Wednesday morning things

Added: this is shaping up, for no clear reason (other than all the ongoing horrors big and small, in the world) to be a Very Bad Day for me. I'm vertical and at work right now because I have an obligation in about 10 minutes but.....not sure I am going to accomplish much else today.

if you're the praying type, they would be appreciated. I really don't see how we're going to get out of this, and I'm not sure I'm going to LAST until we get out of it, to be honest.

Edited about noon: the tour went okay (this being Zoom, with me doing it on my phone and walking around the building and talking.

Two things though, that I think explain my discomfort;

- We have apparently had 13 people reported who either got sick/tested positive over the summer. This was with maybe 200 employees and maybe as many as 200 student workers/athletes on campus. Nine are listed as recovered, but still. And the fact that one of the dorms has a couple floors designated as "quarantine wards" is kind of a chilling thing. (Again: what will I do if I have to quarantine? I guess I just keep enough canned/frozen food on hand for two weeks at all times? No word as to whether there will be help for us lonely live-alones in all this)

- As an "older" (both in terms of age and seniority) person and a biologist, some people are looking to me for answers and guys? I have so few answers that I have like negative answers. And it scares me. I don't know what to do and no one else does either and this is a case where - granted, with a very small probability, but still greater than many of the risk-probabilities we have ways of dealing with*-  there is a probability you get get sick enough to die or have permanent disability

(*I am thinking of the "avoiding needle sticks" training we ALL have to do. ALL. Nevermind I'm an ecologist and the only "needle stick" I will ever suffer is if I'm not careful while handsewing, never mind that the people in History literally never work with needles)

The whole: "I have literally no clue how to do this so that we're safe" thing is what is scaring me right now

* Hanging out at home while a storm passes over. I don't have to be to campus until 11:30 (another virtual tour) so there's no need to go out in the rain or risk the lightning. This is the last rain we're going to get for a while and it's supposed to get deadly hot again, so I guess I don't try to find a place to go hiking this weekend :(

though I might go out tomorrow or Friday afternoon to the local reservoir that has some trails and is where I used to take students for herbaceous vegetation sampling; we are supposed to get GoPro cameras and some technical help and I am considering trying to at least demo the field labs (we can't do any kind of "travel to them" field labs - vehicles aren't safe to cram people in and we're told it's illegal for us to ask students to drive their personal cars). So I'm thinking, demonstrate how the sampling is done and then give data from a previous year. Or, heck, if I have the time - just collect data there and then as I demonstrate the lab.

This is all a lot of work. Work for which we won't be paid any more or probably even thanked.

And yes, I know it's deeply petty of me but I would like to be thanked. I would like some recognition that these are deeply, deeply abnormal times and that preparing to teach and having labs my students can do without coming into contact with each other (working alone instead of in groups) and establishing a bunch of NEW labs where they can do them on the computer, either in the computer lab here or at home if they have to - well, that took work and I"m dealing with the same existential horror than everyone else and.....I would like a little recognition that "this isn't easy" but of course because there are people who have it worse than I do - or who have it better but are more Important - what I does doesn't matter and it will be ignored.

And no, I can't any more look at my work and go "even if no one else seems to care, you did a good job." One way in which I am broken right now is I need to hear from SOMEONE ELSE. I can't trust my own perceptions of things any more

* I had to bow out of the ITFF card swap; I have not received a card in over a month. Have received barely any "personal mail," for that matter. I feel really surprisingly sad about that but I realized: this pushes one of my "buttons," the one marked "on the outside looking in."

This is something I COULD be a part of if things weren't so screwed up; people want me in the card swap* but I don't want people wasting postage on me for cards I never receive, and I get sad sending out cards that never reciprocate.

(*Unlike the things in my childhood that established that "button" where I was explicitly told "no one wants you" or also the case of a girl in my class very pointedly handing out birthday-party invitations and NOT giving me one, and making sure I saw that)

And there is so little "fun" to be had right now that losing one source of fun and hope and something to look forward to makes me despair a little more.

Also no sign of any Doki Doki or Gachapon crates, even though I SHOULD be receiving June's at some point and then July's. I don't know - I have until the 15th to decide if I just discontinue them and not have my card charged but I may have to do that.

I wonder if we do have a local mail thief again.

I hate not being able to trust anything any more. I hate how we've become a low-trust society now.

* I just want to laugh at things again. I may get an occasional "ha" out of a funny cat video or similar but sustained laughter has been very rare these six months and I don't know if it's the state of my mind or the state of the world but I want it to change.

* I MUST clean house this weekend. It's gotten bad, the empty cardboard boxes (recycling no longer being collected from the convenient places, so what do I do? I have only so much room in the trash cart. I've been breaking them down and putting them in the garage but I am running short on room for that too). And the clutter - I keep losing things and not knowing where they are, even stupid things I use daily like the tv remote. And mess and untidiness prey on my mind and maybe I'll be happier if I take a couple hours Friday afternoon and Saturday morning and do a deep-clean?

Also: If I catch the 'rona early on when classes restart and someone has to come to get me to a hospital, I'd be embarrassed at them seeing the mess. So I have to clean up and keep the place clean.

What I really need is less stuff. I can't figure out what stuff I would be most comfortable getting rid of but I have more stuff than my very small house can really hold.

* I'm working more on the big cabled blanket; I have about two repeats and the border left to do. I have attached in the last ball of yarn and I HOPE I have enough, because I think Red Heart stopped making this.

At any rate - even though we're drawing in to the hottest part of the year (so I won't be able to use it for a while), it will be nice to have the blanket done and nice to have a big, long-term project done.

I need to try to pivot myself more to working on stuff, I think it helps me be resilient. I also need to finish a lot of the stuff I have hanging around half-finished.

I've been watching cartoons while I do this - Cartoon Network moved the Bob's Burgers re-runs to 7-8 pm here (Central Time), I suppose on the grounds that it's slightly more "family friendly" than the Seth whats-his-face shows or Rick and Morty. I've seen them all many times but I don't care, it's a little world that is weirdly appealing - even though the family seems usually on the brink of eviction or failure, and weird-bad things happen, there is still a love there. (And Bob is one of the rare cartoon dads who's not a total buffoon - sometimes he gets off on his own mad tangents, but more often than not he's the "one sane man" in the stories).

Also I flipped over to the animated-cartoon-show version of Big Hero Six after that. It's not the same as the movie, but in its own right it's pretty good. The good guys win, there's some mild humor, there's a cat.....more often than not, cartoons are the most tolerable form of television for me.

I should probably also start cycling through the dvds I have again - I have the movie version of Big Hero Six, and I have many of the Ghibli movies, and I have Babe....maybe familiar entertainment that is basically "nice" is what I need as a backdrop for knitting or crocheting. (Or handsewing; I have another quilt I need to bind at some point).