mixed emotions

The days go by with mixed emotions. Being grateful to be in good health, grateful for being in Mexico under the sun, grateful to be together as a family, grateful that we are now two to take care of the cooking and cleaning. The nights are quite warm, so the sleeping gets tricky at times but my husband is the one who takes care of our son during the night, so I get to sleep for 7 hours mostly. After 6 months of very poor sleep, I feel so fortunate. Fortunate and grateful.  And then there's the sun. It feels surreal to wake up to sunshine day in and day out. These are really good reasons to feel grateful and I am. I truly am. But there is this worry hiding under all this gratitude. When and how will this end? Will we keep on staying in good health or will something happen to us? We stayed home for a month going nowhere. Barely doing groceries. Just to the local store to buy veggies and fruits. Then we felt we needed to get out a bit to see the surroundings and do some proper groceries. So that's what we did, we went out.

We felt guilty and weird visiting places. Going to the groceries is necessary but visiting places with beautiful flower arrangements, is not.

We almost felt like criminals but we did bump in to other criminals from time to time, so it softened the guilt a bit.
It felt so sad to see these streets empty of people. Queretaro used to be a crowded place no matter were you went. If you went to a park on a Sunday, there would be no more space for you to sit down. Queretaro used to be a place were nobody would respect your private space. Queretaro's highways used to be full of crappy old cars and trucks driven by insanely poor drivers. That's not the case anymore. 
There's plenty of space on the highways and plenty of space on the benches in the parks.

  When you go to the groceries you are told to only be one family member, to wear a mask and keep a 2 meter distance to anybody. That they tell you while they quickly clean your cart with alcohol. They do say welcome and they do still wish you a good afternoon or evening or what ever time you happen to be there. People are still smiling and being friendly, the ones you do happen to see if you bother to look up from your own anxiety. It's impossible not to feel anxious when you do the groceries. You want to do it as fast as humanly possible. 
I can't help to feel that even if it's 33°c and the sun is shining that there's some kind of a dark cloud hanging over us. This cloud makes us more irritable, scared, selfish, worried, anxious, emotional, drained, tired. It's hard not to have mixed emotions through this pandemic.

nibling

Some weeks ago we were driving in the car. I started hearing nice voices speaking in a language I thought sounded beautiful. I told my husband to turn the volume up on the radio, asking him if it was English they were speaking.  My husband looked at me in a confused way, kind of like I was crazy and told me it wasn't coming from the radio but from my phone that I had in my hand. I started laughing and looked down on my phone. I saw a very familiar image of two men, one pretending to shave the other one with no beard. My phone had started playing my favorite podcast...

(YLE's Ted & Kaj podcast)

Apparently it wasn't only me tired of all the Mexican Spanish but even my phone decided a relaxing break was needed. I have loyally been listening to only this podcast for several years now. I put these Swedish speaking Finns on often in the evening to forget about everything else and gently fall asleep to their calm voices and relaxing subjects. Often my phone keeps on playing the podcast, one episode after the next, all through the night. Sometimes my dreams were very much about subjects they were talking about but often the two guys started to show up in person in my dreams. Especially the tall blond guy. Perhaps because he often talks more or because I as well follow his instagram profile. In one of the dreams I was in his apartment and I asked if I could breastfeed my son in his kitchen. He answered me that he was on his way out but that I could lock up after myself. I answered him "no worries, you can trust me". That morning I decide enough was enough and I needed to start listening to other podcasts. 
Back in 2015 I loved listening to Gimlet media's Mystery Show but unfortunately only a few episodes came out and then it stopped. I decided that maybe Gimlet media had come out with some other good shows and I landed on a show called Conviction. It is a very interesting and well done show. Especially season 1. Season 2 was too much for me to handle in the evenings so I made sure to have enough hours between each episode and my night of sleep. It's scary the stuff that happens in the USA I have to say.
That was when I landed on the podcast Every Little thing, also by GIMLET. Flora Lichtman's voice is just as nice and soothing as Starlee Kine's. Te subjects of the shows are relaxing and neutral. She even managed to pull off talking about the COVID-19 in a way that didn't give me anxiety. That's pretty hard these days. My absolute favorite is the episode about flamingos, they are really powerful birds and absolutely underestimated. Like us women.
So the reason for me writing about nibling has everything to do with this show. Nibling is an upcoming gender neutral word for nieces and nephews, like sibling. There should be more gender neutral words in every language. I love them. I'm all for promoting them and I really hope this one makes it to the dictionary.  

So here we have my son in quarantine. A nibling of my sibling. Wondering just like us, where all of this is going

       

to focus on the moment

Life in quarantine continues. We spent over a week not going further than to throw out the garbage. It's a different and surreal life situation somehow and yet it's the same old same old.

Our days get really warm here. Day after day we wake up to a blue sky, sunshine and in the afternoon we normally reach +32°c. I love it. I love when things are calm and stable. Predictable and reliable. I really get a kick out of it.

The weather in either Finland or Quebec is the opposite of stable, reliable and predictable. That's why it feels like such a luxury here. You would think that weather wouldn't be a subject of conversation but just like everywhere else people complain. It's either too cold or too hot. 

And like everywhere else I don't agree with most people. 

Since my son was born, 7 months ago, I have lived in a baby bubble that pretty much has felt like a quarantine. With a newborn you constantly wash your hands because of diaper change and to avoid giving him bacteria. Because of him I have cleaned the house more often and more carefully even before this virus hell started. I had to spend 6 weeks alone with him in Montreal when my husband was working in another country. Sometimes just taking a shower was a challenge. Because of the constant breastfeeding and naps we didn't go much anywhere. This was in November and December and as we got so much snow I wasn't able to go for walks outside with the stroller so I walked around in circles in our indoor parking to get my baby to sleep. So all this, is kinda familiar to me. Yet now, things are painted a bit more colorful and beautiful.

Now we have our trio united under the same roof. There's two of us to clean, to cook and to take care of the baby. We get to wake up to a view of mountains and the city. Our mission for the day is to stay alive and safe.That's enough.

On the way to trow out the garbage we get to enjoy sunshine and beautiful flowers.

In the evening when our baby is sleeping we get to play domino and drink tequila under the stars. 

If it wasn't for the fact that we don't know how bad this is going to get, if it wasn't for the financial uncertainty and the fact that we don't know when we get to return to our other home. If it wasn't for all that, I would say I absolutely love this. We don't know what the future will bring but I'm very grateful for what I have right here, right now.