and overly tired

 * We were supposed to have big storms last night. They missed us, but I had just fallen asleep when my phone went off with the warning of a bad storm (Which turned out to be north of me; I'm not even sure we got rain). It took a very long time for me to fall back asleep and I had some unpleasant dreams. I probably lost two hours of sleep, which is not inconsiderable, given that seven is about the maximum I can get, and I wake up more frequently if I twist my knee funny or lie in the same position too long and start to hurt

* So I'm finding entertainment that would normally be okay to be upsetting. I sometimes like "Will Trent" because I enjoy the main character and his interactions but tonight's episode was (a) exceedingly violent and (b) featured violence against women, so I had to turn away. 

* I'm also kind of sad because by chance I saw someone today I used to be friends with, but we had kind of grown apart and had lost contact. I didn't even know he was still in town, I thought he had moved. We were perfectly cordial but I could feel that distance and there was no suggestion of "hey, we should catch up" or anything.

And I'm reminded that a lot of times other people matter more to me than I seem to matter to them. 

And I'm reminded of how hard it is to make and keep friends. 

This was someone I was friendly with before the pandemic and being isolated I think led the friendship to die, and then he kind of moved on in life and....yeah. 

The pandemic wrecked a lot of things in human interaction. One of the people on Bluesky I follow commented that " I often think I wasn't much affected by that time, but when I clicked on it I suddenly felt tearful & trapped & nauseous." when she experienced a facebook "memory" from that time. And yeah, I get it. I didn't lose anyone I was that close to, I didn't lose my job, I didn't get sick myself, but when I think back on that time, it feels kind of like an unbelievable horror - I remember saying years ago about the September 11 attacks that if you saw a movie of it and didn't know it had happened, you wouldn't believe something like that could happen. And when I think back on some of the pandemic things, it's the same way. (And of course now, here, it's all over the news that a dairy worker in Texas has contracted avian flu from a cow infected with it and while they're not very sick and are quarantining and being treated, I still have that old sick feeling of "here we go again" and wondering how I'll make it through ANOTHER year of going nowhere and seeing no one.)

And in the relation of the difficulty in finding and keeping friends - well, I remember a much-hated-by-me walmart commercial that showed a family happily (?) sheltering at home with Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell's "You're all I need to get by" playing in the background. And yes, ads lie badly, but still - the sense that nuclear families will close down on themselves and exclude everyone else, so people WITHOUT a spouse and kids are pretty much stuck and will have to remain alone forever....I don't like that. (And yes, I think single people aren't a desired walmart demographic - they want families who will buy "family packs" of stuff and have kids who grow and need new clothes and want toys and all that)

* I still hurt from the yardwork this weekend and I worry that I reinjured something. Standing and walking hurts after a while; sitting hurts when I stand up. I don't like this and I wish I were totally better. 

*Oh, tomorrow will be better, it's just I'm overtired tonight from not sleeping, and also getting the specimens for Thursday's lab out (Lots of standing and walking and shuffling things around) and from re-doing one of the major tables for my paper rewrite (lots of heavy concentration-requiring work). And it would be nice to have a little comfort but it seems thin on the ground right now.