Sitting on the porch in my hoodie listening to the birds come awake with their songs trying to keep my head from completely exploding.
It’s not working.
Saturday I got a letter from The Hartford (the company that we pay to process the ADA paperwork for not going back to the office when only 41% of the people in my county are fully vaccinated) saying that my work from home was permanent. So I asked HR what exactly permanent meant… permanent for 30 60 90 days or what the paperwork actually says permanent permanent. They told me that, despite my ruling that work from home is permanent, The Hartford is wrong and they are re-examining what my doctor’s paperwork REALLY meant and I guess at some point I will be made aware of which day exactly my ADA is done and I have to join the throngs of people streaming back into work.
Few hours later the edict came out that it’s going to be business as usual and they are taking away the elevator restrictions, the cafeteria restrictions, the meeting room restrictions June 2 but are keeping for a couple more weeks the restriction on EVERYONE flooding back in to work. Masks are no longer required (effective immediately for fully vaccinated and everyone if they decide they don’t want to wear one) but if you choose to wear one no one is allowed to make fun of you… yeah, that’s going to work… July 12 everyone will be welcomed back to the offices. It would be nice if everyone were to be vaccinated but that is only kind of a suggestion and not a requirement… but you can pack a dozen people into the elevator knowing that at least 7, statistically, are currently not fully vaccinated. I will need to figure out what stairwell will be open to take the stairs… and I will likely start losing weight again because I work on the 17th floor.
They are working on a flexible working policy. Sometime next week we will probably be made aware of what that is going to mean. I know that I will have to go back to working at work at some level. And I miss my boats. But knowing that I will have to go back to “normal” at some point… whatever my normal will look like… is one thing. Knowing that people who have been vaccinated fully (nurses at the facility where a friend of mine works) have been getting COVID anyway is scary. Knowing that, at best, people like me (on immunosupressants) are likely 65% covered according to my Rheumy is scary. Knowing that Rheumy said that COVID will be around forever like the flu and that there will be flu shots and COVID shots and pneumonia shots like there are flu and pneumonia shots now and that they are already working on the fall booster for the shots we already have taken kind of helps my head a little but only a little because I know an awful lot of people don’t get their flu shots now and if COVID keeps having so many variants what is that going to mean for forever. Knowing that I will join many of my friends and some of my family in always having a mask with me and wearing it when I’m in close proximity to other people… indoors a lot because of HVAC and people and that there will be people who make fun of me for it is kind of sobering.
It’s been nice only having to deal with seasonal allergies for the past 16 months. No cold… no flu…
So I sit here and enjoy the morning as long as I can… knowing that I will need to address reality as soon as reality hits. I have a race in 12 days… and in person race… and with the new CDC suggestions I don’t know what that is going to look like now. It was supposed to be staggered start times. It was supposed to be okay-ish. But what now?
Fully vaccinated people can go back to life as normal… not washing hands so much… no 6 feet of separation… no masks… but no one will ever have to prove that they have had even one vaccine let alone both of them. How many people will continue to get the vaccine if suddenly everything is back to normal anyway? There are an awful lot of people who have already said they won’t be getting the vaccine but are waiting for herd immunity. There are an awful lot of people who don’t wear masks correctly now and will suddenly not have to wear them at all.
I know that the best I can do is the best I can personally do for myself and my household… but… fear is kind of sobering… and I don’t get any more panic attack pills because Bear died 214 days ago so I don’t need them any more.
And sitting here… birds singing… woodpeckers finding their breakfast… sun coming slowly up… these are the things going through my mind. Not just now what… but… NOW What…
Breathe in Breathe out One day at a time and buy a metric ass ton of hand sanitizer…
Yesterday was a hard day, mentally, for me. It was hard in a lot of way.
Yesterday, Bear and Squirrel (lol… sounds like the start of a children’s story) needed to get blood work done. Nothing scary… just that time of the year again… so… yeah. We found out that you, now, need an appointment to get lab work done (okay… maybe not need, but highly recommended). Turns out it was HIGHLY recommended… there were people there waiting when we got there that were still waiting when we left. Bear’s was fasting so we went early as I could get them there.
When I go for my infusions, they have the waiting room set up so that people are actually 6 feet apart. There are “couches” (longer two together chairs) for people who live together. There are socially distanced chairs.
The phlebotomist lab…. not so much.
There are chairs back to back. There are couches back to back. They took out every other chair. There actually is just enough room to push a wheelchair between the chairs in the middle of the room…. barely.
Back to back chairs… I guess that implies that you don’t ACTUALLY have to socially distance if someone is behind you? I guess that implies that six inches equals six feet?
Removing every other chair… I mean… they aren’t airplane sized seats, they are doctor’s office chair sized… but… taking out every other one… that is what… somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 feet…? And the office was pretty well packed.
That was the start of the mentally not goodness.
But then… I’m pushing Bear in his wheelchair. He has on his mask. He’s not coughing. He’s just sitting with his oxygen strapped to the back of the chair and the canula up his nose. I pushed him as far away from people as I could (which was an adventure in itself). I found a chair that was empty with a spot beside it and a table next to that so… it was kind of as good as it was going to get.
There was a youngish woman sitting in a chair across the “isle” from us. I pushed him past her to get to his spot. We were probably 4 feet apart (best it was going to get there). She was sitting back to back against another woman in the chair she was in… so 6 inches MAYBE there.
I parked Bear and she kind of flipped shit. You could almost see the panic in her eyes. She got up and moved 6 feet (maybe) to sit back to back with some guy.
Because bear (73 years old and on hospice and on oxygen) was sitting (mask on, oxygen on) further away from her than she was with the woman behind her to begin with or the man she moved behind.
He is not contagious. Old is not contagious. IPF is not contagious. Wheelchair reliant is not contagious.
I’m so freaking irritated. No one was coughing. You have to have a mask on to get into the clinic. You have to have your temperature taken to get into the clinic. I mean… you can always lie about having been exposed, I guess… but…
It hurts my soul that people think handicapped people are overlooked… are not seen (or pretended they aren’t seen)… treated, in general, like shit.
If you’re one of the ones who thinks that a wheelchair and oxygen and 73 means they have cooties, I’m really glad you’re perfect. I’m glad that you don’t have anything wrong in your life. I sincerely hope that you stay perfect for your whole life… I hope you never have to deal with having an invisible disability (me and my RA). I hope you never have to deal with having a (or loving someone with) a visible disability. I hope your life stays as perfect as it obviously is.
I just don’t understand. And now with covid and the fact that people who recover are going to likely have residual either temporary or permanent disabilities. There are going to be how many more thousand people who are going to be treated like shit?
I’m really glad, right now, that I am already invisible. I got used to be invisible when I was obese. I am used to having an invisible disability… that I only have to cope internally with my crap and not something that people can stare at or stare through.
It hurts me that Bear is going through all of this… everything that has changed in his day/world. He keeps trying… I can’t imagine how much all of the changes are hurting him. Adding insult (almost literally and completely) to injury of having people OBVIOUSLY trying to run scream away from where he is hurts MY heart, I can only imagine what it does to his heart.
Add to that we hit an all time high in covid numbers in Ohio… and you get a really not so great kind of day.
But… today is a new day, I guess. The numbers will be down today because it is Saturday. I’m starting to feel more accomplished because I’m making progress cleaning the basement. I have to keep trying to shake the Debbie Downer-ness that is going on in my head.
99Walks is really helping. Making myself walk is helping. Spending time alone with myself is helping. The moral support I get from the 99Walks Facebook group (is it shallow that the positive feedback makes me feel good?) is helping. I hate taking the time away and leaving the house because I never know what might happen with Bear when I’m not here. I need to work at my training for The Goofy/Dopey for 2023 for myself… but… this whole year has really messed with my morale.
WW Zoom meeting is over… Time to kick it into gear for Saturday.
It’s the 4th of July 2020. I am so over politics. I am so over Covid 19 and its evolving cousins. I’m over the Murder Hornets and the Meth Gators and being scared all the time.
January is the traditional time of “reset”. And in January I decided that my word for 2020 was going to be JOY. And then February happened… then March happened… then April and May and June. I have been fighting so hard to just maintain any vague semblance of sanity and not falling into a pit of depression.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m on year three of my anti-depressants. And there are days when I really want to message my Dr to see if we can’t adjust the dose. It’s not like I have much to be depressed about. Bear on hospice, knowing that the flu probably put him there. Races being cancelled. Fairs and Disney. Movies at the theater being a thing of the past. The world as we know it changing to one where hate and derisiveness are rampant. Realizing just how polarized things really can get. It’s made this Mary Sunshine pretty much a Debbie Downer for a lot of days.
Then I found 99 Walks.
I’m not even sure how I found it on Facebook, to be perfectly honest. It might have been an ad on my feed. I don’t know. I know whatever it was, I saw the shiny thin bracelet that is your reward for making your walking goal every month and I was hooked on the bling. Ask anyone… I have a crap ton of medals hanging in the window of my office at home. Bling is an awesome motivator. And I needed some heavy duty motivation. Three good things every day for months on end wasn’t doing it. Something had to.
So I went and investigated. There is an app for that (go figure). There is a book. There is a central Facebook group. There are spawned off other Facebook groups. Everyone is so incredibly supportive and friendly. It is my respite from the world. It’s not a magic bullet. I still find myself in a pit with nothing to look at but mud walls and worms kind of frequently. But it is helping.
This month the theme is Joyful Wanderer (did I say that yesterday?). I’m taking this month very much to heart. I’m very mindfully walking. I’m stepping up my game. I’m very determined to get my Joyful Wanderer bracelet.
I’m struggling to get back to Choose Joy.
I’m manufacturing ways to try to trick my brain back into some semblance of who I am because I really really miss being me.
Does that make any sense?
So tonight I’m sitting here waiting on French Fries to be finished cooking, nursing a shoulder that has been flairing for about four days now (it usually doesn’t last this long and I’m really not enjoying it). I’m putting my left hand where I need it to be with my right hand so I don’t move the muscles so much in my left shoulder. I’ve been putting Boo Boo Salve on it pretty regularly (it’s awesome stuff… all natural… a friend of my mom’s makes it… https://www.rainbowskytrading.com/) and adding in the Napproxen at night.
Today we went to the zoo again. It’s coming up close to the Asian Lantern Festival and we wanted to see them in the daylight. That, and the Dinosaur experience is open so… yeah.
It was particularly scary to be out and about today. The state isn’t as bad as Florida or Arizona or California right now… but we are double what we were a month ago and it isn’t looking better any time soon. Our county is the second highest number of Covid cases in the state. The mayor of Cleveland made an executive order that everyone has to wear a mask when they are in a public place.
It was good to see, though, that people were actually wearing masks this week at the zoo.
I worked hard today at mindfully spending time with Bear and Squirrel. It was, altogether, a good day. Pictures to treasure. Memories made.
Should we have gone given everything? Probably not. But we were as careful as we could be. Handsitizer. Clorox wipes. Masks and 6 feet apart (even when it pissed people off that I deliberately would not push Bear’s wheelchair past them when it was too close. Bear says he will die sooner if he can never leave the house. I can’t take everything away.
Starting now I will be starting to use curbside pick up.
Am I scared?
Hell yes
But I can do this. I can’t say this is any kind of new normal… but it my current reality and I have to find myself again.
Today was one walk of 2.6 miles pushing the wheelchair and one walk of 1.2 miles. both were mindful and peaceful.
I’ve been sitting here, reading posts on a Facebook group about… do you or don’t you wear a mask? Do you or don’t you believe it’s a pandemic? Do you or don’t you bleat when you walk around all day … Continue reading →
I posted a gif on Facebook of a man who is talking about how 70 – 700 people dying so the US economy can rally is acceptable. The off camera person said… so… 70 is the number that’s okay? Man: yeah… 70. Off camera: Let me show you 70 people.
70 people in that man’s family came around the corner of the street.
When he realized that there were 70 people who were in his family and that 70 suddenly had faces and relevance his numbers changed.
Was it staged? Um… Duh.
Was it to make a point that every single one of the “acceptable losses” is a person? Um… duh.
I’m so tired right now. I’m so incredibly tired.
A friend of mine from elementary school commented on the picture.
But on the other end of this horrible double edged sword, is the awful fact that's thousands have not received a penny of unemployment in 7-8 weeks or more. These folks are losing their businesses and not even being able to afford food.. terrible situation whole way around.
<because… again… duh… it’s not like I don’t know that too… and I KNOW those faces as well> and I answered… I answered because I’m tired. I am so sick and tired of all of the bullshit. ALL of the bullshit.
I know. I really do know. And I’m terrified of the way the economy is and the way it is heading and I hate the way the country is handling this so incredibly horribly compared to EVERYWHERE else. But people are very very cavalier with “eh… 70 to 700 deaths are acceptable as long as it fixes everything ” (which it isn’t going to fix everything like people believe. there is no magic bullet in this case) until they are faced with the acceptable losses being THEIR losses.
Would all 70 acceptable losses be in one family? Not likely. But people don’t put faces to the acceptable losses they keep throwing around. People use a tone of voice when they talk about acceptable losses… like… Yeah… whatever… a few more dead people… so what… pffft
I have family in the same situation… where they don’t have an income and they are waiting and waiting and waiting for stimulus checks and unemployment that feels like it will never come. But I also speak as someone who cavalierly gets lumped into that big giant “Eh, F$%^-em let them die so the economy can be as fabulous as it’s ever been” feeling you get from seeing people talk about acceptable losses. Three people who live in my house would very likely die if any of us got Covid.
I guess that’s three from someone else’s house that wouldn’t have to… but still… I’ve had it right up to the eyeballs with hearing about how it’s “only” the elderly and vulnerable who are likely to die so what’s the problem.
I’m tired of spending 12 – 14 hours a day sitting in my office at my computer busting my butt working only to be made to feel like a drain on society.MY point in this is… every acceptable loss is someones family… someone’s brother, sister, son, daughter, mother, father, best friend….
I want desperately for people to be able to go back to work and to be safe. But I want people to be safe. I want people to not have to get shot in the face for telling people to put on a mask. I want people to not get spit on for asking someone to please stand 6 freaking feet away. Hell, I don’t want people close to me than that when it’s not this fugly mess and I will deliberately run into assholes in the store before all of this if they ride my heels with a cart or shove their smelly armpits in my face because they HAVE TO HAVE THAT whatever that happens to be where I’m shopping and they can’t wait the 45 seconds it’s going to take me to get my whatever from where they HAVE TO BE.
I’m tired.
I’m tired of bullshit.
Everyone else gets to go “LOOK LOOK LOOK at what those assholes in the <whatever political party they are “against” and are HATING… and I’m so flipping sick of the hating> are doing to make the whole FU#$%^& world so much FU#$%^& worse than anyone else in the whole FU#$%^& world could make it!!!!!”.
I Just thought maybe people might need to be reminded that every acceptable loss matters to someone somewhere… or maybe not
I was good. I didn’t reply right away. Probably should have. If I had done anything at the time, I probably would have just taken the post down… because I don’t make waves and I don’t voice my political opinion because I’ve been bullied my whole life and I really don’t need to provide more fodder for people to use to take pot shots at me.
But I am tired.
I’m tired and I’m scared and I want about 2/3 of the time to go sit with my back against my favorite tree at the park and wrap myself in the throw I’ve been working on for years and cry until the tears won’t come any more.
This whole mess has taken its tole on my house.
Squirrel is so on edge most of the time and she is facing the knowledge that her girlfriend can only handle the good times and can’t handle it when Squirrel falls apart. She is facing friends that have already told her that, if she wears a mask to school or around them for any reason they will make fun of her. She just started Humera… added to the other two immunosuppressants… you know what… Covid hunts people like that down. Would she die? Statistically probably not. But that’s a chance.
Monkey Butt has started to shoulder the responsibility for keeping the rest of the house from going completely bat shit crazy. HE (my jaded son who has hated humanity for years) has started to hunt for the bright sides to show that it’s probably really not so bad.
Bear? Hospice. I’m not handling that really well, either. Hospice makes it really really real. Last night we <all four of us> went to Lowes. It was the first time Bear had been inside of a store in over two months. I needed fence to keep my dogs out of my garden and I needed containers to grow some of my plants in… and I needed soil for in those containers… I needed stuff to work on my witchy SHTF prepper stuff outside so I don’t have to worry quite so much about what is coming… and to keep us as healthy as we can be inside our walls. I needed Monkey Butt because bags of garden soil are heavy. Squirrel needed to get out of the house because… she hasn’t been venturing out even when I have made my panic filled ventures out into the craziness. And Bear needed to be out. He needed to be out and where people outside of the four of us (and his hospice nurse Dave) are. The last time we were at a store together, he pushed the cart. Yesterday he drove my truck, but he needed his wheelchair because he knows his legs won’t carry him even with the cart through the store. It’s getting that real. What would Covid do if it came into my house?
And me? I am just tired of the stupid things that people do to each other. I’m tired of people ridiculing the choices we have had to make. I don’t LIKE doing a half marathon virtually with a mask on. I don’t like being terrified every time I walk into a store that is full of people who have apparently decided that the current situation is an excuse for them to let their asshole flag fly high and proud. I have been loudly and publicly ridiculed and laughed at in a Walmart isle because I chose to have a mask and gloves (and because losing 50 pounds has messed with my ability to maintain feeling warm) and a hoody on a 50 degree day. I’m trying to keep up with everything in the house. I’m trying to hold it together because Bear can’t handle it when people lose it in front of him… so I hold onto my control as long as I can until I can’t any more. And I spend hours at my computer working because I do still have a job to “go” to and I need to keep that job. I try so hard to down out the TV when it’s on because everyone talks about acceptable losses and how it is “only” (except when it’s not only) the elderly and vulnerable and fragile who are at risk any way. I’m one of the at risk. I take my own immuno-supressants and I qualify for elderly. Would it kill me? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I know that I’m feeling very lost and very scared and I struggle a lot of days just to make it through the day without falling completely apart.
But suddenly I don’t understand both sides (either side) because I’m trying to point out that NO ONE anywhere seem to be faking the attitude that would feel better when they talk about acceptable losses. I guess when you talk about it in terms of acceptable losses it depersonalizes it. Like when you talk about the HUGE numbers of people who are struggling to survive the devastating unemployment numbers. Like when you see cars lined up at food distribution centers. We get to see the faces of the nurses and doctors who are saving lives. We get to see the faces of some of the people who have beaten it. And those faces give my hope. They are a very good thing. But there are faces behind every number that gets thrown around. The numbers of people working devastating hours in what currently amounts to nearly a war zone at stores (if three people can shoot a guard for saying you have to wear a mask and you are in the position of working in stores like that IT DOES AMOUNT TO A WAR ZONE). The numbers of families (mothers, fathers, children) who are facing another day without money… without food… without <in a lot of cases> hope. THOSE are faces too. They aren’t numbers. They aren’t statistics. THEY ARE FACES!!!
I guess I will leave my soap box now. Will it do any good? Will it matter? Yeah, probably not. But it did clear my head a little and give me a voice through witch to scream.
People are talking about when life can get back to the way it was before. The way it was before Covid-19. The way it was before everyone became aware of all of the things they touch and all of the ways you can spread diseases… any diseases… not just the pandemic one.
Funny… I thought I was super duper careful about what I touched and how I thought about things before. I mean, I’ve had active RA (been classified moderate to severe for what… 12 years?). I have been washing my hands and singing happy birthday twice. I’ve been washing tables off at restaurants. I’ve been “careful”… but I’ve never really, I guess, been CAREFUL.
People talk about how it’s just like the flu. People talk about how mild their symptoms were, they barely knew they had it.
People talk a good game about social distancing… and meet every evening in the driveway within arms length of each other to discuss the day. No gloves, no masks.
The mail man walks up to you to hand you your delivery box… no gloves… no mask… hands it to you… and you have an internal panic attack because… because you were just walking around the house to go inside and you didn’t have your gloves on and you didn’t have your mask on and he just hands it to you. It was in his truck with lord knows what other stuff. He has touched mailboxes and mail and (apparently) other people… and here you are walking around your own yard and should you wear your mask and gloves not out in public but in the semi-privacy of your yard?
Back to normal?
I don’t know if I will ever get back to “normal” if what before was was normal. Covid can live on surfaces 72ish hours (or 14 days depending on whether you are a cruise ship or not…) but the flu can live on surfaces (yeah yeah… depending on surface, humidity, temperature and the phase of the moon and what color underwear you’re wearing blah blah blah) for 48 hours. Two days. Who touched that door handle two days ago? Who pushed that elevator button in the last 2 hours let alone the last 2 days?
Am I a germaphobe? No. I will eat tomatoes off my vines without washing them. I will snuggle my dogs knowing full well they have been rolling in the mud. I will talk to people (eventually… when all of this is over) without the use of technology between us. My house will never be pristine (I have four dogs… I’ll just be glad if I can keep the dust down to a small “Pigpen” cloud most days).
But I will be way more aware of things.
I will probably bag my groceries less by just tossing anything in the bags… I will bag cardboard together, cans together, perishables together. I will leave the cans in my trunk (unless I NEED them sooner) for a few days.
But more…
Normal looked very different in more ways than just that. Normal was running and going and doing and not time for this and no time for that. I love having time. I love being able to do things as a family that we just didn’t find possible before.
Movie night. Game night. Putting jigsaw puzzles together, together. Sitting on foldy chairs in the front yard and talking.
It will be nice to be able to get in the car and drive to the lake. It will be amazing to get in the car and drive to mom’s for a few hours. It will be a hugely special treat to go to the store and walk around and browse rather than just get in and get out (or more… order everything delivered).
Will I ever go to Disney again? My plans are still to run the Goofy in honor of my Goofy. Looking at it now, that may not be before there is a Covid shot I can get about the same time I get my flu shot. Will I look at running in races differently (10000 of your closest friends herded into corrals)… oh yeah. Will I do it? Hell yeah.
I will continue making my own hand sanitizer because I just like mine better than the commercial gel kind. Will I carry some in my car, my purse, my pocket, my backpack, my desk… yeah. And I will use it way more religiously than I ever have before. And I will carry gloves and a mask and my buffs (which I do anyway because well… buff)… yeah, and I will use them.
Life has changed here. Covid-19 situation in the world has changed me in a lot of ways. Some good… some not so much. Monkey butt said, last night, that he thinks some of what I’m doing right now will stick forever… making four thieves vinegar… making citrus cleaner… making citrus enzyme cleaner… coming closer to zero waste. He’s probably right. And I’m enjoying getting back to growing my own herbs and starting my own plants.
Life has changed.
It will be good to get back to not being terrified of the outside world. It will be good to not think judgemental thoughts over what other people do in any situation.
I will take way less for granted.
And I really really hope that life doesn’t actually get back to what normal used to be.
Will it ever get back to “normal” if normal was what it was before? Probably not. At least not for me. There will be a whole new normal. I’m not sure when that normal will be… but there will be a whole new one. And it’s okay.
Sitting at my kitchen table, coffee in hand, spending some time spending time. Dog Channel is playing… the ocean through the sea grass… sunrise… the dogs could honestly care less about Dog TV, I keep it for me. And it … Continue reading →
Okay… life had changed. Life has WAY changed for pretty much everyone.
This morning I found how I need to cope
It’s Thursday. That means I needed to take out the garbage. Put on my jacket, picked up all the garbage bags and drug them to the bottom of the driveway. Dropped them where they go and decided that… hey… I have a jacket on and no dogs to “help”… I need to take a walk. So I did.
And this morning it made all the difference.
I video taped parts of my walk. I sent them to my cousin so she could show them to my momma (she’s one of the caretakers who have access to elderly people). I sent them to my mom to help her with her morning. Taking my walk at a pretty good clip helped too. I was going to take the whole “dog walk” we used to do when Peanut was here… but when I got to one corner short of where I was going to turn something told me I needed to turn early.
It was a goodwink moment.
I found something when I got nearly to where I turn to go home.
Someone put chalk art on the sidewalk. Heart (yin and yang?), someone playing in the sunshine, and… Have a nice day…
Now… when I decided to make my wall into a chalkboard, I went and bought a crap ton of chalk. Unfortunately sidewalk chalk is too hard and scrapes through the pain on the wall. White chalkboard chalk is great. I have a metric crap ton of sidewalk chalk.
And now, I have found what is my way of coping and my way of finding my Mary Sunshine. AND I have successfully infected my kids with my new obsession.
If I can help even one person… just one… in this amazingly hard time we are going through… to find a little ray of sunshine… then I have found my voice.
Irony has to be in the fact that Monkey Butt, this morning, also showed me this news story:
With spring actually starting to look a little like spring, and with the local schools not going back any time soon… maybe I can infect a few of the neighborhood kids with decorating the sidewalks. Maybe, as a small community, we can bring a little sunshine to people who are trying to fight their way out of darkness that is the current feeling.
We are all finding ourselves in the midst of chaos. It is all around us. It is falling down around our heads and threatening to bury us. And yet…
It’s been a rough couple weeks for me, mentally… physically… emotionally… but maybe… just maybe… I’m starting to dig myself out.
It’s Tuesday… the third week of whatever this is… sheltering in place… social distancing… whatever we are calling whatever this is trying to avoid as much of the outside world as is possible. I’m SUPPOSED to (according to the people who decide how to keep yourself sane and on track for working at home) get up and dress as if I were going to work every day. Guess who is totally NOT doing that.
Yep, this girl. My new “normal” dress is leggings and whatever athletic shirt seems appropriate for the day. Sometimes t-shirts… sometimes technical shirts (long or short sleeves) sometimes sweat shirts. And you know what? I can do my job just as well in sweats as I can in dockers and a sweater. Better in fact because it makes me happy and comfortable. Remarkable, I know. Who would have ever guessed it.
I’ve started to be way less focused on the things that piss me off. I have started to use the unfollow feature on Facebook for the people who insist on nothing but back biting and rhetoric. I have started to deliberately avoid the news conferences in the evening. I periodically watch Dewine at 2 pm. I check headlines for details and I rely on Monkey Butt to inform me how things are in the world. He’s my filter. It’s working for me right now.
I’m hunting down motivational quotes to center myself.
I’m taking pictures of things that make me happy.
And the kids and I are starting to put puzzles together. Once upon a time mom and I put puzzles together. I was very very little and I remember sitting in the living room at a card table, sunlight streaming through the sheers, putting together puzzles. It’s been what feels like a lifetime ago (and it really is) since I’ve taken the time to sit down and put together a jigsaw puzzle. Monkey Butt bought two at Walmart a couple weeks ago and we started the 500 piece one. I bought two on Amazon and this morning we picked up a quarter of a put together puzzle so we can put together the one that shows books on a bookstore shelf. Monkey Butt says he’s incredibly sorry that it has taken the current situation for us to do this but he’s really glad we are doing this and he hopes that it doesn’t stop when the the world stops turning turtle (new Mary Poppins… it’s a song worth listening to). I hope so too.
But now it has become an obsession. Hunting puzzles that speak to me (and there are many) and coming up with the wildest ideas of what to do with them later later.
And this morning I found the puzzle I want with all of my heart. It will take some saving up for me to be able to justify taking the money for it… but it is a two sided puzzle of Carl and Ellie from Up… it’s way more money than I can justify on a puzzle right now… but it is the puzzle that I need to do (since I am Carl and Bear is Ellie in our world)… I need to do the puzzle, glue it together, and put it between two pieces of glass and have it framed… it will hang in the window of my office. It may be after I’m really Carl but I will find a way to justify the money for that puzzle.
It’s funny… but putting these together has brought me as close as I’ve been to peaceful and chasing some of the Mary Sunshine clouds away than I have had since this scary shit started. I’m still scared but I’m finding small pockets of peace to bring me out of my terror.
With all of my heart, I hope you can find your little pockets of peace and sunshine.
Yesterday we needed to get prescriptions and pick up some groceries. It wasn’t that I actually knew everything we needed to get… I knew we needed milk and bread. I knew Pepsi was on sale. I knew that chip chopped … Continue reading →
A Figment Of Fitness 