Comments, coincidences, complaining

 Did you guys see Shawna's comment on my last post?: "So this is weird: I followed a link here from Swistle... only to read your description of the Covid protocols your school is following, leading me to think "huh, that sounds like the same protocols we'd have to follow", leading me to click on your profile and find out we live in the same Ottawa suburb!" 

I LOVE when shit like this happens. I had a really good friend in grad school and one day in the library I asked her when her birthday was and she said "June. Fifteenth." Then she looked at my face and said "wait, is that your birthday too? So right now you're thinking, like 'I didn't ASK you MY birthday. I asked you YOUR birthday. You don't even KNOW my birthday so why are you saying it to me?'" and we were doing all this while whisper-laughing hysterically. 

I also want to thank everyone who didn't chime in "oh yeah, you're always allowed to park for only three hours on residential streets, even with no signs", on my parking post, because I posted and then kind of went cold in terror that this was a universal rule that everyone knew. 

I also didn't realize so many kids in the U.S. haven't been in school for almost a year. Is this a state-specific thing? I thought I had read about teachers being forced to go back in some places. But wow, it must be weird having not been back at all. Eve has been back on alternate days from last September, and then was home again for a few weeks after Christmas when we were in lockdown, but the elementary kids went back earlier because of the child care issue. The schools in our area have not had many cases at all, and whatever cases there have been seldom have any high risk contacts in the school (which means it's not an outbreak, just one or two individual cases at a a time). 

I did a shift in the office on Friday and it was pretty quiet, although I am constantly amazed at how many kids bump their heads every day. This week I am helping with the snack program because the office administrator, bless her heart, has taken to thinking that I must want more hours of any description, and is trying to keep me busy, and I have not been able to screw up the courage to say "I appreciate this so much, but I am a depressed, anxious, easily overwhelmed, chronically lazy person and busy is not something I aspire to be kept". 

I don't feel good. I'm sleeping even worse than usual. I either have migraine-level pain or very very bad headache-level pain. If I sit down, I usually fall asleep. I just tried to count how long my head has been hurting for and realized that someone in January talked about going dry for February and I said I already wasn't drinking because my head hurt all the time. I called the doctor finally, but couldn't get an appointment until next week. When I touch my orbital ridge the pain is so bad I almost pass out, and when I stop touching it I get dizzy, so I imagine I'm looking at some kind of sinusitis. If she can't do anything I may be out hunting for street drugs - Shawna, you're from around here, do you have any connections?

Yesterday I asked my husband to just tell me I was doing okay because I am feeling really crappy about myself right now. Right after that, someone posted that this is likely the anniversary of the last normal week in a lot of people's lives, and your inner anniversary timer probably knows that. So that might be it. I just have these waves of realizing now and then that I probably am not going to grow out of my sleep and consequently my eating and weight being chronically disordered. A big part of that is that thirty-plus years of disordered sleep from undiagnosed sleep apnea really, really fucked me over. It's okay, mostly. This family works around it. I can be normal short-term. I have an understanding husband. We can afford for me not to work full time. I do stuff that needs to be done, just at weird hours sometimes. I just wish I was more normal sometimes. 

Last week we went to get Eve's prom dress altered. We pulled into the parking lot and I said "I'm not sure they'll let me come in with you." She looked at me aghast and said "They better! I can't do this crap without my mommy". I said "remember how you're eighteen now?" and she said "age is just a number. Mommies are forever". So we got her dress altered and then we got A&W and came home and watched Modern Family and it was the best afternoon, and this is why I decided a while ago not to take on any extra work stuff until she graduates and leaves home next fall, even though Matt isn't traveling right now, so I technically could. Which is weird, maybe. So I guess we're not normal in a few ways, and mostly that's fine - good, even. Most of my favourite people are weirdos.