Quote of the day: "Calibrate yourself and your expectations so that every morning you aren't waking up disappointed." -Cuomo

pandemic scrapbooking

waking up to dogs on my pillow

leaving messages

birthday w an emergency candle

rereading a book

evidence of housecleaning everywhere ft nobody risks garbage picking this gorgeous table

I take a walk in the evening. People are out with dogs sometimes but less and less, and everyone crosses the street to be many many feet away. I sometimes talk on the phone as I walk, work meetings that start early and go late. I notice: I have to stop talking now if a car goes by, all the cars out are missing a muffler / pieces of shit, only the poor people are still going to work face to face. I see an older woman lugging groceries toward the rent controlled housing unit nearby. She crosses the street to get further from me.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Somewhere in the world, a person thinks about you with love and beautiful intentions. In a related story, you'll fall into a good mood with no obvious reasons for why you're there.

"There" as in still above ground, I am assuming. 

I should run but there's nowhere to go and too many of us to move. I'm fucking terrified.

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/03/24/cuomo-to-trump-administration-you-pick-the-26k-people-who-are-going-to-die-1268833

Spanish Military Finds Dead Bodies And Seniors 'Completely Abandoned' In Care Homes : Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/24/820711855/spanish-military-finds-dead-bodies-and-seniors-completely-abandoned-in-care-home

Dr. Gale Burstein said if you have traveled in your community, you should assume you were somewhere with a possibility that you were exposed to coronavirus.

Shit, God dammit 😖

I work loooong days now. Cmon and ZOOM! Remember when what I did for a living was find ways to keep students from flunking all day? That again.

samantha fish - chills and fever

Lost sense of smell is an early indicator that you're carrying the virus. Test yourself, like sniff an onion or something (?) Those little wake you up with a bad smell if you pass out things that used to be taped on walls in hospitals, smelling salts?, are they still there?

This wasn't a good time to break my nose :/

Neil Diamond




Ok ok I take it back about Whitegirlrapper :/

I had to leave safety to go get appliances delivered, then run to campus for a minute to send files home from my work pc. I filled up with gas, bought the last of the milk and bleach at that gas station, then came home and passed out cold from the expenditure of mental energy that it took to be out in the world for just that long.

I drove by the park, it was packed with people, jogging and walking in groups. Baby strollers. Skate boards.

I thought: I didn't know that was safe, maybe I should stop being such a paranoid introversionaniac, and go to the park...

Then Cuomo came on to plead with people to get out of the fucking park, like right then as I was driving by it.

People are not listening. Maybe they CANNOT. Hear what the birds are saying.

hope that dude isn't gonna die ft just getting by

Update, it's actually not my imagination. Air and water quality are rapidly dramatically improving. It sure has seemed like birds are losing their minds, chirping at midnight wtf.  San Francisco has a nearly 40% drop in smog as of today. So I guess the birds DO care about pandemics, i.e. they feel like I left a week or so ago (woohoo!)..

I wonder of butterflies will rebound 🤔

Bonus: nature cams

-_0 birds don't care about pandemics

I want one last hand rolled cigarette. That sluttysexydamp tobacco. Filigree paper. Just one. Just one loooooonnng draaaag.

Shit

Ok this isn't that much fun anymore. Especially since we all figured how to fucking zoom. Now we're all going to die AND I still have to go TO MEETINGS.

Plus I'm trapped inside with two college kids, one of whom just got home probably carrying the damn plague AND AS CRABBY AS ALWAYS.

Ugh.

"write like colson whitehead," etc

careerus swandiveous magnum opus

jeezus, that was like 3 weeks ago, I was nearly 'done', maybe I should take a cruise, I wondered..

..

 I was full of so much NOOOOOO that I secretly suspect I summoned a petulance, like the haboob

🤔

Broken Nose

Campus froze its funds, I'm not sure when I get paid / reimbursed next. I'm working because

My bosses treat people like disposable crap

Nebraska starts to unravel, despite his paycheck is fine (noting that existential dread, versus situational, it gets on my fucking nerves)

My sister is gravely silent

My youngest is homesick somewhere in Kentucky



... ...

I broke my nose

It hurts!

before/after

I gotta stop looking at the news. West Virginia, last state without the plague. So. Cabinporning instead of more news...

Wow.

Update: nope. (Duh.)

I live prepared for the worst. As I breathe, inhale (brace for it) exhale (accept it). Probably always have by half, and it has been incurable since Trainwreck. It is my brainchemical reality. How did FPH put it? "Injuries don't just fade in midlife." So weirdly, I feel kinda FINE right now, like in synch for a change with the world, which is now also feeling dread and like staying home.

Somewhere, Train is cleaning his guns, chain/sneak smoking, feeling right with the world also, in emergencymode.  He perfected my tuning to harmonize with catastrophe, though my response is RETREAT versus put the sirens on. I'd be packing large lunches for him if we were together now, while at work his adrenal glands would be confusing his brains for his balls, him bonding with some co-worker broad in the heat of crisis. I hope his kid(s) are healthy. But also, I hope Whitegirlrapper bitches him out and is best friends with his mother ft lets her own mother be camped on his couch constantly - gigglegiggle - just thinking that the world is coughing on him while he tries to be all EMT-y about it and she's ladling boring-harpy like existential-gravy all over him gives me the giggles. C'mon, that's fair. And funny.

Meanwhile, Nebraska is blessedly in Nebraska. He was supposed to fly here, but No. Then he wanted to drive, NO. Finally I have to say: I wanted the world to stop. And now it has. 

I am going to curl up here in my girlcave. Lacking only for a song.

it's like everyone with my genetics is singing the praises of staying home w stockpiled pasta 

Play me a song?

"dance moves"

hahahaha

"YA YA", aka the slightly scary smirking bitch at the center of Reality

I thought the end of the world would be cooler than Wal-Mart with my mom

I bought another house. I am too emersed in life to want to write about it much. In my kids, my job, warily letting a man near me while holding him at bay also, life upon life upon life. The surgery worked. But I am worse for wear, heavy still in my mind especially from the months of being pinned down. So I do what I always do when desperate and I need to stand back up - I go balls out at Doing.

But it feels different. It feels like a hat trick that I know I can't keep pulling forever. It makes me quiet. As if to ration my remaining energy more carefully.

The house is an investment. I won't live there. But. She will more than live there. Glow. She will grow up there.

I look down. I always looked down when I was small like her, watching my legs move to hold me up and move me around. I was in love with my own short sturdy brown legs, some of my earliest wordless memories. I stand in the empty house, mine for an hour, I look down at the stained red scratched bald old floor and notice the inlay underneath the years of crud and gobbed on red semi translucent whatever was fashionable in circa 1940. I text the convict ripped neck tattoo floor guy. Remember me? Seconds later: Yes, I do. Good. Because I might just go down that block, buying her neighbors, who would be my sons now that The Girl is settled. Well, my son, living near my daughter, and my youngest - a They, a multifarious blessing.

The virus spreads and everyone braces themselves. Shaken. It feels as if the world just caught what I've been feeling for God knows how long now. A year? Since 2014? Welcome to the party of battening down hatches. I have a year's worth of toilet paper and bear mace, for whatever that's worth. You probably have hand sanitizer. It isn't worth much. Like most things you believed in, once upon a time

public health faculty helped me test it

(don't) play me a song (?)