A Few of my Favorite Things

2020 has been a tough year. We’re not quite to the end of it yet but it’ll be wrapping up shortly. While I have a moment, before my last, desperate dash to get projects done before Xmas, here is a list of some of the things that brought a little light to a dark and terrible year.

BOOKS:

Mexican Gothic; by Silvia Moreno Garcia
In the Shadow of Spindrift House; by Mira Grant (audiobook)
The Year of Less; How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away my Belongings and Discovered that Life is Worth More than Anything You Can Buy in a Store; by Cait Flanders
Girls of Paper and Fire; by Natasha Ngan
The Hunger; by Alma Katsu

They were a delightful distraction.

GAMES:

Pathfinder 2ed. (We have 3 weekly games and a few others that meet sporadically.)
Minecraft. (Many hours, with the monsters turned off, building farms, fortresses, mazes etc.)
Red Flags. (Hilarious, uncomfortable, and hilariously uncomfortable. So much laughter.)
Dragon Age Origins. Still delightful as it ages.
Skyrim. I will never not want to build my houses and fight monsters to get money so I can build my houses.
Harry Potter Wizards Unite! It got me to go outside and walk, masked and distant, around my neighborhood.

HOBBIES:

Knitting
Crocheting
Sewing
Painting
Writing
Drawing
Bird Watching/Feeding

TV SHOWS:

Community. Light, funny, excellent.
Sherlock. Diverting and Distracting, completely delightful.
The Rookie. I keep rewatching the ones that are available.
The Mandalorion. Baby Yoda is a gift to all of us.
The West Wing. Here’s hoping President Biden will be a compassionate and decent leader to us all.
Vera. Freaking Awesome. Love this show.
Shetland. Same as above. Top notch.

VIDEOS:

Liziqi. A capable young woman in rural China growing, foraging and cooking food as well as making all manner of useful or beautiful things. This is my drug of choice to soothe my anxiety. Also my life goals. I have probably spent more hours watching this than anything else.
Tier Zoo. Real life treated as a video game. Weirdly calming and very entertaining.
Julie Nolke. Her future self talking to her past self during 2020 is comedy GOLD.
Ozzy Man Reviews. I like his animal videos the best particularly the Otter vs. Orca and Honey Badger vs. Python. His Destination F*cked videos are hilarious too. Great stuff.
Your Daily Dose of Internet. Amusing, amazing, weird and funny clips put together for our amusement.
Binging with Babish. Cooking show, very cool, entertaining and educational.
Bardcore. Modern songs played on medieval instruments with words altered like this: “Thee and me could write a bad romance….” Awesome.

FOOD & DRINK:

Local Beer. Brewery about a 10 minute walk from the house. Not my favorite beer in the world but good AND they do pay online curbside pick up… and they now recognize our car.
Local Bakery. Way too close to my house. Apple Galettes, donuts, bread, all manner of delicious carbs + Soup!
Local Pizza. Quite close to the house. I am in constant danger of deciding not to cook dinner and just order pizza for everyone.
Yorkshire Gold Tea. Every morning a sweet cup of comfort.
Cookies, home made, all of them.
Birthday cake. 2 in the Spring, 8 days apart, 3 in the Fall within about 2- 2 1/2 weeks. Ideally they’d be more spread out but I will take birthday cake whenever I can get it.

About all the local businesses: I live in a town of 1200 people and I have 2 excellent pizza places, a decent brewery, a fantastic bakery, a seasonal ice cream stand, and a fancy restaurant all within easy walking distance. We also have a little market with groceries, wine and beer and a deli, another okay restaurant, a coffee and donut chain store, and a few other businesses besides. It’s a quiet little town that could use a few more businesses to cover some basic needs but crime sprees around here consist of mailbox baseball, kids stealing change out of unlocked cars, occasional packages stolen off porches and speeding. I mean, you know, mostly. Sometimes someone the police pull over will have like a pound of cocaine in their car or whatever but we are between a few places where there is a fair bit of illicit drug use.

PLACES:

Home. The vast bulk of the year has been spent here and it really is a cute little house. It keeps us cozy and safe and has enough places to store food so we can withstand short periods of not being able to get all the food we need.
The Hippie Fort/Shed/Studio. Our own little getaway several yards from the house. Seasonal but excellent. Could use insulation, heat and plumbing. A great place for date night with music and candle light, a lovely place to read, write, paint etc.
The Library where I work. A terrific little library that has provided us with a wide array of reading materials as well as access to movies and TV shows on DVD. Also, the only place I hang out with anyone other than my immediate family for any length of time at all.
The Park down the street. Just a green space with some trees and a couple of benches but also a little hub for the Wizards Unite! game. Lovely trees.
My yard. I now have 3 little garden spots set up and ready to be planted in the Spring. The place is loaded with ticks but it’s really cute. I need to find a way to kill all the ticks. (I hate them more than almost anything.)

MVPs of 2020:

The Pantry. Excellent work holding lots of pasta, canned goods, tea, cocoa, cereal, crackers, snacks, peanut butter and so on.
Chest Freezer. Ours may be small but it has worked it’s butt off all year storing meat, veg, & breads ready to tide us over when such became hard to find during parts of the pandemic.
Wood Stove. Keeping us warm is a piece of cake for this little beauty. It also assists in the drying of foods and can be used as a stove top for cooking if the power goes out in winter.
XBox 360. Still working like a champ keeping my Skyrim and Dragon Age games ready for me to go hide in.
Playstation 4. My Minecraft machine that also has a Pirate Game, Witcher games, etc that everyone else uses. Also has a little game of Fallout Vault in there that I occasionally like to mess around with. Many, many hours of entertainment for the entire family.
CD Player. Currently providing Xmas music, often used to play audiobooks as well as music of all types. Makes life better for all of us.
Book Shelves. Loaded up with something under 5,000 books, 50-100 board, card, and dice games, as well as RPGs and an abundance of DVDs, they provide storage for many things that keep us entertained and distracted through this long, long crisis.

Hello Darkness

No matter how I try I just can’t seem to drum up much enthusiasm for Halloween this year. I don’t have the mental energy to come up with the wonderful ideas to salvage this one. Or so it seems today, with only 3 days left to pull a rabbit out of my hat. Normally I would be busily working on costumes, making zombie sugar cookies, decorating with our Halloween stuff, and ordering some scary movies from the library or planning a one-shot horror run for the family. I’m tired. I’m drained right now. I know my sweet husband feels the same.

We started this year with the horrifying wildfires in Australia and California. Gods, those seemed like the worst thing, didn’t they? I have loved ones in Australia and CA and I was so worried about them and about all the animals and other people caught in such shockingly bad situations. Obviously the year had to get better from there but it so Did Not. The fires in Australia were brought under control eventually, and even CA had something of a respite but the world situation just got worse. CA is on fire again, has been for what feels like ages and that is almost the least of my worries, not really, it’s still a big worry. Most of my worry time is used for the newest rise in Covid-19 cases and the political unrest in the US. Watching a sitting president fan the flames of hate and violence is not something I ever thought I’d see. My son came of age watching it, and hearing how the climate is collapsing, and now a global pandemic… and people wonder at the nihilistic sense of humor Gen-Z has. My son literally turned 18 in quarantine. So did a lot of kids.

This year horror is all too real and it’s everywhere. I feel like I can’t turn on my computer without finding out yet another unarmed POC has been blatantly murdered by police. The protests over police violence continue but get less and less coverage even as the police use tear gas on peaceful, unarmed pregnant women, small children, and everyone else who dares ask that POC be treated as human beings. I can’t open my computer without seeing yet another highest cases per day report as thousands die and other thousands flock to the President’s super spreader events and refuse to wear masks and scream their approval of the continued denial of science. And there is so much more. So much hate and violence, so much despotism and inhumanity. Even my dreams are filled with stress.

So, I don’t even know why I want to salvage Halloween. Horror is the new normal. 2020 is such a shitshow. And yet, whatever distractions we can manage should be managed. My son, a freshly minted adult, needs me to find the good, to focus on the brightest hopes I can, to provide whatever structure I can in this, the upside-down I never thought we’d live in. Things are crazy enough for him without mom abandoning the rhythms of the seasons and all the celebrations that mark the passage of time. So I keep fighting to stay as positive as I can. I cook our meals, plan and run RPGs, provide the little luxuries of favorite foods when I can, and talk about the future as if everything will be alright because he, and my girls, need to believe the future is worth showing up for.

So I guess I have a Halloween feast to plan, some zombie cookies to bake, and I’ll need some pumpkins to carve into Jack O’Lanterns too. The bridge to the future will lit by candles and guarded by leering pumpkins.

Isolation Day 68: Grateful

There is so much to be grateful for, let me make at least a partial “list.” I am chatting intermittently with the wonderful woman filling our Instacart order. I know she will never see this, so I’m putting a thank you card with an extra tip in it on our door, but THANK YOU, ERIN! Her service is absolutely exceptional. All our drivers have been great, texting for clarification, offering substitutions, etc, but Erin is amazing. She saw hard to get items on the shelves and texted to see if we wanted them even though they were not on our list at all. Wow. She is just Next Level at customer service. She just texted that the store is out of lentils… lentils, huh, thought I was the only one who liked them! ~_^

My job/my amazing boss. Thank you, Katherine, for the ridiculous number of things you do every day to keep the library going during this insane time of pandemic. Thank you for continuing to fight for our jobs and for all you do to help us adjust to this crazy situation, for all that you do to help us continue to put on programming, and for everything you do now that you have always done. I am so grateful to have a job at all, let alone a wonderful job, and to have a boss who is competent, kind, hard working and understanding.

My wonderful husband. He is working so hard to kick ass at his job through this craziness. He spends all day in the dining room, at the computer & on the phone, attending meetings, fixing issues, talking people through tech stuff, researching solutions, etc etc etc. He’s there from 7:45 in the morning until dinner and often has to go back to work after dinner. I do what I can to help, bringing him tea, breakfast, lunch etc. On top of all that, he’s running online RPGs for the kids at the library and our friends as well as a family game. This morning he texted me and said “You, Me, Date Night Tomorrow!” We’ll come up with something fun and creative to do without breaking quarantine. I’m not sure what we can do… hmmm, maybe I will arrange it all and surprise him. I am getting ideas. ^_^

My sweet kids. Gods, I love them. The younger 2 are working hard to complete their school year online. Unexpected, upsetting to them, they continue to adjust, to move forward, to keep calm and stay on an even keel. My eldest is struggling but trying so hard to be helpful, they all do chores but she is very consistent about keeping up with vacuuming and dishes, with checking in and just being her sweet self. They all look after their mom, not letting me lift heavy things, climb ladders, etc. I’m a notorious klutz. They are so kind. I’m so proud of their kindness and compassion, whatever else they are, whatever problems they may have, my children are kind, and kindness is magic.

Food, Shelter, clean water, books, games, and today, beautiful weather. The necessities and little luxuries of life. Oh, and tea! and music! and our lovable band of misfit pets! We have our home, our cupboards my not be as full as I’d like but we’re eating just fine, we have water for drinking, cooking, bathing etc, our shelves are bursting with books and games and today is sunny and cool and perfect. I still have a little stock of my favorite tea, and a few left from the Australian Afternoon tea my niece sent me. I have the soundtrack of our current apocalypse made for me by my dear friend, Angel, hilarious and perfect, and we have our beautiful Kisa, Jazz, and Puddin’ cuddling us, entertaining us, cheering us, and guarding our home from marauders and invaders.

The gods who watch over us. Not everyone is religious or believes in such intangible things, that is 100% cool, 100% ok with me, be YOU. I know people have all kinds of beliefs and that’s one of the things that makes interacting with other humans interesting and educational. I myself follow the gods of my ancestors and I find great comfort in them. I look to the tales and stories of their epic feats and foibles and I follow the way they have set. It’s a framework, it’s a flexible structure that gives me a lens to examine life through. I rely on the virtues to weigh my decisions and set my course. I ask for help when I need it. When there are things I can’t handle I let them go by handing them over and trusting that the gods know better than I do, that their perspective is long and that things will work out for the best. I could not be more grateful to be on this path.

Life is good, even now, even with fear and illness and strife, life is good.

Little Update from Quarantine

We’ve been holed up for quite a while now. We are very lucky in that both my husband and I can work from home so far. I’ve never had a job where that was possible, or a boss that would fight for staff to be able to do so, before. We’re also lucky that my daughter and son are able to continue their classes from home and hopefully get full credit for everything so they can graduate and/or advance. We’ve also been lucky enough to get a few orders of groceries through Instacart. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am in the people who are abusing Instacart drivers by offering big tips then revoking them. Those delivery drivers are risking their health and their lives and it is utterly cruel to steal from them like that.

Anyway, we’re very lucky, but we’re also stressed. Our house isn’t huge and having everyone home and not having friends over is wearing on us. I am sure you know what I mean. The underlying annoyances between the kids seem much bigger, it gets weirdly tense, my husband’s issues with the my daughters … there’s just no breaks, no nights off. He gets moody and tense. I sit here in the middle of it all feeling nervous and stressed. Good times. I don’t want to make it seem like things are bad, they aren’t, things are medium which is pretty good these days. We’re all able to game together and mostly keep things mellow, mostly.

I am trying and failing, so far, to get anything off the ground with the young adults from my library. I suggested gaming online and a virtual book club and got 1 response to each, not enough, so I am trying a quick, creative contest: design your own “Would you Rather” card. I sent the email 2 days ago and I have… 1 response so far. I’m really hoping I can get just a handful of entries. I would love to be able to tell my boss at least one program attempt was successful. Yeah, our library is so small and rural that 3-4 teens participating is considered successful. Maybe I will mail the contest rules to the school librarian so she can send the idea to a wider audience. Or I could actually send the info to my boss to post on the website. Gosh it’s fun having such a sluggish brain lately. I blame the pandemic. ~_^

my example card. sorry the image is so big and sideways I can’t find where to change that!

Update from Isolation

Well, my work is now closed but we’re being asked to come in anyway which is a little weird. I don’t think my boss wants me there as she said in a previous email to stay away “if you or anyone in your household is sick in any way, shape, or form” so that’s good. I really hope she doesn’t want me to come in, I do not want to go out and be near any people at all. There are 5 of us here at the homestead and that’s plenty of exposure for now.

Our daily life is different but not shockingly so. We’ve always been rather indoorsy we just don’t leave for school or work now. We are going to bed a little later, sleeping a little later, not much though. Dinner is still between 5 and 6 pm and being eaten at the table as a family. We are completing regular chores, doing a lot of extra cleaning, and starting to add scheduled reading times, family meetings, and gaming times. We’re working on getting prescriptions and perishable groceries delivered too. The dear dog and the need for firewood keeps us from staying completely inside and we’re thinking of starting up a few more outside chores and just making sure we don’t have any outside contact.

We have friends who are still not taking this seriously and I cannot believe it. One friend told us he and his wife have had “zero exposure” they have 4 jobs between them, 2 office jobs and 2 public food service jobs. Um, Dude? You do not have “zero exposure.” My mother, 73 years old with a heart condition, is still visiting friends and attending church. She even showed up here to return a vase. WTF, Mom? If you don’t want to hang onto it throw it away! Recycle it! Don’t show up where people have been asked to self-quarantine because of potential exposure! I know this is disruptive, I know it sucks, but we have to stop the spread of this thing.

This is the first day that really counts as me no longer working 2 jobs. Normally I’d be going in to work soon and today I think I am going to miss the air conditioning. Saturday is also supposed to be a scorcher and I would have been working through the worst of it. I really hope the universe isn’t trying to tell me something…. Even if it is, I made this decision for important reasons.

I’ve been decluttering and cleaning, again, also spent some time watching these kooky videos with my son. I think the series is called “Tier Zoo” or something like that. It’s fascinating and sometimes hilarious. It treats the world as if it were a game and different organisms as character builds. It’s pretty entertaining.

OMG I think I am 3/4 melted in this heat and humidity. I feel so gross. I think I’ll have a cool shower before dinner, maybe one after dinner, definitely rinse off before bed… I’m starting to see the appeal of having a swimming pool despite the expense and the work involved. I’m making some kind of pasta-y broccoli/chicken casserole and a salad. I haven’t made the salad yet but the casserole is ready to bake. Please hold all applause, ha ha.

I’ve cleaned up a lot of random stuff in the bedroom, I’m still probably only about 10% done in there. So much to do. I need to cull my clothes again, and books, and general stuff. The kitchen might be done though. I cleared out a cupboard today and found 4 partial bags of semi-fossilized marshmallows and a bag of fat little biscuits that super weirdly had NOT gotten moldy. They must have been in there a year. Those are some DRY biscuits! I’m so bad at this. I mean, I’m really good at helping other people declutter, walking them through the “do you want to keep this item? Donate it? or is trash?” process until they can handle it on their own, but I have a hard time actually doing it on the scale my stuff requires that I do. I am making progress, I know that, it just feels so slow. I’m going to call my progress “glacial” so I can think about glaciers, big, beautiful chunks of ICE, so cold, so nice. I miss winter so much.

So, I need to get organized and break down my larger goals into smaller pieces. I want to declutter our whole house, yeah, of course, but should I take it room by room instead of doing whatever strikes my fancy on a given day? Would that help? So far I have been donating as I go which is an improvement over the past. Normally there would be boxes and bags of stuff lingering around the house, then lingering in the trunk of my car, and finally, months later, getting donated somewhere. Maybe I deserve a little credit for that kind of progress? Maybe, but there is so much stuff in here it’s crazy. No, there aren’t paths through some mad hoard, but there are a few rooms where it gets close to that bad sometimes. I’m working on it!

Can I ask you guys a question? (ok anther question) How many of you, who are parents, have wanted to or tried to start a family game night? I’ve tried a bunch of times and I think the failure comes down to, well, ME. I’m so tired after dinner I think I take no for an answer too readily. I feel like I don’t have much left to give by the time dinner is over and I don’t want to delve into the more complicated and entertaining games that might entice my family to actually play. Also, my attempts are short lived, I might try for a week or 2 but I tend to drop it after that. From what I’ve read about working with young adults, and from working with young adults professionally, I know that the formula for success is to just keep at it. Like this summer I’m showing movies on Fridays. Only my family came the first week, the second there was one extra young man, the third there were 4 people who attempted to stay, hopefully this week will be better. But they say in YA if you planned 8 workshops and no one comes to the 1st 7, run the 8th anyway. It takes time for teens to decide they want to do something, it takes time for them to trust that the offer is really sincere. I think I need to just apply that at home.