A New Hope?

Not that new hope.

A cartoon bitmoji of me, a smiling,
white, green-eyed brunette-with-grey
woman wearing a green sweater
and a gold 2022 crown

I don't have high hopes that 2022 will be awesome, but I do have some hope.

Example: I love my job. It's not super safe right now, what with the Omicron variant of Covid and parents who still think it's okay to send their kids to school if it's "just a cold" (not that it ever was okay) because honestly, how would they even know without testing? But I love it.

It's also part-time because by both union and school rules, I count as a substitute. And there (usually) isn't work in the summer. And it's rather ad hoc, because the student load is highly variable, depending on weather, Covid, and each student's pretty fluid housing situation.

I don't really mind either of these things, but what I am concerned about is that this is also not a terribly stable source of income. It varies widely due to the reasons stated above, and also because it's a school district position, my paychecks come only once a month.

I can write (see?), but writing for my personal blog or Vocal or whoever is even more ad hoc than McKinney Vento driving, and my other writing work is freelance stuff that lasts a few weeks before it dries up and I have to go through the process to find a new gig again. I'm still in the running for one of these, but who knows how that will pan out? I can do retail or call center customer care or deliveries, but I would really really rather not be out among the viral strains more than I already am; I'm the only parent Lizzy has left (Abby's dad is alive and well, and Abby's a legal adult (most ways) besides).

Wow, that turned into a lot, didn't it? At any rate, what I really hope for (for me; the kids are a separate matter) in 2022 is a part-time (like 15 hours a week), remote (from home), writing job with like a year or two contract, to do in addition to driving the kids. And if it wants to ramp up for summer hours when I'm off work, so much the better.

Speaking of the kids, at least they're currently as safe and happy as I can make them. We've postponed their NYE girls' day out plans until there is less snow, ice, and omicron out there (and hopefully at least Abby can be boosted; Lizzy's not old enough for the booster). We'll do some of that from home tonight instead - watch movies, play games, do our own mani-pedis, pizza (for them; pork chop for me because dairy is bad), and sparkling cider. 

Abby's school is in person this quarter (after a week of remote for covid-and-weather concerns) so that should work out well for her. Lizzy's school hasn't said yet, and I work for her school district (see all that up there) so I have mixed feelings. I want to work, I need to earn money, and Lizzy really needs to be at the school (distance learning is not her bag). But I don't want either of us exposed to kids whose parents think nothing of having huge unmasked events with their unvaccinated families and then sending their kids to school.

Ideally? Distance learning for a week or two (paid, because why not, as long as we're wishing?) and then back to the buildings. 

Wouldn't that be nice?

All's Well That Ends Well

So I spent the morning alternately cleaning the house and writing a diatribe (on my more political account over at Vocal Media) regarding the school shootings here lately, and I'm looking forward to trimming the tree with the kids in the afternoon. 

This did not go as planned.

Our artificial tree won't light up anymore.

Liz, 14, suggests Google. Google tells me that the average lifespan of pre-lit artificial Christmas trees is seven seasons. Well, this is season 8 of owning this tree - Lizzy picked it out herself when she was six - so there you go.

So after a little internet checking for who might have affordable trees in stock, Lizzy and I head to Target.

Yeah, no.

Most of their trees are either over a hundred dollars - up to $350 - or over seven and a half feet tall.

Or both.

And as our ceilings are fairly low (that same seven and a half feet, in fact), it's a no-go.

All right, on to a local hardware store, buying local is good, right?

Uh, sure. If you're rich.

At this point, in addition to all the swearing I've been doing because I'm super frustrated and last week's vague elbow injury is sore again, I've become aware of a nagging ache in my lower back. Must've tweaked it somehow while getting decorations out of the shed. 

Grand.

Anyway, we hit Home Depot, same issue. All artificial trees are too tall and/or too expensive, especially the lit ones. I wouldn't mind a live tree (not big on the cut trees because they're a fire hazard and a pain in the neck to take care of), but most of the living trees within my price range are about on par with Charlie Brown's tree, and we have an entire solar system of ornaments to put up here. 

Literally.

Including Pluto.

So we end up in my work parking lot, a safe place to use the phone, checking the Walmart website. As much as I loathe Walmart, it usually is cheaper. I get all excited because the website claims to have a 6' tree, prelit in your choice of white or color, for $40, in stock for pickup!

Except that for some reason, Walmart thinks I'm in Los Angeles.

I'm in Seattle, but my time zone - thanks Apple! - is listed as Cupertino, so...

I'm about ready to cry (for the second time that day, although the first was closer to hysterical laugh-crying) but we decide to hit Fred Meyer (the PNW's version of Kroger) on the way home. 

Finally! 

It took some time and some doing - and my helper stayed in the car because she was about peopled out - but I finally found a great tree for our purpose! Six and a half feet tall, pretty skinny, prelit with twinkly white lights, and on sale!

Ugh, but the sale price is still above my budget. And I can't find a box to match the display. So I ask the person running the garden center if there might be another shipment in the back. 

No, they say, but I can sell you the floor model for a discount.

And the cashier can add another $12 off because of the holiday sale going on.

So, we're safely at home, about to eat dinner and then decorate the tree, and cozy-warm. 

And I met my step goal for the day, so...

EDIT: now we can't find the tree ornaments. We have banners, stockings, hats, snow globes, music boxes, even Dreidel Mickey and Christmas Dora, but no ornaments.

I'm going to bed. We'll look again in daylight, maybe run to Grandma's storage unit.

A Day In the Life (WTF Edition)

Cartoon rendition of me, a pale-skinned
brunette-with-grey person looking
relived, with the caption PHEW

Buckle up, folks, because I'm taking you for a ride. Do not fret; ultimately everything worked out. But it was a heckuva day, nonetheless. 

• My personal car wouldn’t start.
• I got Abby to take me to work in grandma’s car.
• I left my badge/keycard in my personal car where it lives.
• I called work to let me in.
• Abby left to take Liz to school since by taking me to work Lizzy will have missed the school bus.
• Work informed me that my morning route has been canceled today. The parent called in literally two minutes before I called from the front door.
• I called Abby to come to pick me up after dropping Liz.
• I had to be back in the work neighborhood in just under two hours at my doctor’s office across the street for my yearly physical, but my roadside assistance is tied to my phone account so I need to be where the dead car is.
• At home, I call roadside assistance and they assure me they will send someone out to jump-start my car. There is some confusion (as usual) because my address is hard to find.
• Nothing happened and I was still waiting on a call when I had to leave for my doctor's visit. 
• As long as I was there, I needed to get a signed form from Lizzy's doctor to the middle school, so I asked them for that. They said sure, no problem.
• Had a good doctor's appointment. Blood pressure and O2 and all were normal, in spite of the frustrations of the morning. The doctor reminded me that I am not Superwoman, I can't do it all by myself, and for the love of whatever you may hold holy, stop beating yourself up when you don't get All the Things done in the ridiculously short amount of time you have allowed yourself. She approved of my method of slowly reintroducing foods to my delicate tummy. 
• Flu shot & labs - thank goodness - now I can have breakfast!
• I went to the front desk and asked for Lizzy's form to take back to the school. It wasn't ready yet, so I told them I'd be back later since I work across the street.
• In the elevator, I got a call from... you guessed it, Lizzy's pediatrician, but the call dropped because, well, elevator. I called them back from the lobby, jumped through all the gatekeeping hoops... and it still wasn't ready; they just wanted to make sure it was for the same kid because the doc office has her under Elizabeth and the school has her under Lizzy.
• I got home, and while I was on hold trying to find out whether the roadside assistance people were ever going to come, I went out to check the car again, just to see if I'd missed something. 

Narrator - she had, in fact, missed something.

• As far as I can reconstruct, my car was in Park enough to take the key out of the ignition, but close enough to Reverse that it wouldn't start. I should've clued in when the automatic side doors wouldn't open, but I had attributed that to low battery. 
• Okay then, we took grandma's car back to her house, I took Abby to work, dropped by the doctor's office to pick up Lizzy's form, and went to work. 
• I got out to my work vehicle and realized I had the wrong key; I was holding the key for the van I use in the morning. I thought ruefully that evidently the Universe would like me to get allllll my Fitbit steps in today as I went back for the afternoon key.
• Work was uneventful, aside from a pair of middle schoolers having a rather awkward conversation when one tried to clunkily compliment the other for being kind.
• Traffic was meh.
• Got done with work - I wonder if I have my morning run on Monday because the kids said they're moving but we need to hear that from their adults - and I headed home to pick up Liz for a trip to Target to see about getting her a new onesie (what I would call a blanket sleeper) because hers is uh... a trifle snug. We stopped for gas on the way.
• Experienced a moment of panic (after being in the checkout line behind a woman who - in addition to making eye contact with the cashier as she tucked her mask into her pocket - was unkind to her baby, snappish with the other woman shopping with her, loudly proclaiming that she should get tax exemption because she's from out of state, and popping her gum), I couldn't find my debit card. The cashier (remember, they had been recently dealing with a not-nice customer) suggested rather diffidently that it might be in my jacket pocket,

Narrator - yes, it was in her pocket.

In any case, I (mostly) maintained equanimity throughout. Nothing worse than eye-rolls and self-deprecating humor and the occasional under-the-breath WTF. I feel pretty good about that.

People and Pandemic Fatigue

Cartoon of me, a sad-looking, green-eyed
brunette-with-grey woman, in a floral jacket
lying on her side on a white pillow.

That must be what it is. I mean, here I am, same Jenn in the same house with the same kids and the same job. I'm contented; I love my job, I love the kids at home and at work, but pretty much everyone else on the planet can go take a flying leap right now.

Well.

That's an exaggeration. 

I guess mostly it's disappointment in people I would've thought know better.

Yeah, yeah, I said I'd separate my personal life (here) from my public opinions (Vocal). Go over there if you want to read serious ranting on my part. But it's hard to compartmentalize to that degree, because I am part of the world. I may be a lot more introverted than I was before Laston's death and all this social distancing, but I'm not a hermit.

I'm a social being.

And it hurts me - sometimes (like now) to the point of actual, physical pain - to see people I otherwise respected until recently behaving so simultaneously unkindly and illogically.

How can you possibly think, for instance, that having an expert (whom you otherwise decry as being "a tool of the union") teaching your child their ABCs in person is more important than that teacher's life and health? Or that your child knowing they have a right to ask people not to touch them is wrong? Or that somehow, someway, being asked to wear a piece of cloth over your face is equivalent to actual atrocities?

I used to like everyone, or nearly everyone.

I don't right now.

Right now, school bus drivers are being stabbed in public school parking lots (we'll know more details of that on Monday) and we don't know why, but it'll probably be something like masking requirements in public school. Or the recent boogeyman of "Critical Race Theory" which isn't even being taught in public schools, certainly not at the elementary level. 

My own school district has people who tried to recall the school board during a worldwide emergency because they didn't like the way the pandemic was being handled. While the courts threw that out for lack of factual evidence, the same group is still spreading the same crap in a bid to challenge the school board in the next election. They keep getting called out and they keep ignoring the call-outs or inverting them.

I don't like being this cynical. I don't like disliking people. I don't like getting sick for the first time since January of 2020 (news flash, masks work, y'all) through a combination of stress and allergies.

But here we are.

Does it Hurt Your Brain?

It hurts mine, when I observe the cognitive dissonance - my own or someone else's - in action.

Example of my own: I know that I should not have more than one serving of dairy a day. I'm both lactose intolerant and mildly allergic to whey (one of the two main proteins in milk, along with casein). But I went ahead and had the homemade nachos (yum) and the a la mode part of the Abby's Homemade Apple Pie With Apples From Our Own Trees a la mode (even more yum). Want a picture of the pie?

homemade apple pie with a lattice top sprinkled with powdered sugar

Here ya go (no picture of the dairy - it was cheap vanilla ice cream from my local version of Kroger - but I digress. And yes, the crust is homemade from scratch. Abby's getting really good at this. But I digress again):

Anyway. The point is, I know better than to have two servings of dairy in one day - one meal - even with the Benadryl. And yet I did it.

And I owned my decision, except for a few minutes this morning (with a Benadryl hangover and before coffee or food) when I hated everyone. I was grimly prepared for my youngest to be a total jerk before she even got out of bed and I was cranky about it.

But that's the difference between me and the people I see around me exhibiting similar logical fallacies; I will own up to it when I notice it, have it pointed out to me, or fix the problem with caffeine and blood glucose.

I know I have written about this a zillion times, but the ones who truly make me want to slap them are the ones who clearly do not care about anyone but their own, though they give lip service to the "think of the children" schtick. They aren't thinking of the children. They're thinking of the "good ol' days" when it was more socially acceptable to be a jerk to everyone not exactly like them.

All of this is exacerbated (and probably in some cases, like freedumb-fighting antimaskers, triggered) by things like a global pandemic that's been going on for almost two years now.

It was interesting today, as I was perusing my Facebook feed (pretty well-curated; I try not to have an echo chamber but I don't want to listen to the likes of ultra-right talk show hosts, either. And again, before coffee or food and with that Benadryl hangover). I came across a discussion of Star Trek - generally a fairly safe topic, if often a little odd - and the various qualities of the different series.

And (as also often happens with discussions of Marvel movies, but again, I digress) people were losing their minds over how Gene Roddenberry must be turning over in his grave over "the slap in the face" that is Star Trek: Lower Decks. Not because it's animated, or slapstick, but because it's "too woke."

I'm sorry, when was Star Trek not woke? I mean, sure, there are differences based on what was considered appropriate at the time (um, hello, Orion Slave Girl Dancers), and individual episodes like Beverly Crusher and the Haunted Sex Lantern or Spock's Brain, but in general, Trek has always been about social justice and being a decent person and valuing diversity and so on. Even some Klingons are pretty aware of this, after all!

I feel like a lot of my peers in age - I'm firmly Gen X - have forgotten the lessons learned via Star Trek and Sesame Street and The Avengers when they were children. Instead, they have chosen to care only for themselves and the people just like them. Forget that IDIC and We All Sing With the Same Voice that you learned as a child.

And they don't seem to notice they're doing it, to get back to the main point of this post. Or if they do notice, and it causes them that cognitive dissonance, it just makes them meaner.

I was that person this morning before my coffee.

How do people who behave like that all the time manage?