New Post, With Ninety-Five Percent Less Porn

Although I did just get this notification from the library:

IT'S A MYSTERY, I swear!

I keep seeing people talking about how important keeping to a healthy routine is during all this. Exercise daily, eat at the same time, go to bed and wake up at the same time, etc. etc. I tried that and I felt like absolute shit. It just made me realize that much more how fucked up everything is. So that's great if that's what works for you. I started feeling better when I said fuck the routine. Start reading a book at midnight, finish at 6 a.m. and sleep until noon? Why the hell not? Cook eight things in one day so I don't have to make dinner every single goddamned night? Sounds good to me! (Eve said Matt came up and confided that he thought I'd gone slightly loony the other night when I was making three kinds of chicken, pulled pork, a vegetable stir fry and taco meat and biscuits. WHO'S THE LOON NOW, HONEY? (Still me, but we have lots of food, so...)

My arm has been agony and the chiropractor and physio place are closed, of course, so sleeping was rough along with everything else and I was feeling pretty disheartened. I've been trying not to overdo it on painkillers, which I finally realized was stupid because the whole point of them is to, like, kill the pain, so I took a hefty dose of codeine yesterday and what do you know, much less pain. I can't do that every day because it kills my stomach, but at least I know when I need a break from the pain I can get one. My hands have mostly gone down to their normal size and stopped buzzing too.

I just found out that one of the teachers at my school doesn't drive so I have offered to pick up groceries for her, which will finally make me feel like I have a use other than feeding my family and not going outside. Angus is home two weeks today and we're all symptom-free, which is good because we can get our own groceries now. On the other hand, if we'd gotten it and gotten better we would no longer be so worried about getting it. 

I'm going to go for a walk now (just because I feel like it, not because it's part of my routine! I am a three-year-old). Hope everyone is doing as well as possible under the circumstances. 

Content Warning

A couple of weeks ago I was on Twitter and I saw a hashtag that I wasn't familiar with - I think it was describing a disease. I punched it into the search bar, but instead of THAT hashtag, it gave me another hashtag that was in enthusiastic use in Gay Twitter. As in, I was suddenly face-to-NOT FACE with a close-up of an erect penis (I'm not being coy with the "it was an accident", if I was looking for dick pics I would cheerfully admit it). I snort-laughed because it was unexpected, but then I started reading the comments, and it was a thread of men complimenting each other exuberantly on their erections and saying "We should all destroy each other's holes!" It was all kind of.... wholesome.

A few days into near non-stop virus coverage, Eve looked up from her phone and said "Pornhub is giving isolated people in Italy free subscriptions! Isn't that nice?"

In non-penis-related news? Yesterday I had a lovely Twitter exchange with one of my favourite authors, who also answered the first fan letter I sent him seventeen years ago.

I'm always a bit disappointed but not terribly surprised when I find out that someone I admire as an actor or a writer is not as great as I have imagined them to be. It's really great, though, to find out that someone I admire as an actor or a writer is in reality just a really nice person. (And yes, I did later realize that it looks like I was pregnant with a broken-femur-having two-year-old and I did die inside a little, fine, are you happy, shut up, leave me alone).

Then I bitch-retweeted the former Governor General, just to make things that little bit more surreal.

Also, pornhub is now in my computer search terms because I looked to see if it was spelled PornHub. Which reminds me of when we were at our friend's annual huge Christmas party and the kids were all upstairs and we were having one of our typically wide-ranging discussions which somehow wandered onto whether p*dophiles have a gender preference. I tried to type "do p*dophiles have a gender preference" into my phone's search bar, an endeavour which I am shaky with at the soberest of times, which this was not, and I have no idea what I actually typed. Eve chose this moment to come down and see what was going on in the kitchen, strolled up and put her arm around me, glanced down at my phone and said casually "Hey Mom. Why are you on Grindr Gay Chat?"

Why yes, Grindr is now also in my computer search history. I should just worry less about spelling things correctly.

So. How's your pandemic going? Right for the junk, like ours?

Plague Diaries: Isolation Day 6

Yes, theoretically I have more time to blog now. Practically, I look at my computer with a grimace of distaste and think "what's the point?"

I am trying to overcome this feeling of overwhelming malaise. I am immensely comforted by the fact that we're all going through this together. I've commented on a couple of blogs, agreeing that it would be worse if this was a Terrible Thing that had happened to just one of us, or just one of our children, taking them out of college, derailing their hard-won successes, throwing everything into uncertainty, and then watching the world move on without us/them. That happens, and it must be such a lonely feeling. This is not that.

Eve has said that she's fine if she doesn't go back to school until next year, or even has to take an extra year of high school. "You always said we should still have grade thirteen", she observed, which is true. She is still working on a baffling English project - it's on the Life of Pi, and she had to draw a pie on a giant piece of paper and then fill in each wedge AND the rest of the paper with tiny writing on a variety of themes in the book. I keep wondering if this teacher has super-human vision, because even if she DIDN'T have to try to read it on the photograph that she's now going to be getting it makes my head ache thinking about trying to read that miniscule script. Not surprisingly, Eve is finding it difficult not to procrastinate - she takes frequent dance breaks in my room between wedges of pie.

We are all in self-isolation since Angus came home from New York Tuesday night (five and a half days and counting). Angus hasn't left the house at all. Eve, Matt and I have been out to walk Lucy and have not been within many metres of another person. It's both a little creepy and comforting to know that every day we do this is another day flattening the curve and protecting someone we might have infected (although no one is showing any symptoms, so maybe not on the second). We try to make sure we have a Family Time every day, because we are a family of introverts all processing the current weirdness and our house is spacious enough that we can all hermit excessively if we're not careful. We watched the second of the new Jumanji movies a couple of days ago which was hilarious (The Rock and Awkwafina doing Danny DeVito. Kevin Hart doing Danny Glover. People switching their avatars halfway through - y'all, there were some acting chops on display here). Matt got Eve to watch Escape from Witch Mountain on Disney Plus with him yesterday - oh my god I loved that movie and oh my god it does not hold up remotely. And as Eve said "you can just tell they thought they were KILLING IT."

We did a virtual pub night via GoToMeeting with seven friends. Even with the technical glitches it was pretty awesome. One friend drank four glasses of wine then passed out on the couch beside her husband still in view of the webcam. Some people couldn't stop moving and some people were so eerily still you'd keep thinking they'd frozen. We tried to take pictures of people toasting at the sides of their frames, but then realized that we were all in different screen positions on each other's computers and it was extremely difficult. One friend had to switch to her phone when her husband went to bed in the room with the computer, and on the phone you can only see whoever is talking instead of seeing everyone, and she was also kind of drunk, so she looked baffled and terrified, as if she was in one of those horror movies where everyone is in a group video chat and someone suddenly gets murdered.

Matt spent two days clearing out Angus's bedroom in the basement which was originally a spare room/office before he moved down there. Just as he had set up a good workspace for himself, Angus decided to come home. He has now done basically the same thing in Angus's old bedroom upstairs. I can't find the tweet now, but I saw one that said "You knew women working from home are on the couch with a MacBook Air and a cup of tea and men have a three-monitor set-up and the loudest keyboard they could find at Best Buy". I showed it to Matt. "I only have two monitors" was his defense. It's fine. I've decided when we can go out again I will do all the grocery shopping and anything else because he has to work and we can better afford for me to be sick. And since it's Angus's old bedroom there's a bed in his office if I need to be quarantined (there used to be both a loft bed and a single underneath, which prompted Eve to say "man, Angus has a lot of beds that he never sleeps in).

Okay, turns out I'm just as good at blathering about nothing as I ever was. Whew. Stay safe, friends. Stay away from other people if you can. Go for a walk unless, like here, it's FUCKING SNOWING. Way to add insult to injury, Mother Nature.

From Before: Eve Engages in Espionage

Due Preparations for the Plague

I haven't been able to settle to anything the past few days other than obsessively going from the news to Twitter to Facebook and back again. I went grocery shopping three times in four days because I did one normal grocery shop and then a thing happened on Sunday that I will tell you about later (it's a long story and I come off like a loon in it, but why be coy) and then we found out Angus was coming home yesterday so I took Eve for her bloodwork (masked gloved person at the entrance with hand sanitizer and screening questions, only two other people there, chairs all placed a metre apart from each other) and then went to the grocery store in the same parking lot (very few people, easy to stay far apart, wiped down the cart). I got to the checkout with milk, bread, meat, cereal, fruit and vegetables and snacks and glanced back at the bearded hipster dude behind me who had.... two cans of Guinness and a pack of gum. I felt like he was doing the apocalypse better than I was.

Anyone else keep doing Personal Plague Math? It sucks that this happened this year because of this, but it would be worse if it was this. It sucks that this happened to my kids now because of this, but it would be worse if it was this. People with little kids dealing with quarantine or self-isolation? I salute you from a healthy distance away, because almighty lord, I cannot imagine. Pregnant people, people with wedding plans, people who have had vacations cancelled when they were barely hangin' on? And then, obviously, health care workers, essential service workers, people who can't just shelter in place and try to hang on to their butts until this is over? Will this be over?

I finally managed to read a book for a couple hours today without checking my phone. I kept forgetting that the people weren't in the same circumstances I am in now, and wondering why they could walk around talking to people and going to restaurants.

I should probably try to blog every day. Along with walking outside every day, doing some weight-bearing exercise every day, cooking something from scratch every day. I might not though. I might just say fuck it and just go with the flow. Matt has decreed that our family of introverts can do whatever we want all day (Angus has online course stuff and can't NOT work out, and Eve walks the dog every day and is studious so it's not like they need hounding) and then we will come together for some kind of family time at or before dinner. Today that meant Eve and I eating at the table while Matt and Angus tried to fix our ancient Wii because Angus decided he and Eve should play Mario Kart. And that is why our latest Amazon Prime order includes both laundry soap and a triwing screwdriver for Nintendo's freaking proprietary screws (yes I am trying to think of how to work 'proprietary screws' into a dirty comment, let me know if you come up with a good one).

I've been slipping into my usual at-home mode, which is staying up way too late, starting to cook stuff at nine p.m. and having to stay up after midnight to finish, forgetting what day it is. I haven't decided if I'm going to rein that in or to what extent, but I just realized I can finish this now and get to bed before eleven, so here goes. Stay safe out in there, everyone.

Stages

I had a weird day yesterday - went to my regular gig in the morning then got called to go over to my Wednesday school for the afternoon because the other library tech was out sick. Teachers at both place said thoughtless things that made me disproportionately angry. The weather was nice but I could feel that I'm entering that weeks-long period in spring(ish) or fall when I'm just hot all the time and in order not to die I have to underdress for the weather and steel myself against everyone and their dog saying "but aren't you COLD?"

Anyway. Will save that for Thursday. Saturday was super fun - my lovely neighbour invited Eve and I to share her box seats (from work) for a Lumineers concert with her and daughter. Eve and Victoria were born one week apart (Victoria came a little late, Eve came a little early) and used to be constantly in and out of both our houses with paints and sidewalk chalk and Barbies (I used to write down their hilarious conversations: "Okay, we both have Barbies. Wait, don't you want a boyfriend? No? Well, too bad you're going to miss out on all the love!": "'Mom, I love swimming!' "Well duh, we're mermaids.'"). They're seventeen now and go to different schools and have different extracurriculars, but they pick up where they left off really nicely.

We did the thing we always do at Bluesfest, which is look at the lineup, vow that we will look up all the artists and listen to their music if we don't know them or their newer music if we do, and then... don't. J.S. Ondara was the opener for the opener. He has a really great voice, but many of the songs sounded the same - a string section and his distinctive voice over top, but often not enough over the top. I feel like a voice like that should have minimal accompaniment, and he needs to vary his songwriting a little (I'm sure my opinion matters a huge deal against that of Rolling Stone, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk). Mt. Joy was the opener - I liked their sound and they played well, but other than the first song I found the instruments overwhelmed the vocals again, which is a common issue for me. I don't really understand why bands do this - it might be just that I'm too old, but I feel like I've always felt like this, and Eve says the same thing.

I adore the Lumineers. Eve and I saw them at Bluesfest and I saw them in the same venue as Saturday a few years ago in the extreme nosebleed section. It doesn't matter if I know the words, it doesn't matter if I can tell what they're singing about, I love their sound and I can listen to it for hours. Their instruments can get loud, but they never seem to overpower the singing. The piano guy wasn't wearing any shoes. They seemed to just be having the best time. They brought both opening bands on stage with them to sing a Leonard Cohen song - I love when this happens at concerts, it has such a feeling of camaraderie and joy. Also, J.S. Ondara's white poncho was really nice.

Next Sunday is Cats in our Broadway Across Canada subscription. It's the one they sneak in there that we didn't really want but have to take if we wanted Waitress and Rent and Hamilton, and we really, really did. We've gone back and forth on whether to actually go, but we've decided that if we see it we can then mock it from a position of authority.

There. I've successfully distracted myself from panicking about the fact that I've been feeling vaguely like we're in the early stages of a Stephen King movie. Going to go wash my hands now, and strongly suggest you do the same.

Weird Things About Me

It's a bit of a dark and trying time, what with the looming prospect of another four years of an absolute horror in the White House and the uncertain spectre of COVID-19. While we're all hoping against hope and washing our hands singing various twenty-second song snippets, I thought I would share some entertaining weird things that I've noticed about myself lately to pass a few minutes.

Do you ever read those articles about the best way to wash your face or hair? Apparently the new thing is shampoo that's not really shampoo - what is it then? I'm not entirely sure. Regular shampoo, though, apparently is mostly water and sodium laurel sulfate, which dries your hair and perpetuates the need for products.

Oh, here it is. Bumble & Bumble's no-shampoo shampoo is 'aloe vera and a combination of essential oils'. This matches another article where a woman talks about never using soap on her face - to clean off her makeup she has a ritual that only involves oils. OILS. She leaves them on for a few minutes and then wipes them off, leaving her face soft and "sparkling clean".

AGGGGHHHHH. MY FACE IS NOT A CAST IRON FRYING PAN. Here is my problem. I want detergents. I want surfactants. Give me lather or give me death! I once bought some Body Butter from Crabtree & Evelyn because it smelled amazing. I had to give it away because I literally could not bear to smear something called Butter on my skin. I know this is not helpful because my hair and my skin will be dry. I WANT them to be dry. I'm in an eternal battle to have dry skin that isn't actually peeling off and dry hair that isn't a ball of frizz. My hair and skin, it should be said, produce enough oil to ... I can't do it, anything I say will be just too gross. I wash my face several times a day. I apply an amount of moisturizer about the size of an eraser on a pencil to the tiny area of my face that is dry. The thought of applying oils to my face or hair makes me shudder viscerally.

I do moisturize my body last thing at night, after I shower, before climbing into bed. I have searched far and wide and determined that Aveeno is the combination of moisturizing but non-greasy that will make me able to use it. A few nights ago I ran out of Aveeno. I opened the cupboard to see if I had other lotions left over. This is a lie - I opened the cupboard to see WHAT lotions I had bought in a fit of optimism and abandoned for one nutty reason or another. I found something with a bourbon vanilla scent. I squirted some experimentally and gingerly applied it to my legs. My bonkers self did not freak out, so I continued with relief. Maybe I don't need to buy more Aveeno right away! I though. Maybe I can use up the rest of the stuff I have! Maybe I've changed! Maybe I've grown!

The next night I put some bourbon vanilla lotion in my hands and went to rub it on my arm.

"WHAT THE JESUS PANCAKE-FLIPPING CHRIST ARE YOU DOING?" my self shrieked.

"Um, it's the same lotion we used last night" I told my self.

"I'D RATHER BATHE IN PIG'S BLOOD" my self howled.

"Uh, okay, fine, no need to be dr..." "PIG'S!! BLOOD!!!"

Sigh. I bought more Aveeno.

I have never wanted a sonic shower a la Star Trek more than this winter. The whole perimenopause thing means I still want to take multiple showers a day (yeah, I'm weird, keep up, that's why we're here, they are generally very short and don't waste much water) but the hormonal stuff and dry skin means it's not the greatest idea, plus I just get weary of the whole water-soap-dry routine for this body that I try to be sympathetic to but is just the slightest bit of a drag right now.

Oh! Also! My usual winter uniform is: at work, leggings and a tunic and boots. At home, leggings and a t-shirt and Roots cabin socks. It's simple, it's easy, it requires little thought. The first time it was cold enough to put on leggings this year myself bellowed "WHAT THE ENTIRE HULA HOOPING FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

"Um, putting on leggings like we do every single..." "OUR LEGS ARE SUFFOCATING!!!"

"Oh for... seriously?" "*GASP!! CHOKE!! EVERYTHING...GOING....DARK..." "Oh for fuck's sake, FINE!" I had to buy pajama pants to wear at home and actual pants to wear at work, except when I wear a dress and tights, which APPARENTLY are thin enough for my drama-queen legs to breathe through.

So whatever else is going on in the world, take comfort that you are probably, at the least, less wacky than yours truly.

I will finish with a snarky comment I exercised great forebearance by NOT making on Facebook last night. I joined an Instant Pot recipe group even though I'm still too scared to use mine (good thing I dropped that on a  post where I've already admitted to being weird). Last night someone said excitedly "last night I made a spaghetti squash!" and some other charmer retorted "You didn't MAKE a spaghetti squash, you COOKED one!" It looked like the original poster was gracious enough to let the comment pass, so I refrained from commenting "And you don't just HAVE an asshole, you ARE one."