(no subject)

I don't really have noteworthy days right now.  Or especially good ones.  If I believe in gratitude, I'd say I feel grateful when I can summon the wherewithal to pull off some basic housework or cooking. The stimulant definitely helps some days, though I have a sinking feeling it's making me dumber.  Or maybe less vigilant, which feels like the same thing.    I managed the admin meeting this morning pretty well, I had most of my shit together, and once again really enjoyed all these people I get to talk with a couple times a week.   But the whole middle-y part of the day was not my finest hour.  (what the fuck, omnia, none of them are your finest hour, though maybe if I think of a smaller scale, day by day, or even which hour in any four hour was the finest)

After much saga, the dishwasher is installed, Light (with some assists from Abundance) hooked all the things up, the lights light up, and I'm now sobbing almost uncontrollably because I can't figure out the right way to load it.   Later, after a bunch of self recrimination, I had a little more of a handle on my feels, and then a combination of not being able to get into a book that I've heard is considered Very Good by many and getting a "you made the owl sad" duolingo email that seemed guilt-inducing/accusatory and we were off again.  And by off, I mean more crying.   So now I've got a weird red splotch that I'm really hoping is just a subconjunctival hemorrhage and not something more exciting that will merit going to the doctor.   
 

Though, speaking of the doctor, I'm experiencing some discomfort again.  It's not a bunch, but it's not nothing either.  It's definitely not something I'd normally consider enough to do anything about, but it's in my stunt boob, and it's been one year and five days since I had the implants completely removed and replaced, and it's been a shut-in pandemic year, so I feel like I didn't even get to ...use?  show off?  the new boobs before I voided the warranty (I didn't void the warranty, a) I didn't open the case b) surgical implants don't really work like that).  So it's pain, and it's weird and hard to pinpoint because nerve damage, and I had hoped for something different, I suspect. (right, because who hopes for vague post-surgical pain)   They're supposed to last a decade, and I think I got a good handful of years after the first surgery, and I know if they open me back up, there's going to be more tattoo damage and I'm struggling with getting off an ass to call my doctor.  
 

On the one hand, most of the days feel the same.  I don't do anything.  or I do housework, and some community management, and some volunteering, and it takes up a couple hours and then I don't take the walks I should take or do enough housework.   On the other hand, it would probably be unkinder to be acutely aware of the passage of time.  There's no way to count the days until I can hug Spark again, or get tattooed or whatever the other things I used to do out in the world, which I'm pretty sure I'm not going to return to even if they themselves return (or at least not anytime soon.  seeing music performed live while being in the same room as the artist and other people seems like the height of folly).  I suspect everyone's going to end up with a bunch of social anxiety or more serious words, if there's an other side to these end times, and I'd like to hope it'll just level the emotional playing field, that all those things that were almost always hard for some of us are now going to be hard for most of us, and that will change the discourse around it, we just got a little of a head start.  But that also implies I think there's a bottom to all of this, and I don't, so maybe I'll have the same relative positioning to other people as I had pre-pandemic, just the benchmarks will have moved around. 
 

I think the most exciting things that have happened to me lately, other than buying a bunch of new socks, have been discovering the game Overcooked 2, which I have an endless hunger for and now request the boys play it with me All The Time, and discovering the building that I've been so curious about actually has a name and a tiny bit of history.  (when I do walk, i walk around Wright's Pond about half the time, and then from my house down to the spot pond boating center the rest, and the structure is about 2/3rds of the way from my house to the point I turn around).    It's a mid 19th-century restored stone barn called Tudor Barn, possibly used to store cut ice from Spot Pond.   Next, to find Wright's Tower, or maybe the Spot Pond Outlook (they're not lost, I know right where they are, I just haven't walked there yet) 

 

I'm pandemic fine.  I'm probably even better than that, I don't have to do work for money and endanger myself in any way, I'm comfortable and fed, live with two partners and many beasts. I get to read a lot, when I can manage to focus, I get to bake things, I get to eat mostly the things I want to eat, I built my cats a ziggurat of Chewy boxes, so they can climb from the floor to the ceiling, and at least one of them has on more than one occasion.  They're behind where I sit when I'm on zoom calls, so everyone can admire both the amount of boxes and the structure (and the googly eyes I stuck to them).   (when anyone asks questions like why, I just say very flatly, "we all deal with the pandemic in different ways". )  The hope is eventually, someday if I believe that the pandemic is actually over, I set them up in the backyard and run through them like the koolaid man over and over again, probably saying oh yeah at least once.  
 

So there's that, I guess.