the baby turns one, we all turn 2022

The baby turns one next week—on New Year's Eve. I've been thinking about this as his birthday week, though, probably because I was in the hospital for so long prior to his arrival. It feels like his birthday should, at least for me, last several days. 

It's very strange to have a baby on New Year's Eve. The whole yearly retrospective gets tied up with the baby. I can't separate what happened in 2021 (most of it not so good) from the baby himself. And because I love him, it's hard to think that 2021 wasn't a good year. A good, exhausting, endless year. 

Having a baby really does induce a weird kind of brain fog. It's very hard for me to understand that the Capitol was invaded by a Trumpian mob this year—just 6 days after he was born. An attempt to steal the election very much seems like something I made up while sleep deprived and taking powerful narcotics. 

It's also very strange to me that covid has been happening for the baby's entire life—including the whole time I was pregnant. I can't even pretend to remember what I was thinking in March 2020 when I got pregnant. That seems so long ago, another lifetime on a different planet. When people talk about returning to normal I understand rationally what they mean, but it is clearly impossible. A world before covid, before the baby, before all this? What world is that? 

I've always hated New Year's Eve as a holiday. The mandate to go out and have fun or else has always repelled me—who can have fun when it's mandated? Of course I never appreciated it for what it really is, not a mandate to get drunk but the celebration of a new start. And now for the rest of my life New Year's Eve will always be about the baby, even many years from now when he's not a baby anymore and has no interest in celebrating his birthday with me. A wonderful way to fully neutralize a holiday I've never enjoyed.  

The baby himself is a delight at the moment. Crawling like a champ, working very hard to stand and take some steps. He loves so many things—the dog, the dog's toys, the swings, taking a bath, speaking gibberish, his teachers at daycare, food, going outside, his father. (Especially his father. I am of no interest currently.) He understands the word no and occasionally obeys when I tell him not to do something. And in turn he shakes his head vigorously from side to side when he doesn't want to do something. I'm sure he also understands the word yes, but we don't use that one very often. 

I'm sure he will be even more interesting (and annoying) next year. Here's to 2022. 

i just can't take it anymore

Someone I work with got covid a couple weeks ago. I don't like to write about work because, given my huge readership (hello to the four of you!), I don't want to write anything that could get me fired. But every good rule deserves to get broken now and again, right? Right. The four of you won't tell, right? Sure. 

When I learned this person had covid I wasn't too concerned—I assumed it was a breakthrough infection, which happens, and they'd be fine. This was a reasonable assumption because I work at a university where vaccination is required. And I also did not think this person was stupid enough to be unvaccinated. Alas, my faith in intelligence is clearly unwarranted, because this person is not vaccinated. Not vaccinated and not young, either. 

My coworker is fine. But I am angry. I'm not angry because I'm scared, I'm angry because it's so utterly stupid and selfish.

I just, I mean, aargh, I can't even explain how much work it takes to be unvaccinated here. You need to apply for a religious exemption that is very onerous and time-consuming. And once you have that, you actually have to risk getting covid. The work and the risk is just so much greater than the minor inconvenience of getting vaccinated that I just cannot comprehend the utter stupidity of this choice. It is so completely selfish! If you don't get sick you're a possible vector to someone immunocompromised and if you do get sick and go to the hospital you are taking up space someone else might need. 

And this is a person I work with every day! I have to listen to their opinion! They routinely insist that I follow administrative rules that are pointless and yet they couldn't be bothered to get a required vaccination against a deadly disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Every time this person speaks all I can think of is how selfish and misguided they are and it's utterly exhausting. 

(To be clear, this person's religion has no prohibition against vaccination. I assume they came up with something to meet the requirements of a religious exemption but this person isn't a Christian Scientist or anything. I would wager all the money I have that they have been vaccinated for polio.)

And then, on the flipside: my parents just returned from 2 weeks in Germany where you are not allowed to go anywhere—even an open air market—without wearing an N95 mask. If you are wearing a cloth mask the covid police will refuse you entry. Everywhere you go you are required to report your location through a government app. You are required to get tested for covid every time you travel to a new state or town. At one point my parents were refused entry to a hotel where they had a reservation because the number of cases in that town had increased and they shut down all the hotels. They had to travel to a different state in order to find a place to stay. 

My parents loved it. They thought it was truly wonderful to have the government track their movements, they felt so safe, they can't understand why Americans would object to being monitored in this way. And I said, really? You really can't understand it? No, they said, it's ridiculous that anyone would object to being tracked by the government at all times. Especially during a health crisis. 

I need to go back and reread Carl Schmitt, but I'm pretty sure we're so deep into the state of exception we can't even recognize it anymore. And I am just so, so, so tired. I want to move into a house in the middle of the woods with no internet or phone and never talk to anyone ever again. Goodbye, cruel covid world.