Hunkering

 Our cheese slicer is broken.  

It broke a month ago, or maybe more, I don't exactly remember.  The wire snapped, which might be repairable, but there was also a metal rotating cylinder between those two screws that broke off, and I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to figure out how to repair that.   So, for a few months now, we've been without a cheese slicer.  

It's hard for me to feel sorry for myself if one of the biggest hardships I'm facing as we head into the one-year-anniversary of Hunkering Down is that my cheese slicer is kaput.  Oh, and our wooden clothes-drying rack has a bunch of dowel-rods that have rotted out and need replacing, so that's put a damper (so to speak) on our life style.  

I honestly can't tell if the reason that I haven't fixed/replaced these things yet is because (a) the pandemic is keeping me out of stores, or (b) my teaching load fills much of my available time, or (c) I hate shopping and buying things even in Normal Times.   It's probably all three.  I'd like to have a working cheese slicer again, and I'd like to fix that drying rack for my husband (aka the Lord of Laundry), but not enough to actually get in a car (or on a bike, if the snow melts a bit more) and go to a store.  I'll use the pandemic as an excuse, but there are probably more permanent personality traits at play.

At any rate, this is all to say that I am perfectly willing to follow the advice of numerous health experts, and to continue to Hunker Down for a while longer.   A year ago -- when the incredibly fraught news of the world shutting down and colleges going remote started filling up our email inboxes --- there were all kind of speculations about how long it might last.  (My college, for example, initially proposed that students should stay home from spring break for 2 weeks before eventually we'd let them return to finish the 2020 spring semester.   Clearly, that was an underestimate.)   

In those days, public health historians predicted it would be 18 months before the vaccinations made life relatively safe again;  I've tried to Hunker (in my head) until September 2021 because of that prediction.   So far, that's been a good mindset for me.  Not for my cheese slicer, mind you, but I think we'll manage somehow anyway.