* It turned very cold (like: 40s F overnight, unusual for April) here and it's raining again. I cranked up the heat, damn the expense, because I'm cold and cranky and tired of being uncomfortable.
* In a moment, I need to do a bit of practice on the piano - I have not keeping up well with that, nor have I been doing much knitting, and I know "not doing things you enjoyed in the past" is a bad sign but it's hard to work up the energy. Especially with the online teaching. Especially with everything seeming to take longer. (Like: wiping down all your groceries with a bleach-wipe before putting them away. I have no idea how necessary it is or if it even helps, but I'm at the point of superstitious ritual with this)
* I forgot my mask yesterday and went to the grocery anyway. I shouldn't have. I was mostly OK, most people were distancing well, but then right after I walked past a guy wearing a mask, I heard him cough. So....I guess I should know by a week from Monday (Easter Monday) if my desire for fresh meat and ice cream bars will be what killed me. I'm hoping that since I was facing the other way and we were close to 6' apart and he had a mask on I'll be okay, but....
I did take the mask and put it in my car, not that I'm going out any time soon.
And I need to make a second one, provided I have enough bias tape, so I have a clean one and one waiting to be washed.
* Is anyone else deeply tired of the ads from companies claiming that they "care about" us in these "unprecedented times"? Like, financial concerns that you KNOW would have shown no mercy in re: interest you owed them in the before-times are now acting all kindly and like they'll take care of you. Don't you believe it.
I am also tired of being exhorted to make stuff for various concerns - KnitPicks is closed for sales right now but they want people to knit afghan squares for Warm Up America. And places talk about sewing masks, though for whom is never entirely clear. (I would hope the homebrew masks would be just for the "worried well" and that medical professionals actually get the real stuff, but we live in a dystopia now). But the thing is: I have a pair of "simple socks" on the needles I can barely add a few rounds to for myself. Bold of them to assume I'd happily knit garter stitch squares to send off where I never see what might ultimately happen to them. For all I know, the blankets made with my labor might wind up being sold....Yes, my trust in groups and institutions has taken a big hit but I remember a family rumor about the Red Cross and socks during an earlier war.
I am ALSO tired of the "designed to uplift" news stories where it's something like "they had a slow drive-by where people waved for this kids' sixth birthday" because that doesn't help as much at they think.
* I guess MOST of my students have at least been looking at the BlackBoard pages I put up even if they are not interacting with me or doing the assignments very rapidly. (I am fully expecting to get a "open it back up for meeee!" from someone, even though I gave 3-4 days to complete a short "test like item" of 20 points, including time over a weekend, though I know in the modern workplaces, "weekends" don't exist any more
What I hate about all this so much? I figured it out today: it is making it up as I go along and having NO previous experience and VERY little guidance to draw on. I read stuff online but often it assumes everyone has 100% good internet access, and the "best practices" recommended seem to suppose resources of time and connectivity not everyone will have.
So I feel like I've been set up to fail at this, there's nothing I can do NOT to fail at this, but I must do it anyway. And it's an awful feeling. And reminding myself that what I'm doing doesn't really matter in the Grand Scheme of Things doesn't help a lot, either.
* I did receive an oddly-toned e-mail from a student basically informing me they would not be completing the class or even returning to school in the fall because they "received the offer of a lifetime" for a job (If there are good permanent jobs out there for someone with a high school diploma only, more power to 'em, I guess, but that just adds to my feelings of uselessness) and I can't tell if they were trying to be super formal or if it should be read as slightly rude and if it was a "please stop sending all the e-mails about stuff you're putting on BlackBoard" thing to me, sorry, but I can't choose NOT to send an e-mail to a particular student if they are enrolled. (I know: I have to send them the information on "how to drop" but I'm still hurting a little over the e-mail. Maybe I do it Monday). And yes, I'm telling myself "this is 'your stuff'" and probably the student meant nothing by it, but I've had so few positive human interactions (or human interactions at all) recently that a bad one feels really bad.
* So yeah. I'm hanging in there but am pretty much in bare-survival mode. I hope some day soon again there will be something like joy but it seems very far off. At least medieval peasants got the occasional feast day, and they were allowed to be close to other human beings.
I have a calendar where I mark off each day (starting count with Wednesday of last week, when I was last on campus, so it's shorter than it might be - I could, by rights, count back to 13 March, the last day of teaching) and it amazes me how little time it's been but it feels so LONG.
* One tiny upside: I got my taxes yesterday. I am getting a federal refund of a bit over $1000 so at least the recent pity-purchases of yarn* won't break me.
(*Pity purchase for me. But also, I admit I feel a vested interest in some of the small dyers I like - like String Theory Colorworks - being able to keep going through this. I've seen the reports that 1/4 of small businesses will fail in this and I hope that quarter isn't all the yarn and fabric sellers. So I'm going to do a little online shopping from time to time, at least as long as the mail keeps coming, partly to keep the businesses going, but partly to give ME something, even a small thing, to look forward to. Even as, ironically, I am doing very little knitting)
Added about 2 pm:
* I am totally unironically referring to the era before Coronavirus lockdowns as "the before-times" as in "I used to buy King Arthur flour at the Kroger's or the Target, in the before-times" (Now, I guess, once supply catches up with demand, I could mail order it direct from them).
* I discovered the local Marco's Pizza delivers. I did not think they did. So maybe some day when I'm feeling sad and cabin-fevery, I order a pizza (and yes, tip the delivery online but very generously). Yes, pizza is a luxury good these days and yes, I have hamburger meat and chicken thighs (one will become dinner tonight, the other dinner on Monday, I think....I think the sell by on the hamburger was tomorrow and the chicken was Tuesday)
* It's Palm Sunday. It's going to be sad and weird. And I will want to think ahead for Easter next week - do I do something special? I know in past years I made salmon loaf and I am pretty sure I have everything I need for that in the house already and salmon loaf would be kind of special anyway. And I have a pumpkin pound cake mix I bought a few days after my birthday from the local gourmet shop, when it looked like my spring break was likely to be spent here, and I thought "Well, maybe I at least make myself a belated birthday cake" and maybe I do that for Easter.
* I feel a little better after recording and posting most of another chapter for Soils and later I will try to finish the MANOVA information. I find idleness is bad for me these days, that little productivity deomon in my brain keeps screaming at me that I need to NOT fail at this, and the way I fail is by stopping and resting and not keeping up with the class stuff because I am not doing research or service right now. (And yes, I know: if I lose my job in this it will probably be 100% not-my-fault, but I'm a control freak who thinks magically and who believes if she just works HARD enough and does everything RIGHT, bad things will leave me alone)
* Both my Simply Sock Yarn order and my Mrs. Grossman's sticker pack for April came today but I am saving opening them for when I finish my work, or maybe even tomorrow (if I can be disciplined). I also have three quilting magazines that came recently and maybe tomorrow I take some time and look at them.
I am SO glad now I subscribed to the sticker packs, both because they are a fun little thing once a month and because I am sending more cards and postcards now. (And my offer stands: if you want one, e-mail me your address. It may take me a couple of days depending on my emotional state but I will eventually get one out to you. Right now I have LOTS of butterfly cards and a few alpaca cards and a few oddball cards that were a freebee from Folio Society some years back, and a few Persian-rug-design cards...)
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