Finding the way, slowly

I took lots of pictures on vacation, but I didn’t want to post them right away because it’s not a good idea to put info online showing you’re away from home on vacation. (Though in our case there was someone in the house quite a bit, doing work on making our bathroom handicap-friendly.) I thought I’d start posting them once I got home, but apparently we brought more home than photos, dirty laundry, and good memories. We also brought COVID home with us.

My husband got symptoms first, then my younger son, and they both tested positive. I took a little longer but by the time I got my test results I’d have been very surprised if I hadn’t tested positive. (So far our older son seems to have have made it through uninfected.) I can work from home (when I have the energy, which is at least part of the day every day), and I have a trial Walmart+ membership so I can get my groceries delivered. And I’m sure I can find some books to read from the hundreds in our house, even if I’d rather be able to get to the library.

Most of the pictures I took on vacation were at the Butterfly Palace, and a lot of them were videos so I could later extract frames with the best views of butterflies flitting around. But I haven’t had the energy yet to figure out how to do that, especially as it involves first getting some large video files from my phone to my computer. (I know there are ways to do it, but the method I use with still photos will not work due to file size, and I just don’t feel like figuring out new processes right now.)

Along with seeing all the butterflies though, and then the reptiles and amphibians in their Living Rainforest Science Center, we also went through the Emerald Forest Mirror Maze. I hadn’t been in a Mirror Maze before, that I can remember (I’m guessing it’s the work of Mirror Mazes International based on the look of it, but I don’t know for sure), and it was quite impressive. I wondered briefly what would happen if we couldn’t find our way out or if someone had a medical emergency while in there (if it is from Mirror Mazes International then they have safeguards in place), but after a while we did catch a glimpse of the exit – though only a reflected image of it of course. Then after several more twists and turns we actually got to the exit.

I’m rather curious how far we actually walked in the maze and in what sort of pattern. Did we go in circles? Did we repeatedly walk past the correct turn? In any case, it strikes me that dealing with COVID, even a fairly mild case, feels a bit like being in that maze. I can see people and places using my computer screen, but I can’t go much of anywhere. Any progress is in very short, hesitant steps. I can anticipate being off quarantine sometime next week, but right now that feels as close as an exit glimpsed in a mirror reflected in another mirror reflected in . . . who knows how many mirrors. And at the moment I’m too tired to want to try to get there any faster anyway.