Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling warm with a throat that felt tight/scratchy, and at church on Sunday, I had also had a feverish feeling moment. So yesterday, I reached for the thermometer that used to be part of our campus entrance table. My temp is normal, so I'm guessing the sweatiness is from December days with high temps above normal, in the high 80's. Plus, our AC in the condo we're renting isn't working correctly. My scratchy throat is likely from remodeling dust or paint fumes, since I have it at work where the remodeling is happening and not this morning at home.
Yesterday the AC repair person came and found a pinhole leak; he'll return on Wednesday to fix it. I wish I could say that I'm reveling in being a renter at this moment, but since I'm both a renter and a home owner, I'm not feeling the reveling just yet. Hopefully we will close on the house before Jan. 5.
This past year, even more than 2020, has been so topsy-turvy, so full of pivots. My campus will close when the lease runs out, but maybe, instead, programs will move to the campus, construction will happen, and the future will be unclear for different reasons. The real estate market is red hot, probably hotter than it will ever be again, we've gotten more contracts on the house than we thought possible, but getting to the closing proves more difficult than we thought, because a red hot market driven by investors is very different than the real estate markets of our parents. We move to a condo that looks like the height of luxury only to discover that the roof top pool is closed for repairs--and it still is.
Some elements of 2021 have proceeded as I envisioned, namely my seminary journey. Let me also list a few more. I decided that a 2 bedroom rental made sense, keeping a guest room in case we needed to quarantine in case a new variant proved to be able to work around vaccine defenses. So far, our teaching lives haven't changed much in 2021--hard to predict what 2022 will bring. While I wish I could say that we've finally conquered our cravings in the most positive ways, we can only do that in short bursts at a time.
When I think about the progress of the year, however, the whiplash returns. In January of 2021, I had no idea this would be the year I would start seminary. I saw vaccines rolling out, and while I knew it wouldn't be a quick end to the pandemic, I am still stunned at the twists and turns; when I got our appointments for our first shots, I reacted like I had won a lottery prize, and in a way I had. Back in January of 2021, I knew that my school had been sold, but I would not have expected all the twists and turns of varying enrollments and approaches to the building plans. At church, we've done in person church and shifted back to distance church, then gathered in person again, and now I am wondering if it is wise to gather for Christmas Eve. In January of 2021, we talked about home improvements, but not because we planned to sell the house; the housing market had yet to gather that kind of momentum that has left so many of us thinking that it is time to sell our houses in South Florida.
So here we are at the winter solstice, the time when we add a bit more light to either side of the day. In this year of whiplash, I like any shift that enters slowly and gives us time to get used to it. The shifts of the past year may have taken a season or longer, but they have felt wrenching nonetheless. I hope that January of 2022 brings me closure on some of these projects, a gentle closure, not the slamming/wrenching kind of closure.
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