Monday. Already tired.

 I got ALMOST all the cleaning/moving of stuff done this afternoon. I was able to vacuum and sweep areas I hadn't moved the furniture from in a long time. But I also had to cram-jam my guest room (where my exerciser is, so I guess tomorrow is a rest day) with the stuff moved out of my bedroom to make it less eccentric.

(I have real issues, I know, with being judged for who I am. Like, how many 52 year olds sleep with stuffed animals in their beds? I'm sure that's odd. Yes, it's a benign oddity and I know it helps my anxiety/insomnia to have it, but. I also know that people who don't know me well would find it odd.)

Also I wanted to move stuff that could get knocked over or dirty out of the way - so the few dolls I had on a bookshelf are now in a box. 

It's gonna be a big job to put everything back. I do plan to do some aggressive sorting and take some loads of stuff to Goodwill or some other charity drop-off - I'll have to see what all they are taking. 

I'm also low-level worried that it's going to be a BIG issue that won't be fixable in a couple hours, or that it will drain my checking account to fix it. I'm HOPING it's just a tiny bit of pipe replacement and will be done quickly.

I have a meeting tonight, three meetings Wednesday afternoon/evening. I got a phone call about a short-notice meeting Tuesday evening but I demurred saying I didn't know what was going to happen with the plumbing but you know? Even if it's done fairly fast and easily, I have HOURS of putting stuff back so I can use my guest room and sewing rooms again (I piled a lot of the clothes on the ironing board) and I need time to do that, so maybe I just....skip this one? It's a group that sometimes is somewhat contentious and if I absolutely, positively do not need to be there, I'd rather not. 

***

More thoughts on Our Ongoing Peril: 

First, "What stage of the pandemic is this?" And yeah: I genuinely don't know. Are we leaving it? Is this an eye of the storm? I don't like the news coming out of Europe of more surges of cases and I expect we'll see that here. I don't like the risk I might get stranded at my mom's if either they discourage travel or else if I catch a breakthrough case. But I also don't like NOT traveling for the holidays to see her. 

But also: 

"There’s a fresh brand of sadness. Not weepy sad, just a blurry, all-the-time sad. It’s as if sad is the baseline now, even if dinner is good and the shows are fun, even if the light is streaming in the window just-so. Sad is where we begin. All the death, all the stupidity and yelling, every day a new thing to be new-sad about. Of course we’re sad. But we’re here, and the mail comes (slow, another sadness), and the light is just-so, and dinner is often quite good."

 

Yes. I'm sad a lot, and sadder than I remember having been in the past, but, it's not a desperate, weepy sad - at least it's not like the sadness earlier in the pandemic when I literally believed I'd never see my mom again. It's maybe not sadness so much as a weariness - "not this mess AGAIN" when I see case counts rise. It's sort of a feeling of doom, but also a feeling of doom strongly tinged with "Same [stuff], different day" -that we're stuck in an eternal now, in a Groundhog Day loop, and apparently MY being as good and kind and thoughtful as I am capable of being isn't enough to break the cycle of bad karma, and so I'm trapped. 

But also - the thing sticking us in Groundhog Day - maybe we DO need to strive to be kinder. Because "Why is everyone so rude right now" and even discounting the usual MeFi doom-and-gloom and wild speculating ("many people are actually high functioning schizophrenics" excuse me, what?) and political pronouncements,  yeah. 

 As is often the case with these things, the "personal experience" comments more than the bold pronouncements are what strike me and resonate with me. 

Someone going by the handle RonButNotStupid lamented: "Can I please have something--however trivial--which acknowledges that the past going-on-two years have been total sh*t, but that I should feel good about myself because I allowed my life to be disrupted, I made sacrifices, and in doing so I didn't make the overall situation a tiny bit worse for everyone else?"

 And yes. I feel like I gave up quite a lot in the name of helping everyone.....and, like, the only thing I have to show for it is not having caught COVID - and I might not have anyway - and yes, these past almost-two years were the worst of my life, EVEN INCLUDING fall 2019 after I lost my dad. (Because at least then there were people around who WERE happy, and DID have good lives, and I could look at them and go "look, you will have happiness again, look at them" and also the fact that people hugged me and even early on brought food to my house - instead of everyone being scared and sad and distant). 

A couple other commenters noted that we're all a lot closer to the surface right now, and that's true. I do anger more easily, but for me - strongly socialized NOT to show anger, both from childhood and in my training as a professor - it only happens in private; in public I am more prone to cry. I haven't really cried AT a service person; I've been polite when, for example, something I wanted was out of stock, but then I'd walk back to my car and sit and cry for a few minutes because things were just so bad and REALLY can I just not have this ONE little thing because I have given up SO MUCH.

And I think yeah, a lot of us are just kind of battered and worn down and some of us have been doing a little more work (me with contact tracing and the blasted teaching-partly-over-Zoom) and other people have been doing a LOT more work (and I acknowledge that, and also realize that I'm not doing a LOT more but it's enough more to make me tired) and also a lot of the little tiny pleasantnesses are gone - like, we don't have departmental potluck lunches any more; we once did. And one of my friendly colleagues has been teaching 100% online, I presume because of health concerns, and it makes me sad to never see them (Oh yes, I know: I probably could over Zoom, but that's so planned and scheduled and not spontaneous and it's awkward)

 But people do seem to be getting worse. Lots of really whiny screamy kids at Target this weekend, demanding toys. (I dunno, when I was a kid? Our parents shut down those kinds of asks pretty fast, ESPECIALLY six weeks out from Christmas - by reminding us if we REALLY wanted it, to put it on our Christmas list. We learned early on that getting a toy "just because we're out" was NOT something that happened)

I also saw an unbelievably awful - and scary - driver on my trip to Sherman this weekend. There was an onramp, I looked to be sure it was clear and I didn't need to get out of the right-hand lane of the main traffic (where I was driving) and then SUDDENLY a small red car roared up on my right side, passed me on the shoulder (instead of pulling into the space behind me), cut me off from right to left, pulled into the passing lane, and roared off where I lost sight of them. It was terrifying - they were going a good 15 miles per hour faster than traffic, and WE were all going the limit or close to it. (75 is the speed limit, I think I was at 72). 

I was just grateful to shortly after that pull into the Target lot and know I made it in one piece. And that was fortunately the only terrible driver I saw, but I've also been flipped off more this past year, and cut off, and all that. People have lost their patience, which can be deadly on the road. 

I don't know. I know I would like a hug, and to have my shower back and to just be able to sit home some evening with my feet up and my knitting and a nice movie on the tv. (I will say the ONE consolation of being here last Christmas? I just binged on every old Christmas movie on TCM or any other channel showing them - everything from "Holiday Affair" to "It Happened on Fifth Avenue" to the cartoon specials, all of it. I think I watched "Paddington" and "Paddington 2" a couple times (both of which are very good movies - I was set not to like them but they are nicely done and have that fundamental sweetness that I need in a movie). Oh, I can do that too up at my mom's but it was a real consolation to have those when I was alone. 

I'll just be a lot happier if (when?) my shower is fixed....