I thought something was up when I was at the grocery store on Sunday. Probably only half the folks in there were wearing a mask.

I should’ve known that was a sign of things to come. Nobody hassling them, nobody paying attention. But I sure noticed it.

People were happy to be out and about, stock up their shelves and be around actual people after those winter storms shut us all down. And now, Texas is going for not bothering to mandate masks anymore, because people are used to the restrictions and will act appropriately without a need for enforced rules? Did I hear that right?!

Uh, that doesn’t work where I’m at. This is the most cover-your-ass-while-being-vague announcement I’ve ever seen. Next week will be a nightmare. And I’ll be up half the night following this story.

I will still mask up, and I don’t care what I look like. But I’m also gonna definitely go out a lot less after this. From day one I heard constant bitching about being forced to mask up (part of the reason I quit my damned job), and now he thinks all the people are just gonna keep wearing them without being made to?

As the great philosopher Col. Blake once said, “everybody who believes that, stand on your head.”

I will continue to mask up because I have a neighbor who has to work in the hospital and is very likely to get exposed and expose her family. They already had to quarantine before the storm hit. I don’t think the numbers have gone down enough to justify this move, though I have missed a lot of news lately.

I will keep wearing a mask also because as far as I know, I’m not recommended to get the vaccine yet. And with allergy season right around the corner, yeah, I’m gonna feel a bit better with that thing on my face while the sneezing starts, anyway.

I also will because I had to watch my own dad struggle for breath for a few precious minutes one morning, and it was scarier than any horror movie scene. Not from COVID-19, but from a restricted airway and weak lungs due to cancer and pneumonia. But when survivors of COVID-19 exposure and treatment recall that struggle to breathe, it sounds remarkably like what I witnessed. It was so frightening I was moments away from calling an ambulance against his wishes before we got his nebulizer working and the meds started to take effect and open up his airway.

I wouldn’t want to put myself in the position of accidentally transmitting a breath-smothering virus like this to someone else and letting their family see what I saw in those minutes.

My dad came back from that one incident, but was gone in a month as the struggle became more frequent.

Over half a million haven’t come back from COVID-19 in the states. And I don’t know a single vaccinated person in my own circle.

There’s a flutter in my chest that’s telling me I have more than a slight twinge of anxiety about this, and I figured I’d be numb to my state’s dickheaded posturing and decisions.

Maybe this is more motivation to get on the exercise train in a frenzy. I’m a fat woman and my heart can’t take this stupidity much longer.