And despite everything

 Not having a great morning.

Yesterday - I didn't really mention it - was stressful. Trying to grade a lot of online exams (I have more today; I gave the students until 11:59 pm last night and while a bit over half the class finished early, I still have 7 exams to grade this afternoon. And my cable box died and man, it was a whole Jeremy Bearimy getting it replaced: went down to the place and was told "oh it's the power cord, other people have reported this issue" and I thought "great, that means I won't have to do the thing of activating another box" but nope, it was the box that was bad - it worked for 15 minutes and then did the shut-off thing again.

So I went BACK, and by that time it was after work, and many people who pay their bills in person (in cash) or who had issues with needing cut off service put back on were there, and there was a line, and I wound up waiting outside behind a guy who wasn't wearing a mask and basically told me he thought COVID was a hoax when he saw mine. I backed away and said warily "a cousin of mine had it and he was pretty sick" (Well, a second cousin, and he seems to have recovered without too many issues, but). \

Got the new box, got it home. Called in for the activation, that worked. Tried pairing the remote the way the instructions said.

Got to the point of being able to turn on the tv, turn off the tv, and adjust the volume, but not change channels. And I thought "great, so I can only watch CBS for eternity now. That's a very specific kind of Hell"

Called back, waited forever, tried the chat. Just as I was getting to type in my problem to chat, the person came on the phone and helped me through it. Turns out there's a secret instruction, apparently, not in the booklet, that you need to use if none of the numbers given for your tv brand work. 

I had tensed up so much during first the grading and then the endless phone waits (and yeah, I was more agitated by it than I should have been, but literally every life-maintenance task I've had over and above the usual minimum of laundry and cooking and sweeping seems to be at least three times as hard as it was in the before-times) that this morning my neck and shoulders are killing me.

And overnight, I had stomach-churn, and I was like "o crap, did the denier dude infect you and you're already sick? Or did you get it on your run to Pruett's on Friday even though you had a mask on and were careful?" I think it was just that I had not the most felicitous combination of foods - leftover pizza for lunch, leftover sauerkraut and sausage for dinner. I guess in a week or 10 days I'll find out if my trip to the cable place wound up costing me my health. (I could have lived without tv even though these days I get distinctly squirrelly without the sounds of people)

And now this morning, for some reason, grief for my father has decided to come back. Why can't I be done with this? It's been over a year. I should be better. If I weren't so busy and so worried about our rising caseload I'd consider calling up the counselor again and just....paying out of pocket because my university won't cover any more sessions. But I guess I white-knuckle it through like I am everything else and telling myself things will get better. I hope they do soon, though I'm worried about this fall and winter as far as caseload goes and the whole "locked inside the house during the coldest darkest time of year without even the consolation of being able to go to my mother's for Christmas"

If things don't get markedly worse (case-wise) this week, maybe early Saturday I do just go to JoAnn's even though  I don't NEED anything - what I NEED is to be out - and maybe run across to Target for groceries (I was not happy with Kroger's last time, too many people not doing things like allowing for distancing)