a fragile day

Today was just another hard day. I guess it teaches me to get out of a useful schedule...

I mowed the lawn yesterday, moving very fast on a high humidity day (it was a dewpoint of 75). I was moving fast because storms were predicted and I got done just before my phone alert about "lightning in your area" went off. But I overstressed something or pulled something and my upper back and arms are very sore today (I use a reel-type mower, so I am the only source of power for it).

I didn't do much today. I had thought of baking bread but mid morning - when I should have started - I was in so much pain I didn't want to. So I mostly just sat around and faffed. Read a little. But didn't do much else. I'm still in pain. I took a tylenol but it didn't do much. I didn't really do anything all day

The problem with this is I begin to think about:

1. How long every day is when you're stuck indoors (it poured rain today so going outside made no sense)

2. How many, many, many more long days there are going to be in this state. If this is what eternity is like? I'm not sure I WANT an afterlife.

It's supposed to rain all week, and with a high probability at that, so no point in going to Twin Oaks - for one thing, I've not been able to clear out the rest of the area I might want to plant, and I'm guessing if it's pouring down they can't do the open-air checkout and probably just close up. And anyway, looking for plants outdoors in pouring rain is no fun. And even if there's a gap in the rain, they're a half-hour from me, so the chances of it not being rain there when I get there is not 100%, and not even high enough for it to feel worth it.

That was literally the big thing I was looking forward to. I guess the lesson is I'm not, for some reason, allowed to have anything to look forward to ever again - so many things I looked forward to this spring have just crashed and burned, both big things and little things. 

I need to make myself do at least one more hour of reading, and then maybe I watch another episode or two of "Murder, She Wrote," because at least that's diverting. I think my favorite shows these days are the ones where the central character has a network of friends (after all,what are all the co-workers in Pawnee's Parks and Recreation department but a little found family?) or family (they seem to have given Jessica Fletcher dozens of cousins and nieces and nephews). I'm sure that's partly because I'm so alone right now, but I've always liked situations (shows or books) where the main characters just....effortlessly....have a big group of friends, that everyone who kind of works together or hangs out together gets along. Probably because I feel like I've never had enough friends, or I've kind of "edited myself out" of people's lives because I tell myself they have friends who are more important to them than me, or that their family needs to be more important to them, and I have no claim on their time....

My own family is so small and so scattered and a couple people at the edges of it have kind of cut themselves off from everyone else and most of my mom's relatives are dead anyway.

***

I cooked dinner (pork chops from the most recent Imperfect Foods box) and it was disappointing. No more pork unless I can get it from someone raising heirloom hogs that actually have some intramuscular fat because otherwise pork cooks up inedibly dry and tough.

***

I don't know. I just feel kind of useless again. If I could go back in time, I'd pull Past Me aside and go, "look, I don't CARE that you like being outdoors for studying stuff, go into virology or pharmaceutical research, you will thank me in 30 or 40 years"  and then my life would take a different path and I'd be pulling 14 hour days trying to get through research on this thing as fast and well as possible - but at least I'd not be sitting here sitting looking at the rain and crying and being utterly useless to anybody, including myself.

I really hope that, despite the forecast, the rain stops for at least a while one day this week so I can get outdoors. I may just have to get in my car and drive - not to go anywhere, I won't even get out of the car - but I need to see something else, I need to convince myself that the world beyond my block still exists and it hasn't collapsed into a black hole leaving only the little slice of the world that I can see from my window.