Wednesday evening sads

 It was just kind of a hard day today.

I came in to an e-mail from a student: her brother had died and much of the effort of making the arrangements were falling on her. I sympathize; that's hard. I'll let her make up what she can in class. 

I am also hearing reports of a new variant/lineage of COVID they've sequenced that has more immune escape than the current omicron. That, along with "we will need at least a booster every year* forever" just brought the weight of "this is forever now, your life has changed and will never again be like it was before, and so far, it's just been WORSE" down on my head

(*I had a unpleasantly strong immune response to the most recent booster and I really fear there will be a point where it's no longer safe for  me, personally, to take future ones - so I face the "suffer from cytokine storm or whatever it is the shot triggers in your stupid body, or suffer after you catch covid" and NEITHER of those is desirable).

As I've said before: I feel like there have been zero new things to do since 2020 that replace some of the things I will choose to no longer do (movies, restaurant meals, shopping in confined shops, and when I DO shop, it's masked, which is NOT pleasant, I don't care how much a protection it is, it sucks and I hate doing it)

And then I made the mistake of reading a bit of a report of the near-collapse of medical services in Montana when they had a bad outbreak, and had a visceral memory of hearing about my cousin Paul dying of covid in October 2020, lying on a gurney in the ER of a small northern-Michigan hospital. He had had surgery and was recovering at a rehab center when he caught it. By the time they got him to the hospital, it was pretty well advanced (remember: in fall 2020 I don't think we even really had TESTS, let alone treatments or vaccines) and there were NO beds - none in the tiny ICU and not even any on a ward. And so he died, all alone (his wife could not be with him) on a gurney in a hallway and....I just started crying right there at my desk. 

So I'm just hitting a wall with all of this.

Also, there's an Issue at church. I can't talk about it but I will have to be the ones to work on solving it, and it's probably going to involve disagreement, and again, I just want to cry when I think about it. I'm so tired. I've worked so hard and some days it feels like for nothing. 

So I don't know. I need some kind of comfort but right now it's a little thin on the ground. Driving home, I thought how lovely it would be to have someone else to cook dinner for me - not carry out food, the last few bouts of stomach issues I've had have been after eating carry out food so I assume I can't do that any more - but real home-cooked food, by someone who knows what I like and also what I can't eat. But instead, I have to take care of it myself. I have to take care of EVERYTHING myself - not just me but I have to take care of stuff for other people, and it feels like it never stops, and I have no one at all to lean on a little bit, so I just have to keep pushing and struggling on all on my own. 

I might try running to the little quilt shop in town after class tomorrow, just to see some friendly faces and if they have the 1/4 masking tape, get some, and maybe hole up in my sewing room and work a little on the big quilt in the frame.