I'm still here

Forgot to make a post today. I did a webinar (the first one in my life, and curse you, coronavirus for bringing me to this) about "pivot to online" and I moved a brushpile from the backyard to where the city can pick it up.

I also went out to Lowe's and got some seeds and now I'm terrified that even that brief time in public got me exposed even though people are reassuring me that it takes more than 10 minutes in close proximity to someone who is shedding virus, and I used a benzalkonium chloride wipe (the only kind I could get, but they have alcohol too) on my hands afterward and washed my hands and changed clothes as soon as I got home. But yeah. My mental health is almost as far in the crapper as it's ever been, I am super anxious that I'm going to get sick, it's going to get bad because I'm fat and I have asthma and hypertension, and I'll wind up in the hospital, and maybe they won't be able to save me, especially if they're overwhelmed. And I know that's vanishingly unlikely but I also wonder if I'm going to even be afraid to go to the grocery store when I run out of fresh food. (and if there even IS food to be had, many news stories locally on how stores are pretty much depleted of stuff. I guess I live on canned goods and powdered milk - I think I have some - for a while)

So much for "ho hum, I will get to stay home and knit." I am mostly too worried to knit. I stare at the wall a lot, or read news online, which I know is bad, but I'm desperate for (a) good news that might suggest I won't have to live like this for the next eighteen months (I can't. I will go mad. I cannot do this) or (b) worrisome news in my area telling me it's time to clamp down even harder (like: cases found in my county. So far the nearest known ones are in Lamar County - far to the east of here, it's where Paris, Texas is - and Collin County, and that person is self-isolating). But still. I KNOW this is my own particular anxiety; my way of dealing with angst over things I have no control over is to try to find the tiny segment I DO control ("I can just not leave the house") and do that so inflexibly - it's a form of magical thinking: "If I wash my hands 20 times a day, I can avoid contagion" or "If I just don't leave the house, I and everyone I care about will stay safe"

I will say, driving home, a guy in one of the City pickup trucks (I don't know which department, water meter checking, maybe?) pulled FAST up a side street where he was supposed to stop and he almost didn't, and I laid on my brakes and the horn simultaneously (Not only was my street a through street so I did not stop, I was there first). He didn't hit me but I was struck by how monumentally stupid it would be to worry like crazy over the virus, and then get taken out by some idiot who isn't paying attention when he drives.

But yes. As I said with Twitter: when there is finally a real vaccine against this, and I can get it, I will probably weep with relief in the doctor's office.