Day 23 - Masks
I got inspired by the "30 day not-so ordinary ordinary items challenge" but as I love giving things a personal twist, I decided to change the format a bit for myself so it suits me better. I've adjusted it to the 30 pictures - 30 stories challenge. But some days you will see that I also use not-so ordinary ordinary objects.
Feel free to join the challenge at any time if you like.
Publish one picture a day during 30 days and write a story about that picture. This can be anything, any object in the home, a person, scenery or a pet. I'm going to share a diversity of pictures and challenge myself to step outside of the box.
I can't even emphasize how fed up I was with these face masks of all sorts to be completely honest. I know they aren't always that bad, because I sure appreciate it when I sit at the doctor's office in the waiting room, that other patients coughing and sneezing are wearing a mask or vice versa when I'm that person. Just before the pandemic hit us, I remember going to the doctor once again with my daughter for another round of checking her ears. It was the winter when she was ill constantly and thankfully they helped her with tubes in the summer following.
But I was there once again and around us all these children were coughing, which you can expect at the doctor's office. The thing that bothered me at that moment was the fact that these (some very) ill children were allowed to sit so close to the other children and coughing in their face without even turning their head or a parent apologizing when it happened by accident. These kids were the reason that my daughter was just getting rid of her ear infection after a few weeks and then got hit by another shitty infection, looking back was probably Covid because I remember reading everywhere that half of the classes were absent everywhere on the schools. This was probably Covid before we knew it as it was just weeks before it actually hit the fan in Hungary.
So regarding the mask wearing in doctor's waiting rooms, I was not that bothered. What bothered me was having to wear them in closed hallways with 10x more people than the space could handle, causing lack of oxygen (which I already had a hard time dealing with sometimes), the masks made it very uncomfortable for me to deal with as I could not handle the feeling of not having enough oxygen in these situations. I have had many situations where I felt I was about to pass out when it happened and my boyfriend confirming that I went from normal face coloring to being pale as a ghost when it happened.
I got used to having to wear them with one exception, having to wear them outside was a thing in Budapest for a while. I will not get into detail but let me say I was happy when that got lifted. I learned to deal with wearing them inside everywhere and just pulled them off as soon as I walked out side to catch fresh air. When we moved to Spain, the only thing that was left was wearing them on public transport and hospitals etc. That was an improvement and thankfully none of the "wear them outside" crap was a thing here anymore (it was at the beginning though).
Hoorah for lifting mandatory mask wearing on public transport this week! Currently it's still not a big deal to wear them in a taxi, but as soon as the spring arrives, it will get less comfortable and I'm very pleased to know that we will most likely not be dealing with that anymore. I had no expectations of how this was going to be unfold, I expected the worst regarding restrictions, but so far we had none of the bad stuff and it has never been uncomfortable since we arrived here.
Funnily we bought a big pile of these masks in Budapest before we left so on top of the cotton ones I prefer, we have many of the surgical ones both for adult and child in stock now. I will just hold on to them because we don't know what the future brings, do we?