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“We’ll go hang out somewhere, indoors, where there’s food. It’ll be great!”

And here I am, desperate for socialization yet diabetic as hell and guess what, COVID still exists and will still definitely do its best to kill me like it’s killing hundreds every week still yes even now despite what the official organizations are pointedly not telling you, and since keeping a mask on while watching other people eat and stressing constantly about whether my mask’s seal is good enough isn’t one of my favorite pasttimes, I’ll have to pass on that invite, which sucks because I don’t get invited to things hardly ever to begin with and turning down invitations is a great way to make invitations even less frequent.

Sigh.

But that doesn’t make it fun.

Monday afternoon I got the second of the two parts of the “Shingrix” vaccine, a shingles preventative. The first round was a couple months ago during my semi-annual doctor check-up, and that knocked me on my ass for two solid days. This time? Only one solid day of aches all over and a head stuffed full of wool. That’s an improvement, right?

I also got my latest COVID jab and the flu jab a couple weeks ago. Am I getting used to needles? (No. Not really. I’m just less of a wimp about it now.)

All in a good cause, mind you. I don’t want the real thing, flu or Coronavirus or shingles or any of it. So, this is me, once again trying to stay out ahead of any of that garbage.

It’s a minor victory, but I’ll take it: This is the first autumn in at least three years when my shoulders have been in good enough shape to even consider trying to put on a hoodie. Previously, one or the other of my shoulders has been in “frozen shoulder” mode, preventing pain-free raising and turning of my arms to do any kind of constricted over-the-head clothing. (T-shirts are loose enough that I could carefully, gingerly get them on & off once I figured out “the trick” to doing so.)

Rockin’ my KGON hoodie on a brisk October afternoon? You bet I am.

(And I’ve lost enough weight that I look better doing so than I have in well over a decade, even.)