Songs…

I am approaching my breaking point. My overwhelming feeling is “I wish I could just stop crying…” but I’m not crying. I am maintaining pretty well on the outside. I am, for the most part, keeping up with feeding everyone, laundry, work, pet care… Fuck, I am even pushing ahead in some areas: getting more competent at my job, decluttering this place, eating better, getting slightly more exercise, I’ve even got a garden plan lurching into motion this week! I’m orchestrating weekly date nights. Fucking date nights! (no pun intended, see? I’m even keeping up my sense of humor!) I am exhausted from this past year plus. This song is just my anthem right now:https://youtu.be/r5yaoMjaAmE (Human, by Christina Perri) closely followed by: https://youtu.be/BF-nZziUCCY (You Don’t Know, by Katelyn Tarver)

I am plodding ahead encouraging, supporting, drying the tears, soothing the fears, reassuring my 3 anxious, autistic, grown children. “Just one step at a time, Sweetie, I’m here, just do one thing at a time, breathe, I’m here, I’m here.” “It’s okay my little love, it’s ok, just keep showing up, that’s the thing, that’s at least 75% of life, you’ll find your people, you DO know how to connect, you have deep connections, look at me, look at my eyes, we have a connection, me and you, that’s not a guarantee, that’s not automatic, even if I wasn’t your mom I would WANT to hang out with you because you are funny, you are kind, you are brilliant! Look at me, look at the cats, look at dad, look at our puppy dog who fucking worships you. Making friends is a skill you can learn. Depression is a LIAR.” “you’re doing great, we all start from where we are, it’s ok, you’re making progress, you’re doing great, I’m here, I’m right here beside you.” I’m getting more sleep lately but this song was my life for parts of this, even before the fucking pandemic: https://youtu.be/cjVQ36NhbMk (How to save a life, by The Fray)

I am grateful to Amanda Fucking Palmer forever for her song that tells the truth of motherhood. She sings about the early days/weeks/months but honestly, the central message holds fucking true. At the end of the day, if everyone is alive, that is a victory, a line in the sand, and we got up the next day and try even harder to be better. https://youtu.be/bDk7CNsQqUk (Mother’s Confession, by Amanda Palmer ~Note LONG song) She’s captured the exhaustion, the frustration and the fears of being in charge of fragile beings. And, while I’m talking about fear, here’s another one that captures all the fears I can barely name for fear of shattering: https://youtu.be/70ApTTyKpdg (Drowning in the sound, by AFP)

It probably seems like all this music is, I don’t know, fucking depressing? But on the rare occasions when I get to play it all and sing and cry, away from the eyes of those who need me to be a rock in this stormcrash life, it helps. I sing loads of other highly emotional songs that are less on the nose too, and I cry and it helps. But I am surrounded by people who need me to be strong, and they never really leave the house, you know? And, for the one who is My rock, I need to keep it together, need to keep pulling beside him so he knows he isn’t carrying it all alone. We have a lot on our plate here and it is what it is, I’m not going to drop in my traces. This is one of the songs that sums up how I feel about our relationship: https://youtu.be/0yW7w8F2TVA (Say you won’t let go; by James Arthur) This one too, adding in the rest we need, the break we’d like to have from responsibilities for a while: https://youtu.be/GemKqzILV4w (chasing cars, by Snow Patrol) How many weddings you think this one gets played at? https://youtu.be/450p7goxZqg (All of me, by John Legend) Anyway, I’ll happily jump on that bandwagon.

I’m ok. I will be ok. Writing all this here helps.

Life is Like Chocolates filled with Toothpaste.

Spring feels like it’s really here so no surprise that snow is forecast for Friday. Sure it’s been up in the mid seventies already but Friday is supposed to have a high of 37 and a low of 32. I feel really bad for all the plants and trees that are out there budding, flowering and leafing like mad.

Things are nuts here, as always, work is crazy for my husband who has six major projects all happening at once in his department because of the infinite wisdom of his employer. They do not understand that if people are forced to do many things at once nothing will really be done well and those people will burn the fuck OUT. I don’t know how he’s stayed in the job for so long. He’s been working so hard through this whole pandemic. Minimum of 60 hour weeks. Even working from home he doesn’t have a sane work/life balance because the work culture seems to be “drive yourself into the ground! Work constantly!” People from his work will email or text him at ANY HOUR day or night. It’s insane. He got 18 texts while he was in a 5 minute shower this morning. Bonkers.

I want so badly for my husband to have a job he loves, a sane work/life balance, and for him to he HAPPY. His employer seems pretty bent out of shape that he is still working from home even though he is at great risk with this virus and its creepy variants. There is an expectation that he will come back to work in person soon even though he doesn’t have a desk anymore as they finally hired a replacement for his last assistant and at long, long, long last hired a 3rd person who is supposed to do helpdesk stuff. His assistant has his old desk and the helper has the old assistant’s desk. There isn’t room for a 3rd desk and his employer’s solution is to have “one of you floating at all times.” Yeah, one of 3 IT people should definitely just wander around, building to building, … all the time, like some sort of nomadic computer tinkerer. That is an example of why I don’t think his current job is a good one. They could give his department more space but they give any and every other department priority over IT no matter how little sense it makes. I honestly don’t know how my husband puts up with it.

We also have a situation at home. My two twenty-something, autistic, transgendered daughters are living at home. One never left and the other bounced home about 2 (?) years ago and was saving money to move out on her own again when the pandemic hit and she had to quit her retail job in a pharmacy to protect her dad. So, for over a year now, she’s had to spend the money she’d saved to get her prescriptions, pay for doctor’s visits, etc. So frustrating for all of us. It is getting to a point where the girls can head out to job hunt again but we’re not quite there yet. I have faith the eldest will get a job eventually, she’s got an employment history, interviews reasonably well and is personable. My middle child has job-hunted for years with no success at all. I don’t think she has even landed an interview. She has no sensibility about how to dress and quirky doesn’t come close to describing her style. She is also very soft-spoken to the point of absurdity. I’ve tried to counsel her on dressing and grooming for a job interview but she is fixed on “How I look shouldn’t matter.” Oh Sweetie, but it does.

Yeah, so, the situation. … that wasn’t the situation. Middle child asked to speak to both my husband and I privately. She brought notes, lots of notes, and told us that Eldest child has been relentlessly harassing her pretty much since she came back home. Eldest has been complaining to me that Middle won’t forgive her for ancient history, Eldest wants to be friends but Middle just keeps rejecting her. I have told Eldest that she cannot force anyone to forgive anything. I have explained that she needs to build trust by doing small, kind things without Any Expectation, and perhaps, over time, Middle might soften. Apparently that has gone in one ear and out the other. It even seems like Eldest might be trying to manipulate how we perceive Middle. Winding her up when we are not in ear shot then asking an “innocent” question and provoking a snarling response from Middle while we can see it. My heart, at this point, is a bunch of jagged glass shards held together with glue that won’t set. We’re trying to figure out what the fuck to do that won’t make things worse. Just up front there are only a few possibilities I can see:

Middle child is lying to us and just hates Eldest and rejects her overtures because of prior bad acts.
Middle child is telling the truth and Eldest is manipulating us so that we only see Eldest trying to be friends and see Middle reacting harshly.
Eldest is so incredibly socially awkward that her acts of harassment are some attempt to be funny and Middle perceives it all as an attack because of old history.

Having raised the two of them, all these many years, these are my thoughts:

Middle child is not lying. She was so on edge she was literally shaking while she talked to us. At the very least, she is telling the truth as she perceives it.
Most likely, Eldest is harassing Middle, she may be stupidly trying to force Middle to interact with her, she may be actively manipulating the situation, and manipulating us, to make Middle look bad because she is refusing to “be friends,” or some other muddle-reasoned thing I can’t grasp.
Eldest has a history of being pretty freaking cruel to middle, there is no denying it, the last time things got physical was 1 /12-2 years ago but it was 100% on Eldest. Middle did exactly as she should have and attempted to walk away from Eldest. She was pursued to her room by Eldest who tried to force her way in while screaming horrible things at Middle. Middle tried to push her door closed but was weak as she was recovering from gastroenteritis (or something? anyway, it led to anemia and made middle exhausted and weak) Middle has PTSD and reacted to what felt like a very dire threat striking Eldest with her palm on the forehead to try and push her out so the door could be close. Eldest responded with repeated elbow strikes to Middle’s neck and shoulders, maybe her head too. I did not witness any of this, neither did my husband, but we heard about the incident from both girls and the accounts only differed on what words were exchanged during the whole thing, really. Each of them felt justified in what they did. … … …

Sometimes I freaking Hate being a parent. WTF? WTF am I supposed to do with this? Talking to Eldest about the situation might cause retaliation. I don’t think dredging up the old physical incident would be helpful at all, though it does add weight and veracity to Middle’s perspective on current events. I need to protect Middle, I need to stand up for her because I know she was the one my ex targeted for extensive punishment that led to her PTSD while he favored Eldest. (Not that is was all skittles and beer for Eldest either but she definitely had it better w/ my ex in most ways) This is Hell. If someone not my kid went after one of my kids, my path would be clear, that person would be made to understand that they would not continue their BS if they wanted to live a long happy life. Undiluted ire is so easy, so straightforward, how easy that would be. But one of my kids is making another of my kids miserable, and I haven’t witnessed any of it so it’s all “she said/she said.” And I don’t want to come down on any of my kids with the wrath of the Elder Gods. This is misery. This is horror.

Middle is relying on my to defend her, to somehow defuse the situation, get Eldest to back the F off so Middle can just live her life in the house without hiding in her room all the time. I need to do something, I just don’t know what, and no matter what the truth is, no matter what I do, this is going to hurt. See why I haven’t been posting much? I totally slacked off because how do I even talk about this stuff? I sound like a crazy person or maybe just an asshole but I am just trying to do the thing that causes the least harm. I’m just trying to help my kids learn to act like human beings and grow the F up and start their lives.

TL/DR: My husband’s job is unreasonably and unnecessarily bad and my older 2 kids = a situation I don’t know how to deal with with my mediocre parenting skills, that I learned mostly from watching nature documentaries as a kid, and my ex is an asshole who I should have found a way to cut out of my children’s lives when they were young.

Busy and Grateful

I have to say one thing for the pandemic. Between my caution that severely limits the buildings and stores I will enter and the scalper’s prices a lot of craft items go for online, not to mention shipping charges and the potential for delay, I find myself giving very serious consideration for the supplies I already have. I’ve been making Super Mittens for my girls the past few days and I had to go to my yarn stash to do so. Limited amounts of various colors in the worsted weight category made me decide to use 2 colors per mitten/pair creating the body of each mitten in one color and the cuff in another. The lack of access to all my usual choices forces me to be creative and it is a great stash buster assisting me in using up stray balls of yarn and other supplies that have been hanging around. I’m also getting to projects I’ve been procrastinating on. I finally made the napkins for Harry Potter Xmas.

I also find myself appreciating what we already have more than I used to. I misplaced a pair of mittens in the grocery store on a rare in-person run for a few items, and I felt just awful about it. They are not the best pair of mittens or anything, I made them from a felted wool sweater and lined them with fleece cut from old PJ pants all acquired through thrift shops (over a year ago at least). They hit the magic sweet spot of being cheap, homemade, and recycled all at once. And they’re cute. I left a note with customer service and they called after a few hours. The mittens are safe at home again and I promise you, I will be much more careful with them in the future. Our dog also did some damage to the quilt I had on the bed and I thought the only replacement I had was languishing in the laundry room but I found a third bedspread I had completely forgotten about in the hall closet! And again it is cute. Why do I have so many bedspreads? Oh yeah, in the before time I used to thrift a lot and having pets means needing back ups of such things.

We are so, so lucky. We have so far gotten through this pandemic pretty ok. I mean, there’s definitely increased anxiety and stress, we feel uncertain about the future, worried about getting Covid 19, nervous about what may happen to our jobs, and the kids… All adults now, one in his senior year of HS, not able/willing to work because of scarce jobs & jobs they could get would be risky Covid-wise. Their lives are on hold. The girls are waiting for it to be safe to go job hunting again, for it to be safe to work again. We are a million times lucky that we’ve hung onto our house where there’s room for everyone and that we are still paying our bills, getting food on the table. So far we are still employed as long as that holds true we should be ok. My middlest child hasn’t had any min-painting commissions in a long while, not surprising, but she found a little place for herself online where she can use her creativity to make at least a small amount of money. I’m very proud of her for that and I hope that it boosts her self-esteem.

The bare fact that I can find any positives this year is amazing and speaks to how very fortunate we’ve been. I know people who are doing better than we are and some who are doing worse. It’s a mess out there and we are all hoping big for a much, much, much better year in 2021. I have never wished away a year so hard as this one. But, I have much to do before the new year and only scant few days to do it in. Be well. Stay safe.

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.

The Cake is not a Lie

My middle child has her birthday today so of course making the cake was a key honor and duty I had today. Triple chocolate with purple frosting. It seems to have come out alright. There will be ice cream and, I believe, Chinese food tonight after I get home from work. Happy Birthday, my sweet girl.

Of course I have also been cleaning. Laundry and dishes are caught up, our bed is made, cat boxes are clean, extraneous sensitive papers are shredded. I’m getting somewhere. Still busily decluttering and organizing. Today I cleaned off the heater in our bedroom and made a start at the disaster by my side of the bed. I’m a nester everything I use frequently ends up in a pile, or several piles, where I can reach it.

I’m working on getting us on an even keel again. It’s finally working because I am only shopping for really specific things that we have thought about deliberately and decided we truly want or need. It’s nice. Retail therapy is not a good thing. That little boost only lasts such a short time and the money is gone forever and there we are drowning in STUFF. I am really enjoying making our house, ever so slowly, into a soothing, serene home.

But I have to get ready and go to work! It really is very odd loving my job but hating leaving home to go do it. I’d much rather stay here and work on the house. It doesn’t help that work is So Weird with no patrons in the library. I can’t wait till tomorrow when we have our trial run of outdoor browsing. I’m not sure how we’ll enforce distancing and all that but hopefully it will go well. It would be nice to see people again. Oh, and I got a late b-day present from my husband. He forgot he’d pre-ordered it so it was a surprize for both of us. I can’t wait to read it!

Dispatch From Under my Bed

Nope. Nope, nope. Not going to talk about the state of the world or all the craziness going on right now. I’ve focused on the crazy already, elsewhere, and I’m going to let this blog be a place of refuge from turmoil, strife and fear.

I found no blackberries in our yard this morning, and was only able to find a few golden raspberries, but there are bushes out in the neighborhood that are producing and I’ll probably hit some of them later. Our bushes are still heavy with not-yet-ripe berries, and we are getting a bit more rain lately, so maybe we’ll have more blackberries soon. Our staghorn sumac is finally producing! I was able to harvest 7 berry clusters this morning and they are now soaking in cold water for a day so I can make my family some pink “lemonade.” I can’t drink it because I am allergic. Sad story, I am allergic to lemons but in a Wild Foods class I took I learned that staghorn sumac tea was the original pink lemonade. It tastes just like it! I got to drink it 2 maybe 3 times before I became allergic to it. I was so excited to have lemonade again… a major letdown, but my family can still enjoy it so I make it.

Got through book 3 of the Demon series: Secrets of the Demon; by Diana Rowland. Really loved it as I have all of them so far. A little iffy on the ending but I am willing to see where the author takes it in the next book: Sins of the Demon. I love her books for many reasons, but the best thing for me is that I haven’t unraveled her endings before I got to them, not in any of books 1, 2, or 3, and that is a rare and happy event for me. I mean, sure, there’s something ego-boosting about figuring out whodunit all the time, but it’s also kind of tedious too depending on how early I’m sure I’ve figured it out. I don’t know why but I’m good at figuring these things out and it makes me appreciate writers who can surprize me, especially when I can look back over the story and actually see the hints that were so skillfully obscured. Suddenly seeing the red herrings for what they were is wonderful. Her white Trash Zombie series is wonderful too, I should get back on that, I think I’m on book 4 or 5 of that one.

Here at the homestead we are focusing on our many games. We’ve started to split off from each other a bit, which is weird. The girls are in games with friends, my eldest even dropped out of the family game, our boy dropped out of the circus game too which means my husband and I are in/running 2 games with none of the kids involved. It’s probably a good thing. Someday things will be more normal and we’ll leave the house for jobs and school and social stuff and it’s good the kids are taking steps and branching out before we get to that. We should encourage our boy to join a game with friends online too.

The reopening of the library continues. It looks like the trustees have approved opening for August 1st. We will start allowing a maximum of ten patrons at a time in to use our computers. Supposedly there will be no browsing allowed, not sure how that’s going to go over. Hopefully it will go well. There are still some layers of approval to get through, the Board of Health and the Select Board must approve the plan before we go forward with it, so it might not happen the way it’s written right now. It seems fairly reasonable to me, if the plexiglass is in place and I am not expected to leave the staff area to interact with patrons, I think I can handle it.

For all my worries about the virus, I am also stressed with the tons of extra work I’m now expected to do. Patrons can’t come in and browse and many of them can’t figure out how to properly reserve things online, so they call us with lists. That’s fine when it’s a few patrons a day but right now it’s many more than a few, and it’s overwhelming. I’m enunciating through my mask into the phone, trying to type or write with one hand, the computer is slow, the patrons are often incorrect that their searches have verified we have the item in our collection, and I have to apologize constantly, explain constantly, etc. After all that, I have to enter everything into the new curbside pick-up spreadsheet we’re supposed to keep. Pus the near endless procedures of quarantining and disinfecting every item coming into the library, all the doors, and everything we touch during our shifts. It’s a lot. I get it, I know it’s all for the best, but we are not working a single extra minute on this stuff. We have the same shifts we used to have only now we’re supposed to add in all this extra stuff and that is just going to get worse for a while as we slowly open up.

After each patron’s computer appointment we are going to have to sanitize the computer, mouse, desk, and chair. We are going to have to field all the phone requests by patrons who haven’t had access to a computer in months, collecting information like name, age-range, phone number, whether they will need to use the printer, etc. We will be enforcing 30 minute limits for the first time since I’ve been working there and requiring patrons to leave the building when they are done. They can’t pick out a book or movie while they are there, at least I think that’s how we’re planning on doing things at first, so we have to enforce that as well.

Lingering, nagging doubts about reopening are with me constantly. The emphasis from my boss is; “if you don’t feel safe with the way we are planning on opening, tell me what concrete steps I can take that will make you feel safe with reopening.” But the only thing that would make me feel safe would be not opening. At this point we are looking at pretty flat numbers in the state, which is lovely, but a lot of people were really stupid only about a week ago, around the 4th, and we won’t see if we will get a spike in cases from that for at least 1-2 more weeks. Add another week onto that to see how bit that potential spike will be. The crazy thing is we’ve been loosening restrictions across the state without pausing long enough to see how that loosening is affecting the infection rate. I’m afraid by the time we see the spike, and even later when officials finally admit that it’s a problem, and even later when they Hopefully lock things down again… it’ll be too late. It’ll be a disaster we can’t hope to contain. We’ll be utterly fucked.

Limiting my exposure to the news isn’t helping. I can be adequately informed as to what’s going on or I can be calm, I cannot have both. I very badly need both somehow. It doesn’t help that my husband feels a need to stay up to date with the news, or that his brother calls and fills him in on any horror he’s happened to miss. It doesn’t help that ignoring all the horror doesn’t make it go away and i know that. I need a break. I need 2020 to give us all a break, to give us something good, something really, really good, something helpful, something hopeful, something less stampede-toward-total-dystopia-ish.

So here I am. Here we are. Tonight will be the last cool night for quite a while. So I think I need to sleep in the fort tonight. In an ideal world, I would arrive home tonight to find a note from my hubby saying “meet me in the fort.” and I would get out there to find a nice dinner, lit candles, jazz playing, and wine. I know, that’s the date I put together for him a while back, it’s the date I need tonight, but I have to go to work. Maybe I can pull it off somehow? I’m having trouble seeing how.

I am Not OK Right Now

Well, it looks like we have a date to start allowing patrons into the library. It isn’t 100% firm but it’s the first time a date has been floated. August 1st, just a few weeks away. My only hope is that the rising tide of cases, and they are already on the rise, will kill this horrible plan.

My son’s school is saying they will be open in some hybrid fashion, having half the students attend at a time. What an utterly FUBAR situation. It will a hellscape of chaos for working parents for sure and I’ve been to the school, seen their narrow halls and small classrooms, there is no way, even with half the kids, that they can maintain social distance. And who is doing all the endless extra sanitizing? The overworked teachers? With what money will they pay for extra janitorial hours? Oh, or will they task the kids with cleaning? That will go well! Again, my only hope, for not having to switch my son to a virtual school, is that they come to their damn senses because of the increasing cases.

This was in my feed yesterday from a poster called Zac Bears “Massachusetts is approaching an “R” of 1 for the coronavirus, meaning exponential community spread will restart! Wear a mask, stay within your bubble, and take all precautions. We aren’t immune from irresponsibility in other states!” And here is a link to what that means: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/covid-19-what-is-the-r-number/ My MIL is in Florida and the hospitals are just about at capacity with this nightmare. We joke with her; “don’t get sick! don’t get hurt!” But it isn’t a joke at all. The worst thing that could happen to her is anything that would cause her to need to go to a hospital.

My work is asking us to self-monitor for Covid symptoms and not come in if we have any… completely ignoring the vast numbers of asymptomatic carriers who can spread this thing. I am disheartened, I am depressed, I am stressed out as much as I can stand to be. And I am being asked: “What concrete steps can we take that would make you feel safe at work?” I don’t have an answer that keeps the library open. I think we should all be in lockdown, at home except for essential trips for food, medicine and the like. I think that is the only way we contain this. I think it is the only path to safety. I don’t want to go out in public, too many people refuse to wear masks, it isn’t safe. And now we have the CDC changing their guidelines because of the temper tantrums coming out of the WH. So we can’t even trust the CDC… at a time when we desperately need trustworthy information.

I am not okay right now.

Dream of a Colorful Life

Cooler weather means baking and more cooking in general. I made chocolate chip coffee cake muffins for breakfast this morning. Muffins for motivation! The boy needs to start getting the computers processed for his dad this morning. My poor husband, he just cannot do it all, there is too much. Thankfully the school agreed to pay our lad to clean them up and process them through. Gives the boy something to do, some structure for his days for a while , and gives him the boost of earning some money. I think I will make the weird bean soup for lunch again. I made it last week and it was a hit so maybe it will be again.

Yesterday I got a fair bit accomplished despite spending the day waiting for the doctor to call which they never did. I did a ton of cooking and prep, did laundry, dishes, got the groceries and such, cleaned the yard and told the lad that I am bloody tired of cleaning up dog droppings in all the places I have repeatedly told him Not to walk her. Basically, anywhere we are likely to walk is not a great spot, especially as we walk in our own yard in the dark sometimes. I picked and dried a ton of roses, made rose powder which is basically dry, pink food coloring with a sweet, floral flavor. I’m hoping for a big crop of mint too, but we’ll see.

Been trying to bolster my husband’s morale. Trying to get him to see that, in my opinion, he doesn’t have to be trapped by his job. He can embrace the idea of “fuck it” and go for what he wants. I know he’s right that we need insurance and that we wouldn’t last long without him having a steady income, I know, it’s 100% practical. But, he shouldn’t hate his life, you know? I’m not saying he just yell; “I QUIT!” and storm off, fun as that would be, I’m saying work on a real escape plan. He’s applying to places and that’s awesome, but if we drop one of our games he could use that time to work on a creative project that could be an outlet for him, that might or might not become anything in the future… but it might, and he will never know if he doesn’t try. What if he kept this job and was able to make a little money on a side project? What if that side project lead to another and another? Even if completely breaking free of regular work doesn’t happen, being able to make some money at fulfilling, creative work would shift the dynamic for him. He might feel freer to pursue a job with less hours, for less pay, maybe we could still get employer insurance until the broken health system gets fixed.

Even though it’s probably a silly dream, I think about us living a smaller, more flexible life. What if we could get our expenses down and our savings up to the point where we could live on a very small income? What if I could sell paintings and handicrafts, work at the library part time. Maybe he could work part time sell some of his creative projects? What if we could grow a lot of our own food? I know there would be a lot to think about, I get how impractical I am. But if we just stay on the well-worn path… where the hell does that get us? I’m tired of being fenced in, stifled, trapped on a crazy hamster wheel of boredom and frustration. I think my husband is WAY more tired of it than I am, I think I’m more tired of watching him deal with it. The craziness of modern life, the hurry, hurry, hurry, the full to bursting schedules, the lack of community, it’s all awful and soul-deadening. There is a way, or there are a million ways, to break free and I am going to find one that works for us.

Reality bites, so I will create a new one. It will be more beautiful and creative and fulfilling. A life worth living, where we make memories and have experiences worth talking about. I want us to both have the time and freedom to learn new skills as we want and need to. I want my sweet, hardworking husband to have enough free time that he isn’t paralyzed by choice anymore. He was working full-time (40-60 hours/week) while going to school 1/2-time (10-20 hours of work/week) for over 6 years. During that time he lost the ability to … know what he wants to do at any given time. He had so little time to call his own, he never made a choice, he’d end up scrolling FB, staring at TV or spending hours on a video game only to regret it later. I think any of those things has their place but he was falling into them by default and feeling like he wasted what little time he had. When school ended he was unable to figure out what to do with his free time for quite a while. We eventually settled into tabletop gaming, a little reading and such, but these are sort of default settings for us. With the extra workload the pandemic has forced on him he’s overwhelmed again. I just want him to have the ability to relax, unwind, let go of the stress and do something that makes him happy. I’d love it if he could be rewarded, get that insane morale boost of having his creativity valued by others.

Daily Slice of Dystopia

May you live in interesting times. That statement is allegedly a Chinese curse and I have to say that times have gotten well past “interesting.” The Covid-19 pandemic is coming under control in many places but it is still raging across the US. A few states seem to currently be experiencing less new case but others are seeing rates skyrocket. Things are supposedly getting better in my state so the governor is saying certain places can open up in certain ways but these phases of reopening are much too short. We aren’t giving each phase enough time to see the actual impact on number of cases before starting the next phase. I think we are headed for disaster. We may get there more slowly than some places, but disaster is the destination.

I have 3 grown children living at home unable to go out and look for jobs because of the risk of exposure to the virus. They are all on the Autism spectrum and the older 2 have always had trouble finding work, my middle child has literally never been employed except for work-study at the local community college, the oldest has been hired in restaurant and by a pharmacy chain in the past. At this point neither has worked since March. I came up with an idea so they could do some work over the summer that would save us money and gain them a useful skill: they can scrape and paint our house, or at least most of it. They are going to watch youtube videos to learn how and start at the back of the house for practice. We’ll get all the supplies, of course, and pay them a small stipend because it just wouldn’t be at all fair otherwise. I’m hoping that learning the skills and having the experience will give them both a boost in the confidence dept. and that having an income of some sort again will lift their spirits. It would be epic if either of them could go on to get work as a house painter. Anyway, that’s my scheme for the girls.

Our son has had a short gig as a paid intern for a few weeks the last 2 summers that has been amazing for him. My husband had been asking for an intern to take care of the returned student laptops each Spring. It is low-level work that includes physical cleaning, sticker removal, etc, checking them in, sorting out and shipping the ones that need to be repaired, and cleaning them out of all user information. It’s something that can be learned with maybe an hour of training and not something the Director of IT should be doing, especially when his workload is through the roof. So 2 years ago his immediate boss was suddenly on board and suggested our son could do it as he had just turned 16 and wouldn’t it be a cool experience for him? Heck, yeah! Our lad enjoyed it very much and has been shockingly good at not spending the money he’s earned. Unfortunately, they are balking at hiring anyone to do it this year. It’s insane, my husband is drowning in work, his assistant is drowning in work, and the internship is minimum wage. Further, we have all the stuff here already and having the lad do the work keeps us safe as much as is possible. Hopefully they will decide to let the kid do the work.

Meanwhile, I am back to work, and my husband is basically being told that he will have to work on campus when they reopen in the Fall. That right there is assuming a lot. It’s assumes we won’t be back in lockdown by the Fall, that there won’t be massive travel restrictions to and from the US, etc etc. It sucks that they are asking to come back to campus. He is seriously at risk for the virus, it is an international school, and he has proven conclusively that over 90% of his job can be handled remotely… except during certain brief spans of time that require him to accept of return physical objects on a frequent basis. I am furious that they told him “even if there were positive cases of Covid-19 on campus” he “should definitely still be on campus.” It is lovely that have agreed to go ahead and install all the protections he has asked for in his office, and agreed to all the procedures he has insisted on for no direct contact with staff or students, but then they tell him he will still have to go to offices and classrooms to fix projectors, printers, and other things. !!! So, he’s protected in his office (which is right by a direct entry/exit point to outside) but then he’s supposed to just walk through halls to rooms with staff and students in them? What sense does that make??? He suggested they hire a temporary IT intern to handle these things because they are very low-level anyway and he will be going nuts in the Fall trying to finish the database conversion on top of all the usual stuff (WAY too much stuff) he has to do. They suggested they could buy him a HAZMAT suit. Utter insanity.

Everyone is tired of the restrictions, everyone is tired of face masks, handwashing, social distancing, and all of it. It sucks. But is all very necessary to try to stop what is shaping up to be a horrifying tidal wave of horrific illness and utterly miserable Death. Everywhere I go I see people without masks, not that I am out and about, I’m talking about driving to work, the drive thru at the pharmacy, dropping off our household trash, and gassing the car. There are way too many people not taking this seriously. And my state is one of the better ones for this sort of thing! We are going to see number of infections rising in the next few weeks and I am going to stay home again no matter what the governor recommends even if it means I lose my job. I am not bringing this damned thing home.

Dystopia is here. This is where we are. We have a virus on the rampage and even though we are tired, bored and completely over it, the virus isn’t. It is not tired at all and it is spreading at every chance it gets. Even people with very mild cases of it are at risk for some extreme complications for a long time after the infection has faded. This thing is no joke and if you think herd immunity is some kind of answer I suggest you research the ‘black death,’ the Bubonic Plague that ravaged Europe all those centuries ago, that is what herd immunity looks like. Relying on herd immunity without a vaccine is UGLY and it reflects the utter and abject failure of the leadership of this nation to protect its citizens. They knew for months this was coming and did nothing. Now they are literally asking and expecting the American people to die for their mistakes to save the economy, to make economic numbers look better so the monster in chief can get re-elected. It’s all a fucking game to him and to his ultra-rich cronies and they view the rest of us as disposable pawns.

Not Digging Phasing Back to “Normal”

We’re easing back into the work routine, it’s going fairly well, despite one abusive patron already, during my second shift back. Keep it on the road lady, I haven’t used the system or tried to locate a book or dvd in months! Oof. I have caught up with making all the flyers I need to and am working on assembling materials for the take-home crafts, and packets of information for the contests I’ll be running and things like that. I’m learning all the new protocols, all the new procedures, etc, even as we wait to phase most of it out whenever that happens. I’m enjoying being back in the building, being among the books, getting to casually chat with a coworker, even at a distance and through our masks. I’ve got my new materials budget starting next month, it’s been slashed, but I will make do. I’ll hunt for what bargains there are to be had, solicit more donations of gently used books, etc. That’s all good. And yet I am still contemplating quitting my dream job.

I get stressed out having to go there, stressed by the extra steps we need to go through to track curbside pick up, stressed trying to talk on a phone through a mask, while the phone slips against the mask as I try to use the computer, stressed by all the cleaning, the cleaners make my skin peel, the gloves make my hands wildly sweaty and uncomfortable, I’m just very stressed by work right now and by the pace at which people are rushing to “get back to normal” without adequate time between steps to see what impact the lifting of restrictions will have on virus spread. They are just going to create a new surge of this horrible virus and we are all going to be forced to quarantine again. 😦

Stress is a big factor in my negative feelings toward working, but it isn’t the only factor. I got used to a new, softer rhythm of life, I have been able to be a better wife, better mother, better pet-mom, vastly more prolific artist, and despite all the stress of the pandemic a generally happier person in a bunch of ways. I had more time to read, more time to learn new things, I liked it. Normalcy kind of sucks. Being stressed, rushing places, having to plan dinner for my family and a stupid, sad separate dinner for myself. (usually a couple of granola bars and some water for me. bleh) Not working allowed me to reach out, online of course, and keep up with my friends more, connect in new, untried ways that have turned out to be hella cool. I feel more of a sense of community with all my friends than I did when we were all rushing out to jobs all the time, driving kids around, constantly running errands and busy, busy, busy! Not that I was idle at home, I mean now I am cause it’s a billion degrees out, but I was painting, writing, working from home, cooking a lot, reading, planning, dreaming, just living. And it was good.

We’ve been lucky, we’ve been able to continue to work from home through this nightmare, we have been getting paid when others have been laid off temporarily or permanently, lost their insurance and suffered hunger while not being able to pay their bills. We have friends who are struggling through this and it’s just so stressful. We help where we can but I wish we could do more. I want to fix all the problems and it sucks that I can’t, that I have to choose where I feel like we can make the best impact at any given time. When the virus comes roaring back and we are all forced to go back home I think it might be worse the second time around. Folks that lost jobs will probably still be out of work and how are they supposed to eat and live if our damn government doesn’t support its citizens? Doesn’t ban evictions and suspend the machinery of rent and mortgage collection and tell the greedy utilities they aren’t allowed to shut people off? If our government was more functional we would have universal health care, a strong safety net, and much else that the rest of the civilized world already has. We need to fix that!