* Slightly nervous because cases are spiking up in my county, though on campus they report only 12 cases (for 5000 students and maybe 300 staff, though many of those students are offsite this year). Hoping this isn't a precursor to another "pivot to all online"
Also wondering if that means I should scrub my plans for going to Sherman Saturday to mmmmmaybe run to JoAnn's (or the bookstore) and go to the Target for groceries.
* Big pandemic mood yesterday was wandering the aisles of Pruett's (the larger of the two local groceries I am currently comfortable going in to) and wishing they had some kind of DIFFERENT food. Most of their canned goods, for example, are not the brands I prefer. Wishing there was some more "upscaley" shopping option here even though I know that's unlikely to ever happen
* On my drive out to Lake Durant on Sunday, was struck by all the new home construction. Who is going to buy these places? There aren't many high paying jobs here so unless they're counting on a mass exodus from Dallas of people who can telecommute....not sure those houses are gonna sell.Also makes me suspicious that maybe Lake Durant will wind up being much more crowded in the coming years if the houses DO sell.
* Still waiting on my Webs order to ship :(
I ordered some yarn in particular colors for a circular shawl, and filled in with some sock yarn to meet a particular discount goal. I suppose their shipping is slowed because of distancing but I always worry something's gone wrong with an order until it ships.
And yeah, some days the only thing like pleasant novelty I have in my life is waiting on something I've ordered. I think part of my frustration in Pruett's yesterday was that there is very little new in my life - or at least, little new that is PLEASANT. Having to teach into a camera for the people tuning in from home is new, but not fun. Wearing a mask every day in class is new, but not pleasant.
I wish there were a way to get fresh groceries shipped in a reasonable time frame but the only way I could, it would cost the earth - and at that, sometimes the shipping gets hung up here (why I gave up on Imperfect Foods) and stuff overheats before it reaches me.
Some days it feels like I am living at the very ends of the Earth.
* Another unpleasant dream night. The main memorable one was a mash-up of "my family is moving house" with "no one pays attention to me" - in the dream, I had a second brother (younger than my actual brother is in relation to me). We were struggling to get our stuff packed up because we were moving, then someone suggested we go to a local ice cream place we liked one last time and I realized "oh no, I will never be able to have their good ice cream again" and so we went, and waited in a long line. And while we were there, the littlest brother (who was very young and cute) kept getting people going up to him, giving him money for ice cream, etc., etc. And I was standing there, at the head of the line I was in, and the workers behind the counter were ignoring me and serving people behind me in line. And I grew increasingly frustrated, realizing "I've not even packed my clothes yet and we have to leave tomorrow morning" and then I woke up.
it probably says something not very nice about me, I don't know, that I was jealous of a (nonexistent in this world) little brother but also I know a lot in my life I feel frustrated about other people either being cuter and more appealing than me (and so: getting attention) or being pushier than me (and so: getting what they want)
I read somewhere that pandemic dreams are just generally a thing and some people hypothesize that it's increased stress doing it, but others have speculated that a lot of us just don't have as many "inputs" as we once did (especially human contact) and as a result, our brain tries to make up the deficit while sleeping.
* I tried watching the NCIS rerun last night as stupid Adult Swim has replaced Bob's Burgers reruns with stupid American Dad. But I found it was just so violent and awful (I used to like the show but have not watched it for six months) and this episode in particular was people being willing to kill, and kill quite cold-bloodedly, for a "cause" and it just all seemed so stupid and pointless and the death count was too high and too many people got injured.
And I think that's another way 2020 has broken me a little - some forms of entertainment are just too much for me any more. (For a while, I couldn't even read mystery novels, and even now, there are a few I've started and had to put aside). I hope it doesn't end with me unable to tolerate any form of entertainment because then I'll just come home and either work until bedtime or stare at a wall, and I suspect my dreams will be even WORSE for that.
It could be it was an unusually harrowing episode, though. (It was the one from last season - there is still no new TV other than horrific debased "manufactured drama" shows in the vein of Big Brother) - the one where Ziva finally got revenge on Sahar, and it turned out Sahar was in hiding, and was the mother of the boy who had kind of befriended Jethro and it was implied at the end he was going to have to go and tell the kid he shot his mom because she was a terrorist who had killed a number of innocent (?) people. Kind of like the mystery novels where though the murderer is found out at the end, there's no real resolution, there's the sense things will never go back to how they were, a trust has been destroyed.
(Perhaps all stories like that are in their own way a recapitulation of the expulsion from the Garden - innocence is lost, peace is shattered, and while we go on in life, it's harder now and that easy relationship we once had will never be again?)
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