Surly Thursday (not really Surly, not really Thursday)

 In fact I'm feeling quite a bit better. I was crazy anxious about going to my Thursday school yesterday, because I had only started a few weeks before, then was sick the week before March Break, then there was March Break, so I felt like I was starting the routine all over again. I've talked about this before, and I don't know if it's common to depressive episodes or if it's just a weird fun thing my brain does - it's not that I don't WANT to do something, and it's not that I'm not confident that Regular Me can do it well. It's this feeling I get like I will start going through the motions and I just... won't be able to make the right moves or say the right words. Like there will be a bunch of second graders staring at me and I will freeze and be unable to move. 

Anyway, I got up and got dressed and drove to the school, and once I was there it was fine, which it usually is, as long as I can get myself out the door. I read in French to the 2/3 class after telling them my French isn't that great and they were allowed to laugh a little, but not too much, and they told me I did really well. Another teacher sent her grade fives alone and then came to check with me if that was okay and reassured me she had told them they wouldn't be able to keep doing it if they misbehaved. They were actually completely wonderful, asked all their questions respectfully and told me to have a good day when they left. One younger girl had donated a few books to the library from her own personal collection and she was concerned that she couldn't find them on the shelves. I explained to her that it can take a while for the books to get catalogued and processed before we can put them out, but she kept looking for them earnestly anyway. When another girl was looking for a mystery, the first girl said wistfully, "the books I gave were mysteries".

The only crappy part of the day was that my trusty Doc Martens let me down AGAIN. A few weeks ago when I was there my left boot randomly ripped a blister in my heel that took over a week to get better. I thought it was a one-off, that I was maybe wearing the wrong sock or something, but the same thing happened yesterday. I'm on my feet for almost this whole shift, so maybe that's it. I ordered some moleskin bandage, but I'm newly discouraged about the footwear situation. Footwear in the winter is always an issue for me, and I can't afford to lose one of my only reliable options.

So aside from my stupid feet, I do have a couple of grievances I have been nursing in my bitter bosom. The first one was an interaction on my Facebook community moms group. This is a new one - I left my old one because I was pissed off and disgusted too often by the complete lack of guidelines and the medical misinformation that was allowed to run unchecked. A friend told me that this group was better, and it has been, much. When the protest/occupation was happening downtown, most people were in agreement that it was bullshit, but a few people piped up about "authoritarianism" and nebulous ideas of "freedom". The moderators banned any convoy discussion at all, other than facts - streets that were open or blocked, etc. I thought this was a good call. Most of what is on there is humorous and supportive and friendly and informative.

This particular entry was a group member asking for advice regarding her mother in law watching her kids. Her mother in law constantly thought the worst of her and would confront her in front of her family regularly. She would feed the kids junk food until they were sick and ignore any guidelines given by the mother. The woman said she recognized that she was "just trying to be a good grandmother" and just wanted to know if she was crazy for having reservations about sending the kids for a week-end visit.

The responses were almost uniformly condemnatory of the woman, NOT the mother-in-law. Everything from "yeah, that's pretty much how it goes with mothers-in-law", "oh, she has the best of intentions", "what I wouldn't GIVE to have my parents back so my kids could have a relationship with them, you ungrateful cow", and "I don't even know why I'm LISTENING to you complaining that she WANTS TO LOOK AFTER your kids". Like, over twenty comments like this.

Am I crazy? I mean, I remember being an overwhelmed mother of babies and toddlers before we had any family anywhere near, and I was desperate for a break from childcare sometimes too. That doesn't justify this kind of gaslighting in my mind. Doesn't feeding the kids junk food until they're sick sound more like the grandma cares more about being liked than about the kids' well-being? I mean, an extra couple of cookies or dessert first? Sure, why not. That's not what was being described. And basically saying that this poor woman should not only put up with being treated badly but be grateful for it, just because the grandmother was "willing" to watch her own grandchildren? "She has the best intentions?" Well how the hell do YOU know that? I found it upsetting not just because I felt like they were being so unfair to her, but because it seemed so out of character for the group. I recognize how fortunate and maybe rare my experience with my mother-in-law was (the worst thing she ever did was buy Eve a hundred-dollar pair of shorts even when Eve told her not to), so feel free to disagree with me. 

For the past year or so I haven't been into watching my usual dark, twisted fare. I usually heartily endorse the Aristotelian concept of catharsis, and really good horror movies are great for evoking pity and fear. Of course, when real life contains such a plethora of pity-and-fear-inducing crap, this becomes less attractive. I dove into a rewatch of Modern Family - so sweet! so funny! so intelligent and heartwarming! - and was utterly bereft when I finished it. Matt went away on a business trip last week, so I thought why not resurrect the very intelligent tradition of watching horror movies and then being too scared to fall asleep in an empty house? I watched a Swedish movie called Border, which turned out to be more of a very dark fairy tale. It didn't scare me in the traditional way, but I thought it was quite brilliant - different, and smart and moving. 

I looked up some reviews of the movie just out of interest. Most were good. One was not only negative, but so ridiculously tone-deaf, male-centered and egotistical that I literally rolled my eyes. The comments were all in agreement with my reaction, at least. The reviewer said that the way the actors were made up was supposed to make them "more human", but instead just made them "weird and creepy". In fact, without major spoilers, the way they look was NOT supposed to make them more human - quite the opposite. And "weird and creepy" read like a nine-year-old boy reviewing a classic movie and downvoting anything that wasn't boobs. The whole review was a real-world manifestation of that "Sorry you didn't get a boner" meme.

We went to the bar Tuesday night as usual, and Wednesday morning one of my best friends, who I was sitting beside, tested positive for Covid. Can't even blame the dropping of the mask mandates, since it was the first day it applied. I'm fine so far, just feeling weird, like I'm sitting here waiting to manifest Covid. I thought fleetingly, maybe I'll get it and lose my ability to taste and smell and I won't feel like eating and I'll lose some weight! Then I kept eating things all day to see if I could still taste stuff (not meaning to make light of Covid, just making fun of how ridiculous I am). 

In conclusion, random picture of Angus and the rest of the team pitching staff.