it’s been a long time since I wrote in this blog. i’m still drinking NA beer and trying out new ones all the time but i guess my fascination with writing reviews about each one has dwindled. (i’ll try to get back to that this year.)

nothing remarkable has been going on with my health, which is of course good news. i meant to write a one-year craniversary post in october but never did. (i posted on facebook about it instead.)

i did start writing a hurricane ida post with a play-by-play from my vantage point inside my house but never finished it, so it sits in my drafts. i think i will keep it there as more of a journal entry for myself. it was quite an experience and the ensuing few months with a partially collapsed shed in my backyard that i looked at every day took a toll on my mental health, but i seem to have made it through. it took a while but i did get a brand new shed and things got back to normal more or less and life just went on and i didn’t write about any of it here on this blog.

and now it’s new year’s day 2022. i first started writing this post on december 17th but didn’t finish it then. it was a week where i began the first two of many holiday cat sits while still having my full dog walking schedule. the following week i started an 8-day overnight dog sit, hopefully the last one of those i’ll ever do. (i will continue dog walking and cat sitting and doing any other petsitting which does not require me to spend the night.) there were a few more cat sits sprinkled in there. work was very hectic for those few weeks, but it was great for my bank account and now i can start to pay down the credit card i filled up with all the vet bills for sticker and stencil’s various ailments of the past several months. (they are both doing better now, thank goodness.)

if you know me then you know i don’t really love christmas. it’s not that i hate it but i think the combo of having a job that is peak busy during the holidays and being single/living alone makes it challenging. in the past i have enjoyed decorating for the holidays but for the 11 years i have lived in this tiny one bedroom rear apartment that doesn’t face the street and has no interior doors or way to keep a christmas tree away from naughty cats, i have not decorated. no one ever comes to my house so no one but me would see it, and during the holiday time i’m hardly in my house because of work so it seems a waste of time, energy and money. i enjoy other people’s decorations though. and i try to get my little rituals in – christmas eve for a few hours with one group of friends, and christmas day for a few hours with another – but aside from that, it’s just a whirlwind of a month of working where i try my best to not get sick.

sadly, i was not successful with that this year. i got really run down from my work schedule (late nights, early mornings, bad sleep, poor eating) and it remains to be seen yet (still waiting on the results of a PCR test) whether it’s omicron (covid) or not. i have symptoms that come and go but for the past week i’ve had severe fatigue, off and on runny nose, a cough and occasionally a scratchy throat, and i experience what feels like hot flashes but they don’t register as a fever with my digital forehead thermometer. oh, and i had a serious headache for a few days, which was actually the most alarming of symptoms because i just don’t get headaches… except when something is really wrong. (like when i had meningitis and discovered my brain tumors!) so i’ve taken two rapid tests, a few days apart, which both came back negative, and i went for a PCR on Thursday hoping to get the results back in time to partake in new year’s eve festivities. the results have still not come in and my symptoms have been so inconsistent it’s been hard to tell if i actually have something or am just worn out from working too much. i did end up going over to some friends’ house last night for a couple of hours but i kept my mask on even though we were outside and there was a strong breeze, and i kept my distance from everyone. i took a rapid test right before i went (negative) and felt fine when i went there but my energy waned pretty quickly and i came home around 11pm. i was in bed before midnight.

and here we are, january 1st, 2022. happy fucking new year. i want to be optimistic about what’s in store this year for all of us but it’s hard to do with omicron raging through new orleans and the country/world at the moment. but hey, mardi gras is on this year! which means we have a six day lull between the end of the christmas/new year’s holiday and the beginning of the carnival season which begins on thursday, 12th night (epiphany). bring on the king cake! the joan of arc parade is on and i guess we’re gonna go and just keep our masks on the whole time and try hard not to be in a thick crowd. not sure how mardi gras is gonna go but i think a lot of us are hoping omicron will have peaked and maybe passed for the most part by the height of carnival parade madness. more concerning is the pussyfooters’ blush ball, which i have a vip ticket for, which is on january 28th. crossing fingers!

i guess that’s enough of a longwinded post for now, to get me caught up. i’ll make a separate post about what has been percolating in my mind creatively and what i’m otherwise working on for 2022. go eat your black eyed peas and cabbage y’all!