The International Jump Rope Union announced yesterday that the World Championships have been rescheduled for July 2021 in Ottawa, Canada.
I should have been elated by the news that the youngest may finally get her chance to represent Australia, but I was slightly freaked out.
The idea of flying to North America in just over a year seems so implausible. We can’t even have a picnic in the park in Australia yet.
I keep (over)thinking the US will look a little like an episode of The Walking Dead next year, with only an invisible border protecting Canada from it.
There’s a chance there will be a COVID-19 vaccine by then, but it’s a very slim chance.
DD sent me an article from The New York Times earlier this week, which discusses what the pandemic means for the future of the US. It featured an interview with Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote the 1994 best seller “The Coming Plague”, which predicted the current health crisis.
“I’ve been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that’s my best-case scenario,” she said.
If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections “with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and can’t make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets and they own an island that they go to and they don’t care whether or not our streets are safe,’ then I think we could have massive political disruption.”
“Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25 percent unemployment looks like, we may also see what collective rage looks like.”
Not crazed zombies, but still scary.
I don’t fancy being anywhere near that. And, cute as Justin Trudeau might be, I’m not sure he’s going to be much help keeping us safe in Canada.
I’d much rather remain in the travel bubble that Jacinda Ardern wants to create between Australia and New Zealand.
But the youngest is … young … and she is unconcerned by such impediments as a pandemic and social unrest, she just wants to skip. She’d also like to switch her stopover from Hawaii to The Maldives … I love her blithe optimism … and lack of geographic knowledge.
In other news, DD and I have passed an important relationship milestone: putting together an IKEA bed. It was NOT FUN, but no one yelled at anyone and we hugged at the end of it before he tottered off sore and exhausted into the night. We both agreed we’re getting a bit old to make IKEA beds.
I loved him a little bit more afterwards for being so patient and calm.
As for the Canada conundrum, I’m not going to worry about it too much at this stage. I will wait for confirmation that the youngest still qualifies, then I will give it a good six months before even considering the flights.
It just doesn’t seem possible at the moment that it will be safe to go. But, I suppose, a lot can happen in a year.
A lot has happened this year, and it’s only early May.
Song of the day: The Cranberries “Zombie”
housegoeshome 
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