one little thing

I've started getting lots of e-mails from different companies I've ordered from. Some are ones I've ordered from occasionally over the years (like Monastery Greetings) and others are ones I ordered from once (Swiss Colony, back when I thought "oh crap what if food gets really hard to come by" and was looking at alternative places to get it from).

Well, some of them have started sending me the "buy Dad this for Father's Day!"

And I can't.

I know people remind me "the first anything is hard" and I've already had the first Thanksgiving and Christmas without him, and the first occurrence of his birthday - but at Thanksgiving the whole remnant of my family was present, and at Christmas I  was at my mom's, and we had each other and also the friends local to her. And on my dad's birthday - well, that was the last day classes met in person and everything was kind of chaotic and I had the worry about pivoting to online to distract me.

But for this? I have nothing. Literally my life has contracted down to work/meals/mail and weekly trips to pick up groceries. So it's going to be a couple weeks (what is Father's Day, anyway? The 15th?) of these e-mails and I don't want them.

(I don't want necessarily to set up an exclusion rule; it seems it often sweeps up an e-mail I would want)

Anyway: most businesses that do that? I unsubscribe from their mail. I doubt I'd order from Swiss Colony again and if I did, I could easily find them.

I'm sure part of this discomfort is increased by (a) I can't get up to my mom's to see her - I've missed already two opportunities I would normally take and (b) the spectre that eventually I'll lose her, too, and then really have to figure out how to do Christmas and Thanksgiving totally alone - and the additional worry that even though she's being careful, she's being a little less isolated than I am, and she might catch COVID and die....and I am NOT READY for next year to be the first year without ANY parents and I am praying that that doesn't happen; the idea of mourning someone while also extremely isolated is horrifying in the extreme.

We're seeing cases bounce up again here; I suspect the re-opening of casinos last week may be part of that (it's been more than the five-day minimal incubation period) and I'm hoping that the (largely peaceful, here) protests don't lead to a spike in cases - yes, they were outdoors, and most of the footage I saw from Ardmore, the people marching were masked up, so I hope they stay safe.

And yeah, yeah, I get that the companies are  just doing their thing and 95% of the people receiving those e-mails either don't think anything of it, or are like "yeah that might be a good gift for my dad" but right now, for me, things are a little bit raw. And I also recognize you can't request that the whole world be covered with soft leather to ease your feet; you have to be the one to put sandals on, and maybe unsubscribing from a lot of these is a way of me putting on sandals. I get too many of those "don't forget about us!" e-mails anyway.

(At least the quilting stores and Ulta are unlikely to send Father's Day e-mails)