Days 254-261

 

Days 254-261, self quarantine:

Monday, November 30, 2020

Welp, if you’re reading this, you made it through Thanksgiving, 2020.

Us, too.

But sorry, I’m not really relaxing until January 20, 2021.

In the afternoon.

After Joe is sworn in and Donald and his cootie infested family have vacated the premises and said premises have been fumigated.

No worries, I’m going to keep all my fears and neurosis to myself about what I’m worried might happen between now and January 20 like war, firing squads, mass virus and associated death and martial law, let’s all read Heather Cox Richardson daily for a comprehensive account of the day’s events, and also, to learn American history.

That’s what really gets me about Trump supporters.  They‘re so fucking stupid and strong wrong they refuse to educate themselves.  

They insist that somehow NPR, PBS, BBC, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS, Washington Post, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and EVERYONE but Fox are “fake” news.

Fox.  Where they gave us the caravans of criminals transporting duct taped Mexican sex slaves and then, woo hoo, Hunter’s laptop conspiracies.

Until they didn’t because even they knew it was all a lie.

Omg, it’s insane.

Anyway, I am also really terrified virus wise and wish I could talk Gary into grocery delivery but he refuses.  At least we only go to early seniors shopping bimonthly but it’s really scary because people are still being assholes, either getting too close or wearing masks below their noses.  

Though Gary is a news watcher now and I’m noticing he’s paying attention.

Last week, I know I read somewhere on Facebook a woman we went to high school with died of Covid before she even had her test results but I can’t find the post anywhere including my alumni page so now I’m thinking it didn’t happen and oh joy, now I’m having vivid, stress ridden Covid nightmares.

Though man, I could really swear I read it, complete with instructions to private message the author.

Whoever that was.

Oh, wait, I know.

It was my late mother, she visits a few times a year, always in the middle of the night, always with the full head of hair she never regained after chemo.

It’s always the same.

First I try to kick Gary awake because he never believes she visits but of course he never wakes up though once I swear he yelled in his sleep for me to cut my toenails.

Then I greet my mother.

“Mom!  You have hair!”

And then we chat but I can never remember what she said and then I wake up, totally freaked out and positive that this time, Gary witnessed at least some of it.

Nah.

I once wrote a short fiction piece published in one of my favorite ‘zines that riffed on her visits.

http://www.juked.com/2006/03/starman.asp

Yeah, I gotta start writing and submitting shorts again, I know. 😎

So we actually had a nice Thanksgiving and then celebrated Gary’s birthday two days later with a feast of Indian food delivered by GrubHub.

We’re just trying to get through the holidays unscathed and I must admit, it’s a hell of a lot easier knowing the vaccine and President Joe are on the way.

It’s just that there’s 52 days left and Donald is such a crazy little bitch...

Ah, well.

I enjoyed my week off from this journal and figure I will stick with it until the vaccine makes it safe to go out but maybe not every day.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s some pics from the holiday weekend. Pics of FaceTime with both kids for Gary’s birthday, Thanksgiving dinner, which Gary knocked out of the park, he also made bananas foster french toast for brunch yesterday, and the birthday card Julie made Gary, emailed me and I printed out and gave to him with his gifts - guitar stands from all of us, bird books from Eric, and a portrait camera lens and remastered Imagine vinyl from me.

I know it makes me old but it still freaks me out that I can do all of that...meaning, print out a birthday card and see the kids via FaceTime.

It’s like the Jetsons really did come true.

I used to think picture phones were the stuff of nightmares.

Okay, I still do, but sigh...at least I can see my kids...

Anyway, in other news, paralegal world, I have a bear of a month ahead of me. Yikes, memos galore.

Ho ho ho.  When am I retiring again?

Haha hopefully soon.

I’ll let you know the exact date on 1/20/2021 after Joe’s sworn in.

Ooh, 01202021 is an anagram!

I’m gonna take that as a good sign.

Happy Monday!

Day 253

Day 253, self quarantine:

Sunday, November 22, 2022

Guys, due to my high level of anxiety over what I am positive Donald is planning, the unbelievable stupidity of the people in this country unwilling or unable to properly educate themselves, and the unrelenting stream of Facebook memories of Thanksgivings past that are making me cry, I am unplugging until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

See you on the flip side.

 

Day 252

 

Day 252, self quarantine:

Saturday, November 21, 2020

I’m not feeling it today.

I’m scared about the virus and whatever ominous activity an unrestrained Donald is clearly planning and I miss my kids.

That’s the post.

Happy Saturday.

Day 251

Day 251, self quarantine:

Friday, November 20, 2020

Well?  Did I tell you I had a vision?

My pencil tree is adorable.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I was actually happy for a few minutes last night.

But oy, Donald, what are you doing to me?

A coup?  Really?

Four years of sleepless nights and now this, just in time for our miserable holidays, without our families or sick or both?

Really?

Since I’ve watched him not be held accountable for anything including sailing through impeachment and as an accomplice to the deaths of 250,000 Americans, sure, why not?

I’m terrified, actually, but I feel terrified in general these days, what with gun violence, global warming, and oh yeah, a pandemic.

I gave up pills and drinking WHY?

Oh I’m kidding, I still drink.

Anyway, this morning I have to send my boss the Answer and Memorandum of Law I’ve worked on all week and I swear, it’s like being back in school and turning in a paper all over again but worse.  I’m filled with so much self doubt it’s ridiculous.

Fun fact, kiddies. I knew being old would be a drag, but I thought, hey, at least I’ll finally be comfortable in my own skin because I won’t give a shit anymore.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah, wrong.

Anyway, I’m nervous because it was something I’ve never done before and while I know my writing is good, I’m always nervous I missed the legal point.

Oh well.  That’s the nice thing about being at the end of my career.  It is what it is.

HAHAHAHAHA.

Oh god, I better go upstairs and take another look at this thing before I send it.

I need cookies.

This is not going to be an easy Friday.

 

Day 250

 

Day 250, self quarantine:

Thursday, November 19, 2020

250 days of isolation.

Sounds like a made for television movie, doesn’t it?

I didn’t realize it until I typed it.  

Oh well.  I’m more shocked that Thanksgiving is just a week away.

No, I won’t go there.

I rather focus on Gary’s savory bread pudding with orange rosemary gravy, which will be the centerpiece of our meal.

And whipped roasted maple butter cayenne pepper sweet potatoes.

We haven’t decided on a green vegetable yet but we’ll figure it out.

Not sure if we’ll need dessert but Gary wants to make apple dumplings in custard sauce, too.

Whatever.  It’s all good.

Except Donald.  

I don’t want to discuss it now, but I’m worried.

Anyway, I got nothing today, I have to go upstairs early and work on a project I don’t think I am smart enough to do but my boss thinks I am so I have to at least try.

While I’m gone, enjoy this picture of Gary completely freaking me out last night.

I know, right?

Relax.

It’s a Christmas ornament.

Happy Thursday!

Day 249

Day 249, self quarantine:

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Is it just me or are the two weeks since the election the longest two weeks since the year of March, 2020?

Anyway, the pencil tree arrived yesterday and as planned, it’s the perfect size to leave up until the kids can safely be here to celebrate, after which it will be installed permanently year ‘round in my office/Julie’s bedroom upstairs where it absolutely belongs.

I know right now it looks like the mummified version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree but trust me on this, I have a vision, and I am posting this as a
“before” pic for fun.

Gary’s going to fetch the lights and ornaments from the basement today and I’m decorating it after work tonight so I will hopefully have the “after” picture soon and also hopefully it’s not going to be like putting lipstick on a pig.

I know it is but we have awesome ornaments.

Okay, so I can only fit about ten of them...sob...

Nah, it’s gonna be fine.

I told you, I have a vision.

It’ll be nice to have a
lit up, decorated  tree at Thanksgiving.  I haven’t discussed this with Gary yet, but I’m thinking of making us get dressed up for dinner.

I’ve been sadly looking at my overflowing jewelry chest lately. It’s filled with so many cool pieces I’ve collected over the years...it’s almost a year since I’ve worn anything other than my wedding band.

And while I did give away a lot of clothes, I kept a few nice things.

So yeah, I could see getting dressed up for dinner.

At least my top half, anyway.  My bottom half might prefer elastic waist pajama pants at dinner.

Gah, I haven’t worn shoes or boots since March, either.  That might be asking too much. But hey hey, I’m rocking fake leopard fur slippers!

They’ll do.

In other news, omg, why do I keep reading stories about people who are wearing masks and staying home and still getting the virus?

This is really stressing me out.

President Joe, a real mitigation plan and the vaccine can’t get here soon enough!

As well as January 20, 2021 in general.

So is anyone getting scared by Donald and the possibility of a coup or should we keep calling him an irrelevant sore loser?

I’m gonna stick with the latter for now.

But it’s getting really hard to ignore what he’s been up to, huh.

And on that note, I’m off to paralegal world.

Happy Wednesday.

 

Day 248

 Day 248, self quarantine:

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

“🚨 Here is today's snapshot of each state's progress in reducing COVID cases/hospitalizations/death, via covidexitstrategy.org

Green is trending better.

Yellow is caution warranted.

Red is going downhill. 

Bruised red is uncontrolled spread.”

Oh hey, do you like metaphors?

The entire country is “bruised red.”

This is terrifying.

Also terrifying:  The Mad King is still here, insisting he won the election while trying to get us into a nuclear war with Iran.

He needs to be removed today.

But as those who know are pointing out, we’re currently being governed by the mafia.

There’s adults in the room, but they don’t care about us, and if it enriches them further to keep Donald where he is...

Good luck getting rid of him.

Okay, I said I am done talking about Donald so I’m moving on.  But reading his unhinged tweets and knowing how desperate he is, is very, very scary.

Anyway...

I got nothing today. Gary and I watched the news about the virus for a bit, got completely unnerved, and then unplugged and listened to music.

We’re just trying to stay sane.

And that’s why I am also going to unplug now and watch the Holiday Baking Championship, which is as corny and cheesy as you can get but I love it so much I tape it every Monday night the whole eight weeks it’s on and wait to watch it on Saturday mornings but I can’t wait this week so I’m watching it now.

Happy Tuesday!

Day 247

 

Day 247, self quarantine:

Monday, November 16, 2020

That’s a pic of my living room this morning.  

Notice the lack of the Christmas tree I intended to put up yesterday?

Yeah.

So right after I finished writing my post yesterday morning, I decided to open the box that held the Christmas tree and set it up myself while Gary was still sleeping.

Did you ever see the episode of the Dick Van Dyke show where Laura opened a package meant for Rob she shouldn’t have?  And it was a blow up boat that inflated to full size as soon as she opened the box, scaring the hell out of her?

That was me and that freaking tree yesterday.

The minute I pulled it from the box...and it was heavy as fuck...and I cut the binding cord, the branches sprung out and almost knocked me over.

Our living room is twelve feet wide.

The tree was almost six feet wide.

And seven and a half feet tall.

I immediately started to cry.

I mean, it was ridiculous.  It was a monstrous mountain of fake tree.  It took up half the house and blocked out all the light coming from the back door.  There was no way we could keep it. I started hyperventilating about having to return it, especially less than 24 hours after reading Gary the riot act about the virus and going to stores.  I had no idea how I was even going to fit it back in the box.

Also, Gary doesn’t do mornings.  When he saw that debacle before he even had coffee, we weren’t going to have a good start to the day.

I dried my eyes and tried to think of an alternative spot.  Could I move it all the way to the left and smoosh it up against the end glass panel of the back door?

I got on my hands and knees and tried to drag it by its base and knocked over half the stuff on the coffee table.

I burst into a fresh round of tears.

It was never going to work.

And of course that’s right when Gary decided to wake up and come downstairs for coffee.

I knew he’d be angry at me just for opening the box myself.  Oh, relax, he’s not macho, it’s because I’m a klutz with a bad back and wonky shoulder and the last place either of us wants to go during a pandemic is the emergency room.  He worries about me and is always begging me to “let him do it.”

As expected, we had some words.

Gary said he hated fake trees and never should have agreed to one.

I wanted to say, “It was your idea to buy this King Kong tree!  I looked at one half the size!”

But I didn’t.

The tree did not look that big in the pic online and we didn’t measure.

And what’s the point of arguing?  I’m stuck with him in quarantine. Neither one of us can go anywhere and it was my day off.

I wanted to spend the day happy, playing our traditional Beatles Christmas records and trimming a tree.

Not crying and arguing.

So instead of playing a childish blame game, I said, “Oh my god, this is my worst nightmare, it took us fifty years but we’ve turned into our parents at the holidays.”

Because our parents and holidays = arguments.

Horrible.

Usually alcohol was involved.

We swore as kids dating we would never, ever be like them, and that we’d make our own kids’ holidays like something at Disneyland.

And we did.  And still do.

Welp, Disneyland before we learned the truth about Walt, anyway.

And that was all it took. Gary stopped yelling and so did I.

But I was still all teary eyed.

“Like 2020 isn’t horrible enough with no kids and no holidays,” I sobbed. “Now it’s the attack of the killer Christmas trees.”

“If we were only going to keep it up a couple weeks, I could live with it,” Gary said.  “But I can’t even get out back to feed the birds. And we just cleaned up all the records. Forget about playing records, I can’t even fit back there. And you want to leave it up until the kids can visit when in 2021?”

“It seemed like a great idea at the time,” I said miserably.

“Don’t they make smaller ones?” Gary asked.

I looked up hopefully.

“Yes!  That’s what I envisioned!  They’re called pencil trees - not even two feet wide but seven feet tall. Pottery Barn has them but I’m sure I can find one anywhere.”

But I want the pencil tree from Pottery Barn.

“Okay, order one and we’ll take this one back.  Hopefully they do no contact returns.”

They do.

So the new tree will be here by next Monday, it’s only twenty inches wide at the base, which is exactly the width of the Edison victrola in the photo I intend to put it in front of and it won’t keep us from seeing our records or our birds.

Or playing our Edison. We have 78 rpm records from 1920s we still listen to, especially at Christmas.

Disaster diverted.

We’re both pretty emotional right now though.

So we talked things out throughout the day and by the time we went to bed we were making all kinds of giant fake tree jokes and now that we both know how much we’re both hurting we’re going to be extra tender and considerate with each other so everything worked out in the end.

It’s crazy, though, how it took a pandemic to change our decades long relationship.  We talk about everything now.

Yikes.  We’re normal, huh.

Okay, today I gotta tell Gary I saw a floor lamp in the CB2 catalogue “we” have to have.

As you know, the old me would have just ordered it and told Gary someone gave me a gift certificate.

Not anymore.

I know, right?

Anyway, have you noticed my tremendous restraint in not talking about Donald today?

That’s because he’s irrelevant.

He does not exist in my world anymore.

So that’s it for today.  I have kind of a crunchy work week with deadlines and a review of the case list again crunch crunch but I will ace it and I’m really looking forward to the four day Thanksgiving holiday next week.

And Thanksgiving dinner!

Gary’s menu is INSANE.

Wait for the miniseries.

Pics will follow, naturally.

Happy Monday!

Day 246

 

Day 246, self quarantine:

Sunday, November 15, 2020

“Tonight we reached another dire U.S. coronavirus milestone: For the first time, we recorded 1 million new cases in a single week.

1 out of every 324 people in the country have been identified as positive this week — an average of 145,712 people each day.”

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

I’m so scared.

I just read the obituary of someone who used to do my hair.

Coronavirus.

He leaves a shattered spouse of forty years.

You know Ms. Overactive Thinker here.  I almost spiraled into a panic attack at 5:00 a.m. this morning.

The what ifs...

Okay, I’ll stop.  This is out of my control. What is in my control is staying indoors and Gary knows this, too, but of course I am also reading stories of infected people who did everything right.

And still they got the virus.

And still they died.

I have it on authority Governor Wolfe is going to ask everyone who can, to return to remote work on Monday.  This doesn’t affect me, my boss knows I’m working remote or not at all but I worry about everyone else.

I’ve been so obsessed over Donald and the election and so much in acceptance mode about the virus after eight months of quarantine I forgot to keep worrying that the people I love and I are in serious danger.

Oy.

How much more can we take?

Look, I’m very careful about who I follow on Twitter.  I know the difference between legitimate scholars and news people and internet “legends” like Lincoln’s Bible.  But whoever that is, she’s been right about everything and people I respect follow her. Here’s what she said yesterday:

“No one is prepared for what Hanukkah-Christmas is going to be like.

The time to listen to our healthcare front line is now.

We won’t get a federal response to the raging pandemic until donald, Jared, & Pence are gone.

We have a horror to live through. It will change us forever
And by “no one is prepared”, I don’t mean no one is isolating or stocking up on toilet paper.

I speaking to the emotional, spiritual, mental, & societal horror of witnessing mass death, while health care systems are pushed to the brink of collapse.

It will change us.”

Watching interviews with medical experts
on MSNBC and reading grim statistics out of John Hopkins, I shuddered reading her tweets because I know it’s true.

As if we’re not battered enough by 2020.

My advice to myself is to stay physically busy and absolutely live in the moment.  That includes putting my phone down.

I have to.

So today will be spent trimming the tree and beginning Project Kitchen, which will take us through December.

For the best and most recent Donald news, someone suggested I follow Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook and boy am I sorry to be late to that party, she gives the most intelligent analysis of the day’s events of anyone so if you’re not following her, do it.

Be good to yourselves.

My tip today for that is Bassetts Ice Cream sandwiches.

Omg, Gary used to buy them for the kids and brought them home.  I devoured them.

I can see they’re going to be a “problem” for me.  

Oh well.

Things like being skinny don’t really matter anymore, huh.

Happy Sunday.