My tiny love story

I've been watching Modern Love on Amazon Prime.  If you're unaware, it's a series of unrelated love stories, based on essays written for a column in the New York Times by the same name.  The New York Times also has a column called "Tiny Love Stories", which asks people to write their love story in under 100 words.

I tried it.  Didn't think I could do it.  Turns out I could.  My first hand-written draft was 89 words long.  I modified slightly when I typed it out, and now it's 90 words.

At 21 we shared a chemistry class and a fume cupboard.  The year we turned 23, we shared our first kiss.  At 25, we shared a surname and a plan for a life just for two.  At 27 we shared a move across the country, at 30 one halfway around the world. By 41, we shared three children and a house in the suburbs.  And this year, at 46, we have shared over half our lives with each other.  Our shared life is longer that the part we didn’t share.

Locking it down

 We're in lockdown.  Again.  It's the fourth one so far this year.  On the plus side, our lockdowns tend to be short ones (the three others in January, April and June were all three or four days long).  For the moment, this lockdown (which started on Saturday at 4pm) is supposed to last eight days, providing infection numbers stay under control.  Given that this is a Delta outbreak, it might take longer than that.

This outbreak has involved school children and some teachers, and has sent students and immediate families from (at last count) five separate schools into 14 days quarantine.  Given that literally everyone I know is only one or two degrees of separation from one or more of those five schools, there is the potential for a lot more infections and a longer lockdown.  But we shall see.

My children, however, have seen the bright side in this.  They all slept in.  The girls got to use computers (luckily we have two laptops) to do their Mathletics and some writing.  They also both decided to do a "research project" and to write me a presentation about it.  Kid 1 presented on Vegemite.  Kid 2 went for "Foods I Love".  Kid 3 (who is still learning to read and write) did some drawings, attempted to write a letter (he got bored before it was done) and used an art app for a while.  And then they all did some artwork, painting big pieces of cardboard in multiple colours.  They are currently all reading quietly together.

Again, we're very lucky in all of this.  I'm a casual employee, so I won't work or get paid this week, but my husband can easily work from home.  We've got the space to have a home office plus room for the kids to do their school work where I can supervise.  We've got a decent sized yard and plenty of things for them to play with.  All the grocery stores are still open (and delivering), so we're not going to run out of food.  And the weather is warm enough that the house is opened up and the kids can play inside or out.

Other people are not us lucky.  A lot of people won't be able to work, won't get paid.  People may be isolated, or be stuck apart from their family.   And a lot of others have been quarantined. The Ekka (the Brisbane Agricultural Show) was due to be held in August, and it was cancelled today.  There will be implications for a lot of people from this.  Lockdown will hopefully limit the outbreak, but it has a number of downsides.  And it's hard to know how to best measure the effectiveness of the handling of COVID outbreaks.  Is it the lowest possible number of infections?  Particular economic outcomes?  Opening of business and larger events?  

People keep talking about "getting back to normal", but I don't think that's ever really going to happen.  We're just going to have to get used to some new level of normal.