Disquiet

I don't know what it is. 

Post-holiday blahs (strange as this particular Thanksgiving was)?

The dumpster fire that is 2020 (including jobs being sidelined, a pandemic, and local politicians who post memes of themselves locking-and-loading!)?

My family members arguing (they're probably both over it, but I'm a fretter)?

Autumn (and SAD)?

My therapist being out of the office last week (the clinic auto-reminded me anyway)?

The creepy lullaby from anime playing in my head for the past few days (though that may be a symptom rather than a cause!)?

Anyway, I feel... off. Anxious, leg-bouncy, comfort-foody, liable to bite if pushed at all. Even by 2020 standards, it's not a great day.

It's just as well the kids have not emerged from their respective rooms yet today.

I'd better text them both that I'm having a potato-chippy and spoon-droppy day, so it's in their own best interest to just zip their lips and comply with requests.

As those requests are likely to be minor today - put away folded clothes in their own rooms, for instance, or get the mail - I will probably only get pushback until after I can get some food into Liz.

We're already all pretty tired of turkey, tbh. 😆 But we have other leftovers too.

It will be okay. But it sure doesn't feel like it today.

Pride and Prejudice

No, not that pride and prejudice.

This is a more personal/maternal type of pride and prejudice, although it certainly has to do with manners, both mine and other people's.

You see, I am proud of my kids and their accomplishments, but I have trouble expressing that in ways that don't embarrass them (or me), or that sound fake because of the prejudices of the world we live in. Part of this is that we are very alike in some ways and polar opposites in others. And of course, with pandemic rules, we are all in each others' laps 24/7, which does not make it easier.

I'm so proud of Lizzy's fierce ability to stand up for what she thinks is right... but since it's usually expressed as her calling me out on incidents I don't even remember, I have trouble with it in the moment; her assertive personality and my conflict-avoidance are at odds. She's angry and hurt, I'm hurt and defensive, and it's not pretty. What I need to do is remember in-between times that I'm proud of her and why, and tell her so. Without sounding like a condescending jerk in the process, because if there's anything Lizzy hates, it's being talked down to. She's intelligent and she knows it, and if she often thinks in absolutes that people with more life experience think are silly, well... she's also 13 and ADHD and ASD. She'll get there or she won't, but I need to remember that she's not only a neurodivergent young teen. She is more than her poor grades, quirky behaviors, and variable social skills. 

When all I see are those things - the grades and the assertiveness and the neuro-atypical behaviors - that's my own adult prejudices making assumptions about a very complex person.

Abby is, if anything, her opposite in many ways, and that's nearly as difficult for me. I am so proud of her, as she is artistic - music, theater, drawing, dance, you name it - and gets good grades in everything except spelling. She's also indecisive to a fault, overly modest about her abilities, and so conflict-avoidant that she makes me look like a conflict-seeker by comparison. These things make me want to shake her on a regular basis; can you please, please just make a choice? But she is also naturally kind even to people she dislikes, forgiving to everyone, and appears to have gotten all the social skills that her sister has to work at so hard. It makes her easy to underestimate as being merely "the nice one" and I have to work on that too.

In any case, to end this introspective post, my goal is to make it clear to them that I am proud of them for who they are and who they are becoming. It's not a matter of "do this and make your mother proud of you," because I already am. I just need to express it better.

2020 Standards

Cartoon of me, a chubby brunette
 with grey streaks, in blue sweats and bunny
slippers, at the bottom of a staircase with
the caption "WHAT'S GOOD?" 

"How are you doing?"

Well, by 2020 standards, I'm doing great! I'm even doing great by 2016 standards, although my criteria for great was even lower at this point four years ago. But that was more personal and didn't belong to the whole world, so it's rather beside the point.

So, yes, my criteria for great in 2020 is pretty damn low. I mean, none of my immediate circle (me, the two kids who live with me, and my mom) have the 'rona, or if we do we're asymptomatic and blissfully ignorant, and we haven't really been anywhere we could get it. When going further than our own mailbox is a production akin to going to war in full plate armor because a) there's so much gear and vigilance, and b) it happens so seldom, it's unlikely that we've been infected.

But it's gotten to the point that even my therapist (whom I still see every other week via Zoom for safety) opens our session with, "What positives have happened?"

She has to ask this. Getting all my social interaction online means that there's the constant inundation of political and selfish and laughably deluded behavior, interspersed with little bits of positivity, some of which are toxic, too. I've seen a lot of inspiration porn lately, for instance, and LinkedIn has become almost worse than Facebook since just before the US election.

So she asks about the positives.

Because the negatives (even though they're mostly pretty minor) are legion because it's 2020.

Examples: 

Long term, no-one is going to fault Liz, 13, for struggling with distance learning. It's seventh grade, she's both special education and highly capable, and if she has to retake algebra in eighth grade, well... she's already a year ahead. It would be a pain, but not a calamity. We'll do the best we can with it (and have come up with a lot of stopgaps and bandaids and temporary solutions), but it's not the highest priority thing in my mind. Sometimes all that up there is hard to remember in the short term though, and it's one more thing.

Abby's grades are more of a priority than Lizzy's just now... because Abby is a high school senior. She loathes distance learning, but she is just a more laid-back person than her younger sister, and she's doing fine. Her midterm report was mostly As with a couple of Bs, for instance. But she hates it and although she has more outlets than Liz does (like Outschool's anime discussion group and a voice acting project she's part of), it's still one more thing.

For me, it's always income. My job with the school district is mostly sidelined because of Covid and I'm getting maybe ten hours a week. My writing gigs are few and far between right now. Abby's 18th birthday(!) is coming up and the SSA is so overloaded and backlogged that I have no idea if she's still getting survivors' benefits for her next month, even though I applied (for it going through high school graduation) months ago. I mean, we'll make it work as we always do eventually, and I have some good job leads, but it's... you got it... one more thing.

Even with all that, those coping skills I learned in the aftermath of Laston's death in 2016 are serving me in good stead. My sense of... equanimity, I guess... is higher, I'm not in a constant panic about everything, and not going anywhere or interacting with anyone (in person) on top of the 2020 stressors means that I haven't gotten an upper respiratory infection since about February.

We will persevere because if there's one thing we have learned, it's that we're doing great! 

By 2020 standards, anyway. And reasonably well by any normal standard.

Just Staaahhp

Cartoon rendering of me
peeking around a door,
with the caption "Stay Home"

This applies to Washington State. Your rules may be different. Your mileage may vary.

Nobody wants to be wearing masks.

Nobody wants to be in lockdown.

Places of worship are allowed (masked, at 200 people or 25% capacity) because of all the pushback the state got last time regarding stifling religious expression. It's not a conspiracy.

Inslee doesn't want to kill your small business. He just doesn't want your small business to kill people. Or our hospitals to be overfull.

It's not actually his fault that the federal government screwed the small businesses the last time (well, the only time) they gave money to the so-called little guy. Click the link; I'm not typing all that again.

It's not "just a flu." But it is flu season. Both at once would be awful.

Even if it were (which it's not), it's a new one. We don't know enough about it to take risks.

We're trying to play it safe here.

Look, use me as an example. I'm trying to keep a household together, on less than ten hours a week pay, with one child who is a senior in high school and one child with some extra needs, the angst of adolescence, a finely-tuned sense of social justice with nowhere for it to go, and who is not enjoying (or helping her teachers to enjoy) the crisis-distance-learning experience. During a pandemic where the high points of their days include such gems as going outside to get the mail. 

And I complain, of course, because it's 2020 and it sucks large for everyone.

What I don't complain about is wearing a mask in public or how my favorite movie theater is closed or why-do-I-hafta-when-it's-only-the-elderly-and-infirm.

The selfishness is outrageous.

Gratitude

Cartoon rendition of me,
a chubby, fair-skinned,
green-eyed, brunette-with-grey 
person, wearing a blue shirt.
The caption reads "GRATEFUL."

It's November, and in my country, that means Thanksgiving (which in my family is usually just an excuse to get together and stuff our faces). As with most things in 2020, it's... different this year. 

Only four of us will be there for the aforementioned face-stuffing, and it's the four who are together for dinner twice a week anyway; we don't go anywhere, don't see anyone, and have things delivered as much as possible. It's a very small bubble, essentially one household under two roofs a couple blocks apart.

Oh, Lizzy and I did go to the dollar store yesterday, double-masked and gloved, stripped off our gloves (the right way; we've known what we're doing since Laston's last illness) and disposed of them when we left the store, stripped off our clothes and masks in the laundry room by the back door, and washed them right away. We wiped down car handles and controls with disinfectant wipes in between things, washed our hands obsessively, got sanitizer into paper cuts. 

And Mom and I went to Costco during what she calls "old lady hours" today (I'm not for another eight years, apparently, but she is, and I was there to lift things in and out of carts), but Costco has their cleaning protocols down to an art form. I felt much safer at Costco than I did at Dollar Tree. Not that the folks at Dollar Tree don't try to keep it clean, but the aisles are narrow and people stand too close.

But these are huge productions, with huge precautions taken, because there's a spike in the 'Rona in our area. It's like preparing for battle - or in my area, snowfall - to even get out the door to go further than the mailbox. 

And it's not like there's a lot else for me to do to keep my brain busy. I'm low in seniority at work, so I don't yet have an interim assignment while the students are not in school buildings. I am on the committee for Racial and Educational Justice for that team, though, and that's nice; I get to learn and grow and interact with my peers. Right now another team member and I are compiling a list of words and phrases that are in our everyday speech but have seriously icky or racist or sexist or ableist origins, and some suggestions of what to use instead. So there's that. And I just this minute got some good news about a quickie writing gig! But that won't use up all that many hours or pay all that much money, though whatever I manage is certainly welcome.

In any case, yes. I am grateful. 

I am grateful that Biden/Harris won, though I'm sure the Loser in Chief will still make a stink and I have reservations about how well we can, as a country... progress. But it's better than the alternative.

I am grateful that we're all basically healthy.

I'm grateful that we're safe and together and will continue to be, and that though of course we will miss the larger family at holiday meals, they have promised to Zoom in for dessert.

At least this year the tiny-yet-constant fretful feeling of "did someone cut Abby's apple pie with the knife they used on the pecan?" is not an issue.