For the past 27 months known lovingly as the year 2020, between the toilet paper shortage, showering with hand sanitizer, and being glad that the masks we wear cover up the acne that said mask caused everyone is at their wits end with this bullshit. I will not give any opinion on what I think of Covid-19 or any stance on it, blah blah blah. The only perspective on this pandemic that I can offer is the personal ways that this has turned my life into the epitome of “what in the hell is happening.”
I will begin with the moment I was running around the house getting everything ready to settle in for the Big Twelve Tournament (NCAA college basketball). Selection Sunday was coming up for March Madness to kick-off in a few days and I was living large. This was going to be my Kansas Jayhawks year, I just knew it. Then quickly my TV starts informing me things are just shutting down something called Covid is sweeping the world, China has finally done it they have cancelled all basketball and I consider that to be a personal attack on my well-being. Then I get the call from work that we all have to quarantine in our homes for 2 weeks until everyone figures out what is going on. First, was not upset at all to take 2 weeks off of work right before leaving on deployment. Second, all sports were just gone, what were we all supposed to do? Fast forward a few weeks everything is closed, thank God Tiger King saved us all. Netflix really came through in our time of need. But the show must go on, its deployment time! Well then, this fuckery really got out of control. A group of us have said goodbye to our families and they are not allowed to wait to see us off. We get our luggage loaded and we wait. Best part of the military, HURRY HURRY HURRY……. now please sit and wait for hours until something actually happens. After about 5 hours we get the announcement. Please call your families to come pick you back up and you all need to go get tested for Covid. Uh what? So long story short, after getting tested twice we finally say goodbye to our families for real and the plane takes off and we head out on our deployment adventure.
***First enjoy a photo captured of me accepting my role as the house troll after one week stuck in the house. My robe became apart of me and I accepted it willingly***
Not sure if you have to have so many blog posts, a certain number of followers, or what the stipulations are to call yourself a blogger. I feel like at this point in my third post, calling myself a blogger ranks right up with my declaring my professional singing career. But until I finally decided I’m going to do this for real I had one follower. My best friend Jamie has always been my devoted reader of the rantings and writings that I would spit out and then email to her. Luckily her and I think that we are both hilarious. My writings were always well received, I believe I reached the level of being on the bestsellers list in Jamie’s email inbox. So now that I am blessing the rest of the world, I thought to start this site off that I would spit out a few posts to get it rolling and from here on out I will do a post a week. But for a little throw back of how Covid affected a deployable squadron I am going to post the email I sent Jamie from my first week of being deployed. Little background not only did we have to quarantine before we left, but then when we arrived, we had 2 more weeks of having to be sequestered to our barracks room. The struggle was real ya’ll. Hope you enjoy a little peek into our low point in the life of this pandemic.
Dear Jamie,
Half through day 4 as I sit here on my bed, waiting for my lunch to be delivered with Netflix droning on as background noise I wonder…. How the fuck do we survive ten more days of this. Trying to get myself on a schedule is near impossible. Reaching for another beer to drown the day away is all too simple. We can walk around the parking lot for exercise but today the clouds decided to end their quarantine and release the rain down on us. I want to lay here and read, but the moment I start scanning the pages I feel my eye lids start to heavy and napping will only further throw off any chance of being set on a schedule once we’re released. Face-timing with family helps but honestly there isn’t anything on my end to talk about. So, I listen to them and make funny faces at my nieces and nephews, but as with anything the calls come to an end and I’m back to sitting in silence. Day 8 and still 6 more to go. The rain has kept up for the most part, so I haven’t been keeping up with my laps around the parking lot. But instead I laid in bed all of day 7 nursing a whiskey hang over from hell. Trying to come up with things to do usually becomes scrolling though Netflix for an eternity trying to decide what to watch next or watching Tik Tok videos until your brain is completely numb. We’ve now become our own society where every item owned holds a monetary value of trade. In the past 8 days I have traded shots of whiskey for coffee K cups, packs of ramen noodles for beer, and ibuprofen’s for bottles of water. We are living in a moment where cash means nothing and if you’re the person with a hook up that can get goods from the store you win, you rule the barracks. In order to survive everyone has to play their part in contributing to the day, so if you still have cigarettes left then you better be sharing with everyone because when the time comes that you run out, you’ll be taken care of by those you shared with. No longer is anything mine or yours, its ours and good thing is everyone is on board with that frame of mind. All any of us want is to get to work and start into an actual routine, be able to work out not doing laps like our names are Karen in a JLo sweat suit at the mall. We need some sort of normalcy that has been missing from everyone’s lives for months now, but especially in our not normal deployment lives we need the structure back. We need something to wake up for and to be able to go to the store and buy essentials for ourselves. Not working out “drug deals” to get cigarettes and beer (oh and of course food) dropped off at the corner of the building like we’re running the black market.
Searching for Sanity,
Mallory
Meander With Mal 