I placed another pickup order with the wal-mart and the website was super buggy. I may be getting 2 1/2 gallons of milk in two varieties (1% Horizon Organics and skim Fairlife) or I may be getting one of those, or I may be getting neither. Who knows? I complained in the little evaluation at the end of the process and they tried to call me from a 1-800 number (which came up as "Probable Spam," so I rejected the call) and when I tried calling back, the call dropped from their end, so forget it.
If I get no milk actually I will stop by Green Spray but I am mightily tired of how hard it is these days to get groceries, and when I go in person, how anxious I am that no one get to close to me.
That ate up more time than it should have.
Right now, I'm reading "Chances Are," a 2006 book about (mainly) the history of probability (and a LITTLE about the mechanics of it, but not as much as I hoped). Previously I finished Fat Chance, which was a much better (in terms of covering the mechanics of it) book - though I didn't understand everything and will have to go back and look at it again, or consult some of the other books.
It's a little hard to stay motivated for this, even with Pomodoros. Maybe after this book I read either The Least Likely Man or a book I have that my mom bought me on the history of the development of ecology programs at different universities in the US. (I once commented that I am sort of "related" to the Wisconsin school - my graduate advisor had been a student of a student of John T. Curtis', who was the founder of the Wisconsin school. I like that kind of thing - I like that feeling of connectedness. That maybe I have some roots outside of my own family)
And actually, rootlessness or feelings of such are one of the things that bedevil me - I am far from family (my mother, 700 miles away, is literally the closest relative to me that I know - there is a ranch out here with the same surname as I have on it and when we drive out that direction to go to one of the field sites the students always ask if it's my land or that of a relative and....it isn't, at least not that I know. It's remotely possible I have some distant relatives around Covington, Louisiana or New Orleans, but they would be quite distant and I don't know them). And especially now, being away from the department (not that anyone much is in over summer anyway) and with church being suspended for in-person services at least until July.....I really feel the rootlessness.
I think I posted this before:
That's my wall of family photos. There's one of my niece, a couple of my parents, some old ones of my mother's mother and my aunts - but a number of people there, I never met them; they died before I was born or when I was a baby (my Uncle Stanley, my mom's father)
And yet, having them there, makes me feel less rootless. On my bookcase I have a few more photos - ones taken at my brother's wedding, some from when the Vegetation Management class I was a teaching assistant for (and which had a number of my friends in it) took an overnight trip to Southern Illinois. All of those things either remind me of where I came from, or of good times in the past.
(I hope there are going to be good times in the future but sometimes it's hard to have faith that there will be )
But yeah. Two thoughts today from Twitter:
1. The two pandemic moods
More often than not though it's the second one for me.
2. I was speculating if I might have some kind of deficiency. My moods have not been great; I often get tired sitting at my desk trying to work (I think I catnapped for about 10 minutes today, which is REALLY unusual for me). I take a B complex and D3, so I don't know.
I suspect it's probably The Pandemic, though - likely it's lack of fun and outside-time (it's been very rainy) and human contact that's just nice, casual contact - that's not the head-on-a-swivel, don't-let-anyone-get-too-close thing, and also that a lot of the contact I have these days is mediated through the phone or a screen, and it's very *functional* - like, the person who had taken notes at the church meeting two weeks ago wanted to make sure she was quoting me correctly about my concerns in re: re-opening in person church too early. And while that's good and that's important, I've never really loved the phone - back in the before-times, I would walk down the hall to ask a question of, or give information to, a colleague, rather than calling them. I prefer face-to-face communication. E-mail and the like - where I can stop and think and compose - is a close second. But on the phone you neither have the clue of the person's expression nor the ability to think and compose what you're going to say so stuff doesn't come out wrong.
Or it may be a deficiency of fun. I can't really think of any "fun" thing to do that would be a good idea right now. Maybe at some point just going for a drive somewhere, though that's a rather etiolated sort of "fun," maybe that's the best I can hope for these days. It's still too wet to go to the garden center, and also - if you watch the news - apparently Sherman and Denison made it for the fasted spike in COVID cases and while a lot of that might be the Tyson plant....maybe going to Sherman isn't such a good idea right now. (There is nowhere else I can think of that I could get plants from other than Lowe's here in town. There might be garden centers somewhere out in the country but I don't know about them)
The thing is? I don't even know what I'd want for "fun" at this point.
Well, no, I do: if magically the pandemic went away? I'd want to go visit my mom. And then later I'd want to go down and hang out with Laura for a couple days and go to any of the weird roadside attractions or interesting small shops we can find. Or go antiquing. But none of those things are possible (or prudent - the antiquing MIGHT be possible). I've done a little browsing on Etsy and eBay to take the place of antiquing, but it is not the same.
it may never be possible to do the kind of fun I used to do again - go out antiquing, spend hours in a store looking at stuff, picking stuff up to examine it, going to a restaurant for lunch where someone brings me my food that someone else cooked and takes the plates away at the end. All of that, all may be gone forever and we're left to scuttle in and out of our houses like hermit crabs.
I don't want to get sick but I also admit that this is no life. I know a lot of people sheltering with spouses or kids have reported those folks getting on their nerves but.....no one is happy in this....I can only think that I'd be happier having someone in my vicinity on a more regular basis. I know they say it's okay to "bubble up" with another person or two that you're confident has been sheltering away from being exposed but....that's another thing, that's something you have to ASK someone and one thing I've convinced myself is that I'm not important enough to anyone to be their bubble-person because everyone else here has family or friends closer than me. So I guess I just keep white knuckling it alone, and keep praying for either a very effective treatment or a vaccine faster than seems possible.
I mean, if I lived within a shorter drive of my mother, I would TOTALLY have loaded a ton of yarn and my continuing ed books and maybe even my laptop and clothes and some of my extra canned goods and stuff, and driven up there, and sheltered with her for the duration. But that's not possible, it's too far, especially now, when I'd have to pass at least one night in a motel somewhere on the road - and also, the thought of driving across the giant Mississippi on a bridge gives me pause. (I can do, just barely, the Red River into Texas - though that now will probably be really hard the first time I do it again after having not done it in so long)
But yeah.
Anyway. I guess Friday is now my "get food" day - my Imperfect Foods box comes (this week I am getting a small steak, and some smoked salmon; hopefully it makes the trip okay - they put things in a foil pouch with coldpacks that up 'til now have always still been frozen when they get to me) and also some green beans and the usual lemons/onions that I use so much in cooking. And also that's when I do the wal-mart pick up.
I admit I want ice cream. But ordering it for pick up from wal-mart, considering how much of a goat rope it's been a few times, seems unwise - anything frozen seems unwise. If I get brave I might run to Green Spray some time just for frozen/cold things.
2 comments:
I know you are lonely. I wish there was a way that you couldn't be lonely. I wish there was a way you felt comfortable asking someone if you could double bubble with them occasionally. I wish I lived closer to come stand at your street and talk to you for a few minutes.
I check in here from time to time. And I agree with what purlewe said above. Although I am more your mom's age, I feel that we would be friends. I volunteer at a wildlife refuge so I identify a little with your profession. But the reason for this comment is a suggestion. Have you ever considered or been to the Ancestry site? I have found so many family connections. Through DNA, I have gotten in touch with relatives I never would otherwise had known. I even got my mother-in-law to submit her DNA before she passed away. I have discovered immigration interviews of an aunt who came to this country at the turn of the last century. It is a fascinating hobby and who knows, you may have more relatives than you ever thought. Mary
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