Kalsarikannit in Magical Realism

(Kalsarikannit - Finnish for underweardrunk, or “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear.”)

Before my last (non-entry) entry, I last wrote on February 11th, 2020. It’s funny I kind of skip over COVID entirely in that long ago entry, even though it was something I was very much aware of at the time. 2020 was the first January in 5 years I hadn’t spent most of the month in China, for obvious reasons. One year I even spent some time in the now infamous Wuhan which in my experience was a beautiful and fun place, filled with lovely and warm people. It was tough to see this place suffer, even from afar.

I wrote about Ireland and Slovenia and all the ridiculousness trying to get back home but didn’t really talk about…why I left? The COVID part now is obvious, even through most of the restrictions in most countries didn’t hit until a month after - maybe mid-March 2020? Maybe I thought I was making too much of it. I started worrying before I had to I guess. I was starting to freak out in groups of people at the event and thinking about cutting the trip short when the final straw was finding out that a “friend” I was traveling with (and let stay in my rental house!) had been carrying drugs which was kind of the last straw.

When they mentioned this to me, nonchalantly in passing, I completely lost it. They had no idea why I was upset. Yes, just because recreational cannabis is legal in the US, that does not mean you can bring it on airplanes or into former soviet bloc countries where it is NOT LEGAL. Obviously poor Brittney Griner’s situation is more complex than that but just once recent example of why that is NOT A GOOD IDEA. Also, did you never see Brokedown Palace? (Friend -1, Enemy +1)

Completely separate to that but adding to general life chaos, heading into 2020 I realized I had been at my job for over a decade. And while I liked it a lot, was well paid and had awesome flexibility, I worried that I had gotten stagnant mentally and professionally so decided to do some networking to see what was out there at least. I ended up accepting a job that was a big step up in title and compensation, plus had super sweet offices overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. I was slated to start in April 2020 and figured I’d take a month or two between jobs to travel, etc. Instead with all the uncertainty of early lockdowns, etc. I was left wondering if it even made sense to resign a job I loved for something completely unknown. But I ended up making the leap of faith, which I still think was the right choice even in retrospect. However I saw no point to taking a long garden leave between jobs if I couldn’t go anywhere so I finished one job on a Friday and started the next Monday.

2020 March through late June in NYC was bad. I was working from home and basically scared to leave the house. Judge if you want, we didn’t know what was going on at the time, if this was in the air or what. I was worried for A because he was working for a hospital that was still requiring him to go into the office once or twice a week, and to cover for colleagues who had moved out of the city or had pre-existing conditions. He took citibikes instead of the subway, but I worried about that too. Most of my friends and family were out of NYC but too many were doing stupid stuff which also didn’t help.

Trips to the grocery were like a battleground, people acting crazy on the street, passing morgue trucks full of dead bodies, barely anyone on the sidewalks. A’s job provided masks for him and I had one cloth mask (mostly for smog) from trips to China and everything was closed. There were constantly helicopters overhead and I was happy to be healthy and employed but sick and sad in my soul. Sometimes we would take a walk and A’s greatest joy was jaywalking the West Side Highway, which is just…not a thing that should happen.

We ate so much delivery food (including delivery cocktails which were a big thing at the time) and my lifestyle was extremely unhealthy. Not my usual unhealthy lifestyle of traveling and partying and balancing out with working out a lot, literally sitting on my butt at a computer for 14 hours a day and not doing anything else. I also felt awful and often unable to control my rage at what was going on in the world. I watched China and Italy and NYC suffer, and so many other places refuse to do the necessary to stop the pandemic from spreading.

Things started to feel a bit better in the summer 2020 as New Yorkers at least were being sensible and it seemed low risk to do outdoor things at least, but A was still working in the hospital and while I started to be less worried about us getting sick I was still living in fear of giving it to someone somehow. I think in late June/early July things opened for boat charters, and since I couldn’t go anywhere, we started doing swims of the Manhattan loop. I didn’t leave the house otherwise, but we’d jump on a boat and swim 28 miles (45 km) on the regular for fun. Other than that I was working from 7 or 8am until 8 or later every day, often including weekends. It was better than winter/spring but I had nothing in my life outside work and the Manhattan swims or zoom calls/podcasts about swimming that suddenly became a thing, which was another point of stress in terms of another thing to fit into the day and worrying about what to say because I am a terrible public speaker and only slightly less awful interviewee.

In August I had some successes at work which gave me some breathing room to think about even using PTO after working around the clock for months. In the footsteps of my friend and mentor Julie Ridge, I made a goal to swim the Manhattan loop each day for a week and did it, 7 swims in 7 days which had never been done. This was actually pretty good for me bad habits-wise because I had to be so regimented about everything I did. Each morning I’d wake up, check email, put my out of office on, pack up, eat breakfast, get on the boat, swim, get out, clean myself and the gear, go home, eat dinner in the bathtub, check email, go to sleep, then do it all over again. I took 2 ibuprofen each day but did not drink alcohol as I needed to recover as well as possible.

The back to back swims gave me the guts to take a weekend off in September and plan/execute/swim something I had always wanted to do - the unprecedented quadruple loop of Manhattan. 114 miles/ 183 km in 45 hours, 24 minutes. It was beautiful, and challenging, but it felt so meaningful to me to circumnavigate my beloved island and feel strong again after feeling weak and powerless for so long. On completion of the first lap, I broke the record for the most solo circumnavigation swims of Manhattan, which was also a long term goal.

In the darkest hours of the night on the last loop around, I learned that RBG had passed away, on the eve of Rosh Hashana. I cried in my goggles, but sucked it up to get around the island one last time. There were so many amazing moments, being cheered on by construction workers repairing a bridge, the NYC ferry captains shouting us out over the radio, and so many random New Yorkers who took a moment out of their day to stare or even clap for the weird white blur in the water.

I finished about an hour before sunrise, pulled myself up the ladder of the boat, hypothermic, and got dried/dressed as soon as I could. A kissed my chilly, waterlogged body part of a mouth and I soaked up his human warmth. We had done it! Got onto land, vomited in a bag, then carted our gear home and up the stairs where I fell asleep fully dressed wearing a dryrobe on the bed with my eyes open. A took a (creepy) photo, because I am obviously a GODDESS OF SEXINESS. One day I will write about this in detail, it was actually extremely meaningful but right now I’m too dead inside to wax poetic.

Fall 2020 and winter 2021 were more of the same. I did a few more loops after the Quadruple. I guess the holidays and everything passed but it’s all a blur. A got vaccinated relatively early in January 2021 as he was still working at the hospital and I had my first dose in early March 2021. Second shot 28th March 2021 at the Javits Center. I felt so relieved I cried silently in the row of chairs while waiting my 15 minutes after the shot. I cried a lot that year. I haven’t stopped.

After being vaccinated, I thought normal life might return. Spoiler alert - it did not, but that is a good stopping spot for now as any.

Last updated April 20, 2022