Maintenance. Upkeep. Inventory. Stacking. Recycling. Day by day, I tidy things. Gives me something to do. It's useful to have a pile of laundry handy. I can stack towels while the daily carer is in. Arthritis and lack of concentration gradually make bathing more difficult. Not so much the bathing, more the dressing
after drying with a towel.
And so, in come the daily carers to assist
with the bathing…and, just as importantly, the dressing. I exit, stage left or
right depending on closeness to any particular door. Then I have to find stuff
to occupy my time. I sort and fold laundry that’s been left there for the
express purpose of giving me something to do.
When the daily carer is gone, I might turn
to a spot of gardening. Very little gardening is required. Some weedkiller. A
little digging. Cutting back branches. Spotting a thing that needs fixed. This
week, garden maintenance involved sorting the fence…
A post fell over. Too many rainy winters
followed by rainy springs and rainy summers and rainy autumns. Did this wreck
the fence? No. The original fence was long-gone. I watched the whole wooden
wall shake in the wind, come winter. The fence was “strengthened” with extra
spars along the length of its construction.
Too much weight. Far too much surface area
for the wind to catch itself in. I removed the extra cladding. The original
fence spars started to fall to the elements. I removed the spars, too. This
left the posts. Those were fine. Unless I nailed new planks in there. No good.
The posts would splinter and weather more rapidly.
Instead, I unrolled plastic netting and
fixed that in place, post-to-post, as an improvised fence. The wind blew through
the net and stayed intact from winter to winter. Spring is in the air, which
meant cold rainy windy days at the start of this week.
One post had simply had enough. It cracked
at the base and fell over. I slid the post out of the netting fixtures and
tidied the revised construction. There’s more effort put into battling the
weeds. Flowers appear in surges. The tree is budding. I actually put the garden
bin out for collection.
And I do all this, counting down to the
second vaccination. When gardening, I stay away from the gate. The hut limits
vision of activity on the street. Someone could easily walk past, footsteps
masked by the sounds of passing cars, and then that someone could just as
easily sneeze a vast evil cloud right there into my face.
So, even when gardening, I keep a vigil. The
bins go out for collection late at night. Only a random walker of dogs can
interrupt my routine. I am masked when I head out to the pharmacy to pick up
pills. And I am still the only customer in the place when I do that vital run
for supplies.
Food arrives by delivery van. I wash my
hands after handling incoming envelopes. My contact with potential
super-spreaders is LIMITED to ZERO CONTACT. The daily carer is tested weekly,
and walks in all suited and booted.
Gardening. Dealing with the bins. Taking in
food. (The delivery guy stands well back, and I am around the corner in the
hall in case he sneezes.) Accepting parcels. The postie retreats to the street.
Other delivery drivers stand back and take photos of parcels to prove delivery.
I step around the corner in the hallway for that – no one needs to see a photo
of my shoes.
All of these basic activities are performed
against the clock. The slow timer. Vaccine dose one is done – for both of us. Every
day is a day closer to the second dose. And then there’ll be the wait, for two
weeks, as both doses do what they do.
And after?
I took a survey. Daycare wants to test the
pulse of the people who use the service. This was over the phone, of course.
The only person I’ve seen from the unit was a carer who transferred over to the
daily care service, using her transferable skills where needed. I vaguely
recognised her. She was masked, suited, and booted at the time.
The poor guy from the survey had to ask
really obvious questions with really obvious answers. This is a good thing. It
identifies the bulk of the response. Periodically, he’s bound to come up
against unusual answers or observations from carers with rare requirements.
As carers, we all have rare requirements.
But I’ve often seen even rarer birds fluttering through the carer aviary.
There’s always someone worse off than you are, even if you find that hard to
believe. Anyway, my answers were pretty much average.
The countdown clock to the second dose is a
countdown for everyone using services involving crowds. Not large crowds.
Daycare units handle small numbers. But the problem is the small bus that picks
people up. The problem is persuading dementia sufferers to wear masks.
With the elderly punters vaccinated, there’s
freedom of movement, a bit of room to wiggle, really, on the service front. I
expect it’s still going to involve a whole lot of nothing for a long time. Then
there’ll be a return to a limited service…
One day a week, instead of two.
Until then, boxes are ticked very slowly.
These people have all been vaccinated. We need to have all of those people
vaccinated as well. Getting there. Daycare stopped just over a year ago. No wee
trip out. And no special arrangement for the daily carer to come in early. No
early rise for me, to have plenty of time in hand before the bus arrived.
There’s a lot to do before I can sit around and do nothing. She’d be seen off
on the bus and then I’d have a coffee and sit down and take it easy for a few
minutes. Then I’d get things sorted. Maybe fix a few problems around the house
that I needed to see to with a bit of space to work in.
Or I’d watch a film. Head to town to conduct
all my business there, bundled into one trip. Strange days. I haven’t been to
town for a year. The one fixed point of contact in town is the dentist. And the
dentist is closed. No six-month check up.
That was cancelled as the lockdown came in.
So I’d have had a second check-up midway through this nonsense, and a third
check-up a few weeks ago. I’ve missed three dental inspections. Luckily, on the
dental front, I appear to be doing fine.
The last few check-ups I had were
spectacular. I think I am okay. Even if I am not…I’m pretty sure any fixes
would be minor. We all live in the world of the dentist, now, with the masks
and the gloves and layers of protection.
Starting that up again, the biggest problem
is going to be heading to town. I went more than a year without being inside a
vehicle. The last time I took a trip in a bus was forever-and-a-day ago. Don’t
ask me when that was. I think of buses as Covid Carriers. No matter how well
you prepare, you can’t prepare.
And the last time I was in a car was the
last time I returned from the last respite break I had. Just before Covid shut
the respite service down for all but emergency cases. Until…
Last month. Then I used the same driver to
take me to the vaccination centre. Taking a bus there would mean spending to
much time away from looking after someone. Too many risks on the bus. Luckily,
my driver was super-tested for Covid regularly. Still a risk. No matter how
well you prepare, you can’t prepare for everything. Nor should you.
My risk was down to dealing with one driver.
Not a bus with people in it.
Yes, I spent more than a year without using
a vehicle. No trips to town. Twelve trips to the pharmacy, masked and gloved,
and the only customer in the place at the time. In rain, when I could go in
rain. Dampens the crowds. Yes, I would wait for rain if I knew the weather
would turn in the next few days – I’m always a week ahead when it comes to
receiving pills.
Not that there were crowds at the pharmacy
anyway. Not after March last year.
What is the real countdown, though?
It comes after vaccination is
well-established. We eventually see the levels of protection available. And we
discover more about variant strains of the disease. We don’t return to the way
the world was before. Someone, somewhere, prepares for the next disastrous
disease. Lessons learned and lessons not learned.
We wait and see. Science is the science of
observation, no matter which branch of science is under discussion. So, grimly,
we count the dead. And we check on the living with long-term problems from the
pandemic. Gradually, we go to town again. We visit the dentist once more. Maybe
we take a bus here, there. Perhaps we shift a load of online things offline
again…though I doubt it…
Shopping is conveniently delivered by van.
That’s a carer thing, not a pandemic thing. Though…I can now make my orders by
priority far ahead of the timeline that was available before Covid. I’ll still
be taking delivery of food by van. The main change there was that I would go
out and take the food in, helping the delivery guy.
Now I step back while he drops the food off
on the hall carpet. I was often thanked for going out and collecting the food.
One driver complained about customers who expected him to take the food to the
kitchen, unpack it, and…I’m sure if they were snooty enough, they’d want him to
fill the fucking fridge freezer while he was about it.
Yes,
some things remain the same. Chiefly…we hurry up and wait.
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