Life was so stressful after the attempted overthrow of our Democracy, I was so worried all the time, then things moved ahead mostly as they should and I was weird and jittery for a bit. But I am still here. I couldn’t write, I wasn’t feeling it, I read instead but also did a lot of other things.
I am upping my Game Master game, trying to get better at running combats, better at Roll20.
I’ve been gaming a lot. I average about 3 or 4 RPGs per week including the one I am currently running.
I learned how to crochet a Magic Circle so now I can crochet amigurumi better, and mittens, etc.
Mastered the “half double crochet” stitch. You’d think that would be a single stitch but no… anyway, I finally got that one!
I have been making amigurumi stars, bees, etc
I am attempting my first sweater, I think it’s my first sweater, I forget a lot of stuff these days. LOL
I’ve been doing my usual stuff too and working.
So yeah, still trying to level up and become a more competent human!
hi there, my computer has decided that the function of shift keys is entirely optional so there will be no capital letters and some of the punctuation i want to use will be unavailable. yeah, so 2020 comes to an end taking my ability to capitalize with it. lol.
what i’ve been doing lately. since xmas i’ve been crocheting mittens/making super mittens. i’ve got two pairs crocheted and another almost half done. i still need to make liners and stitch them in. i’m sort of toying with the idea of turning on the lights at my etsy shop again. i’ve been gone a while. i’m also reading, of course, two excellent so far books; the angel of crows; by katherine addison, and the beast of the stapletons; by james lovegrove. i am loving them. i’ve also been watching and rewatching a ton of liziqi videos and a little series on youtube called that chapter.
tonight i worked for the last time in 2020 and heard the sad news that a patron’s father has just died of covid 19. awful. My brother in law has it now and so far he’s ok… oh look, it capitalized something! Oooo and exclamation points are back. Excellent. I refuse to retype this whole entry.
I’m thinking about my resolutions for the new year and trying to remain hopeful that 2021 will be a much better year than 2020. I don’t know about doing an end of the year recap, I kind of just want to move forward without looking back at this point. Maybe I will recap the good, try and glean something positive from 2020, and build upon whatever I can salvage from this garbage fire in 2021. I’ll post some pics and do a real entry sometime soon. Be well.
So, I’m sorry for going all “Winter holidays” there before enjoying the Fall. Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of all and I shouldn’t short change it like that. How rude! So I’m here to talk about candy, costumes and what’s going on instead of trick-or-treating and in-person parties this year. First, I love this idea for little kids or pretty much anyone:
How fabulous is this? Obviously, I think those with sensitive little ones should play fast & loose with the word “scary.”
Decorate for Halloween, make Halloween themed snacks, and have everyone in your household dress up in costumes. Then mix & match from these ideas:
Take out some Halloween themed books or collections of ghost stories from your local library and have a read-aloud by candlelight or flashlight.
Make a Facebook group and ask friends and family to dress in costume and post pics or do a Zoom gathering to show off costumes and socialize.
Hokey monster movie marathon. (Godzilla and that era or any of the wondrously bad/hilarious sci-fi channel monster movies.
Create and decorate a Halloween Tree. My middle daughter started this when she was 3. We were getting ready for a little Halloween party and she asked; “What about the Halloween Tree?” I was like; “whaaat?” and asked her if she meant the tree with the lights and decorations because that was definitely the Christmas Tree… yep that’s what she meant alright but it was a Halloween Tree and she obviously thought I was suffering from extreme early-onset dementia or something because i was clearly misremembering. SO, I made a Halloween Tree. All you need is some smallish dead branches and something of sufficient weight to hold them up. I used a vase full of stones. Just arrange the branches to look like a dead tree, add some lights and spooky decorations and you’re done. Our first tree had a small string of white lights but you can now buy orange or purple Halloween lights. For decorations We make ghost out of Kleenex and string with faces sharpied on them, and some pumpkins and cats cut out of colored paper. Ours is usually sized to make a great centerpiece.
Bake some Halloween themed sugar cookies, the kind you cut with cookie cutters, and let the kids decorate and eat them. You could make this part of a Facebook group w/without costumes. Have friends and family share their kooky cookies.
Find out what, if anything in these crazy times, your local library is offering for Halloween. I am having a Make-Your-Own Monster event with a randomly drawn prize, and offering take-home crafts of Fall lantern kits, shadow puppet kits, and friendship bracelets. My counterpart in children’s services is offering several take-home kits for the little ones. Some libraries might be having costume contests by having patrons submit photos.
Some radio stations are definitely having costume contests w/submitted photos. One in my area is offering a prize of $100 or $200 on a debit card. (I can’t remember the amount)
Make a round layer cake and decorate it to look like a Jack-o-lantern.
If you and your kids or housemates play tabletop RPGs (Role Playing Games) run a special one-shot Halloween game. The possibilities here are nearly endless and can range from a child-friendly, goofy Scooby Doo vibe all the way to a Creepy, gritty, gorey Walking Dead/horror movie vibe. Call of Cthulhu is my go-to. One shots are perfect for it as player characters generally go insane when exposed to the Mythos anyway.
Create a LARP, if you’re feeling ambitious, and have enough people in your household. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play and it can be a lot of fun. This one takes more prep than any of these other ideas because you need to have a plot, props, maybe an accomplice, etc. The simplest way to do this is to get your hands on a boxed Murder Mystery game that contains all the characters, clues, etc. A few years back I created my own LARP for my youngest when that’s what he wanted to do for Halloween. I had 3 days and no money to spend so it was unpolished to say the least. But it was fun. It involved splitting our group in 2, a scavenger hunt for one group so they could find a book about Halloween that contained clues as to what they had to do, and the other group had to come up with 2 word clues to try and help the first group when they got stuck. The second group had accidentally been pulled into the afterlife and were stuck in a waiting room with a booklet of their own outlining their situation. They also got snacks and hot cocoa. The first group had to find the clues, figure them out, and conduct a ritual to get group 2 back through the veil between worlds. I wrote the booklets and decorated them with woodcuts of skeletons and such from online and set up the afterlife waiting room in our shed.
I have a bit of a headache so that’s all I’ve got for right now. Please feel free to add your awesome ideas in the comments. Or your really dumb ideas, those can be a ton of fun! ^_^
Just a couple of pics I dug up: goofy jack-o-lantern idea and one of our Halloween Tree centerpieces.
It was 39 degrees when I woke up this morning, so lovely. Not that I want the growing season over just that I enjoy being slightly sane and enjoy being able to stand wearing clothing. I’m hoping to enjoy wearing sweaters again someday, maybe even this winter, when my crazy hormones finally loosen their grip. We’ll see. I am pleasantly chilly this morning.
My hubby is sick but of course started work before 8am. At least he’s home and can work in his bathrobe if necessary, he could work from our bed even. Working remotely is kind of awesome, I mean it would be better if it was more of a choice, but still. He’s working ridiculous hours now, that’s just a job at a school in September, to be expected.
Apparently I’ll be writing the grant proposal for the Cultural Council next month. My boss has confidence in me and promised to check it over before we send it. Look out, I just might become competent at my job! I still have plenty of gaps but I love what I do so I keep trying to learn it all. One thing at a time, I’ll get there.
My reading for the year is ahead of schedule. I think I’ve read 42 books out of 52 I aimed for. With life being busy, stressful and so on I figured 1 book a week would be a decent goal for 2020. Then it turned out the whole world changed and got weird so I might have to raise my goal or something. I am currently reading The Library of the Unwritten; by A.J. Hackwith, Crossings; by Alex Landragin, Among the Fallen; by N.S. Dolkart, Fury of the Demon; by Diana Rowland, and This is My America; by Kim Johnson. Next up: Beowulf; by Maria Dahvana Headley and Disfigured; On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space; by Amanda LeDuc. I’m enjoying all the books I’m reading, I just can’t seem to settle down into one. I’m blaming stress.
I’ve only read one dud-book this year. Surviving the Lake House was just a dull slog. I almost never give a low rating to a book, I hate to do it, but I felt like the writer could have benefitted from serious editorial intervention. It was bad enough I looked up the publisher and, sure enough, self-published. I understand the desire to want to hold a book you’ve written in your hands. How amazing must that be? But writers need editors. They need a dispassionate someone to tell them; “This isn’t ready yet. It needs to have a consistent tense.” or; “You’re writing in the first person you need to tell your audience why you’re telling them this tale.” or: “You need more description. The reader needs to be able to visualize your characters, scenes and so on, they need to connect to the characters.” Plus all the usual grammar fixes etc.
I read a lot. Shocking, I know, that a librarian should be a big reader, fulfills a stereotype at least. I read all sorts of books, fiction and nonfiction, but I have my favorites. I read a lot of fantasy, especially what is generally called ‘dark fantasy,’ of course as a YA librarian I tend to read a lot of young adult fiction too, a lot of dystopian fiction, lately I find myself reading a fair few mysteries, and I have always been fond of Sherlock Holmes stories. There are so many authors now trying their hand at writing the great detective that I cannot keep up. I really love what James Lovegrove has done with his Sherlock stories, especially the ones involving Cthulhu. I love the mythos originating with H.P. Lovecraft and fostered by his literary descendants. Seeing the mythos combined with the world of Sherlock Holmes is a treat.
The Lady Sherlock stories are surprisingly good too. I didn’t think they would be, thought the concept would be gimmicky, but they are very well done. The young Charlotte Holmes needs to forge her own path in life but she’s a privileged young lady in Victorian England and is thwarted at every turn. So she, with the help of a few accomplices, comes up with a way to use her bright and questing mind to make something of a living for herself. Of course it’s more complicated than that, with relatable and interesting characters, and plenty of plot twists to keep the reader guessing. I’ve read the first 3 books so far and I just ordered the 4th from another library. This series is worth reading for any fan of Sherlock Holmes. Interesting take well executed.
Oh, and another favorite, and recent, adaptation! There are 3 books by Kareem Abdul Jabbar starting with Mycroft Holmes; that are delightful. Co-written by Anna Waterhouse this trilogy is irresistable. Full of excellent and appealing characters, well plotted, perhaps not quite globe spanning but with some interesting travels and travails, these books deserve to be widely read. It seems a bit funny, I had always thought of Mr. Jabbar as simply a sports figure. I hadn’t realised he had other hidden talents. Hidden to me, I guess, I don’t pay too much attention sometimes.
Hurting today, my head, my joints, it’s not a great day if I’m talking about pain. We’re supposed to game tonight but I’m not sure I’m up to it. I wouldn’t even have to be out of bed to play so that’s saying something. I took a brief walk this morning. I’ve made breakfast and lunch for Bill and I, done a few dishes, and am trying to come up with a dinner plan but that is the extent of my efforts today.
Oh, wait, I’ve also been emailing back and forth with one of my teen’s mom about matching books that interest her son with audiobooks so he can listen while he reads. It’s really tricky because audio books are expensive so libraries tend to focus on physical books. I’m working on it though, even requested my Director purchase a copy of an audio book to match one of the YA paperbacks the teen is interested in. We’ll see if she feels it’s a good investment. The book is not a new title, not terribly old either, but we’d have the only Ebook in the system so it would likely see some use.
What stage of the apocalypse is it when we’re all stuck in a weird limbo of the world returning almost to normal even as the virus spreads. My grown offspring can’t job hunt, can’t see friends, aren’t sure what their best moves are and neither are we? Even weirder, what stage is it when I love my job but I kind of want to quit it so I won’t be exposed, but we’re taking all the precautions we can at work and I really love the job, and my boss is Awesome, but I cannot, cannot bring this virus home? And what insanity is it that my mother can beg to spend time with me, insisting she has been “Super Careful” and socially distant etc etc… but I looked at her FB and there are pictures from her recent travels of her on the beach with a whole group of people None of whom are masked?????
Later, some time in the dim and distant future I may understand WTH she is thinking, but I doubt it. Almost everyone that I know personally who is acting foolishly about this pandemic is a Boomer. I know some Boomers are actually being careful but in all seriousness, I totally get why Gen-Z is calling this virus the “Boomer-Doomer.” In my household, that has been locked down as hard as it can be since early March, Gen-X, Millennials, and Gen-Z are determined to ride out the insanity and live to see a post Covid-19 world. Our Boomer relatives are travelling, spending time with friends, giving people rides, shopping, etc. I do not get it. They are at higher risk…
So, I’ve been to the docs 3 times this week and I’m right now waiting for a call from them. I’ve been exhausted and not sleeping well, hurting all over, especially my joints, for some time. I’ve had a lot of blood drawn for tests this week and they actually might have found something. Something is weird with my liver. Huzzah! Yes, I am sounding positive about something that is probably bad because I’ve been struggling for years and kept being told I was fine when it is clear that I am not. So yes, I am happy there is something to freaking look at, now maybe we can get me healthy and fully functioning again. On the other hand, I need my liver, it does really important things for me and I am still using it, so hopefully whatever is going on is fixable. It would be great if I had to change my diet and eat healthier, that would cool, extra motivation. We’ll see, I guess, don’t know if doc is waiting for yesterday’s blood tests to come in before calling me.
Other than my liver, my doc put me on a muscle relaxer so my sleep has been better for 3 nights running. Fingers crossed that trend continues! Because my liver is involved I have stopped taking Tylenol for the moment, a nurse suggested it might not be helping, to see if that might give my liver a break. Poor thing, I get so many headaches and struggle with chronic pain, I take a LOT of Tylenol. Well, generics and store brands, but same thing. Lets see if I can make it through today without taking any, I haven’t in … 2 days? I should get an award. 😉
Being so tired means I am reading a lot. Finished So you Want to Talk About Race, The Simple Life, and Sherlock Holmes and the Stuff of Nightmares, so far this week. All very good and recommended books. Now I am reading Touch of the Demon, and This is my America, along with The Color of Law. I’ve got three more books in the demon series after this one, and a few books still to find and read in the Lady Sherlock series, as well as an unknown number of books in the Lovergrove Sherlock Holmes series, so I can hum along happily for a while and not worry about what I’ll be reading next. Actually, my TBR (to be read) pile is staggering. I’ve got a ton of fairy tale novels, horror novels, and nonfiction too. Sheesh.
Best coolness of the past 30 days: I discovered The Bloggess has her own bookstore and book club and I decided to try it. We read Mexican Gothic as our first book and it was creepy and wonderful. Yay! The next book is on its way here: Crossings, by Alex Landragin. I can hardly wait. I let book club books ‘jump the line’ in my TBR pile, the only books that take priority over them are library books with rapidly approaching due dates. I wonder how many library books I have ordered…
I have been cooking a bit more this week. Last week was not a great week as I was particularly tired and sore. I’m making a tomato based pasta sauce for everyone else, they can use it while I’m at work some evening. My son seemed very appreciative that I’m making this effort. He said something like ‘Homemade pasta sauce, that is supposed to make a big difference, taking it to the next level.’ He made his impressed face too. ^_^ I’m hoping to finish making it today so they can have it tonight. We’ll see, my hands hurt and I’m pretty wrung out and still need to go to work tonight.
Nothing is going on with the hippie fort. I have plans for the next improvements and would like to be spending time out there. It’s just been too hot for hanging out in all the uninsulated glory and we don’t want workers here if we can avoid it, at least till the pandemic is under better control. We haven’t had work done on the apartment yet either. So much to do and so much not getting done.
Global pandemic has meant our apartment has been empty since February. How could we rent it out when we can’t interview potential renters? Or show them the place? Well, it turns out a friend has been desperately, and quietly, wanting a change of address, so that happens September 1st. We won’t be able to hang out really, not until things settle down rampant disease-wise, but it will be good to have the place going to better use again and we’ll be able to maybe sit outside with masks and chat of an evening or something. I know it will be great, she’s such an awesome person, I can’t wait to get to know her even better. She’s a creative type too so there will be much arting going on in the near future. Dare I dream? Collaboration? ^_^ All those happy thoughts aside, I am convinced we will be going into lockdown shortly after schools resume this fall. There’s too much in person stuff happening and Covid is going to get out of control again in a hurry. I saw an add for PPE for kids for back to school and it nearly broke me. Face shields with cute stickers on them… what messed up dystopian novel are we in? Or what level of hell is this? I can’t even, I’m going to pet my kitty cat and take a shower. TTFN.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I felt a bit better today? Sadly not the case but I am maintaining. I had hoped today I would have more energy and less discomfort but it is what it is. I think I slept a bit better. I’m waiting for a call back from the Dr. as my joint pain was not addressed in any way. I made sure to discuss it with both the nurse and the Dr. but the Dr. moved on to prescribing antiviral meds for other symptoms and I was so uncomfortable at being in a building in proximity to people outside my bubble that I didn’t notice we’d failed to get anywhere with the joint issues in my hurry to be gone from that place.
I’ve been reading a bit, finished the second “Lady Sherlock” book. I picked up the first idly because I’ve always loved Sherlock Holmes and am willing to give anything relating to the great detective at least a once over but I was surprised to find A Study in Scarlet Women to be not only a fun read but also filled with characters I care about, a plot that woke my mind up, and a well wrought mystery that got more complicated as it went. The second in the series, A Conspiracy in Belgravia, did not disappoint. Sherry Thomas managed to keep on surprising me but I think I might be figuring her out. Well, I have hope that I am close to figuring her out. I should know fairly soon because I’ve put the third on hold at the library. For now I will be returning my attention to Diana Rowland and the 5th book of her Demon series; Touch of the Demon. The 4th ended on a terrible cliffhanger and I’ve been almost out of sorts waiting to start it.
We picked up our groceries, curbside, and our farmshare yesterday so we’re full to bursting again. The entire freezer in the apartment downstairs is full again. I need to make sure I am properly organized, we have a tenant moving in at the end of this month and I need to make sure everything is ready for her. I can’t be using that fridge by then and we need to get the insanity of my husband’s work overflow out of there as well. I’m not sure how we’ll manage all that with the unexpected delays with everything being backordered, but we’ll figure it out.
I just looked over at one of my very latest purchases, online purchases, I haven’t been inside a store since early March, and I was struck by the feeling of peace it gave me just to look on it. It’s a cellophane package containing, I think, 240 little skeins of embroidery floss in what I am calling “Every Color” with capital letters. I think there are 2 of each color so, really, there are many more colors in the world than in this little package, but it is honestly beautiful and I feel like I could make any design my heart could desire with this lovely collection of thread. It only cost about $15 which makes me happy because I love good prices. I’d be happier if I’d found it used, like if I’d stumbled on it at a tag sale or in a charity shop, I prefer second hand things. Second hand purchases save things from the landfill and can be had for pennies on the dollar of their original price. Awesome all the way around.
Anyway, The feeling I get looking at this colorful bundle was striking because I’ve been feeling so stressed lately what with the global pandemic and the failure of our leadership to contain or manage it and so forth. That peaceful feeling made me pause to think about it and I realised what I feel when I look at my packet of embroidery thread is wealth. I feel a great feeling of “enough,” of satiety, I feel content and confident that whatever I need to do with this thread I have got it covered. To me that is wealth. It’s the same feeling I have when my cupboards and fridge are full and their contents are varied. It’s that same feeling I have when my TBR (to be read) pile is vast, deep, and partially unknown, & when I know there are several books lurking there that I am positively hungry for. And it is the same feeling I have when I have several unpainted canvases, tons of paint, a bag of colorful yarn, or a drawer full of clean undies and socks. Oh! And empty notebooks and pens!
I feel so wildly, undeservedly lucky when I can look and see that any of these things are true, but I have realized that the truest wealth is time, is self-determination, getting to actually choose how you spend your time. I mean, we all probably know this, that time is the most precious resource. We have what we have and we cannot make any more of it. We can’t save time we can only spend it. I think the lockdown, and having to go back to work, made me see it clearly, undeniably, and deeply for the first time. For a few months, I got to decide when I worked, when I rested, when I ate, etc. It was disturbing and difficult at first, I made myself get up and go to bed on my normal schedule. I scheduled work activities each day, 2-3 hours per day to get the same number of hours in as usual but never having to work 7 in a row as I had at my job. That felt nice at first but wore on me terribly over time. Instead I worked about 4 hours 3 times a week and found that better, better still when I clumped those days together, though I was still able to be flexible to accommodate webinars and such. I finally found a wonderful rhythm, a way to order my life so I felt less stressed, had time to relax and pursue art, crafts, reading, journaling and other writing. I felt better than I had in a long time.
Now that I am back at work coving my usual schedule, quite honestly, I hate it. I work Monday and Friday evenings and all day every-other Saturday. It isn’t the number of hours that’s the problem, not at all, it’s 8 hours one week 15 the next repeat indefinitely, no problem. It’s being locked into the days and times. It eats me up, it destroys my ability to relax on any day I have to work and makes me feel rushed, pressured, and stressed. I’m back to 2-3 days per week where I am not home to make dinner and 2 days where I don’t get to eat dinner with my family. And the evening hours are not great for me to be working during. I am not at my best then, I am mostly spent by about 5:30 PM, just biorhythm-wise. My body wants me to recline and relax in the evening, or stroll, maybe. My body communicated this quite clearly to me when I was the master of how my hours were spent. I can get a LOT done in a day if I know that once dinner is done I am “off the clock.” Without work taking me away from my home I was able to use my clothesline much more frequently, I got into a habit of foraging berries and making breakfast smoothies, I started walking again for exercise.
It doesn’t help that no one else in my house is leaving it for work yet. My husband is locked into just brutal hours of work, stressed to the max and completely burned out with his job. I am not saying I envy that, I feel horrible for him, what is expected of him by his job (I.T. Professional) at this point is ridiculous and cruel. He is expected to do it almost completely during work hours but of course he can’t confine all that he has to do to those hours, there is just way, way too much. I need to be more grateful that I have as much lingering self-determination as I do, I am going to work on that. BUT, I think it is insane that most people live by the clock, serve corporate or other masters, and are expected to give SO MUCH for SO LITTLE in return. And, shockingly, people are expected to be grateful for even the worst, crappiest, most slavish, dehumanizing jobs. That isn’t me, but it is a LOT of people. Chained to clocks, having to work through illness, injury, at jobs that actually cause them considerable hardship. That is messed up!
Everyone deserves to work a reasonable number of hours and still make a living, have a life worth living, with a schedule that makes sense. Maybe we can’t have the ideal life where we determine what we do with each hour, but we should all have a good, satisfying, and dignified life. We all deserve time to relax, to seek entertainment & education, to spend time with family and friends creating memories. My husband was set to take a week off in March, instead he’s been working his ass off, straight through, at a very stressful job, since New Years Day. He’s got a good job, one that grants him 3 or 4 weeks “vacation” a year. So far he’s only been able to take a day here or there, I think he’s only taken 1 or maybe 2 off honestly, July 4th, the Friday before it was just off for everyone at his job, that’s the only day. There is no way he can take time off now, everything is a mad scramble getting ready to open the school for the fall, with no actual plan for NOT opening… which will likely be forced upon them at the last minute. It’s insane. And he can’t take time in the fall, of course, or likely anything like a week off until Christmas. He will get a few days at Thanksgiving though. They had damn well better let him save all the vacation time he is unable to take now. Gods, I hope so. He needs to take at least a month straight off just to recover from this.
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.
Gen-Xer Remix 