Multifarious: working with seniors, the a-word, boiling rage

I. Working with seniors

Since mid-April I have been working at a local high school two days a week to help seniors who need course recovery in order to meet graduation requirements. 

I have been, more or less, their mom on these days. When they are with me, they work. If they don't work, I nudge and harass and cheerlead and tell them to NOT SCROLL DOWN on the course recovery work because they will get overwhelmed. Or I explain things to them. Or I help pace them if they lose focus and have them check in with me. 

It has been mostly rewarding work, especially when a kid who has been coming to work with me finishes up her/his assignments, and we know they'll be able to cross the stage later this month. 

There are some, though, who won't walk the stage. They may not be able to finish course recovery this summer. Some of them will be back for another senior year. Or they will drop out. 

I think seniors overestimate their "adultness" once they hit that magical 18 on the birthday cake. I think sometimes teachers overestimate it, too, although I suspect this has more to do with teacher burnout than the kids to be honest. A lot of the kids are mature and responsible, but there are some who need a lot of hand-holding for a variety of reasons. And there are a lot of adults who would do a hell of a lot better with some more hand-holding. 

Even kids who are mature and responsible, who can keep track of their homework and club meetings and sports/work schedules, make bone-headed decisions. Or don't think of all the ramifications of a decision, and it's because their brains aren't done cooking yet. 

N is a bright kid whom I trust with a lot of things, but there are times I legit think to myself, "What is wrong with your brain?"

And the answer is: nothing. It is just an 18-year-old brain.

II. The a-word

The Roe v. Wade leak was all over the news last week, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about the prospect of things changing. How would that affect my daughter? How would that affect by sons?

I could be wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they are pro-abortion. I don't think anyone likes abortion. I don't like abortion. In a perfect world, no woman would ever feel she needed an abortion. But we don't live in a perfect world. 

We live in a world where we give a shit ton of lip service to the notion that we value life. We do nothing of the sort. One million lives lost to COVID is proof of that. Our systems have not, as a general rule, valued poor life. Or black life. Or immigrant life. They do not right now. We do not value infant life because if we did we would make childcare leave more feasible and for longer. We would have ENOUGH FORMULA. We would fund universal preschool to help all children start out more closely to a level playing field. We wouldn't have such ridiculous drug laws that have put so many men in prison away from their families. 

I have never had an abortion, but I have had an unplanned pregnancy (while on birth control). All things were "right" for me. I was in my mid-30s, had been in a long and healthy marriage, had no debts or drug addiction or anything that would endanger my security and ability to pay the bills. I had two children and could afford them so there wasn't a concern that I couldn't afford another one. Despite these things, my unplanned pregnancy was scary and overwhelming AND I WAS IN THE BEST POSSIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES. 

So I will not pass judgment on any woman who is in different or worse circumstances who cannot, whatever her reason, sustain a pregnancy. And I think it is absolutely wrong for any government entity at any level to tell a person what she can or can't do with her body. We didn't mandate vaccines; we do not take organs from dead bodies that did not, prior to death, give permission. We need to keep our laws off women's bodies as well.

III. Boiling rage

Maybe the rage relates to what I just wrote about, or maybe it is perimenopausal hormone stuff? Or maybe it is the ceaseless exhaustion that comes with being a mom to three and a wife to one and none of them seem able at times to do much of anything for themselves, without me specifically directing them on what.to.do. They rely on me because I made it my priority for so long to be relied upon (the downside of the SAHM thing). 

Or maybe it is the confluence, the place where all these intersect. The place where I would like to just run away and be responsible only for myself and my wants and needs and not have to have others in my brain.

Maybe it is that our tax people told us we had to pay something like $7,000 in taxes, which we paid, but we only owed $900, which is great, except now we are waiting for the government to return out money and it is freaking me out because we had termites ($800) and the boys keep getting ingrown toenails which means $200 surgeries all the damn time. Maybe it is that I have been so busy since I got home from Ecuador that I haven't had a minute to collect my thoughts and just be. Maybe I miss quarantine just a little bit when life was a fuck-ton slower. 

Maybe I need to take another half-dose of Lexapro. 

People and their dumb natural consequences

When N was little, maybe 3 or 4-years-old, I told her to put her coat on when she went outside, and she refused. Threw a duck fit. 

I could have fought her, wrestled her into her coat, but I just let her go outside and then enjoyed myself immensely when, with teeth-chattering, she came back into the house a short-time later because she was freezing. 

This is now how I feel about people who have refused to get vaccinated for COVID. 

I am a skeptic by nature, hence the reason I have never fallen head-first into a pit of religious faith or absolute belief in anything. (There is some irony here when those who put belief above all else must experience with their every sense the pain and suffering of COVID infections themselves before they will understand it is a serious fucking problem.)

I have reached a point where I absolutely do not have any compassion for people who have remained unvaccinated and are now sick. The biggest problem I have with them is their utter selfishness that is now keeping health care workers exhausted and delaying hospital care for people who have other non-COVID life-threatening issues. 

I don't pretend to know what Jesus would think, but I hope he would give them a good lecture and maybe flip a table at them. 

Recently a parent explained to me why she is not making her child get a vaccine. I did not ask; she offered this information willingly and unprompted, and I tried to keep my eyes from bulging out of my head. 

She said, "She's old enough to make her own choices."

I think I said, "Oh," because, again, trying to keep my face in check. 

I didn't give my children a choice because if they do get COVID and require care I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO FORK OVER THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT. 

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO PUT MY LIFE ON HOLD AND BE AT THE HOSPITAL.

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF MY CHILD IF SHE IS HOME SICK. 

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE MY CHILD TO VARIOUS DOCTOR VISITS SHOULD IT COME TO THAT. 

Besides my child who gets sick who will suffer most, I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO SUFFER. 

And why would I choose to suffer in this way and be inconvenienced if I don't have to?

My senior does get to handle lots of her own stuff. She gets to pay her own car insurance. She gets to decide where she goes to school and what she wears to school and how she handles her schoolwork and what she wants to eat as a snack when she gets home. 

But as long as I'm the responsible party for her health care, she doesn't get to avoid a vaccine that has the ability to make COVID a largely preventable disease. 

What makes this statement by this parent even more mind-boggling is that this person's child plays on a sports team. There's no I in TEAM, or that's what sports-minded people say. And yet, not getting a vaccine could put the team and their games in jeopardy. Focusing on the "I don't want a vaccine" means the "TEAM could be harmed."

I am tired of being angry. I am tired of watching people do the dumbest possible things and reap the harshest consequences from their dumb choices. And I am mostly tired of knowing that because of their dumb choices so many other people are suffering. 

This is why you're crazy

They said COVID is a hoax. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long).

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work.

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?).

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic.

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong). 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong) and vaccinated people shed virus or vaccine (which one?). 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong) and vaccinated people shed virus or vaccine (which one?) and the vaccine alters DNA. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong) and vaccinated people shed virus or vaccine (which one?) and the vaccine alters DNA and the vaccine would implant computer chips in us. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong) and vaccinated people shed virus or vaccine (which one?) and the vaccine alters DNA and the vaccine would implant computer chips in us and the vaccine didn't keep people from getting sick when Delta came along. 

They said COVID is a hoax and it would go away after the 2020 elections and it is just like the flu (but the flu doesn't sicken people all year long) and masks don't work and masks violate our God-given rights (to our faces?) and they were making a vaccine for a disease that they also said is a hoax and the vaccine was a guise for the government to control us and the vaccine wouldn't work and the vaccine would make people sterile and the vaccine makes people magnetic and the vaccines cause autism (still wrong) and vaccinated people shed virus or vaccine (which one?) and the vaccine alters DNA and the vaccine would implant computer chips in us and the vaccine didn't keep people from getting sick when Delta came along and the vaccine was really a placebo. 

They said all this stuff, adding more weirdness and implausibility. 

Layering strange upon nonsensical until I had to ask "Are they crazy?

And then I said "This is why you're crazy."

I said it to them, and I said it to myself when I thought about them.

How the pandemic has changed me

Prior to September 11, 2001, D and I didn't want children. 

We had said when we married that we wouldn't even think about kids until we'd been married five years. When September 11 happened we'd been married almost four. 

The events of that day made us reconsider a lot of things, including what we hadn't done and what we wanted to have done prior to dying (if we had a choice). And we decided that maybe having a child was something we wanted. 

A big historic event that didn't directly impact me in any way changed the course of my life in a big way. 

The COVID-19 pandemic appears in some ways to have changed things for me as well. 

I think most of this is internal. My mindset has changed.

Some things were already changing. The brainwashing of people I know as a result of the presidency of Donald Trump had opened my eyes to the ways in which others aren't really what I thought they were. Or maybe they were always really what I thought they were but I just couldn't tolerate their behavior anymore. 

I am not a worshipper. My motto is that everyone, and I mean everyone, has had poop stains in their underpants. This is the great equalizer and the reason I don't get intimidated or overwhelmed by people who have money or fame or great talent. Even Jeff Bezos has had poop stains in his underwear, and some of those might have been added this week when his penis rocket went sky-high.

For a long time, I have not been a people-y person, but the pandemic made me really reflect on my view of friendship and acquaintances and who I want and need in my life. 

There was a contraction, and there continues to be a contraction. 

I have even reconsidered who I need to speak to.

Of course, I have no desire to be uncivil, but I don't need to pretend to like or care about fitting in. I don't need to be social media connected to everyone I've ever known. My unfriend game on the social media tabs continues. And this doesn't mean I hate people nor does it mean I wish them ill; I just don't care. I don't need their view or opinion or anything from them. 

I doubt they even like me. Perhaps by unfriending them I will remove me as an annoyance for them (and they were too kind or lazy to do it)?

A couple days ago I finished a book called Subtract by Leidy Klotz, and it was about how we don't often see the benefit of subtracting things from our lives. We seem to have an evolutionary need to add and build, but subtracting can be just as if not more beneficial. 

The pandemic has really made me think even more about subtracting from my life, distilling its essence down to what is essential and really meaningful for me. To borrow a phrase from Marie Kondo: "What does spark joy?" 

And right now, haphazard, random, not based in anything meaningful connections does not spark joy. 

My thoughts on donuts (so much extra)

I am a minimalist at heart and could become fairly ascetic if my family would allow it. (They like stuff more than I do and have a harder time getting rid of stuff than I do; just ask D about his CD collection in the basement closet.) I just don't require a whole lot of stuff nor do I like a whole lot of stuff. Rather than bringing me joy (however temporary), it brings me discomfort and this has intensified the older I've gotten.

I owned a Fitbit for a short time (bought secondhand) and decided I hated it. 

I have never owned an Apple watch nor will I ever. 

We don't have an Alexa nor will we ever.

We don't have a Ring doorbell.

I wouldn't replace the outside lights to get automatic sensor ones so D managed to find a switch that will make the lights come on at dusk and go off at dawn (and not as wasteful as replacing lights that are old but still totally working). 

I have and still wear a pair of sandals that I bought right before we went to Disney....in 2011. I own and wear one pair of tennis shoes, 2 pair of sandals, and one pair of flip flops. My winter boots are the same winter boots I have worn since before D and I married.

I am not in any way an "extra" person, but it hit home recently when I realized that I DESPISE what has happened to donuts which makes me sound like a very grumpy old person but I do not care.

Donuts are so freaking MUCH anymore. I can't even tolerate to take a bite because there is so much frou-frou now. Candy and cookies and doodads sprinkled on top to kingdom come.

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

Of course, this is in no way surprising. I realized during the cupcake explosion of several years back that even though 7 inches of icing and whatnots on top of a cupcake look amazing, they taste like an overwhelming blob of diabetic coma. 

The same thing has happened to cookies, too.

And cars.

When we bought our new-to-us minivan almost two years ago, I was like...

I don't want leather seats. 

I don't need the trunk door to lift automatically.

I don't need to be able to start the car remotely. 

I don't need GPS.

I don't need heated seats (which always make me feel like I've peed myself whenever they come on without me knowing it when I'm in someone else's car). 

I don't need/want a sunroof/moonroof.

I don't need a television in the car for people to watch. 

I don't need all the buttons and widgets that I might also find on the freaking Space Station. 

I'm not saying that all this stuff isn't cool. Sometimes I find it very cool. It is all definitely visually stunning, as are the donuts with all the shit on top of them. 

But the substance is remarkably cloying. 

Sad to see the pandemic go

Let me qualify that title a bit.

I don't think COVID is done with us even though people are continuing to get vaccinated. I would not be a bit surprised to see rates climb again after March and April spring breaks. 

I've read too many dystopian apocalyptic books to think things are just going to go totally swell (cause 526,000 deaths is not swell). And I've read enough Buddhism books to know it is all hopeless/emptiness, and I can't control it anyway. 

But I am sensing an "end-to-this" feel, and it makes me a little sad. 

Maybe it is just the spring weather?

I won't be sad to see sickness and dying go away.

But it saddens me to think that everyone is going to pick right back up exactly where they left off a year ago, perhaps none the wiser, perhaps having learned nothing or thought nothing about what was better about life in the pandemic.

As the months wore on, I heard people lament their kids being home, things not being normal, and I wanted to shake them and say:

In one year (or 10 years) you are going to be wailing about how your "baby" is going away to college. You have been given the gift of time seeing your child in ways you never would have had if the pandemic hadn't happened. You got a bonus. 

Our family has long been on the slow boat. That is always how D has rolled, and I have gotten more comfortable on the ride over the years. Our kids generally like being home and not doing much. Our lives in many ways didn't change much due to quarantines and the pandemic, but it changed enough that it was a gift. 

We took hikes last spring before N got a job. 

We always ate most dinners together, but now we were eating all meals like we would if we were on a vacation. 

D and I take walks together every single day, and sometimes twice a day. 

It wasn't all bad. 

And so now to think about going back to "normal" makes me cringe because...

I didn't miss the early mornings and the travel time.

I didn't miss the hours away from home and the homework when the kids got home.

I didn't miss being in my car and driving so much. 

I didn't miss the school functions and the paperwork that came home. 

I didn't miss the guilt that sometimes came with not attending school functions. 

I didn't miss the uniforms and the lunches.

I didn't miss the meetings.

I didn't miss the go, and the go, and the go. 

I didn't miss the small talk with people I barely know.

I didn't miss the being friendly when I didn't feel like being friendly. 

Once you become used to more stillness, the idea of returning to the buzz of sound and motion just feels like too much. 

Why we didn't do a class ring for our kid

I have a class ring from when I graduated high school. 

I wore it for one year and then promptly stuck it in a jewelry box when I entered college; once I entered college, I didn't want to be seen as a "high schooler" anymore.  

It has been sitting in that box for 30 years. 

It sits alongside my mother's high school class ring, which has been sitting in a drawer for 60 years. 

I looked up class rings for my daughter's high school just now, and they range in price from $419 to over $1,000, and either of those amounts seems like a lot of money for something that will be worn for a year and then stuck in a draw for the rest of time. 

In college, when there was a some promotion or information given about college class rings, I promptly tossed them. I knew my high school ring was in a drawer; I suspected my college ring would do the same. 

When the idea of rings came up with N, I explained to her my thoughts on rings. We opted to go on a school-related trip with her Spanish teacher in 2022. 

Admittedly, this trip costs considerably more than either $419 or $1,000, but that experience is something she will carry with her for the rest of her life. She will gain a much greater perspective on herself and what the world is and does. 

Of course, part of this decision was easy because there will be no junior ring ceremony due to the pandemic. N isn't in school every day listening to her peers discuss junior rings ad nauseam. 

But it makes me wonder, as I like to do, who decided that junior rings are a thing? And that junior ring ceremonies are a thing? 

I remember virtually nothing of my ring ceremony from high school. I can say with fairly good certainty that it made zero impact on my life. 

[And my senior prom? What I remember is that the entire time I wished that I hadn't brought my long-time boyfriend because I was well on my way to dumping him. I would have had much more fun had I gone stag and just yucked it up with my girlfriends.] 

I can't help but wonder if junior ring stuff isn't all a marketing ploy that the masses have fallen into because people love an excuse to spend money and don't want to be "that" parent (which I totally don't mind being) and they want to make their own children experience everything they did (a bit of reliving their own lives through their children)?

Of course, I'm not a huge traditions person, mostly because I know that traditions change, whether we want them to or not. And forcing a tradition when it is long past its life, is painful and embarrassing and unpleasant. 

Airing of my grievances, 2020 edition

People who walk in the middle of the neighborhood road when there are PERFECTLY good sidewalks. (I just watched a neighbor do this as I typed.)

"Christians" who don't realize that Jesus wasn't white and he probably wouldn't be down with a lot of their "all these poor people have to have skin in the game" bs (when the majority of these poor people work full-time jobs or multiple part-time jobs or are actually disabled and can't work).

Khaki pants with tennis shoes.

Brittle fingernails. 

That dental and vision insurance aren't considered "health" insurance. Why are these two body parts not considered part of the body when it comes to health? 

Those 5 stray dark hairs that grow on my chin at random intervals so I can't pluck all of them at the same time. 

My husband's inability to find anything in the fridge. 

That children's adorable baby breath becomes stinky teenager breath. 

"Christians" who are SO SURE they are going to heaven that they're like, "I'm cool with dying from COVID cause Jesus loves me," which isn't terribly "Do unto others" because not everyone is so freaking sure of the afterlife and maybe aren't in a big hurry to die. 

That eyeglasses don't come with those cool heater things so you can tighten/loosen your own glasses without having to run back to the optometrist.

When book-to-series adaptations add so many weird things it doesn't even feel like the book (I'm looking at you 11.22.63). 

People who don't cover their freaking NOSES with their masks (like the dumbass checkout kid at Walgreen's). 

Anyone on the internet without medical degrees/epidemiology degrees/science degrees acting like they have more knowledge than individuals with these things. 

When certain people in my household forget to put STUFF ON THE GROCERY LIST.

Most every white.person.problem (including this list).

People who drive for miles and miles with their turn signals on. (It pains me to think about this lack of observance.)

My children who, while I love them, talk about all kinds of shit related to video games and YouTube that I neither know nor care anything about. 

People who talk a lot, in general, but especially in the morning before I've had enough quiet time and/or coffee. 

Middle-age body spread and the chicken neck phenomena.

That ovaries don't just shrivel up and fall out the instant you decide you are done having children. Must we continue with this period bullshit for another 20+ years?

COVID and the dumbass federal response to it. (Thank god all these people who said it is NBD and a hoax are getting vaccinated.)

Receding gums

The way earbuds make my ears itch

Podcasts that are just nonstop talking about mostly inside jokes that nobody else gets. 

Skin tags

Shower grout and its utter disgustingness

Country music. (I just can't. I'm sorry.)

People who screech to not be afraid of COVID but who also track all the burglary reports in their areas almost incessantly. (Why is one type of fear stupid but another type of fear is totally normal?)

The fact that I didn't appreciate my body when it was awesome and didn't crack and have to move slowly in the morning. 

People who cannot read.the.room and include me on emails that if they had any CLUE what I'm like would know that I should NOT be part of that email. 

People who are always looking on the bright side or being chipper. Tone that shit down, please. 

People who aren't teachers or school administrators who keep bitching about why the kids aren't at school as if they even have a CLUE as to all the logistics of school during a pandemic. 

Christmas...all of it. Ugh. 

That there aren't "glaring inefficiency" lines in all venues where people who need super quick things could go. Like basically a 15-item check out lane for everything. So when I'm at Walgreen's during a pandemic, which gives me the heebie-jeebies anyway, I don't have to stand in a long 6-foot distanced line behind Wanda who is returning $40 foot warmers or whatever shit she bought. 

(BASICALLY, WHAT I'M TELLING COMPANIES IS HIRE ENOUGH WORKERS AND QUIT TAKING ALL THE MONEY FOR YOUR STOCKS.)

What I'm realizing as I'm writing this is that The Airing of Grievances is much better done with others because there is a certain amount of brainstorming energy that comes from hearing others grievances. It spurs your brain much better than just blogging.
So I shall post my grievances and perhaps add to them on social media when/if others come up with their own brilliant grievances.

Masculinity and femininity

I spent much of my life not matching whatever the hell it is that "feminine" girls should look like. 

In high school, I cut my hair short. I simply look better and feel better with short hair. I don't have the energy or desire to mess with long hair. 

I was (and I guess still am) shaped like a boy. Minimal boobs. Narrow hips. 

Voluptuous I am not. 

I was also never at all good at that old school "Don't call a boy; wait for a boy to make the first move" junk. I have never once told my daughter any of that garbage. It is ridiculous to put all that pressure on boys. 

Who decided that guys had to make the first move? 

I was always perceived as that "weird" kid. Chances are pretty good I am still perceived as that "weird" middle-aged lady now. 

I remember being asked when I was a kid if I was gay by a group of girls at my Catholic school. I don't know how old I was, but I thought the question was stupid. There was this adult volunteer who had these freaky long nails and I'd lose my shit whenever I saw her; I'd run up and hug her and ask to see her nails. 

Apparently, this qualified as homosexual in the late 1980s. 

And these were the "popular" girls who asked me, so I should probably spell it "stoopid" because that's what their comment was.

In 4th grade, the cutest boy in the school, grabbed me from behind while we were sitting on the floor of the classroom cleaning out our desks and said he was raping me. I guess I was kind of cerebral then because I was like, "Uh, dude. This is not rape." 

Do you see why sending my kids to Catholic school did NOT seem like a better option than sending them to public school? Why pay tuition for this kind of garbage?

I dated two gay guys in college. Admittedly, at the time, they were still figuring things out which I didn't know, but many years later, when things were clear for them and me, it made me consider what I find attractive in a guy. I knew I liked guys, but I definitely never liked that macho, tough guy shit. 

I liked the smart, cultured, eccentric guys. I liked the falsetto singer guys. 

Long before I was a teen, I loved Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran who was so secure he could wear cosmetics and rock out on the synthesizer. He was thin and non-muscley. I guess from the time I was 10 years old, I knew what kind of male I liked and it wasn't the machismo guy.

I married a man who is sensitive and quiet and funny. And virile enough to produce three children without trying too hard.

So I don't understand and have never understood why men have to be a certain whatever. 

I have taken this into how I raise my sons. 

They are smelly and farty and genuinely gross. But they are encouraged to be understanding and empathetic and sensitive. They have never been told not to cry. 

I guess I just think it is all absurd, us humans trying to put each other in these stupid boxes of categorization. 

Like what you like.

Don't be a dick to other people. 

Why is this so hard? 

Drinking is not funny, and yet everything is a joke

I have written articles about excessive alcohol consumption.

My dad's brother died at 48 from cirrhosis of the liver and his father was an abusive alcoholic. 

I'm pretty aware of the dangers of drinking.

I became very cognizant of my alcohol usage at age 21 after I drank WAY too much vodka and had a 5-day hangover. 

I stick to wine and beer, with an occasional margarita or strawberry daiquiri. 

I have no more than 2 glasses. 

Most nights, if I have a beer, it is a half-beer that D and I split. 

I'm also aware that D and I have been drinking more than we ever have as a result of the pandemic. 

Initial research suggests he and I are in very good company and a lot of it. 

My antidepressant is working overtime of late. 

The pandemic is part of it, sure, but my dad's health issues are what has left me reeling. My dad's health issues in combination with the pandemic and being terrified to be near him because his body cannot handle anything else. I cannot risk his health because it is terribly fragile at the moment. 

Nothing is funny right now. 

Everyone drinking more than usual. Everyone more isolated than usual. My dad's health. My emotional health. 

And yet it all feels like a joke; the year of near constant feeling like we're being punked by circumstances beyond our control. 

I can make fun of my liquor store run and stay vigilant to not go overboard, to always be aware that it wouldn't take much to slip over the ledge into addiction. 

That many, many people do something to deal temporarily with an issue and then that "fix" becomes the next real problem. 

Our entire society, maybe our entire world, is doing that now. 

Surviving and knowing that the steps we're taking may be the steps of future unraveling.

The movie "Speed," except a virus is driving the bus

A former coworker of mine now works at a local hospital. She posted that the hospital system is experiencing "critical staffing" issues. 

I overheard a conversation where a nurse was saying local medical systems are preparing to freeze non-emergency surgeries because of virus quarantines and illness. 

In small towns/cities where COVID is rampant, there isn't enough room at hospitals for COVID patients. 

Numerous governors are starting to restrict restaurants/bars and activities where groups of people meet and are, at least part of the time, maskless. 

And it all sucks. 

It sucks for the people who can't go out to eat because maybe that was their way of doing something fun when everything sucks.

It sucks for the restaurant industry that has been slammed from every direction.

It sucks for the local economies, which means it sucks for everyone whose tax dollars have to stretch even tighter. 

It sucks for the leaders who have to decide between restricting freedoms and hospitals being completely overwhelmed/more people getting sick and dying. 

It sucks for people who have depression and anxiety.

It sucks for people going through chemo and cancer whose immune systems are already blitzed.

It sucks for people who work from home; it sucks for people who can't work from home.

It sucks for kids in school who have to distance and wear masks; it sucks for kids who aren't in school and have to do online.

IT SUCKS FOR EVERYONE. 

As of Nov 19, the case fatality rate in the US is 2.2 percent. And this sounds great until you multiple 2.2 percent times the number of people who live in the US, which is 330 million people. 

0.022 x 330 million = 7.26 million DEATHS

We are now at 250,000 deaths. So if we multiply that number by 29 we will have almost 7.26 million.

All of our options are BAD. 

There are no good options; there are only BAD options with BAD consequences.

And with this virus, if enough people (and there are enough people) fear it and fear millions of people dying, they are not going to act normally even if leaders do absolutely nothing except sit on their couches and eat bonbons. 

They aren't going to shop or eat out or go anywhere or do much of anything while the virus is running rampant even if my governor and your governor and the president and everyone else says "Everything is fine; go about your business." 

Because they know their friends are getting sick; they know people who are very ill or in the hospital or who have died. 

And while I could be wrong and there could be a mass conspiracy where every nation on the planet and doctors in North and South Dakota have agreed to bury empty coffins and do interviews about how bad everything is virus-wise, I doubt it.

The USPS and other COVID-y things

 Lawd amighty. 

There is some serious discontent in my neighborhood surrounding the USPS, which I find pretty funny, mostly because the folks who seem to do the most complaining on our neighborhood FB page are diehard Republicans. And a more efficient, less wasteful USPS seems like it is exactly in-line with conservative principles.

Principles. Shminciples.

Principles don't matter when it concerns MY mail, I guess. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not loving things books taking a much longer time to arrive. 

Still, not getting things instantaneously is a good reminder to me of how spoiled we've all become by modern life.

It's not a bad thing to have to wait.

I mean, hasn't this been what every parent since the beginning of time has been saying to their children?

Doesn't delaying gratification build character? 

There is much I don't love about COVID-life, but it's not such a bad thing for my children to have to remember to write down on a list what they want me to order from the grocery and then have to wait for the next time I pick up groceries.

It's not a bad thing that my children aren't being able to do exactly whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it.

I wish many of the adults would get a handle on themselves and be reminded that they, too, can learn to manage their disappointment.

A reading/viewing example of white supremacy

There are, to my mind, two kinds of white supremacy.
There is the definition everyone thinks of, in which white people believe they are superior to other people who are Black, brown, yellow, etc.
This is what I always thought of.

But then there is white supremacy in which whiteness is the dominant color that society thinks about as being "the main."
Reading "White Fragility" helped inform this other meaning.

Because supremacy doesn't just mean superior.
It also means dominant, influence, or advantage.

I caught myself having an experience of white supremacy last night when D and I watched the first two episodes of HBO's His Dark Materials, a trilogy based on the novels of Philip Pullman.

This series of fantasy books has long been a favorite of mine, but I decided I needed to reread it.
And so I started reading it to my kids this summer before bed.
The 16-year-old even participated in the listening.

Now, I have always, in my mind, visualized the characters as white.
Was this because Pullman is white?
Maybe.
Is this because I was influenced by the 2007 film version of The Golden Compass?
Maybe.
Is this because I am white?
Maybe.

So watching the new HBO series, in which the master of Jordan College is played by a black actor, and John Faa is played by a black actor, and Boreal is played by a black actor, it struck me how sneaky and subtle supremacy is. It informs your thoughts even if you aren't aware that it informs your thoughts.

It was a bit of a wake-up for me, an awareness of how unaware I am all the time.

Why I decided that unfriending people was the way to go

There came a time, I think it was in April, or maybe May, when I decided that I didn't need to be "friends" with certain people I know.
Heck, maybe I had made this decision by late March.

For a long time prior to this, there were people I was "friends" with whom I didn't actually like.
Mostly, they posted stuff like "Liberals this, that, and the other."
As if they know the hearts and minds of every single person who considers her/himself liberal-leaning.
Or they would post stuff about what Thomas Jefferson said about the republic, even though I know they didn't study history; they majored in business administration and maybe read a book or two about Jefferson.
Or they would argue with me, but arguing with me wasn't the problem.
It was their name-calling and willful fucking ignorance.
I can handle someone arguing me if they are presenting data or analysis or something more than, "But, but" and "Ok, then how about..."

I decided that in the world before FB existed, I would only raise my hand to wave at these people if I saw them in the neighborhood.
I wouldn't spend any time with them beyond a courtesy greeting once a year.
If I saw them out in public and knew they didn't see me, I'd probably also occasionally turn around and visit a different section of Home Depot to avoid speaking with them.

There is a whole mess of family that I am unfollowing and getting fairly close to unfriending since I haven't seen many of them since I was a child.
And they continue to post ridiculous stuff like "I don't see color" and "Christians are persecuted in the US" and other things that make me want to roll my eyes until they get stuck in the back of my head.

I had thought to myself that I was being open-minded by being "friends" with people who I strongly disagree with, but I finally decided that I was simply being driven crazy by people I don't actually care about.

And if I was gonna die during a pandemic or watch people die during a pandemic, I wasn't going to spend one extra second more than I had to being subjected to viewpoints that just make me angry.

I am all for having peaceful conversations because I am willing to learn from others and listen, but the truth is that there are some people whose minds are closed.
Having an argument with them is simply screaming into a void of nonsense or stupidity or derangement.

I determined that my own mental health was more important to me than making an effort to be "open-minded."

(I also deleted dead people because that just seems obvious.)

Pandemic parenting expectations after reading a novel about a pandemic

I finished Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel a few days ago, and it made me feel much better about my inability and/or refusal to even attempt to make my kids' lives normal right now.

Normal is over.
And I don't know if this is temporary or permanent.

I do not have the mental energy to do anything more than keep my kids fed, relatively clean, and ensure they survive.
I'm not worried at all about whether their reading or math scores decline as a result of NTI this past spring.
I'm not worried that they aren't reaching whatever "potential" they might have.
I don't know that too many people right now are meeting their greatest potential.
Because self-actualization becomes not so critical in unique situations such as these.
Maybe there are some people, but I'm not one of them.

In St. John Mandel's novel, the pandemic that impacts the world kills somewhere around 99% of the population, and it does so within 48 hours, which I think is a mercy.
There are few things worse than unknowns and uncertainties as far as I'm concerned.
If COVID-19 were far more deadly, perhaps people would be taking it more seriously than they are.
Although I doubt it.

When my kids were younger, it was easier to have "engagement" summers.
They were happy to play in the backyard or go where I thought would be a fun spot.
Now they are older; they don't care, and I don't care enough to fight with them about it.
And during a COVID summer, my anxiety at being out among other humans, most of whom aren't wearing masks, is greater than my desire to have my kids doing self-actualization activities.
We won't be going to museums or malls or anywhere that we don't absolutely have to go.

A parent I interviewed for a magazine article recently said that either she or her husband go to the store "as tribute," which I thought was the most brilliant thing ever and am now applying to my life.

We have always kept the bar pretty low for entertaining our children, and I am so glad for that practice now.

As I read the aforementioned book, it occurred to me that kids in this pandemic mostly 1. died or 2. had to survive in ways that were probably horrible.
Their parents, were they even still alive, were far too busy finding food or drowning in their own psychological trauma to worry too much about their kids being engaged.

We had a meeting about field hockey, and while I will support N, I also am the type of person who doesn't like to invest too much effort and energy into something that seems fairly unlikely to happen.

This is, of course, the exact opposite of sports enthusiasts who want to be prepared and "ready to play" should the season actually happen.

My personal feeling is that the schools are going to find it difficult enough to figure out how to educate during COVID; I think they aren't going to think it is worth the effort, headache, and liability of extracurricular activities.
I just don't think they are saying this as yet.
But I suspect they will.

Whatever conditioning occurs will be an effort in "pretending to care about sports during pandemic" for me, although this, in truth, isn't too far from my normal "pretending to care about sports" status.

There is an awful lot of going through the motions for me now.
Which may also be permanent or temporary.
Uncertainty is cruel. 

Take your uncomfortable feeling and sit with it

Affrilachian poet Frank X. Walker published a poem this week.
Reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
That uncomfortable feeling was me recognizing that the poem's sentiment was honest and accurate.
What role do white women play in the raising of men who perpetrate brutality against blacks?

From my experience with OCD, I know that one of the ways to make it better or lessen its impact is to do what is called "sit with your anxiety."
Part of the reason people with OCD do their compulsions is to reduce the uncomfortable feelings they have.
The problem of giving in to the compulsion is that while it makes a person feel better for the moment, it makes the anxiety worse overall, which requires you to do more compulsions or new compulsions to make the anxiety go away.
"Sitting with your anxiety" is extremely uncomfortable but it is what is necessary to help truly master OCD and not be controlled by it.

I have seen at least two instances this week in which white women I know have posted their thoughts and/or feelings on social media regarding protests or wishing all this what they call "meanness" in the world would go away.
When their comments were challenged, they did not "sit with their feelings."
They deleted what they wrote and went back to "only happy, positive posts now."

While doing this may lessen their negative and/or uncomfortable feelings, it is indicative of white privilege.
They have the luxury of not dealing with the meanness of the world because of their color.
It is easy for them to slip back into the comfy, secure confines of whiteness where life is, perhaps not always easy or simple, but easier than if their skin color impacted how they were treated or viewed by others.

Sitting with the uncomfortable is, in my opinion, part of the hard work of understanding what your bias and prejudices are.
It isn't fun.
But it is necessary.

This week, a teacher friend posted the Harvard Implicit Bias Test.
There are numerous tests a person can choose, but I took the race one.
And before I took it I was scared.
I did not want to know what it would tell me.
What if what I thought I knew about my bias/prejudice was not accurate?
What if I had to look my bias/prejudice in the face and see myself for what I am?

And yet, that feeling of being scared that I felt was a luxury.
Feeling scared by what an online test will tell me about myself is so far removed from the feelings of fear that come from
driving while Black.
jogging while Black.
babysitting while Black.
eating ice cream while Black.
sleeping while Black.
bird-watching while Black.
kneeling while Black.

Language--what you say and what you think you say

I.
The other day, I wrote about code that white people sometimes use, and I gave "dirty" as an example.

As an English teacher and writer, I think a lot about the words that I use and the words that other writers use and how the use of those words impacts listeners and readers.

There is what is called denotation, the literal definition of a word.
There is also connotation, which is the understanding and usage of the word which may be similar to the literal definition or may be COMPLETELY different from the literal meaning.

The following words are all synonyms for the walk and describe how someone moves their body to get from one place to another.

roam
advance
sashay
shuffle

Even though these words all have the same denotation, they all connote something different. I would use the word "roam" if I was writing about trying to find my way in a city and not knowing where I'm going. I would not use sashay to describe how I get around an unknown city. Advance suggests military movement and strategy. I would not say I am advancing through the grocery store to get cereal.

When a white person uses the word "dirty" or "thug," they could be using the denotation of these words, or they could be connoting something totally different. Sometimes they do this unintentionally and sometimes they do it with cruel intentions.

Last fall, I used the word "dirty" to describe a certain type of blues music that I like. When I used that word, what I was trying to convey was a sense of rawness and stripped down(ness) to the music; music that had not been over-produced to sound full and "cleaned up."

After the words came out of my mouth, I realized that because I was talking about blue music, a form of music originated by black artists, my use of the word "dirty" could be, understandably, misconstrued from what I had intended.

Add to the fact that I was thinking about the music of The Black Keys, two white musicians, whose influences were Junior Kimbrough and Robert Johnson, two black musicians, and my usage of the word "dirty" became even further complicated.

At the time I said that, I didn't know The Black Keys were influenced by these men, but after I made that statement, I decided I needed to do some work. I began to research who they were influenced by and listen to those musicians.
I needed to internally give props to those musicians who maybe haven't gotten the credit they are due.

However many months later, I am still thinking about my use of the word "dirty," what I thought I meant by using that word, and what someone else might have understood.

II.
One of the dangers of social media is that it isn't a complete conversation and most people don't have the bandwidth to read an entire essay.
(Myself included, especially when there is no punctuation or separated paragraphs.)

Televised media is another example.
Why do people watch so much television?
Is it because the world and your understanding of it will be handed to you in short, digestible snippets?
But can we really understand anything from blurbs and soundbites and a 5-minute discussion?
For me, to understand means to read and read and read and think a lot after that and throw some experience in there, too.

So what social media has us do, myself included, is try to get everything we think into one statement, but one statement doesn't cover it.

III.
In trying to say everything we want to say in snippets, we add buts.
But is a conjunction intended to link two parts of a sentence together.

I like to eat popcorn, but it has an unpleasant effect on my digestive tract.
In the above sentence, I started out with a positive (I like to eat popcorn), but the "but" made it negative.
That is what buts can do.

Buts can also make a positive of a sentence that starts out negative.
I always hated tomatoes, but I have learned how to enjoy them on a salad.

The problem is that a lot of people are starting their comments as follows:
I support the protests, but I disagree with destroying property.
I think the police are too brutal, but I also think people need to follow their authority figures. 

The but takes your positive support and turns it into a negative, even if this isn't what you intended. Even if you say it in the spirit of goodwill.
Even if you really agree that things should change.
That but screwed up how your comment was received.

Are there other logical things potentially wrong with those statements above?
Sure, especially since some of the people who think POC should listen to authority figures are the same people who threw duck fits when authority figures instituted measures during the pandemic that impacted their ability to get their hair cut or select furniture at a discount store.

But this is simply about the power of the words we use and choose and the need to think about how our adjectives and conjunctions can impact how we are perceived.

I am so mad at white people right now

This is my blog to attempt to make sense of what I'm feeling.

I am angry.
I am sad.
I am ashamed.

All of these feelings stem from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And they stem from the arrest of Omar Jimenez while trying to do his job.
And the video of Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper and her call to the police.
And the non-arrests or delayed arrests of Arbery's killers and Floyd's killers, as well as no-knock entries of police in the middle of the night.

But the cherry on top of the aforementioned shit sundae is the white people I know living in their white, upper-middle-class world and having not a clue that they don't have a clue.

I say this as a white person who knows damn good and well that I cannot possibly wrap my head around the POC experience.
Whatever I might think I know, I'm 100 percent sure I don't have even the slightest grasp.

"Violence doesn't solve anything" is the white person's lament that would be better said as, "I don't understand why black people protest and riot even though I did not say this same thing when armed white men went to the state capitol and screamed at law enforcement."
Unarmed POC are tear-gassed while white men with weapons that could reduce a crowd to dust are allowed to just hang out in the state rotunda.

"I don't understand why they're destroying their community" is another common refrain I've heard and seen. What this screams to me is, "I live on the other side of town than those people, and as a person who has been able to utilize business and economics to my advantage, I cannot imagine destroying something that provides me entertainment and a way to spend my disposable income."

How many freaking memes are about white women shopping at Target for fun while their husbands tailgate in the parking lot?
In the upper-middle-class white world, destroying a Target might get you a one-way ticket to hell assuming there is a hereafter. I like Target, but I know it screams "white person shopping place."

And just the fact that these statements say "their community" implies that you, as a white person, aren't a part of the person of color's community.
Even if shit is happening across your town, it is still your community.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention white people who do live all the way across town, some 15 miles from where protests happened in my city, commenting about gunshots at 3:30 in the morning near us.

I don't know how this appears to them; perhaps as concerned citizens of our little niche.
But in my frustration, all I hear is: "OMG, the chaos of the blacks is coming to our secluded little nugget of nirvana in the east end."

The comments of "This is horrendous" and chiming in on what you think you heard is the verbal equivalent of clutching your pearls.

Imagine hearing gunshots every night and not just on the night that a protest ended up in shootings?

Imagine being woken up at 3:30 in the morning because the police are ramming your front door down during a no-knock warrant? And then actually being shot?

Did you say "This is horrendous" when you saw the officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck?

What I want to say is "Will you PUHLEASE check your damn privilege at the door and quit freaking out about a non-event? You can walk down our street any time and rest assured that you are not going to be shot by anyone, and especially not a police officer."
Quit thinking about yourself when you have so many privileges you can't even begin to understand them all.

There are the white people who post a photo of an uplifting story about a friendship between whites and blacks and think this means they don't have a bias, implicit or otherwise.
Or because they have a black friend it means they don't have prejudices and don't have to do any internal wrangling and work about what racism is and how it impacts all of us.

If you have moved outside the school district or to another neighborhood in order to keep your kids at the "good" middle school, maybe you aren't as color-blind as you like to think you are?
(The whole notion of "Colorblindness" being part of white-people idiot-speak.)
Ahem, is the "good" middle school where there are more white kids?
Because while I'm pretty sure I don't understand the POC experience, I know white code when I hear it.
I have people in my family who stopped shopping at "dirty" Kroger even though it went through an extensive makeover and expansion.
I know what they meant by "dirty" Kroger.

This blog post was me reacting out of anger and frustration, and it is a terrible mess of lashing out and perhaps hurting the feelings of my white counterparts who read it.
Is it any wonder that the anger and frustration of POC has resulted in fires and looting.

Or does it explode? 
(White folks, this is code. Go Google it.)

Dunder Mifflin and the conspiracy theory

I am old enough to have worked my fair number of jobs.

There was the ice cream shop when I was a teenager which was owned by a skeezy dude who made inappropriate remarks to his all-female staff.

I worked at the grocery store that went out of business because it was so poorly fiscally managed.

I worked at an online publishing company that had some cool people but also a manager who wrote soft porn and shared it with his employees as well as another dude who lived in his mother's basement and was so socially inept he would lecture his same-level peers on their work. There was the office worker whose skin was yellow because all she ate was fast-food.

I worked in a public school that had drama queens and unusual relationship triads/dyads and a whole lot of dysfunction.

There is no place I've ever worked that has been run so seamlessly and with 100 percent coordinated effort and enthusiasm on the part of every.single.person who was employed there. There were rumors and backstabbing and disaffection.

Last year, I subbed on a team that was completely dysfunctional. During a meeting with the principal to discuss why the kids were off-the-chain, one of the teachers admitted (this was in March), that he had never bought into the team incentive and hadn't been doing it the entire year.

I thought to myself, "I feel like I understand why this is all a train-wreck."
Everyone has to be on the same page, or at least within the same chapter for things to operate smoothly.

When I think about companies that are in operation now, I am sometimes astounded by the inefficiencies and general stupidity.

For example, I am a regular Kroger customer who has been using the Clicklist since quarantining began. I make my order, pick it up, and receive a receipt showing I spent $87.65.

However, on my credit card, Kroger shows anywhere between 4-8 DIFFERENT transactions adding up to $87.65.

And I ask myself, as well as the Kroger customer service when I email, if they can have 1 amount given to me on a receipt, why are they unable to give me 1 charge on my credit card?
I have yet to receive an answer.

Clearly, something is not right.
The left hand and right hand, somewhere along the line, are not speaking to each other.

And this is seen over and over again in each and every business, organization, or government agency in the world.
They are all flawed; sometimes outlandishly so.

With that in mind, I cannot really believe in most conspiracy theories, especially as they concern one-world coordinated entities that prey on people.

Is there corruption?
Of course. I don't deny that.
Might there be coordinated efforts to try to fool people?
Sure.
But are they successful to the extent that we are all puppets being manipulated by them?
Throughout the US and across the world?
Think of how many people would have to be involved for that to work?
Every single person would have to be equally intelligent and secretive.
And for there to be some kind of one-world-order, there would have to be thousands and thousands of people all coordinating to the letter.

Does anything in my own life experience, be it volunteering on the PTA or at church or working at a business, make me think this is realistic?

The short answer is no.

It's surreal in all kinds of ways

I often read historical books and think to myself, "I wonder what it was really like to live during whatever horrible event occurred."

My 4th grader and I just finished Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, and so my thoughts have been on life-altering, catastrophic events because I've been reading about them fictionally and non-fictionally (every time I read the newspaper).

This pandemic is surreal to me.

I generally always think that people experienced "the worst possible," but that is not the case, and I sometimes need reminders.

When 9-11 happened, it was life-altering for me, but I didn't experience the worst of it. New York City, both then and now, has been hammered.
There are degrees of experience.

Apparently, the country is anticipating over 134,000 deaths, more or less.
With states opening back up, that number is likely to increase.
What I wish I knew is how many people test positive who are completely asymptomatic.
That seems important but not included in the stats I'm seeing.
I see how many people test positive, but I don't know are they mildly sick, hospital-level sick?
There is so much we still don't know or understand about this virus.

There is economic fall-out no matter what course states and governments take.
If we close for longer, people suffer.
If we open back up, people suffer.
I think only hindsight will tell us in which scenario people suffered more.

What reading the aforementioned children's chapter book has made me notice and feel a little mystified about is the whininess I see, at least among the people I know and who post on social media.

I, too, want life to return to normal.
I, too, would like a haircut.
I, too, would like to take my kid to his orthodontist appointment.
I don't love substitute teaching but I would LOVE nothing more than for life to return to normal when I could substitute teach.
I would love to feel comfortable going to the grocery without a mask and browsing (and I hate to shop).

But my basic needs are met.
I have food, water, shelter, and prescription medication.
Everything else is an inconvenience.
It might be an inconvenience that makes me wanna cuss, but it is an inconvenience.

I have recently seen a petition going around with folks whining about maybe or maybe not being able to go to the pool which seems like a whole lotta privilege making its way to social media.
I both get it and hate it at the same time.

The petition itself doesn't make me cringe; it is the comments that go with the petition like, "How will I live this summer without going to the pool?"
And I'm struggling to know whether such statements are hyperbole especially after reading my fair share of books about people who lived during circumstances and times when even walking down the street put them in the range of a Nazi's gun.
When a hunk of cheese was a luxury and treat.
For some individuals right now during this pandemic, a hunk of cheese is a luxury and a treat.

And there are people in our city whose pools were shut down ages ago for reasons I don't even know. Because of the expense?
Because the pools are in the West End which has been redlined to death?
Because the pools were for the poorer and blacker segments of the community?

Also surreal to me is seeing the same folks who make the argument that women shouldn't have abortions even though pregnancy has severe financial/economic implications also argue that people should be allowed back to work because the pandemic has severe financial/economic implications.

How is the right of one person to control their body and what they do with it because of finances not the same as the right of another person to control their body and what they do with it because of finances, especially when harm to others' lives is the result?

Is it because harm to the fetus is a definite and harm to someone else (an older person/medically fragile person) because of COVID-19 is only possible?

It is surreal that individuals worship a Jesus who is compassionate and empathic and yet also support a president who hasn't the ability to offer true compassion and empathy to others, a man who has a necrotizing case of "it's all about me."

It is beyond bizarre to me.
And I guess it always has been but I didn't have the unfettered time to think about it almost constantly.