Happy Thanksgiving during covid-19 times

Best wishes on Thanksgiving Day. I hope it’s a day of joy for you and your loved ones.

Things are better for me than last year when I started looking for a Thanksgiving dinner late and ended up going to a grocery store deli to get fixings for my dinner. We didn’t know much then about how covid-19 is transmitted, so I was getting my groceries from pickups.

I missed not being able to go to Madrid and celebrate Thanksgiving with my daughter and her family last year like I usually do. I felt sad and didn’t want to cook for just myself.

Now, I’m going to the co-op a couple of times a week for groceries and Safeway occasionally. Since I’m vaccinated and most people are wearing masks, I’m less worried about going out.

I quickly got some items together on Tuesday to make a Thanksgiving dinner for myself this year. At the co-op, I found a duck and a pecan pie. I’ll cook the duck and have it along with my favorites; mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing.

I grew up in a farming family in Central Washington. My mom was a great cook, and I’ll be making stuffing based on her recipe. She used hamburger buns for stuffing for some reason.  They made a really moist stuffing, which is what my dad probably liked.

I’ll still sad being alone on Thanksgiving again this year, but I don’t feel as isolated because things are better in pandemic times. We have vaccines and medications to treat covid-19.

I also was going to write that things are better this year because fewer people are dying of covid-19. That’s not true. I looked it up.

The number of covid-19 deaths recorded so far in 2021 has surpassed the total for 2020.

More than 771,000 covid-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic. About 385,000 were reported in 2020, according to the CDC, and more than 386,000 have been reported this year.

So, this Thanksgiving, I’m glad to be alive.

My daughters will be coming to have a Christmas celebration in early December. That makes me happy. Things couldn’t be any better than that.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving celebration. And keeping wearing a mask, preferably an N95, when you’re inside with people not in your bubble.