Masks

New Mexico is one of the few states that require masks to be worn whenever we’re outside our own homes. Masks are required regardless of whether we can socially distance, for all public spaces, indoors AND outdoors. To be ultimately clear, our regulations specifically state: even while exercising outdoors.

It’s a bit ironic, because we’re one of the most rural states in the nation. So John’s out there jogging alone in the desert at 6:30 am, with a sight distance of several miles, with no one in sight for at least a quarter of a mile, and masks are required. Meanwhile, dumb-asses are holding parties (mostly in nearby states, in our opinion).

We have handmade masks, made by friends and family (thank you). I have two that have a metal strip between the layers, which can be shaped to keep the mask from sliding down your nose.

I also have a cool patterned one.

John made his own gray ones.

He put a little slider bead on the elastic so he can adjust them. That’s what happens when you let an engineer loose with your sewing machine.

I can sew too, but when all this started immediately after my cancer surgery, I could barely sit, much less focus, so I appreciate friends and family making mine for me.

We eventually found one, very old, N95 mask. John had bought it many years ago, for a long-forgotten remodel project, probably involving lots of dust or solvents. He dug it out of some box in the garage somewhere, it somehow having managed to survive several moves halfway across the country and back.

We save it to use when risks are higher, such as the occasional times when he has to go into work. Even though we treat it carefully, the rubber elastic wore out. Here’s John replacing the elastic.

In some ways this seems like a very boring, mundane post. But just imagine this time a year ago. If you would have told me that we would be carefully changing out the elastic on a throw-away mask from the depths of some dusty box in the garage, I would have been, “huh?!?”

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