....for little mercies

 My mom just called. It turns out my brother and sister-in-law, after talking with their friends on the phone (The woman is sick with COVID but is apparently improving), discovered that the exposure of the friends to it - which led to the friends testing positive - was several days AFTER my brother and sister-in-law had last seen them.

so there's no chance they get sick (well, from THIS exposure) and they won't have to quarantine over Christmas (It is one week now to Christmas Eve, and it seems very strange to me that Christmas is so soon and it seems very strange to still be HERE instead of in Illinois)

My friend is meeting with an oncologist in the near future so I guess they've concluded it's cancer, I just hope they found it early enough to be able to do something about it. 

But yeah, I'm kind of beat. I didn't get the research task done today because I had a student with an issue about a grade, which I thought I had explained to their satisfaction but I guess not because they looped their pet admin in on this (some students have that. I never did; I never was anyone's "favorite" or had anyone who particularly wanted to go to bat for me) and I had to spend about a half-hour on the phone with the campus technology center convincing someone to break into the webpage for the lab section (I did not have access to that; I am just given the final lab grade to include with my overall class grade) and they finally downloaded that student's grades which I then e-mailed to both them and the admin to prove that, yes indeed, the grade they earned was the grade they earned.

But it did leave me slightly demoralized and headachy, and I got less done than I might have as a result.

I also made my weekly grocery run (needed more milk). I will make one earlyish next week to get my Christmas Steak - I decided to buy one of their top-quality and expensive steaks for Christmas dinner (if I were at my mom's, we'd be doing a rib roast). Not sure what else I will serve, whether to try making Yorkshire pudding (as is traditional). Maybe if there's a decent rim of fat on the steak I could cut some off and use it as drippings, or mix it with butter. And a couple vegetables, I guess; maybe green beans again, maybe red cabbage. 

I might make a special dessert (I was thinking flourless chocolate cake) or maybe I just open the box of  petits fours my mom had sent to me from Bissinger's. 

 

I did also pick up some extra canned goods (tuna, and a couple cans of soup, and the "best liked" veggies - corn and green beans - and dropped them off at the Wesley Center Blessing Box along with a couple four-packs of wal-mart brand instant potatoes (which was part of an earlier pick-up order, and they were a substitution I didn't want but didn't see in time to refuse) that I had. At our monthly board meeting the director mentioned it seemed to be emptying out faster and I know there's been a huge jump in need here recently. So maybe I do that? Maybe every other week or so, I just grab a few extra cans of stuff when I'm out shopping and just drop it off there on my way in to campus or if I go for a walk on campus? I mean, I'm just one person, that's the frustrating thing, and I can only do so much.

I dunno. I vacillate widely between "this is going to be okay, you can open your presents Christmas day and fix an early dinner and eat it slowly and then knit and listen to music" and "this is really miserable and I am sad and I am just angry at the universe" and those are like two disjoint sets I can't rectify with each other. 

I think I would feel a bit happier if case counts/hospital occupancy were lower and I felt okay about making a run to JoAnn's or one of the antique shops some time but they aren't and I don't and I've heard enough stories of people who apparently got exposed in a store despite being careful, so while I have to feed myself (so trips to the Pruett's are still necessary), I have to avoid "unnecessary" trips. So I've largely lost the "third places" in my life, and I had no idea how essential they were to me.

And for how much longer? Forever, it seems, since "phase 3" doesn't even have a timetable for shots (educators including professors are in phase 3) and even then we're being told we will probably have to mask and distance for six months to a year and......I just want to give up. I hope there's something good to come back out to; I hope there's a reason to. I hope I don't lose everyone I love during this time. But it's hard. (And I also recognize this is partly because I'm tired and had a difficult day; things always look worse when things go badly at work)

Listening to some traditional German Christmas music right now on YouTube. Part of my heritage is German and I think of the heritages I'm familiar with, I like how Germany and England do Christmas best. (One of my dreams, but it's probably just a dream, is to some day be able to go to a traditional German-style Christmas market. Probably not IN Germany, even if it's ever safe to travel again, but I know some American cities do them). Maybe some day there will be VR versions, where you can put on goggles and have an immersive experience, and when you "buy" stuff in the market, it gets sent to you in the mail? That might be a way of making trapped-indoors shopping a little more pleasant; make it seem like you're wandering around a market instead of clicking buttons on a laptop.

I don't know. I wish I could think of something safe and fun to do. I've been trying to get out and walk, weather permitting, but where I can go is still somewhat restricted due to hunting season (several areas I could go do have deer hunting going on; I think the season, at least for bow hunting, lasts until the end of January). I really should have tried to be pushy and find someone else to bubble up at the start of this because going it totally alone is harrowing, and the people I could ask already have their bubbles. (And I wonder: when this is over, will people want "outsiders" to their bubbles back in their lives? Or is this forever now? "Is this forever now" is the question I ask myself whenever times seem extra hard; some days it is hard to imagine any changes that would be an improvement.)