Backsliding

I know I said I was done with the wallowing. I gave my head a shake! I got some perspective! I was ready to move forward! 

I am not ready to move forward. Well, I am in theory, but I am just lacking the bodily resources to make it happen. Last night I slept like I had been drugged or cursed by a poisoned wagon wheel. Wait, that's not right. Spinning wheel. Eve said she feels the same, so maybe it's just the weather. Pam and I went for a great walk last Thursday and declared that we would do the same at least once a week. The following Wednesday I looked at the weather and said "oh great, it's supposed to rain for the next six...seven...NINE DAYS?"

Saturday and Sunday were sunny and cold and then warmer. I hate when people on social media tell me to go outside because it's beautiful, but I did, in fact, force myself to go outside and do the stupid little walk for my stupid mental health. Saturday I got Eve to go with me, and Sunday Matt and I walked over to my mom and dad's because they needed help figuring out the bill for the mobility devices we rented and bought when my dad fell back in September. I asked Matt why they didn't just pay it rather than making him go through every line with them (it wasn't that high, they could easily afford it) and he said "your mom just wants to make sure she isn't getting ripped off" and Eve said "just say 'oh look, in this Young Person Font that only I can see it says 'you're not getting ripped off''". After they dealt with that Matt put Angus's game on his phone so we could listen to it (because we should be in fucking Elmira New York watching fucking baseball) and they pulled off a surprise win (the team has been struggling pretty hard) and I sent this picture to Angus, which he liked.

I keep saying I want to take a week to just read (other than my stupid little walk) so maybe I'll just do that. I finally got my reading mojo back after a week or so of focus issues and inability to decide on what to read next. The opening lines of the last two books I read were "So Shanna got a new job at the movie theatre, we thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead and I'm really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all" and "How much is it to fix a broken goose?", so things are looking up. Plus I just finished this book (in actual paper form) and just LOOK at this cover:

Also, I had my first tweet to do any real numbers. Was it an uplifting inspirational verse? Was it a penetrating social justice analysis? It was not. Somebody posted this:

And I responded with this:

234 likes and counting. So proud. (It's actually killing me that I didn't format it better. Penis flytrap. It should have been Penis flytrap.)

Also, I got my Covid vaccine. 

Yes, I dressed fancy (underwire bra, even!) I didn't post a vaccine selfie on social media because I was conflicted and I sort of agreed with Tudor (HI TUDOR) that it was all kinds of messed up that the government was saying 'EVERYBODY GET YOUR SHOT' while not vaccinating essential workers. They lowered the age for Astra Zeneca at pharmacies to 40 and up, then lowered the age for the provincial portal, but they're STILL NOT FUCKING VACCINATING ESSENTIAL WORKERS. I also don't blame anyone who posted a vaccine selfie, because the messaging is so jacked that how is anyone supposed to know what to do? Get your shot! But some of you can't! But if you can you should! The more people vaccinated the better! But this one might kill you! But get it anyway! All the while la la la la, what's that about essential workers? Can't hear you! 

I was very sick about twelve hours post-vax. Matt slept downstairs so I could thrash around. Apparently I fever-texted quite a few people in the middle of the night. Here's what I sent Eve:

I needed a straw because I couldn't lift up my glass of water to drink. Everyone told me to drink lots of water but then I kept having to get up to pee and I had a 103 degree fever and convulsive chills and taking the blankets off to get up to pee was AGONIZING. I knew I would probably get mad side effects because immune responses tend to be where I shine - if there is a side effect to be had, I will have it. I consoled myself with the fact that I was clearly mounting the robustest of defenses, and this cemented my conviction that actual Covid would probably kill me. I felt weird for days. 

Okay. I have made dentist appointments for the family and a doctor's appointment for myself (TWO PHONE CALLS) and written a blog post. I'm going back to my sulking chair. I mean my reading chair. 

Oh, Eve just came down and laid on the kitchen floor to complain about Calculus. Nothing but positive attitudes and stiff upper lips over here. 

Enough of That Crap

 I'm not going to delete the previous post, but around 1 a.m. last night while I was reading I stopped and gave my head a literal shake. There's nothing that wrong with needing a couple of days to wallow, but I do try to stay aware of my privilege and my perspective on that had slipped a bit. Like a lot of people I know, I want to get the vaccine and get our cases down so things can get back to something approaching normal. No one I'm close to has died of Covid or even been really sick with it. My kids have lost out on some important senior year and university experiences, but they're healthy and safe. I can stay home most of the time right now. And people in the rest of the world and literally in my province are sick and dying and terrified. I still have it pretty fucking good, and it's time to start acting like it.

Because there's nothing I can really do for those other people other than stay home and not be an asshole not be the kind of asshole that breaks the rules and endangers others, I am going to supplant my whiny post with some random less-whiny thoughts.

(I am still really pissed that the sign-up process for getting the Astra-Zeneca vaccine at a pharmacy is an absolute clusterfuck compared to the provincial portal that I used to sign my parents up for their vaccines. There's no centralization - you have to root around for a list of area pharmacies giving vaccines and put yourself on every single wait list separately. There are rumours that some places' wait lists aren't really working, so people walk in or call and get appointments that way instead - like, wtf? I'm okay waiting for a shot - none of us can go anywhere for the next five weeks anyway - but I am offended by the absolute teeth-aching fuckery of it all. But that's not the fault of the pharmacy workers, so I'm even more offended on their behalf, because the crapstorm they must be facing right now is terrifying to contemplate.)

Yesterday Pam (HI PAM) texted me authoritatively that we would be walking that afternoon whether I liked it or not. We stuck Lucy in her carrier, masked up and drove to a nearby trail. We were able to walk distanced and kept our masks for if we ran into people or if the path narrowed. We vented about Covid crankiness so hard that we forgot to notice the beauty of nature until it was time to turn around, so we made ourselves stop and stare at the trees for a while before we started bitching again. Pam has been working at a furniture store (until lockdown started this week) and getting the full brunt of people who are Covid cranky and also mad that their furniture isn't being delivered. I feel fully qualified to judge those people harshly because we had laid down a huge chunk of change for our first new couch in twenty years just before lockdown last year and its delivery was in limbo for months before we got it, and I never spoke harshly to anyone over that. Who the fuck yells at a store employee (particularly one as nice as Pam) over a chair? Seriously, reconsider your life choices. So she's looking for a less stressful job. I suggested she get one answering phones in a pharmacy because I'm helpful like that. 

Then we went and got a few groceries, and our thing before we got stupid jobs was always going for a walk and then getting groceries, so even though we had to wear masks and be careful not to be too close it felt reasonably like normal times, and I was less cranky after (and not just because I bought ice cream). Also, the checkout girl said she liked my hair. 

We're back to the Zoom bar nights, which I hate but force myself to do every now and then. I just feel so weird sitting there, and I can't think of what to say, and I HATE staring at my stupid face and I get obsessed with all my chins, and then Matt gets mad at me because I keep moving my face around hoping some chins will disappear (they never do) and I try to tell myself that no one else is focusing on my chins (but I know someone probably is). I prefer the kind of bar night where I can just look at other people's faces and forget that I have one for a while.

Today Eve had a P.D. day so she drove us out to the fancy doughnut shop and we listened to Demi Lovato's new album. I wore a sundress and when I got home I walked Lucy in a sundress and sandals and sunglasses like an aging movie star instead of my usual ratty shorts and t-shirt. I brought my neighbour some doughnuts, which reminds me of the time we got a giant-ass cake from a local bakery for Matt's birthday and I brought some over but they didn't answer the door so I left it on the step intending to text when I got home. But in the thirty seconds it took me to walk back home I forgot about texting, and then she texted me "did you just leave cake at my door? I hope so because I already ate it", and I died laughing and told her she probably had some kind of tracker inside her now. 

It's Friday ((I think). I wish everyone health and good weather and vaccines and trackerless cake. 

What the hell is a hand-roasted nut? I guess it's better than a nut-roasted hand, but just barely

Surly Thursday, Not the Funny Kind

 Not gonna lie, things have gone to shit around here somewhat. I had a funny Surly Thursday post lined up for before our April Break (postponed from March) and then our Covid cases went through the roof and both my school and Eve's which had had very few cases were suddenly turning up positives every couple of days and I was working in the office which means cradling a lot of sweaty heads and catching a lot of nose blood, and I was feeling both anxious and guilty for feeling anxious when I was still in a pretty low-risk position. I was booked to work the last three days before the break in the office and I toyed with not going in, because quite honestly as a sub they don't pay me nearly enough to take that kind of risk, or to sit in sweltering PPE in the isolation room with a kid who has an upset stomach and needs to be isolated until a parent can pick them and all their siblings up. But I didn't want to leave the school short-handed, so I went in and it was okay, and then I sort of crashed into a boneless heap.

This boneless heap was shortly thereafter animated by rage and spite when I guess there were rumours that Ontario was going to ask for health care workers and/or vaccines to be shared from the East Coast. A bunch of East Coasters took to Twitter to express their displeasure with this. In a way I get it. I know we're all exhausted and frightened and a prolonged crisis like this makes it really hard to stay compassionate and gracious. In another way I was profoundly hurt and angry that a bunch of people were almost gleefully proclaiming that the people of Ontario had brought this on ourselves by not following the rules and it was only right that we should suffer the consequences.

This sentiment completely ignores the fact that many outbreaks came from workplaces such as factories where low-income workers weren't given paid time off to get tested or stay home if they were sick, and that there was no evidence at all that all of the cases were generated by gatherings or people flouting restrictions. We have a premier that wouldn't institute paid sick days or close schools, even when it was known that the variants are more contagious and school cases were increasing. I have heard of crises in other parts of the world many times that were down to poor government management as much as to acts of God. I have never felt anything but lucky and concerned about how I could help. Now a high number of people, many of whom I followed, some of whom I considered friends, saying "you want me to give up my vaccine for these jerks?" Well no, I don't actually, but also now we're not friends anymore because that was an asshole thing to say when you know you have Ontario people who follow you who are sick with fear and anger about what's going on in our province. It takes a certain amount of willful blindness in that person's place to feel morally superior instead of just fortunate. 

I used to be kind of dismissive of those memes about shattering a plate and then trying to glue it back together to show how you can't just say "I'm sorry" after saying something hurtful and make everything go back the way it was. People screw up, I would think, and there's no way we can all avoid ever saying the wrong thing. But a few times over the past couple of years someone has said something that I knew almost immediately had caused irreparable damage to our relationship. Sometimes they did even say sorry. Sometimes I even appreciated it. It didn't change the fact that that thing was said and I would never forget that they said it. 

The cool thing about this is that I've also realized that, when someone says something like that, I don't have to let them just stay in my life and keep aggravating the sore spot. I used to be bad at this. I would continue to see people or be Facebook friends with them or follow them, even when every interaction left me fuming or annoyed or going over what I wished I'd said in my head. Sometimes I did start arguing every point, because for a lot of my life I wasn't confident or assertive enough to argue or speak out even when I felt like I should. Then I'd get to the point where I'd be wondering why I kept up a relationship that was more work than satisfaction. One person on Facebook actually asked me something like "why do you keep being friends with me if you disagree with everything I say?" and it was like a light bulb - omg, I don't HAVE to be? Omg, I don't HAVE TO BE. 

I don't know why I was so hesitant to walk away like this before. Maybe I thought they weren't that bad. Maybe I thought it was too drastic a measure. I was wrong! It's so liberating! The people in my timeline are people I actually want to see and they say kind, funny, helpful things! Like Hannah (HI HANNAH), possibly the only person from the East Coast I didn't unfollow because she told everyone who snarked about Ontario to fuck off. 

The irony is that I have now bitched about this issue so much that I'm even sick of myself, but I've typed out all this crap and I'm unable to unfollow myself (believe me, I've tried), so I'm going to consider this cathartic and try to speak of it no more. Hang on, that might not be irony. Fuck it, I don't care. 

I'm going to post this pitiful diatribe and then plan to get back to being funny next time. 

Eve Passed Her Driving Test!

 This is such an immense relief, I can't even tell you. Like I said, we were confident that she is a capable, safe driver, but the fact that Covid postponed first the in-car part of her Driver's Ed and then her test made this all very fraught. She was worried that I was going to drive her an hour and a half and then she'd fail. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to get another test soon and she'd miss out on being able to drive her last summer before university. She was worried she'd throw up on the way there. It was a big giant worry-fest.

The night before she said "I have something I do that I think is normal but is probably weird but you have to find it cute because you're my mom". She said she has soap that she uses the night before every test because it's gold and sparkly and she feels like it's good luck. I told her this is not a remotely mockable thing - anyone who has access to soap that is gold and sparkly would be an idiot not to avail themselves of its possibly miraculous properties. I also told her about the time we glued a tortilla chip back together in my student house because it was the Lucky Tortilla Chip that was clearly the reason the Blue Jays were still winning and someone accidentally broke it. 

To distract ourselves the night before we watched a couple of episodes of the Really Bad Fireman show I'm currently watching. I'm finding that I can't deal with anything challenging, insightful, dense or really with any redeeming qualities right now viewing-wise, so I just keep finding terrible shows with bad writing and lots of episodes (me: finds a show with a bunch of seasons and episodes so I can just put one on whenever I want to watch something and it will last a long time. Also me: watches two-hundred-and-forty-hours of tv straight and then feels annoyed that I'm out of show). Eve enjoys heckling the ridiculous situations and dialogue: "Why the hell do people call out a criminal for being a criminal and then turn their back on the criminal? OBVIOUSLY they're going to get clocked by the bad guy!" (this literally happened TWO EPISODES IN A ROW). We briefly appreciated that, aside from two obviously hunky leads, some of the firemen were less conventionally good-looking. Then we realized that every single female character is ridiculously, insanely, stupidly hot and were mad all over again. 

Eve said when she started out her foot was shaking so hard it was impossible to maintain a constant speed - "It was, like forty-eight! thirty-seven! fifty-three!" I remember from singing exams how frustrating it is when you are actually unable to control your body. Once she got over that, though, the instructor said she aced everything else. Her parallel parking was flawless, apparently. 

I was completely calm and positive and supportive on the drive there, and then when she drove out of the parking lot with the tester, I lost it. I texted Jody (HI JODY) from my picnic table and told her I was freaking out and she CALLED ME immediately and talked to me until Eve got back and got out of the car and yelled I DID IT, and this is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me. 

We had read that the route in Cornwall goes by the Dairy Queen, so I said "good, bring Lactaid, we'll go to the Dairy Queen to celebrate when you're done." And we did, except I realized as we were headed there that it was only 10:20 a.m. and it might not even be open yet and if it was it was a weird time of the day for ice cream.

Did we let that stop us?

Reader, we did not.

Possibly NSFW?

 Holy shit you guys, the sleep thing is extremely bad right now. I feel like for the the past few weeks I'm never really asleep or really awake. Got about three good hours last night, worked in the library this morning and covered in the office this afternoon. It was quiet. It's never quiet. Quiet is not good. I think I was literally asleep at my desk at one point. I kept pretending I had to go to the bathroom just to walk around and wake up.

Also, I catalogued a buttload of dictionaries.

Aren't they pretty?

The sleepless brain makes the stupid brain even worse, as you can imagine. I was watching a tv show where a woman was taking a pregnancy test and timing it using her phone and I said "hey, they should have a pregnancy test app where you can just pee on your phone". Help.

At our last outdoor bar night I was telling the group about hanging out with my friend Jody (HI JODY) on her front porch on Sunday for three and a half hours. Jody is an accomplished equestrian and, in the course of our long and rambling conversation, she pulled out her chaps to show me and, waving them around expressively, begged me as a writer never to use the term "assless chaps" because chaps - *emphatic wave* - are, by their very definition, assless. I confess that I have, in the past, almost certainly used the term 'assless chaps', if not in writing then in speaking. I told her we saw a dude in Montreal walking down the street wearing chaps and his ass was hanging out. We concluded that he must have been wearing a thong, or assless pants. 

So this occasioned much discussion at bar night, including Collette (HI COLLETTE) telling us that her search algorithm had coughed out pants for women that make it easier and more discreet to pee outside (something like this, I guess). There were several rude suggestions about why that particular item might be directed towards someone (for outdoor sex, in case I'm being too subtle), although Collette protested "Nuh-uh, they just think I'm a hiker!" and then she said she should try another search that would make the algorithm even more perverse and I yelled "hide your phones, everyone!" Then we realized that Google and Amazon are literally always listening, and I had said the words 'assless chaps' loudly at least a dozen times in the last five minutes, and we all stared at our phones in silent horror.

Eve's driving test is tomorrow, an hour and a half away because all the centers are crazy busy since they had to close for so long because of Covid. She's anxious. I'm anxious. She's a perfectly good driver, just... anxious. I'm a perfectly good mother (?) just... anxious. The drive there is going to be a bit of a trial. 

Maybe I'll try to distract her by telling her about the blog post I just wrote that inadvertently turned out to revolve around urination and ass. 

Me, Also Me, Bed, Duck Duck Pork

 Me: Takes on a bunch of extra shifts thinking the structure will be good for me.

Also Me: Complains bitterly every single time I have to go to work.

Me: Thinks it's time to branch out my reading a little

Also Me: Reads three horror books that take place in snowy places. Two are about mountain climbing.

Me: Thinks I'm finally getting on top of the pandemic/sinus/perimenopause-induced brain fog.

Also Me: Literally forgets how to make a taco

Me: Carefully makes a meal plan and grocery list so my failing memory won't lead to disaster.

Also Me: Buys every single ingredient for pork carnitas. Except pork.

I thought I might be able to make a whole post of these. Turns out I was wrong. I'm feeling better on the whole, but I couldn't fall asleep last night and then woke up stupid early. Did I mention that my library work is very solitary, and once all the books are put away and I'm sitting at the desk cataloguing it is very difficult to stay awake if I'm really tired? 

Eve has a pretty severe case of Senioritis - I'm actually surprised it took this long to kick in. She has Chemistry and Music this term and a half-credit in whining, apparently (which I respect). Honestly, the Chemistry teacher seems to be phoning it in a little as well (again, no judgment, it has been a YEAR). Last week she assigned molecular models, which seems a little more grade five than grade twelve, but whatever. Eve came and showed me these one evening:

She used q-tips and tin foil and straws and gold paint and squished-up cotton. I said it looked like a fine job and she said "It's not - I refused to use anything that I couldn't find in a five-foot radius and it took me seven-and-a-half hours. If I'd just walked around the house it would have taken me one." Well okay then. I regularly almost fall off the couch trying to lift Lucy into my lap without standing up, so I get it.

I spent most of the beautiful week-end walking around Barrhaven having drinks or burgers on various decks. Did I fall into the trap of forgetting that a warm day in March does not forecast a warm night in March and end up freezing once the sun went down? Why yes, yes I did. 

A negroni because we fancy

Vaccine bookings opened for people eighty and over last Monday. The portal opened at eight and we got an appointment right away, but then it crashed before it went through and then every other time we got on we got an error message. We tried to call the help line and it was four hours on hold with the most annoying goddamned jazz elevator music you've ever heard. We gave up and just kept trying the online site and eventually after six hours got my dad an appointment for this Thursday. Today was booking for people seventy-five and up so we got on again to book for my mom. It crashed again but let us right back in and we got her an appointment also for this Thursday, a few hours before my dad. Not complaining (anymore, for the moment, stand by) but what a giant clusterfuck the whole thing has been.

Someone posted bunk beds in our neighbourhood buy and sell group. Have you ever seen bunk beds like this?

Personally, I have not. Personally, I rather think this looks like someone balanced (perhaps Krazy Glued) a single bed on top of a double bed and is punking the buy and sell group. How do you get into the top bed? Does the top bunk person always have to get in bed first, or they have to stand on the bottom person to get in? So many questions. 

The weather has become drastically warmer and the streets and parks are thronged with people. Everybody is very happy. I will admit, to no one's great surprise, that it all makes me a little cranky. It takes my body a couple of weeks to acclimate and I'm always too warm getting dressed and yet I know I can't really wear a tank top yet. I miss my snowy walks where I could actually wear a coat with pockets to hold kleenex and sunglasses and masks and shit. I miss the ducks making little duck foot trails in the snow.

I mean, come on.

I guess the ducks might still be there, but that trail has to be a hellscape of mud at the moment. 

Oh well. It will either get colder again and I'll be comfortable or it will get warmer and I can wear fewer clothes and still be uncomfortable, but that's why I have air conditioning and an ever-growing collection of battery-operated fans. I don't have one of those necklace ones yet, but obviously I've considered it. 

We did our usual early-morning ritual, nine people up at 6:59 a.m. trying to snag a campsite for five months from now when booking opens at 7:00 a.m. (this is just kind of my life now). It's always a blood sport, and some years we have to try two or three days in a row, but this year over half of us couldn't get a site. I guess because of Covid and travel bans there are like fifty thousand more people trying to book Provincial Park campsites. Not sure if we're just not going to go or if we're going to squish a lot of people on very few sites and pretend to be a couple of large non-traditional families. Most years I would be fretting about this. This year it's not even a blip. Matt just wants to be able to go to the U.S. and watch baseball. 

Right then. I guess I'm going back out to buy some pork. 

Food and Drugs

 Just realized I my wall calendar is still on February - I forgot to flip it for a whole week. This either means I'm getting better at keeping appointments and work shifts in my phone calendar or I've forgotten a bunch of stuff I was supposed to do this week (brb, checking if I'm still employed). I have this weird tic where whenever I try to open either the calendar or maps app in my phone, I open the opposite one. Isn't that weird? Even if I think about it first I almost always end up on calendar when I want maps or vice-versa. 

Last week I did my usual library shifts and office shifts and then I did the afternoon snack program, because I am aiming to do all the jobs at the school. The kids will not know what to expect when they see me. Will I check out a book to you? Give you a late slip or some ice? Toss you a little bag of Shreddies? Jump out of a closet and start teaching math? WHO CAN SAY? (anyone who knows me at all can very definitely say I will not be teaching math). 

Doing the snack program is a pretty funny line between a sappily beatific "I am literally FEEDING HUNGRY CHILDREN" vibe and a "omg, back the fuck off you relentless little vultures". One little boy said "I don't want any food, but you look like you have some big muscles". Um, thanks? One girl said she liked my tattoo. One boy worked me like a used car salesman to get a blueberry muffin. 

It was Matt's birthday this week-end. We have a restaurant nearby that's been doing what they call a Global Table Series, where the chef creates a menu of seven courses of a specific country's cuisine, you pick up a giant box of little containers, watch a video of him preparing each course and then prepare it yourself. The video is hilarious and there's just enough prep that you feel like you're cooking fancy but not so much that you feel like you're doing all the work.

 Matt ordered the Thai one for us for Valentine's Day and did all the cooking and it was so much fun. It turned out that this month the Mexico one fell on his birthday weekend so I ordered it and picked it up and did the cooking. 

(or not, hahahahaha)

Lime ginger margaritas!

Arepas and something and tamale something and right after I said "we don't eat the banana leaf, right?" Chef Blackie said "do NOT eat the banana leaf, people".

We literally cooked tiny quails. Okay, I will stop with the food photos. 

We start early and watch each course video and then pause to cook and eat the course. We played a game between courses four and five so we wouldn't get too full. We still kind of felt like an anaconda that had eaten its yearly goat and needed to sleep for five months after, but it's a really nice way to spend an evening. 

He is OLD, but well fed. 

We looked at the menu for next month, which is Germany, and hesitated, because Jagermeister is involved, but we might try it anyway. 

So I started this post and then stopped because I was feeling really crappy and then I finally talked to my doctor and she's pretty sure I've been walking around with a raging sinus infection for weeks, which explains a lot. I thought it couldn't be an infection if I didn't have a fever. Am dumb. Antibiotics are onboard and hopefully I will soon be less stupid. 

Have you seen this article? It made me feel slightly less like I have to book a brain scan stat, after I started losing my train of thought in the literal middle of a sentence, even with no outside distractions in play. Today I went to get gas. I put my credit card in the slot and couldn't remember my pin number. I mean, I knew what the numbers were, but I couldn't remember how many of them and in what order. I did it wrong twice, took out my card and put it back in and got it right, but it wouldn't let me try again. I got my debit card and got THAT pin number wrong the first time. Took some deep breaths and finally got it right. How are you people with full time jobs or little kids surviving? It is MADNESS.

I figured I'd add some pictures to the post and my phone is upstairs, so now I can't post it AGAIN. This is BALLS.

Okay, pictures added. I still feel like the post is missing something. Wit? Relevance? Wheels? A duck? Whatever. Posting.