My days have gotten busy since I’ve “recovered” from covid.

First Reader and I divide our time bouncing between digging through the remains of our home, cleaning out my mother’s storage unit (while deciding what to keep and what to donate), spending time with our dogs who are with our dog sitter, and helping take care of our current living quarters. Somewhere in all that activity, we also need to find the time to make phone calls and arrange appointments. By the weekend, we’re exhausted.

Thanks to the weather, we’ve been able to juggle most of those activities. When it’s cold and snowing out, like this weekend, we’ve been able to take a breath or three and regroup for the next round of insanity. I’ve even been able to spend some time this past week to set up my new office.

First Reader says it looks a lot like my old office, and it does. That’s because my step-daughter scored a computer desk almost exactly like the one I had on the mountain. Yay! I still have a bit of work to do to get it in shape, but it’s coming along.

We spent a day up on the mountain searching for treasures and managed to find a few things. I felt like a kid at Christmas whenever one of us found a recognizable piece of something. Especially when some of those pieces were made of paper.

Most of what we’ve recovered so far have been pieces of metal, porcelain, or ceramic. One such discovery was a porcelain sea captain, sans head. I think we even found most of the parts of the base that help him stand. I picked him up when I lived in Japan back in the day, along with a few other pieces that I managed to hang onto until now.

We have also been sorting through what is left of my mom’s things. I lost my mom five years ago, and most of her belongings went into storage when she moved near me after a series of strokes a few years prior. I knew my kids were planning to move near me at some point, so I saved the furniture my siblings and I didn’t want or need. My kids have since picked out what they wanted or needed, so the rest is ours to sort through. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but at least we won’t have to completely furnish our new place, and I will have a few mementos from my folks.

I perform all of this activity as I continue to recover from covid. I’m tired, my head hurts, my body aches from all of the physical activity we’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks, and my ears keep ringing. The tinnitus is not new, just more pronounced in the past month or so. Depression from all of the crap that’s happened over the last couple of months also looms in the background. Despite taking anti-depressants, I still have problems sleeping without additional assistance. Some nights find me spending an hour or two playing games or scrolling social media during the wee hours.

In spite of all the daytime activity, I still make time to escape from reality by playing video games. I’ve been playing with a group on the east coast for several years and have been notably absent for the last couple of months. Games are a way for me to blow off steam, and I’ve not been able to indulge much lately.

As life calms to a dull roar, we will settle into a routine based on the winter weather pattern we end up with this year. As long as we’re making progress, we’re doing well.