Sick and Tired

Not physically. 

But emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

I'm reminded of a song by comedian and musician Bo Burnham. It's called Sad, and contains the line, "my empathy is bumming me out." 

Oh boy, isn't it?

Think of how much harder it must be for people who live this stuff every day than it is for my privileged ass. And there are plenty of folks who have more privilege than I do - I unfriended and even blocked some I know in real life this week - who think they don't have it at all.

I'm trying to stay in my own lane online, and if you know me at all, you know that jumping to others' defense before I have all the facts is something I do habitually (and  I'm working on that). So I'm supporting Black Lives and other people fighting for the side of right, but I'm staying out of their way.

That said, some other ah - current events - are in my wheelhouse. Critical thinking, single parenting, allergies and related healthcare issues, special education - these are things in which I actually have training, first-hand knowledge, or both. People are exhausting right now, even for extroverts.

Some of that stuff is covered in this roundup of false news stories collected by the Associated Press - if the AP is compelled to get into Snopes territory of fact-checking outrageous claims, you know things are a mess. Some are issues of common sense and/or basic decency to me, but others are more concerned with their perception of constitutional rights (hint: nowhere in the constitution does it say you can't be required to wear a mask in public). Some people are willing to die on a hill of Black people finding white use of black emoji offensive. Some issues are too early to call, but everyone is still arguing about them anyway, like what school will be like in the fall. 

Look. On that last? We don't know yet. Just because a neighboring district is sharing their works in progress doesn't mean that that'll be the final state of affairs... for their district or ours. 

Believe me, I understand hating the moving target. I am not a spontaneous person; I like my ducks in a nice neat row, thank you very much. I learned to deal with the new normal and the moving target eventually, but I still hate not knowing WTF is going on. I get it, I really do, and I still feel that way. I'm trying to stay chill - mindful, if you prefer more formal nomenclature - of the world around me. Right now the world around me simply doesn't know. 

Are you an epidemiologist? No? Then you probably don't know more about the transmission of viruses than they do.

And neither do I. Or my county sheriff. Or anyone else who isn't listening to epidemiologists.

I've said it before, but I am super grateful that I'm not responsible for decision-making for a group larger than a household. 

Because if I'm exhausted by people who refuse to think or use logic or empathize, imagine how my state governor or my school superintendent or my county health commissioner must feel right now...

Tough Lessons

I was thinking today, as I called my dad and my father-in-law and my eldest called her dad (if you're not a regular reader, you know my youngest didn't because her dad - my second husband - died in 2016). Anyway, I was thinking that - as tough as this time is for us, with the Covidpocalypse and Online Learning sucking for us and all - how we really do have it easy compared to some.

Yes, I know my concerns and problems are valid, too; I've been in therapy long enough to grok that pretty fully. This is not the Traumalympics. But my concerns and problems are usually anxiety and money. We're healthy. We're privileged. We're safe. I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of weeks, and basically, I've learned to chill out about most things. And to follow rather than jumping in to save.

A lot of people don't have this luxury. 

That doesn't make my trauma any less valid, but it does give me some perspective. 

I don't have to worry about my kids getting killed - or even bullied - due to their skin tone or accent or sexuality. Even if we sometimes have trouble with bills, we're not going to starve or become homeless. Although our schools are not perfect, they are light-years ahead of where they were when I was an adolescent in the same district.

Sometimes even the most privileged have their issues - I am so very glad that I am not in charge of making decisions for anything larger than a household, because it's got to be a totally thankless job to be, say, a state governor or a school superintendent right now - but these pale in comparison to the main issues of the day. 

I've written about this sort of thing before. Yes, I have actually said that I agreed with peaceful protests but not rioting and looting (re: Ferguson MO in 2014). I have a whole blog post that essentially says All Cancers Matter. 

But I think (I hope) I understand it better than I did.

It's Not About Us - Or Maybe It Is

I've been very quiet about making my own posts - both here and on Facebook - during the past few days. I feel like it's not my place to give my privileged (yes, I am privileged in many, many ways) opinion right now.

I'm trying to follow the lead of the people most affected, and for me, that means amplifying their voices where I can, responding with care when I am asked a direct question, and supporting however I'm able.

And for the love of whatever you may hold holy, not getting in the way of progress.

Look, I dislike violence on principle. I can afford to, straight white person that I am. On the other hand, I am fully aware that not everyone has this luxury, and that this exact inequity is one of the key things in all this <waves hand vaguely at 2020>. From our healthcare system (insofar as it is a system) to our educational and employment and justice systems... they're all heavily weighted in my favor, even though I still decry a lot of how those systems have treated me and mine.

But the people fighting for their rights to exist as actually equal human beings - not just officially by law, but in reality - those are the people who need to be heard right now. It's why responding with All Lives Matter is an asshole move; of course they do. But right now the Black Lives are the ones in jeopardy. So stop centering yourself, fellow white people; this is not about you, or rather it's only about you in relation to Black Lives in this moment. You'll get your turn to be the center of attention again. Try not to blow it.

Which is another, related point... other topics which are only tangentially related to the issue immediately at hand? Now is not the time. Talking over people about whatever your pet cause is... is the same exact thing as saying All Lives Matter, and again, an asshole move. I keep seeing (well-meaning, white) folks going off on tangents about abortion or "black-on-black" crime or vaccines or what-have-you, and right now? Tone-deaf as fuck. If you look around you may notice that Pride Month is taking a back seat right now because as a general rule, oppressed folks support other oppressed folks. Not all, of course, but generally.  Because they know how it feels to be unheard forever.

Use your brains. If it's not about racism or police violence, take it somewhere else. I mean, have I posted my usual Cute Things My Kids Say here lately? Sure. But only in specific places, not to the world at large, not this week. It's neither the time nor the place.

You don't have to go out there and risk your physical health to protest. I'm certainly not; I'm keeping my asthmatic ass away from what they assure me is not tear gas, thank you very much.

But get out of the way. Support if you can. Shut up and follow for once in your life.

Top Five Best Purchases of the Covidpocalypse

WARNING: SPOILERS IN SOME LINKS

While this list applies to my family and YMMV, keep these awesome things in mind!

This is not a countdown; I couldn't possibly rank them. So I'll give them each a special title instead.

Tastiest Treat: I originally purchased a pack of Michelle's Maccs for myself as a Mother's Day treat. Let me tell you, they may be expensive (by my standards), but they are worth every penny. If you are expecting overly sweet and unnaturally soft macaroons, or a Mounds bar, these are not it... the flavors are subtle rather than overpowering, and they're freaking awesome. Now, for me, these are a special treat, not a bag of candy/cookies for munching mindlessly. But as I'm trying to be more mindful of what I put in my mouth anyway, they're perfect. Twelve flavors, certified Kosher, and all nut-and-gluten free except the peanut butter flavor (coconut is not a nut, and these are made in a bakery, though, so cross-contamination could exist).

Best Bang for My Entertainment Buck: Now I got a fire in my belly! Honestly, hours and hours of entertainment by way of FUNimation Now Streaming. I got the $7.99 a month version so Abby could have it and now I'm watching (with her) almost as much as she is on her own. Lizzy's watching a bit with Abby as well, and the selection is enormous. Eight bucks a month for hours of keeping us occupied and maybe even picking up a tiny bit of actual information (though Lizzy has been informed that InuYasha cannot be used for her research project on Feudal Japan, except as an example of mythology.)

Super Sodalicious: For Easter, my mom got us a SodaStream. I was a skeptic, but holy cow this thing is awesome! I use it for seltzer (I have three flavor drops - mango, cucumber, and raspberry) and the kids use it for actual soda pop (they like several flavors, but their favorite is the Homestyle Lemonade). It's been terrific to have around, and of course, other flavors can be added... a couple drops of the juice from a jar of maraschino cherries was pretty good, for instance.

Keeping Hands Busy Best: Lizzy is, as you may know, a Fidgeter Extraordinaire. She is also very very hard on her fidgets for two reasons: she doesn't know her own strength, and she tries to take things apart to see how they work. Now, jigsaw puzzles, arts & crafts, and that stuff are awesome (you can't watch anime all day without doing something else; Abby draws) but it tends to be either too big a project for Lizzy's attention span or she gets frustrated with her inability to arts-and-crafts what she sees in her head. Enter two lines from LEGO: the BrickHeadz line and the Minecraft BigFigs line. These are small enough sets that she can do one in about half an hour, and she delights in changing around some of the bricks afterward to make each look slightly different. The BigFigs are allegedly for playing with as well, but the skeleton at least keeps falling over and losing his arrows.

Most Awesome Mask (and Hair Flair) Artist: So we've been buying hair flair from the lovely Cassondra of  Cassondra Creates! for about a year now. She's the creator of Rosie Bands (yes, that Rosie) and has recently expanded her tiny home business to include masks. She was donating masks for the first couple months, and now charges $10 (and includes a hair flair in mask orders) just to pay for materials. She's an artist tending toward the pretty or quirky, and did not so much as blink when I told her we needed masks for the Geeky, the Goth, and the Girly; she had that fabric on hand. She ships quickly and she works really hard to get materials that match the personality and wishes of the customer. Awesome stuff! (Don't worry about my eye - it's harmless but ugly.)

Honorable Mentions:

• Amazon Fire Stick - this was given to us as a gift. We don't have "regular" TV, so this is replacing our aging PS3 as our primary streaming device. The aforementioned Funimation would not be possible on our TV without it.
• Michael's Crafts - they deliver, although delivery is expensive and their website is best viewed on a computer-sized screen. They also have curbside pickup. And Shrinky-Dinks
• The Museum of Flight Store - we got some jewelry for Abby, a puzzle for the whole family, and a couple things that encouraged Lizzy to rearrange and clean her entire bedroom on her own.
• Shipt - Of all the same-day delivery companies, I like this one best. They text you when they arrive at the store (through a filter so they can't see your number) and will always text (if you set it up that way) about replacements. I even have a favorite Shipt Shopper now!
• A new hamster cage for our escape artist. This was also gifted to us by a friend.

I Will Not Die On This Hill

I try really hard to choose my battles, especially when it comes to my girls and on social media.

Sometimes I fail at this.

Which is fine; I'm a human being, and failure happens.

What I won't do is deliberately make my life and my children's lives harder by shooting myself in the foot (just to expand the military metaphor).

I've written about this before, but here's the thing; I don't want to attach negative associations to things that should be lifelong positives.

Learning for its own sake, music and other arts, physical and mental health... these things should be positives, rather than obligations. And figuring out how to phrase things/assign family tasks/where to push and where not to... it's a very fine line and a balancing act on that line.

Even in the best of times, which these are not, scholastically speaking.

Example - generally these things are accommodated, and very well, in Lizzy's IEP. We know what she is capable of at school, how far she can be pushed out of her comfort zone depending on several factors both autistic and adolescent, and that routine is key. And they are doing an awesome job translating that to the distance learning model. But there's also only so much we can manage at home without the risk of her learning to resent things she actually likes, and that I want her to keep liking, like science for the fun of it and music and Feudal Japan.

We've gotten at-home accommodations as well - thank you Lizzy's middle school IEP team - and it's going pretty well. But she seems unable to wrap her brain around attendance in one class and doesn't see the point in optional Zoom cooking classes and also has issues with Zoom piano lessons, though her piano teacher is the most patient person on the planet. I don't want to force her to do these things the school way (because again, I want her to keep liking them instead of seeing them as a chore), so I work around the issues by saying things like, "If you can't find the attendance check-in for that class, email the teacher," or, "Okay, let's do some cooking at home," or, "For today, just do the scales and chords." In general, this works, and I know a few of you will think I'm letting her call the shots. I'm not; she still has to do the things; we're just accommodating for her (and my, as I don't want to have a shouting match every day) specific needs.

The idea is to start the day at Green

Based on conversations with assorted educational and mental health folks here lately and the chart over there, we have determined that most of the time in the Before Times, Lizzy would start the day at Yellow. After breakfast she'd be at Green and generally stay between Green and Yellow for the rest of the school day, depending on the circumstances.

Now, in the Dark Spring of 2020, we've decided that almost everyone is a shade (see what I did there?) more anxious than we would normally be. This also means we can go from yellow-green to dark red in an eyeblink, over something as minor as "let me help you find the check-in so you don't have to email Ms. K every week."

And nobody wants that.

The Four C Words

Not that C-word. I try not to use that C-word. Yeah, yeah, it's less fraught in other cultures, whatever. I still don't like it.

Anyway, part of today's training was a TED Talk from Scott Geller. He's a bigwig in Applied Psychology, and a lot of what he says makes sense to me. This may well be my own internal bias, as a lot of how I've learned to communicate with my youngest is similar or maybe even based on some of his stuff, and he seems to be pretty liberal, politically speaking. So there you go - I am not an unbiased witness.

The training was about working together and thinking positive, for the most part, but I'm gonna take those Four Cs and interpret them in this time of Coronavirus.

The Four C Words in this are:

Consequences - our consequences, of course, are literally life and death. For some people, this is more about making a living being more important than life, as far as I can tell. The problem is they don't want to put their own lives on the line; they want to make it cool for the rest of us to put our lives on the line so they can make more money. I'm not talking about the teeny businesses here - you know how I feel about them - and the ones I know seem more willing to live with the restrictions anyway, as well as the ones more likely to be screwed by the federal government. For whom it seems there are few consequences.

Competence - true competence, to my way of thinking, is doing what you can on your own, and ultimately knowing when to shut your mouth and consult an expert. Or several experts. Which my state governor is doing, and my federal government is very decidedly not.

Choice - the folks out there shouting about not having a choice? They seem to mostly be the same folks who think they should police our choices over our own bodies and relationships (and several of them are clearly raging asshats, given that they're also waving Confederate or Nazi flags. This is not a good look). Yes, my health does actually outweigh your coiffure, you self-important asshole. Which brings us to...

Community - we're supposed to have one. Or maybe Civilization is a better C-word for this. God knows we could use one right about now. I long for the day when we can be decent to each other. I'm really tired of the conspiracy theories, violence, and the money-over-lives bullshit.

I don't like this better than anyone else, I desperately need a haircut, I could really use a massage, and I suck as a homeschool teacher.

The only difference between me and you is that I'm not willing to kill for these things.