If you are fully vaccinated and emerging from your cocoon, do you feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle?

<blink blink> <shades eyes with both hands>

Oh, yeah. Still really cautious as awful reports come in from other places.

I did some small things that prepared me for a bigger one, but it was still small compared to before times.

I’ve gotten together with friends, and then I was brave and went to hear a horse concert of instrumental music. There was no singing. It felt radical!

a horse concert ?

No intention of trumping this question with anything politically related. Not even a hint.

As I post this I’m sitting alone in my favorite coffee place, fully vaccinated, still wearing a mask and still using the sanitizer available at their counter. I’ve been meaning to do this since last year worried it will close permanently. Happy it didn’t and happy to give it some business this morning. I also can’t wait to fly somewhere, anywhere. Reading an article in the NYT about how air circulates in planes right now. No idea yet if it will dissuade me enough to delay.

@mazingerz88 I’ve been invited out to California to see my kids. Scared of flying still but I may go soon.

@janbb We could very well be two more of the millions Rip Van Winkling the skies. Funny. If I do it I’m headed to LA myself. Wouldn’t mind taking the train or bus for several days of travel but uncertain if air circulation is any better compared to a shorter plane trip.

Still wearing a mask in public. Still avoiding crowds. Still avoiding deniers.
It will take me a while to get past their actions.

We are also thinking of a trip to LA to see the kids and grandchild. Maybe in June or July when things settle down a little more – and the lawn doesn’t need to be mowed so frequently.

I’m one week after my second shot, and I had decided a month ago that today would be the beginning of not worrying about a mask with people I know are vaccinated also.

I went to zumba indoors for the first time in a year this morning! It’s the class I used to help teach every Sunday, and I helped today. It was incredibly normal. People talking before class, and seeing friendly faces. I brought my spray bottle of alcohol, and after touching someone else’s phone and then my phone I sprayed my hands and phone, but otherwise everything was normal. One person wore a mask the whole time. In the back of my head I do think it’s higher risk in a room full of people breathing heavily, but I have chosen to ignore those thoughts. I was completely in the moment and enjoyed myself.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to go see a band play (outside) and meet some friends and dance. I have been to see bands with my husband over the past year, distanced from the crowds and we had masks on, and not inviting anyone else to meet us. If I go it will be another first since last March.

Next weekend will be the real test and makes me a little nervous. It will be the first time eating at a restaurant in over a year. I don’t think I’ll be completely comfortable.

I have been wearing masks in public and avoiding crowds, and trying to stay away from strangers in stores and restaurants. I have been going shopping since the pandemic started. Less often than previously, but still. Once restaurants opened here in NY, last May or June, I was going with my daughter and her friends, eating outside mostly, until the cold weather came. I was off of work from mid-March 2020 to early June, but then started going in several mornings per week. Last summer we took two long-weekend trips – one to Newport and one to Cape Cod.

For me, I haven’t really been in too much of a cocoon.

I really would like to go on a big vacation but I would still like to avoid planes, so will wait to see how other states do with their Covid numbers and then plan some bigger driving trips for this summer.

Right now I have no urge to go to a movie theater but maybe in 2022 we’ll start going to movie theaters and Broadway shows again. When I can sit in a crowded theater and take the train down to the city (NYC) to see shows, it will feel odd, for sure.

@jca2 I also want to start going to live theatre again. Just yesterday I was looking at the schedule here. It’s only 20% capacity and masks requested, so I think I’ll feel fine, although I’m betting they raise the capacity soon.

Sorry for another post. I didn’t answer if I feel like Rip Van Winkle. My answer is yes! I haven’t been completely cocooned, but very close to cocooned when it comes to my previous daily activities.

I got vaccinated two weeks ago, but in the past few months I got adjusted to normal life by going to Starbucks and working on art commissions in the outside patio. It really helped my anxiety by being around people. Socially distanced of course. And double masked

I don’t feel like I’m emerging.

I was forced to be out a lot, though, during the worst of it last year. Every week, my husband’s medical needs took us into numerous doctors’ offices, clinics, and other places where we were, or I was, most likely to run into sick people. We hated the constant risks, but what choice was there other than to leave him untreated?

I spent a lot of time waiting at pharmacies, too, as well as doing the grocery shopping. And then there were the days of vigil in a crowded covid-ridden hospital. I’m actually amazed that I haven’t been sick at all, at least not in body.

But my time of withdrawal isn’t over yet. There’s a kind of relief in it. And like a lot of others, I’m wary of resuming what used to be a normal life. Just over a year ago, I said to my sons—just as I said to them on 9/11/2001, when they were both in their teens—”Remember it wasn’t always like this. Remember how it was before. Because that normal isn’t coming back.”

I am fully vaccinated but plan to stay in my cocoon until around June-ish. Even then, I won’t be attending concerts or eating at buffets or anything involving a closed spaced and/or oodles of people.

Maybe see some family and friends.

I don’t quite feel safe yet and am not a huge fan of people in general — so it works out.

Sorry. That should have said house concert.

@Hawaii_Jake, I sure was wondering. Some pretty peculiar pictures went through my mind. Finally I decided it was some kind of hip expression that I just didn’t know.

I am fully vaccinated but life hasn’t changed much for me during Covid. I work by myself at customer’s houses, and don’t come in contact with too many people.

I get my second jab on Saturday but I’m going to continue avoiding busy indoor spaces for another month or two. How much I relax my guard will depend on the number of Covid cases locally and how effective the vaccine is especially against the new variants of virus. It does feel that the worst is over however.

Here’s a useful article about the vaccine’s efficacy against the variants:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/well/live/covid-variants-vaccine.html

Horse concert.

^brilliant

(Sorry, Jan, thread drift.)

^^S’okay.

I went to a coffee shop with an old friend today, first time I’ve done anything like that in over a year! Felt almost normal. :-)

^^ Yay you!

We are hosting our first party of any kind in well over a year. While we have had onesies and twosomes over for dinner occasionally, this is an annual poker party with up to 8 couples and three single ladies. We met some of these people at a poker party hosted by another member of the group. The biggest change I noticed from earlier parties was the reluctance of people to hug!

@Jeruba I sure hope the old normal will come back. I think it will. After all, there have been just 5,800 positives out of over 60 million vaccinated people. Those odds are similar to getting struck by lightning.