#COVIDCatLady, Day 80

Been a while. I’m probably not alone in needing to take some time away from social media. I had escaped to facebook during the early days of coronavirus, to a space that was still untouched by the pandemic, and focused on sharing the simple day-to-day from Shanghai. Then the virus went global, and as much as I would have liked to continue, it was just too much to relive the emotional rollercoaster all over again, just 2 months later.

Shanghai is “normal” now, if that’s the word we’re going for. Frankly, I don’t know if Shanghai ever was normal, or if normal should ever be the goal. Who decides, anyway? We’re still masked everywhere we go, still getting our temperature checked, but the registration at entrances have eased up. There’s a long weekend coming up, and folks are actually planning on traveling domestically.

I can now go to yoga and strength training classes and I wash my hands a lot less compulsively. I have taken to reading with gloves on, so that my hand cream wouldn’t stain the pages of my books. I still carry homemade hand sanitizer with me everywhere I go, even though Clorox wipes and such have long been well in stock. There are live shows now, but only for private guest lists.

Construction projects large and small are back in full force. The police are back enforcing traffic rules rather than quarantine rules. I went clothes shopping (online) for the first time since January and bought a floral dress and a swimsuit. I’m not sure when or where I’m going to need the swimsuit. The purchase was very much aspirational.

Shanghai Disneyland is still not open. (Disneytown is.) That’s the last and most important sign of “business as usual” for me, least because I work there. I can’t wait to see kids with balloons again, although I’ve spotted several masked Queen Elsa’s and Spider-Man around town. Kids never stop being kids. I get the sense that they adjust much better than us “adults,” because what’s “normal” to a kid anyway, when grocery shopping in your Queen Elsa gown is normal?

Personally I am feeling... Sluggish. Normalcy, whatever that means, has mostly been restored, except now I go to the office a lot less. I feel like I had been on an elimination diet, and have slowly introduced my “normal” foods back into my system, one by one. Group dinners. Stand-up comedy open mics. Shopping. After a couple of months of mostly being with myself, I’m more deliberate about who I spend my time with, and I say no more often.

I’ve never had so many conversations starting with “how are you feeling?” where I know with some certainty that whoever asked the question, meant it. Rest, relationships, emotions have come to the forefront of our collective consciousness, and that can’t be a bad thing, can it?