t affect children, remember?   

This, (waves hands around frantically), here, is definitely *not* where or how I envisioned this school-year starting. For whatever reason — hope? delusion? — after not having my kids (or most kids) physically in school since around March 2020, I thought by the time yet another brand new school year rolled around, the pandemic would be so far, so sufficiently, in the rear-view mirror that the year would be more closely resembling “normal” than we had experienced in nearly 20 months. 

Usually, we meet the beginning of a new school-year with excitement and just a little bit of dread, but the dread typically doesn’t border on the existential type; it’s more along the lines of mourning for the long, slow, easy-going days of summer or bemoaning a return to homework and tests and early wake-ups and such. 

It’s not worth my time or energy to express my frustration on the subject because my belaboring, my preaching, to the choir here won’t change anything. Virtually every single adult I personally know, with literally one exception that I can think of, has decided to get vaccinated. It is heartening to learn that so many organizations, employers, and the like are requiring their people to be vaccinated in order to be physically be on campus, though I imagine there’s a litigious segment of society that will forever challenge these “mandates” on the basis of “freedom” or some other nonsense. 

As has been the case for the past 20 months though, time will tell. I would like to think that our society will have a come-to-Jesus moment, a reckoning of sorts, when we decide that we’ve experienced enough voluntary death and suffering from COVID. 

What sucks, of course, is that tons of people will get needlessly hurt or killed in the process. This tragedy is so, so sad and worst of all, completely avoidable.  

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But in other news: how about those Olympics?!?! Which was your fav part??? I never watch as much TV as I do during the Olympics, but I don’t think I’ll miss my nightly cry session, ha. What can I say… these athletes’ stories are moving.