Best-Laid Plans

It’s kind of like a summary of this whole fucked-up year, isn’t it?

Last weekend, I went to a neighboring state for 48 hours to visit family who had been quarantining for 2 weeks. Vermont has a somewhat complicated system by which they designate counties in the northeast green, yellow, or red. Green means you can travel freely; yellow or red mean you have to quarantine upon return. The county we were visiting was green, and had been so for weeks.

You know how this will go, right? I was too nervous to enjoy time with family. I feel like a ticking bomb or loaded gun constantly. At any given second, I might be carrying something inside me that will kill people. Though we’ve been strict, though family there had been strict, though we were using separate bathrooms and distancing from each other and spending tons of time outside…I still could not get over the idea that any of us at any second might murder everyone we love, simply by existing.

Then, halfway through, I was calling up the Vermont map to show my mother the system and noticed that the county we were in had been flipped to yellow. We left the next morning. Monday morning, I started a round of calls to clarify our situation.

On a technicality, the state says we don’t need to quarantine, since we went in good faith while it was green and stayed on the property etc. But I’m nothing if not neurotic. I’m doing something like a quarantine anyway. I have been working home since March, so that was all set, and I moved around the things that I had been on schedule for in the office. Canceled all my CrossFit classes for the week (my first week of full classes, with such limited time slots that I’d had those appointments for 2 weeks), placed a huge Instacart grocery order, and checked in with the barn.

There is only one improvement on this from the previous strict quarantine: I’ll still get evening barn time to give Tristan his meds and to ride. I’ll go when no-one else is there and follow my usual (already very strict) procedures for cleaning everything.

On Sunday, I can get a test, per Vermont’s quarantine rules (to test on day 7 of return) and hopefully get results soon enough to start to put my life back together on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Since returning, I’ve been listless and frustrated. None of my usual things have gotten my brain back on track – baking, reading, walking the dog, playing dumb video games, working out. I just keep chasing my own brain around in circles and sulking and eating carbs.

I hate this. I know I’m not alone in that, but I really, really hate this.