I hate to think that this is normal. I resist calling it the new normal. The masks, the social distancing, face timing/google meeting/zooming with friends, family and clients, avoiding any social event that has more than 10 people, avoiding restaurants. It isn’t normal and it isn’t the new normal. It just sucks. Two of my co-workers tested positive for Covid 19 after the first vaccine. I wonder if they took chances with their masks or social distancing due to a false sense of safety.

It rained all day. It’s dark, dreary and damp. Toby is a handful and we are tired trying to figure out his signals. Especially the poop and pee signal. Tomorrow the sun will come out and we will start again to make sense of our puppy.

Rosalie Harris, one of the most loved and respected matriarchs of St. Johnsbury always asked me this question when we ran into each other. It is likely the most important question any community, country, the world can ask about it’s viability. If the children are doing well, the people are doing well. In the case of the United States, we are failing miserably. There is a very small window of opportunity to advance social change which President Pop Pop is implementing at warp speed. He plans to make the $300 monthly child credit permanent. There is talk about national pre-K for three and four year olds and making high quality, accessible child care affordable for all families. The US military actually is a role model for this kind of child friendly policy. I am nearly done watching Orange is the New Black (sliding into the finale very, very soon) and it is a miserable revelation of how we trap poor working families in a cycle of poverty that feeds the criminal justice system that is a ravenous beast that can never be satisfied.