On a Downswing

A bitmoji cartoon of me, a chubby,
fair-skinned, green-eyed, brunette-
with-grey woman in a pale-blue
top, with a green depression
support ribbon on the chest.

We all - anyone who has known me for more than a couple of weeks - know why this is. (TL:DR, coming up on the sixth anniversary of my husband's death)

It's things like this that prove you can't just positive-think (or yoga or sunlight or crystal or meditate or special-tea or wiggle your toes in hot pink Himalayan sea salt harvested by virgins on the full moon or or or...) your way out of depression. Not all the way, anyhow. 

If I could, I would. 

And goodness knows I have tried.

Don't worry; I'm okay. I'm not having self-(or other)-harming thoughts or anything like that. 

Just feeling down.

Part of this is the obvious thing up there, a bit of it is the weather, this horrible allergy season, money, the folks I see already gearing up to make this school year harder than it needs to be, the state of the world, assorted plagues, the usual suspects, blah blah blah.

I'll get over it.

But in the meantime, I'm gonna pout. And write utter fluff posts rather than anything serious.

It's Been Awhile

No particular reason.

All of my usual day-to-day has been Too Much - I'm even behind on reading and games.

This just doesn't happen.

Not often.

I feel fine except for the constant onslaught of allergens this year, and the weather getting back to high-of-70-and-slightly-damp is helping that a lot. Highs in the 90s (for several days running. In western Washington) with the extra-bad-allergy-season are no fun at all.

I mean, I also have the entire score of Mamma Mia! in my head.

On that note (hah! that note. For songs, hee hee...), there's one weekend left of Studio East's production of Mamma Mia! at the Kirkland Performance Center (KPC). 

On Kirkland Avenue. 

In Kirkland Washington. 

That just tickles me. I should live there.

Oh. My kid is in both casts, as a Featured Dancer and Backup Singer. People keep asking. 

Masks not required but strongly encouraged.

I Can Do The Thing

Really, I can.

I think.

I'm at the eye-crossing stage of fatigue right now, for the past three days, no matter how much I sleep. Mind you, I was very cross-eyed as a small child, and it's a sure sign of fatigue when it starts happening now. 

I mean, I have reason for fatigue. Don't we all? What with shootings and pandemics, all the -isms and -phobias, and people just Being Jerks.

But it's still disconcerting.

One more week of my school district's 2021-2022 school year (a neighboring district to which I transport a student goes until the 23rd), and boy will I be glad when that's done! Not the work so much - although with the number of personnel we have out with Covid or other reasons, we're all pitching in and taking extra routes, even those like me, who don't drive actual buses - as the process of Lizzy finishing middle school. She did not take well to distance learning, academically or socially, and we're really looking forward to a break before she rejoins her besties in the fall (they went to a different middle school than she; they were in elementary together).

At least I have a working computer again. Have you ever tried to type a 300-600-word article on an iPhone? Not great for fingers or eyes.

This spring has been ridiculous as to allergens - warm and wet springs in Seattle are always like that.

My doctor, when asked if I should have this test or that shot or the other procedure, has taken to saying, "Over 50. Asthmatic. Works with children. YES."

So - given that I have full containers of this and that allergy meds and such - I should be able to deal. 

One more week. 

I can do the thing.

Really, I can.

A Mother's Work Is Never Done...

...and that is totally okay with me.

A Bitmoji cartoon of me, a brunette-with-grey
and fair-skinned woman wearing blue,
toasting with wine. The caption says
Happy Mother's Day.

Today is a mixture of mom tasks, daughter-of-a-mom tasks, sibling tasks, and - most importantly - celebrations of all these people. It's almost ten AM and I have called my mother-in-law, checked on my (step)brother and his wife (his mom, my stepmother, passed away a couple of weeks ago), folded a load of laundry, asked my girls to do the dishes and take out the garbage, mindfully wore a short-sleeved shirt, and actually done something with my hair.

These last two do have a purpose, as silly and minor as they may seem to the casual observer. Short sleeves are because I'm getting a second Covid booster today (I'm over fifty, asthmatic, and work with children), and hairstyling is because my mom enjoys it when I look "put together" (which I don't usually; I just pull the hair out of my face and call it good).

So that's the Mothers' Day plan at Chez GamersBabes in 2022. Call or otherwise contact affected family members, do Mom Things around the house, go to my mom's with my sister for coffee and pastries and chat, run an errand, get a Covid booster, pick up my mom's groceries curbside, come home and probably do more Mom Things, and lastly, eat comfort food (yes, it is Lizzy's specialty of tuna salad on sourdough with the fancy toothpicks and all), and eat whatever special dessert Abby is making as her gift to me (her specialty is chocolate chip cookies, but I'm prepared for a surprise).

I have a number of friends who dislike Mothers' Day for assorted reasons, and that's absolutely valid. And to these friends who struggle, just know that you are loved and appreciated by me, regardless of the day. 

To those who do celebrate, Happy Mothers' Day!

Lessons Learned

Nothing serious here, really. Not the usual diatribe about selfish asshats or any of the deep stuff about Life During a Pandemic or my common rants about those asshats up there persecuting whatever group is being persecuted this week.

Or not much, anyway. There may be bits of these. But mostly just a bulleted list of random things learned or relearned this spring.

• That garlic in the pickled carrots? It's to flavor the olive oil and thereby the carrots. It is not for eating. It's mostly raw and it hurts going down.
• The sharp feeling of extreme relief when the Low Battery light in the car turns out to be indicating a low battery in the key fob.
• Teens and preteens still like to search for their Easter candy.
• Sometimes the old video games are the best. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my ancient (32 years is ancient in game-console time) SNES with my ancient SNES controllers is the best!
• Trust the Libby app's book recommendations.
• I am dismayed that our Superintendent of Schools is leaving us, even though I'm excited for her. Do I think she's perfect? No, although I think she's excellent and the people of the school district on the other side of the country are lucky to get her. 
• I hope we get a decent new Superintendent because as much as I'd love to rub the (few but very noisy) entitled asshats' noses in how wrong they were about her, I don't want any of us to have to go through that to learn the lesson.
• My fingers are getting old. The SNES is great, but the controllers are... less than ergonomic.
• I was a snob regarding college. I blame the hiring manager who talked me into going to college when I was 42 (he was about half my age) because "your lack of a degree tells me you can't stick to things." (No, it told you I couldn't stick to things when I was 17. I'm a grownup now, thanks). 
• But yeah, I still bought into the "degrees make everything better" schtick, until I realized: I have a four-year degree in Intercultural Communications and I drive a school bus for a living. 
• The degree in IC does improve my side gig of 8-10 hours a week writing internal copy for a company, mostly in the Diversity and Inclusion space; it does not really affect my primary employment.
• Supply chain shortages are weird. Some days they're toilet paper, and a week later it might be chocolate coins or clam strips or Otter Pops.
• Apricot nectar is an excellent sweetener for chai.

This post reminds me of some of my early Random Posts before the world got weird. It was nice. I enjoyed it.

It's Not That Simple

Given that it's Autism Awareness Month (and for the love of whatever you may hold holy, remember that awareness is not the same thing as paranoia, please), I thought this was a good time to write this.

A well-meaning person (friend of a friend of a friend) said to me, "Look at how smart your Lizzy is! She must do really well in school!" They were saying this in reference to a Facebook Memory I posted, wherein then-six-year-old Lizzy stated, "myths are like fairytales we used to believe before."

Well, yeah. She was right, they are.

But this well-meaning friend of a friend of a friend (WMFFF) doesn't seem to get that wise little statements like these and excelling in school (or even attending school every day) are not the same. Not at all.

One of these is a one-off statement, clever, off the cuff, probably when everything was okay in her then-very little world. 

The other is a complicated series of things, involving self-confidence, executive (dys)function, anxiety about everything from grades to antimaskers up in her face, self-esteem, boredom with some subjects, being a teenager, shame about previous school behavior, the inability to grasp why she needs to know dates and names when she already understands the stories behind them, trouble staying on task, finally being able to start to deal with her father's death, poor habits she picked up during distance learning, being terrible at asking for help, impulsivity when stressed, the need to understand the why rather than just the name/date facts, and a lot of autistic/ADHD overwhelm at the mere thought of facing any of these, much less all of them.

(And no, none of it is due to vaccines, none of it can be cured or even should be; the issue here is that the world is not built for people who think differently. That's it. That part is that simple. If the likes of Autism Speaks would shut up and let actual autistics speak, they might learn something.)

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here (through my own slippery neurodivergence) is that the issue lies not with Lizzy. Nor with me. Not even with her school (they have tried so hard - bent over backward - to get her on a track that she can thrive in, from switching teachers to letting her draw or read to other accommodations. They're great!). 

The problem is with the system at large. Not even just the educational system (though that's part of it) but the whole dystopian, unrestrained-capitalism, screw-the-planet, -ist and -phobic, awful system that basically says, "If you can't conform to this set of mostly unspoken arbitrary rules, then you're not a whole person."

And because we're all steeped in this since birth, programmed to think this way by society at large, even the kindest of WMFFFs think - way deep in the backs of their minds where they can't even perceive it consciously - think that if we just tried harder, we could be rich or lose weight or get straight As in school or avoid illness or climb the corporate ladder faster.

I wonder how many of them stop to think that maybe - just maybe - it's not all about "getting ahead."