Life feels weirdly paused right now. Not that things aren’t happening, lots of things are happening, I just feel like I’m holding my breath, waiting to be able to relax and breathe. My son has started his senior year of HS, and my husband is putting in 90-100 hours per week at his job, mostly from home, and I still go to work 2-3 times per week but the library is still closed. Patrons are getting really cranky about not being allowed in to browse, and I get it, I love browsing too. But we are doing many hours of curbside pick up and we’re even delivering items to patrons as well as putting out story walks and giving out take-home crafts. It’s the best we can do for now until the Board of Health and the Trustees decide to open the doors. Oh, we are also setting appointments for patrons to use the computers.
Right now we are working on setting up a time for some limited outdoor browsing of new items in our collection. We’re hoping to do it once a week so patrons can have at least some opportunity to browse. I’m also trying to get a grant to put together a take-home painting kit for some time next year. I want to provide canvases, paints, brushes, and a relevant book for beginners. It is way beyond the kind of kits I’ve been sending out so far. We put together kits mostly from art supplies we had lying around and added LED tea lights, glass jars, or skewers. We did have the stained glass kits which were expensive but those were bought with a grant that was supposed to cover a stained glass workshop event so I guess the painting kits would be comparable.
We’re ordering books again! It’s awesome. I hated only being allowed to order virtual books. I mean, they’re better than not having books at all but it is nice to be able to have new books for the shelves again. I was trying to diversify the collection before the pandemic and now it’s much easier. I feel like more books by writers of Color are being published and are getting promoted more, they are easy to find right now so it’s a big help. There are some excellent YA novels coming out, too many, I can’t keep up!
I’m in a weird headspace. I’m going to stop writing now. I hope you are all well safe.
Though it often feels to me as if we lead boring lives in which very little happens the reality is a little different. Here is our year so far:
January: Happy New Year! First few days I see at least a dozen memes on FB about how right around every year “20” there is a terrible plague. heh, cute. Coincidentally, we start hearing that there’s something going on with a virus in China. Within a short time we’re still hearing everything is under control with the virus, but we’re seeing images of people in hazmat suits disinfecting the streets and the first city or province gets shut down. I begin stocking the house up a little more than usual; extra pasta, meat for the freezer, beans, rice, etc. (I always keep a good supply of food etc on hand in case of emergencies. I just increase our stores a little, fill in gaps.) Our tenant lets us know she is moving out and can’t pay February’s rent, we remind her she already paid when she moved in so, no worries. She tells us she is pregnant and moving in with her boyfriend.
February: I continue buying extra and stocking up, the news out of China isn’t good, the virus has spread to other countries, it is inevitable it will come here. I begin to get nervous about our son’s upcoming wisdom tooth extraction. It’s supposed to happen in March, he’s in pain, he needs it, but we’re starting to get a little nervous about going out in public, we’re wondering if we actually are going to have to isolate ourselves at home to stay safe. As the numbers everywhere start racking up, we wonder When do we pull the trigger?how do we decide it’s time to stay home? I get sick, it seems to be the flu, Tamiflu puts me right. We wonder how we will deal with the loss of rental income as we have no intention of looking for a new tenant as this virus continues to spread.
March: The boy has his wisdom teeth out, all goes well, yay. My husband gets ill, really ill, the doctor won’t see him. They prescribe over the phone, he takes breathing treatments 3 times a day, he takes pills. I worry. The doctors say they are assuming he is Covid-19 positive. My boss tells me not to come in. Our daughter works at a pharmacy and they aren’t taking precautions, she quits. Schools close. We are all home now. We don’t go out. We clean, we cook, we play video games and catch up on our reading. I worry about my husband, he’s exhausted. I begin working from home as best I can. My husband’s work won’t wait, they text and call, he begins working remotely through coughing fits. It’s unreal. He’s starting to feel better! His work hours keep expanding. We’re lucky, we both still have jobs, many don’t.
April: We mail our tax stuff in. We keep working. There’s hardly any traffic going by. I cook, a LOT, I start baking again. My husband is doing better, still coughing, but better. We start gaming more, lots of RPGs are started or picked back up where we’d left off. Isolation isn’t so bad. We meet online with friends to play Cards Against Humanity. We get groceries delivered! Huzzah! We’re using the empty apartment as a work space/art space/extra video game space. I turn the shed into an art studio/space to get away from the kids with my hubby.
May: Everything is still weird. We’re working from home, gaming online, getting groceries delivered, etc. This is the month we start to hear that people at only a small remove from us have gotten Covid-19, friends of friends… it’s scary. My husband’s aunt gets it, some of our friends get it. We stay home. We try not be paranoid about it, but we are not going to get this damn thing. The list of symptoms keeps growing, the ages and health condition of people getting this and suffering horribly from it keeps expanding.
June: We celebrate our son’s 18th birthday at home with cake and few presents we’ve gotten him online. It’s low key. We play an RPG, eat pizza and drink root beer. We finally begin to feel the sting of not seeing our friends and family in person. We keep working remotely. Our lives have something of a rhythm now, the kids are learning remotely. Our daughter gets her associate’s degree, our son passes all his 11th grade classes. My boss starts talking about the library reopening. Eventually I hear we will be back in the building in July. I am not happy about this, I don’t feel ready, I worry we will reopen to the public too fast.
July: I go back to work. It’s surreal working in an empty library. We do curbside pick up and delivery now. I devise and assemble take home crafts. Our budget is slashed way down but we all still have our jobs. I buy a few books for the collection. We struggle to keep up with cleaning all the books and other materials after their 3 day quarantine in the Community Room. Everything is confusing and different. Everyone is overwhelmed. We start feeling pressure from some people to loosen up our restrictions, to visit, to have lunch outside and “socially distanced.” My husband gets pressure from his job: What would make him feel safe so he can return to campus? Nothing, he tells them, honestly nothing. It’s an international boarding school and we’ve been hearing how many more enquiries they are getting from Texas, California, and Florida… You don’t say? How shocking that the uber-wealthy living in states where the virus is completely out of control want to send their kids to the relative safety of our neck of the woods! We promise we are 100% shocked by this. My uncle is diagnosed with cancer…
August: My husband continues to work from home, he digs in his heels, he is high risk. We get a note from his Dr. stating he is high risk for this virus and must be allowed to work remotely. The school continues to pressure him, suggests more isolated offices but when he starts to say that one in particular might actually work they say; ‘oh, you can’t have that one. A person that won’t even be teaching needs to use that room to write their book… ” because the huge free house they have all to themselves … doesn’t have room? As happens from time to time, my husband is contacted by a headhunter. Would he like to work in the field he just got a degree for? My husband starts seriously contemplating leaving this job. My uncle is rushed to the hospital and dies 2 days later on his daughter’s birthday. My husband is interviewed for a very cool job. He gets a second interview. We contemplate what life would be like if he actually liked/loved his job. We get the apartment ready so a friend can move in. We talk about having less money with the new job. We talk about how much notice he ought to give if he is offered this new job. I see a glimpse of a less stressed-out version of my husband.
September: Today, the first of the month, my husband’s assistant quits. He does not want to go onto campus either. He will work the next 2 weeks if he can do so remotely. Unfortunately, he was supposed to be the boots on the ground so that doesn’t help at all. How does one hire someone during a pandemic? How does one train someone remotely? We’re not sure. We are about to find out. We hope very much to receive an offer from the company my husband has been interviewed by because what is going to happen to the school is going to be an absolute shit-show. OMG. FUBAR. Our friend/new tenant is moving in today! The apartment is clean and shiny, the weather is good, I can’t wait. I know we can’t hang out like we want to but she’ll be here and we can sit outside and talk maybe? ^_^ Our son starts his senior year next week. My library may open at the end of the month and I have mixed feelings about that. I’m still worried about the virus numbers spiking a few weeks after school resumes.
The summer vacation that wasn’t is all but over now. Our Bug starts his senior year of highschool, virtual only, next week. He’s/We’ve been stuck home virtually 100% since early March so days have no meaning for him, time has very little meaning as well. It will be a weird adjustment for him to make having to wake up and login to his classes every weekday. I think he’s looking forward to having a schedule again though. This has all be so disastrously weird. We’ve all been stuck in a kind of limbo and it doesn’t seem like it will be ending anytime soon.
Once in a while something goes right and the amazing cleaner, Therese, made time for us today so the apartment is pretty much clean and shiny for our new tenant moving in tomorrow. I’m airing it out now too, it’s been closed up for months. I replaced the worst ceiling tile but it was a terrible pain. I will definitely pay someone who knows how to do that next time. Hopefully our new tenant will love living there and the pandemic will end and then we can all hang out together. She’s a similar kind of weirdo to us and we all game together online. Someday we will all BBQ together and stuff.
Work is still very odd. No one is allowed into the library except for specific little time slots to use computers. We still do curbside pick up and take home crafts but there’s no browsing for books and no in person programming. I’m trying to come up with take home crafts and activities for fall with no budget so that’s interesting. I need to figure out things for the teens and tweens to make from the supplies we already have. It’s kind of awkward. Putting together the bags is fun and everyone appreciated them so much. It’s so weird not having people in the library… but it will also be 100% weird when they start coming back in. Strange days we’re living in.
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…
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.
Apparently I don’t blog so much when it’s boiling out. We finally brought up the air conditioners and we’ve been running them enough to keep sane. I’m still uncomfortable a fair bit of the time but I can sleep so I won’t complain.
Berry harvests are still way down right now. There are TONS of immature blackberries on the bushes but they are ripening so slowly I wonder if they will ever be ready. The sumac berry, /pink-lemonade reportedly came out weird, I think I jumped the gun and they weren’t ripe yet, everyone still liked it but said it did not taste like lemonade. I need to find my foraging book and check when they are supposed to be ripe.
So, the camp-out went well. Five kids showed up and three stayed until midnight. We read spooky stories, talked about and showed off our pets, and the kids thanked me multiple times for putting it together. They asked me if we might be able to have similar events on some kind of regular basis and I’m thinking about it. I think I’m zeroing in on something, maybe the ideal sort of job for me, something that takes advantage of all my strengths and talents. I enjoy creating events, parties, planning activities, and running craft and other workshops, contests, book clubs etc. So, teen librarian is phenomenally close, my current job is phenomenally close, to what I feel I should be doing. But…
Other things I want to do just aren’t allowed in that box, not the way I want to do them, not on the scale I imagine them. Like the “All Hallows Read” where I wanted to run an overnight campout in the library. I thought we could do a sleepover with pop-up tents, sleeping bags etc. The plan was to have toaster oven s’mores, cocoa, etc, read aloud some spooky stories or Halloween related stuff, play some games and let the kids have the unusual experience of sleeping in the library. The teens loved this idea and my boss thought it was great and was willing to split the night with me so each of us could get a little shut-eye but the trustees didn’t feel comfortable with it. They also don’t allow us to show PG 13 movies even if we would limit the attendees to 13 and up and obtain explicit parental permission for each child attending. They won’t even allow PG 13 movies for adult audiences at the library. It’s just weird that I can show the first two Harry Potter movies but not the others.
That is all for now. I’m feeling ill and overwhelmed.
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.
So, it’s been several days since I posted, we’re all fine here, how are you?
I’ve been working, working on working, running games, playing in games, reading, cooking a lot, and plenty of other stuff.
My latest read: the 3rd book in the Demon series. So good so far!
Special note: last night, while gaming, exploring a vampire lair, a bat got into our bedroom and went unnoticed by all… except for Puddin’ the Wonder Dog, who perked right up and stared at the little thing until I took notice. Of course I start yelling; “OMG, A Bat!!! Help me, A Bat!” Stuff like that, and my husband is like; “We already killed all the bats, we’re fighting a vampire.” … … … ME: “NO, A REAL FUCKING BAT!!!” Points——> “Right fucking THERE!” And then much restraining of the dog, searching for something to throw over the bat, then running for leather gloves and a box, and finally: successful bat removal. Then returning to the game.
So, that was most of the excitement for yesterday. But I also learned how to make friendship bracelets! Yes, I know, like any 8 year old can do, but I am enjoying it. It’s one of the take home crafts I’ve put together in the hopes the teens will enjoy it. The stained glass craft and the fairy lantern craft have been well received. I’m working on a shadow puppet craft too. Lots of stuff to do.
My attempts so far: simple stripe, chevron, leaf pattern, & rainbow pride stripe.
I’ve been playing the Harry Potter game on my phone again for a few days. It encourages me to get outside and walk around which I really need to do. I’ve put on 5 pounds, all squishy and no muscle. Rude. It’s a freaking pandemic do I need to gain weight too? No. So I get out and fight Death Eaters and monsters, and return confundables or some such thing. It’s cute and play HP theme music at me. I like it. They keep adding to it and making it more interesting which is cool, plus special events and things.
Also, holy crap, you guys! One of the teens has submitted a story for the contest!!!!!!! YAY! Last year I had a Design a Cover contest and no one entered so this is making me very happy. ^_^
My sister sent me a present. It is so awesome! She’s gotten into pottery and she’s really good, selling stuff online and in a little shop or two near here. So exciting. Anyway, she’s making yarn bowls now and they are so cool! Here:
It’s blue with a branch opening and gorgeous green on the inside. So so lovely. She has cool stuff, check it out! https://hollypots.com/
This weather is killing me. So disgusting. It’s 81 degrees out with 60% humidity and I walked for about 20 minutes, strolling, and I am so sweaty and uncomfortable. My hair is still damp from my shower and I’m considering a second one right now. I will definitely shower before going in to work. UGH.
If the promised rain would keep on coming maybe we could get a full berry harvest. Some of the wild berry bushes are in spots that drain a little too well. They are laden with hard, green berries just waiting for proper rain to ripen and make me very very happy. ^_^ We are harvesting and eating berries every day. I make smoothies with them since there aren’t that many yet.
Approximation of daily harvest of berries.
The library will likely be completely oppressive today. My Director is usually cold all the time and I am always too warm so it truly sucks in the summer. I’ll only be there for 3 hours tonight but I have to work all day tomorrow. I haven’t been on my feet that much in MONTHS, I’m going to be hella sore. I know, I am lucky to have a job at all, and I am grateful, this weather just makes me miserable.
My MIL in FL is getting really antsy. One in 3 people may be infected where she is and she’s getting a little scared. She’s also alone, bored, sick of all of it like the rest of us. I don’t know how I’d be coping if I didn’t have my husband and kids here. I honestly don’t know how non-gamers are coping. We play games with friends 3xs/week. Lots of laughs, just enough catching up with each other, I don’t feel super isolated. I do miss in-person games, getting together for wine, beer, food, but honestly, Roll20 gaming is social enough for me most days. I find normal zoom chats pretty boring, like phone calls but you can see everyone’s messy houses and split ends, we use them for the audio when we game. I can’t believe that’s all non-gamers get, zoom chats and such with friends and family. Oof.
Okay, don’t listen to me, I’m just cranky from the heat. bleh. Be safe!
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.
Gen-Xer Remix 