I am in vaccine limbo, halfway between the two shots. I can’t do anything different yet. I can plan for the future, but that isn’t working out too well. It just makes me antsy. The only thing I have managed to schedule is a date with my hairdresser 9 days after the second shot. It will include a pedicure for the first time in over a year. I’ve had two professional haircuts in the last year and three I gave myself, more or less successfully, but I’m really shaggy again, waiting out the last days of hibernation.

We’ve been blessed with very cold weather and lots of snow in this limbo month, additional incentive to stay inside and just wait it out. We even have several resident snow shovelers who are happy to make themselves useful. They are in their own limbos, awaiting renewals of work permits and thus mostly unemployed for now.

A year ago the asylum seekers emerged from much worse confinement, a detention center near the border with Mexico. To this day they refuse to eat pancakes, cold cereal, and canned fruit and vegetables because these things stir memories of prison food. I think they are still making up for the inadequate protein and general undernourishment of the previous year by consuming lavish amounts of chicken, prepared with abundant garlic, ginger, and vegetables, and heaped over platefuls of rice, potatoes, or cornmeal porridge. Other than juicing up their favorite beverage—apple cider laced with beets, celery, lemon and ginger—I’m happy to let them feed themselves. Our three have little taste for junk food and sweets except the huge Costco muffins and cheap Oreo knockoffs. Apples are the favorite snack. They’ve been healthy.

Food is comfort in limbo. I have tried to be careful but I’m slowly gaining weight. Perhaps the pounds will melt off with the snow. It’s been too cold for regular daily walks. Maybe today. It’s nearly 20 degrees and the sun is shining.

My husband is spending the vaccine limbo month dealing with shingles. He had been vaccinated properly for that but still got it. Maybe it’s a mild case but he’s taking ibuprofen round the clock for pain and it’s been two weeks. He’s started getting some distance energy healing from our daughter. Today he was able to space out the meds a bit. In spite of his discomfort he’s been more productive than I’ve been. He’s co-written a major report with the group opposing an industrial landgrab in the area and helped our housemates file income taxes.

Long phone calls, Zooms, and FaceTimes with the family help, even—especially—when the grandkids are making chaos.

I’m taking it a day at a time, an hour at a time—not counting, or counting on, anything. I’m sitting in my sunny dining room, enjoying the roses I bought myself for Valentine’s Day on my last cart-heaping dash through Costco.

How are you?