Friday, March 25, 2022

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.


Monday, March 14, 2022

First Past the (Penis) Post

 The scene: My family room, Ontario Family Day week-end, February 2022

The circumstance: My sister and her family visiting, having picked Eve up for study break on their way through Hamilton. It is the last day or two of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The players: Wanda (Grandma), Ian (Poppa), Jody (my sister), Andrew (my brother-in-law), Charlotte (my niece), Jonah (my nephew), Matt (my husband), Eve (my daughter), me.

General conversational din

Charlotte, checking her phone: OMG, have you guys seen this thing about the Finnish skier with the frozen penis? 

Everyone: What

Matt: I heard it was so cold they actually shortened the race, so it must have been really cold.

Charlotte: but FROZEN PENIS

Eve, checking her phone: hang on, it was the SECOND TIME? Is he the only one this happens to? I bet it happens all the time but no one talks about it. I bet the other skiers are like DUDE, STOP GIVING INTERVIEWS ABOUT IT.

Jody: The first rule of Frozen Penis Club is we DON'T TALK ABOUT FROZEN PENIS CLUB.

Jonah: He says "you can guess which body part was a little bit frozen when I finished" - we don't have to, you just told us!

Poppa: Can't they wear something warm over it? Are they afraid Penis Warmers won't be aerodynamic enough?

Charlotte: Yeah, like a Crocheted or Knitted Below the Shoulder Boulder Holder

Hilarity peaks, subsides

Grandma (quietly): Beanie for your weenie.

Hilarity Resumes

Later, over dinner, Eve told us about how a group of people, some of them friends of hers, went out on the football field after a big snow and ran around drawing a ten-foot-long penis. They got in quite a bit of trouble with campus security, who let them off with a warning and actually went out on the field to erase the penis. We all thought this was ridiculous because it was literally a medium that would melt anyway, but I observed that this was clearly a foretelling of Frozen Penis Guy, and we all know prophets are hated in their own time. 

Fin

*with apologies to Remi Lindholm because despite all the laughing, we agree that a frozen penis is, in fact, no laughing matter, we are just terrible people

**Andrew rarely participates in our loud vulgarity, but he puts up with all of us cheerfully, and I appreciate that about him

Previous penis post (sometimes penises just pop up everywhere, I don't know why)

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Fear and Loathing in....Everywhere, Basically

 I'm just going to ramble for a bit because I fell in a hole and now I'm at that point where there's an insurmountable wall between me and blogging (and most other things), and waiting until I have a coherent post is going to mean never blogging again. I know everyone is feeling the immense cognitive dissonance of trying to live a normal life while various things on fire keep drawing our attention. But what do you do? Sit there staring at the fire? After we protest, and send money, and agree that it's all horrible and unfair, what else? Stop moving, stop living, stop finding joy in anything? My mother's parents are Polish, and she was born in Austria as they were fleeing from the war and spent her earliest years in refugee camps. She doesn't remember that, but she remembers her parents talking about it. How for the first little bit, you're on the move, maybe carrying a suitcase, your clothes still clean, and it feels weirdly like a vacation, but you keep remembering that you can't actually go home. I don't want this for anyone. It's so stupid and senseless.

Eve managed to get home for study break, "dodging Covid left and right" as she put it (multiple cases in people in her classes and on her residence floor). She's back and she said it's rapidly gone from "oh no, so-and-so has it now" to "another case, OOPS, oh well". Matt is in San Diego for a trade show; the venue has a mask and vaccination policy but he texted me a picture of fifty thousand people at a concert across the road from his hotel. I think we're dropping mask mandates here soon - I haven't really bothered to look up when because I will still be masking for the foreseeable future. 

Someone on Twitter mentioned that the antidepressant she takes works but if she doesn't take it on time she feels like her brain is seeping out her ears. This reminded me of the time I tried that same antidepressant, and it sent me screaming mad. I thought crickets were talking to me. Then there was the one that my doctor recommended because it would be more 'energizing' that wasn't, and when I tried to get off it things went horribly wrong. I went back to my second-generation one because it's not perfect and I get a ton of breakthrough symptoms (in winter especially), but at least I'm not wandering around trying to converse with wildlife like some discount suburban Snow White. 

I've been engaging in some uncomfortable introspection lately (that'll teach me to try not to spend all my time on social media, at least THERE I'm mostly annoyed and disgusted by OTHER people). I was such a weird kid. I was... such a weird teenager and in my twenties? I can't think of a better word than weird. It has taken me such a long time to become anything approaching at peace with who I am. What a giant pain in the ass if I have to do even MORE significant personal growth. 

I've been trying for the past few weeks to do a few of the things that I am invariably saying "I have to start doing X". So far I have played the piano after years of not (I am very bad, keys are very dusty). Listened to part of one podcast. It was not an instant match made in heaven (I liked the podcast fine, I just am not sure I am ready to add another media to books, tv and music - hey, maybe I can listen to podcasts instead of the personal growth thing! Can anyone recommend any podcasts that will definitely not make me grow as a person?) And I had a cup of tea. Shut up, it's February I mean March, I'm doing what I can. Oh, and I accidentally cooked an actual meal last night. 

I love you guys (not drunk. I've almost accidentally quit drinking because I feel so off-kilter all the time because of *gestures broadly at everything* anyway). It's almost a new week. I will try to do something good with it. 

Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story

 The photos from my previous post are: Eve in grade eight in a fractured fairy tales play at her school. She was the princess from The Frog ...