Tuesday evening things

*The cold has reached the loose cough stage; I hope this ends soon. I have to be careful about letting myself cough, because sometimes it's hard to stop. I got some mucinex pills and some kind of herbal/honey cough drops, and vitamin C. I know that there's mixed evidence about the efficacy of that last, but at least it won't HURT me. I can't take a lot of the typical remedies because of my blood pressure, so I have to rely on things like honey or drinking lots of water or running a humidifier.

* I read somewhere - and I hope it's wrong - that some of the highly placed "health" folks (who don't know squat about actual health, IMHO) are talking about how there should be a "comedy" about the pandemic, and that is one of those "LISTEN TO YOURSELF, MAN" things. I know people who lost parents to COVID. I lost a cousin myself and still on some dark nights it pops into my mind how he died, alone, on a gurney in the hallway of the ER because there was no room for him, and at that time there was no real treatment for COVID. And his wife couldn't even come in and say goodbye and it's all so awful.

And they want people to laugh about it

We have become such an insensitive culture. (And yeah: people are more freely using the n-word and the r-word and other words that a few years ago were on the decline. And while I think it's still generally seen as true that "nice people don't say that," there's a critical mass of people who don't care about being "nice people" in the sense of having manners or caring about others' feelings).

The pandemic changed me. I don't know how to have fun any more, and some days happiness is even a struggle, and I did not used to be like that. 

* I did do one thing today I hadn't really done since 2022 - because of this cold, and because I had a couple meetings where I was sitting in close proximity to people (unlike in class, where I was like 10' from the students), I wore a mask. I explained why - what brought it on was that I misremembered that someone was in one  of the groups who had a spouse going through chemo, and I know even catching a cold while on chemo can be bad, but that person was not on that committee. Still, another member thanked me for masking when I explained and maybe yeah, it's not an all or nothing thing, maybe I keep a supply on hand and if I have a cold or something I just slap one on to avoid transmitting it. 

I know of people who are still masking. Some of them, yes, are medically fragile, but I've also encountered people online who aren't, but who fundamentally say "if you go out to restaurants any more, you're a bad person. And if you go into a store without a mask, you're a bad person" and that kind of thing does get to me because I want to be a GOOD person and I don't know. But I also know people tell me I'm harder to understand in a mask, and they're not totally comfortable. 

I know if someone ASKED me, like even if they didn't preface it with "my kid is going through chemo" or something like that, if they just said "would you wear a mask when we meet up" I'd be like "Sure" and make sure I had one. 

But for a random grocery store trip? No. Especially not since when I was still masking in like 2022, I wore one and had someone look at me and start laughing. 

Life is really hard to navigate when you don't want to be bullied (I don't, I got a lifetime supply of that as a kid) but also don't want to hurt other people.

* I'm not watching The Big Speech. I never do, no matter who's in the WH, but I think tonight it would be really irritating to me for numerous reasons.  In a minute I want to change the sheets on my bed and then I'll see if I can find cartoons and knit on my "red resistance hat" (this is a copy of a Norwegian hat that became symbolic of resistance during WWII. I started one a couple weeks back but the yarn annoyed me slightly so I stopped working on it, but decided I needed to finish it or rip it back, and if I'm going to finish it it should be soon. (And maybe, who knows: sympathetic magic? Maybe I'll finish it and things will get a lot better, particularly in the ways the hat was designed to protest?)