one down, one to go!

i was so excited yesterday to get my first shot of the pfizer vaccine. actually, i was excited already a couple of weeks ago, when i got the invitation and made my appointment. i stood before my closet, wondering what to wear. i landed on my favorite mid-length navy blue cotton dress from cos. it has roomy black pockets and i've traveled many a mile in it. it's my favorite dress to wear when i fly because it's comfortable and it means that i don't have to take off belt and such at security. not that i expected there to be security at the vaccination station. it just felt appropriate to wear my favorite traveling dress to get vaccinated since being vaccinated represents being able to travel again. i wore it with a favorite infinity scarf and i made sure i took my fancy sequined mask with me, as it felt like a festive occasion. 

when i arrived at the vaccination station - it was in an unoccupied office complex on the edge of vejle - the parking lot was full and i wondered if i would even find a spot. everyone getting out of their cars was in my age range (so lots of grey hair). that makes sense because we are invited by age in denmark. people were silently going in and no one was speaking to one another. i had my health card scanned and got in the line. weirdly, the people who had just had their jab and had to go sit in the waiting area came back through the line, walking a bit too close, if you ask me. i felt like they should have gone back on the adjacent roped off aisle, but they just brushed past all of us who were waiting in line.

no one was speaking and no one looked happy. i was feeling really happy and excited, but no one else seemed to be. there was a long corridor of rooms with numbers on them and people were going in for a minute or so and coming out and then the brusk little grey-haired ladies administering the vaccinations would call out for the next one, like we were small, dull children who didn't understand how it worked. i don't think they are nurses, but i'm not sure. it just seems like so many people are needed for this job that there can't possibly be that many nurses in denmark. i suppose they're all kinds of healthcare adjacent people who have been trained to administer the shots. 

mine was a bit cross and when i said that i had to have a photo while she took it, she was quite sour about it, saying it wasn't technically allowed. i said that i didn't intend to have her in the shot anyway, aside from her gloved hands. and that the moment was too big for me not to photograph it. if she'd tried to stop me, i would have pitched a fit then and there and i think she knew it, so she didn't. 

then, i went out into the big waiting room, where you're supposed to sit for 15 minutes. as usual, no one was speaking and no one looked happy or elated or smiling, though that's a bit hard to tell when everyone is masked. we were socially distanced and no one said a word. i set my timer for 15 minutes and then left when it was over. i had one brief minute during the wait, where i felt a little bit dizzy, but i suspect it was due to my excitement, than an actual reaction to the vaccine.

i've read so many posts on instagram and online in general about how happy and moved people have been getting the vaccine after this long, tough haul of a year, but i saw absolutely no evidence of that. the danes are apparently a stoic, emotionless people. i think i'll never truly understand them. 

and when i got outside? the parking lot was empty save for my car and like two others, which kind of felt weird. 

i went to starbucks and got a latte to celebrate and then i went back home to work. 

i woke up in the night with a low grade fever, so i stayed at home to work today as well. our receptionist at work takes our temperature when we arrive in the morning and i thought maybe my slightly-elevated temp would make her turn me away, so i played it safe. i felt otherwise fine, though late afternoon, my neck on the lefthand side, which is the arm i got the shot in, started to ache and i felt generally lethargic and achy all over. good to know my body is busy building immunity.

i can't wait for the second shot in mid-july.

 

a monday kind of a day

i love this picture. it looks like a creature of some kind. he's got green moss hair on his head and a large eye and some kind of a trunk-like appendage, along with that arm-like branch sticking up. i love the wrinkles under his chin. i don't really know what i'm going to do with him, but he speaks to me somehow. there's some glimmer of something there. it's one of those moments of intuitive inspiration. i don't know what's going to happen with it, but i'm sure that something will. and no, i'm not going off about inspiration again.

* * *

i made sabin and karoline turn the channel to house at 6 p.m., just like i do nearly every weekday. you see, i need my fix of house. he's so deliciously mean. sabin had my laptop in her lap and announced, "i'll just go to you tube and type hannah montana and watch it there." when did the child learn about you tube? i think i've got to keep a better eye on her.

* * *

this morning, we braved THIS traffic (thank goodness i normally fly to my job) to go in and get husband some vaccinations at the only place we knew for sure would have a yellow fever jab available at 9 a.m. on a monday. mom asked me if i had to twitch him or ear him down for the vaccination, like we used to do with the horses, but i don't actually know if that was necessary, because i was running around frantically trying to find an ATM to get some cash to pay for the damn shots because their stupid card machine was broken. and let me tell you, there was no cash machine within a reasonable walking distance in any direction (reminder to self: do not try to find cash in the area of the royal palace, apparently they have no need for cash). finally, it dawned on me that there was an ATM on the 4th floor of my old workplace, right across the street from the doctor and so i asked a good friend who is still on the inside (if that sounds like prison, i do mean it to a little bit) to help me out with some cash. naturally, during this frantic run, i managed to find time to grab not one, but two double lattes. and by the time i got back, not only was husband vaccinated against yellow fever, but also against hepatitis B AND their stupid card machine was back up and running, so they didn't need my hard-earned cash (tho' i am very grateful for irene's help!). it was a monday kind of thing.

and then i set this guy off at the airport so he could head off to north carolina (no yellow fever there) and then onwards to brazil (possibility of yellow fever there). i'm a bit envious of brazil. south america is one of my missing continents (Oz is the other one). then i high-tailed it for home, where the feverish child had been left on her own (with big sis when we left) and where research into these called. so much for being a resourcestærke parent, leaving the child home alone sick. but it was deemed better than dragging around in the car to get carsick at the moment of leaving. i wish we'd all been headed off for brazil. i already had yellow fever. the vaccine. or was it japanese encephalitis? or maybe typhoid fever. i never remember.

in lieu of going to brazil, perhaps i'll just have to watch the movie:

hope your monday was fabulous.