At first it's liberating. You exist only from the neck up. You don't paint your toes. Then you don't match your socks. You don't shave your legs, then you don't soap them, then you don't spread lotion on them, relieving yourself of fussy habits that took up time before. You still wash your private parts, usually, then less usually, less purposefully, you're not wearing underwear anymore so the whole remove wash put on new underwear 3fer is no longer a guide. There's no yoga, the only reason you ever shaved your armpits anyway. You stand in the shower now, just stand there, like you used to when you shared one and it was his turn to pump the shampoo. Now nobody is there and you rarely bother doing anything. You stand under hot water, that's it, just stand there trying to feel grateful that there is still hot water, trying not to wonder if that will go away too. Later, you watch your hair dry in online meetings, in which you are increasingly muted, springing into massive curls as if it has a life of its own, which it must because yours has slipped away. No it's still there, your life, it's just full of holes now where things have left it that you didn't want to see go. And now it's your mind that is slipping away. It should be directing your limbs to cut onions or something, to make another spreadsheet or something, but it won't. It becomes obsessed with living backwards in time and accuses you, "This is all your fault, if you hadn't let the toenails go nothing else might have been lost. You let the slipping start, and now you can't hold on to anything. You can't even hold your tears in." You try to talk your mind into starting over, let's paint our toes. But it won't. It doesn't trust you anymore and you don't trust it. You and your mind are breaking up, and you don't know how to stop it.

Rochester Regional Chosen to Test Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine | Rochester Regional Health
https://www.rochesterregional.org/news/2020/05/coronavirus-vaccine-trial-rochester tempted to volunteer

Life seems increasingly pointless this way. I will never hug most of the people I love again until there is a vaccine. I will never see my mom. I don't think I can bear it much longer, I am sinking into suicidal ideation more with each passing day like this. So why not?

Jasper is dying. Mid pandemic, he's just dying of death. I find him at all hours hiding in weird places and cold. I study food. I've always studied food, from my dad's make your own wine phase when I was 6 through our try the meat of every varmant phase, through (by proxy) the hippie homeschooling of Spider Lily milling her own wheat berries for pizza with pecans and jalapenos (I still make that recipe), through the revelation of NEW YORK (bagels, majoram, butter lambs, wings, ACTUAL pizza) and my sexy adventures of meat boards and shallot butter.

But Jasper is Just Plain Old. There is no way to feed someone out of that forever.

There is no way to homecook homeschool home ec arts your way out of Revelations - is there?

Morrissey - I'm not a dog the Elon of pop music. Brilliant ft. Douchebag

https://youtu.be/_aBykMbRIog

More hives. Started taking claritin, tho I think it's klonopin I need.

How do you self medicate (aside from the alcoholic factor, of course)? When there is no 108 degrees of yoga to be had. No gym. No reason to buy a dress. Or boots. No facial I can splurge to get, no hands on me of any kind that I can get for love or money or even just for the fuck of it. I hope it gets a little better now that the weather has finally broken, but. I believe that the pandemic is about to get exponentially worse. That, in fact, what I am witnessing is a moment in history when a populist sociopath will have killed millions of people right in front of the world's eyes. That and the unrelenting emotional onslaught of half grown children whose present and futures were just snatched, living close enough to torture me but too far to hug them. Well, let's just say that no number of hanging baskets of flowers are a match for that re my mental health, which is nooooot gooood.

Gotta hand this one to Nebraska. I told him how I used to sew bedding ensembles. That my beds were a work of art. But I don't have a sewing machine anymore, I wept one day, and no way to go to a fabric store either, wherein lay the pleasure by half, letting my eyes just feast on flowered textiles. I liked ensembles that didn't quite match because then my eyes had things to choose from to look at, to make me happy. Which I am not. I have no color even, there is only gray, I sobbed. So, he sent me a bed of flowers

"light reflecting off sequin pillow"

Here's to pawg men.

Get a 100 degree fever mid-pandemic, and suddenly your grumpy kids LOVE YOU SO MUCH (DON'T DIE).

Meanwhile, I got to say "boobs lab", a class in my new gen ed that's become infamous, in front of Mayo clinicians and Rita Charon today. My friend B teaches the class, they run experiments on breast milk donated by our lactating colleagues. B was my co-presenter today, she's a health economist so this whole humanities world is new(s) to her, but she is zealous like a convert. Why was my graphic literature class talking about hand washing back in January?  Cz Covid was coming out of Asia, so I knew it was gonna be racist rhetoric time. I had NO IDEA, but I invited B into my class to grow hand germs on bread with me and my students. She got the bread from Dicamillos, a luxury that I will never take for granted again. A couple months later, after our students had wondered what the fuck does bread and hand washing and breast milk and reading comic books about AIDS pathogens and playing rounds of Pandemic in class have to do with each other or anything (??), the answer(s) became brutally clear. The pandemic is oddly great for humanities work. If you can hack drinking from a fire house of urgent relevance all day. Humanities are like the delivery drivers of higher ed, you had no idea how fucked you'd be (you already were) ..

I'm sick.

If this is Covid, it's a sleeping pill. Asleep for 20 hours of 24. Aside from also covered in hives, I don't feel too bad really. Just, I can't stay awake. I should get nose swabbed, probably, but that feels like an almost impossible level of effort, to DRIVE somewhere, eesh :/

I gotta get up. Today is when I'm scheduled to make a big splash w my new health humanities program at a national conference moved online. At noon. I haven't even thought about what we are going to present, too busy grappling. In fact, maybe I've just had an exhausted nervous overworked crash. It's not the first time that hives and exhaustion put me down weepy. This blog is a record of many repeating patterns and that is one.

I'm going to apply to be a contact tracer today too. I need a 4th job like I need a hole in my head, but .. still ...

It is going to get much worse.

It's like watching a tidal wave rolling up on everyone cavorting on a beach. It's terrifying.

..nearly 1.5 million Americans have gotten COVID, and more than 80,000 deaths have been recorded; experts think the actual number could be five times higher. South Korea, which recorded its first case on the same day as the U.S. and instituted wide-scale testing, has endured less than 300 deaths.

Hers

Lover come over

And still rough

Motherlover

OH FOR CHRIST SAKE

I dunno why 1 that never occurred to me and 2 it is darkly funny. Cuomo reported that 66% of new cases downstate were contracted by people who were sheltering at home, like they got it outa NOWHERE...unless...ohhhhhh (duh)

How did the researchers ...?...like "hey I know you're kinda dying but can you jerk off into a cup for me real quick?" 🤣

And now it is 100% likely I'll be getting a puppy before this is over to add to my collection of Shi Tzus that I got in the years that I had lost hope of ever getting laid again.

Oh for Christ sake :/

I miss my pond. I have missed it since I left it. And I can't get it back. I can't dig that hole again and even if I could, I don't know enough about plumbing. And now I can't even get one installed by a landscaper, my fave pond store is Covid-closed, not even curbside pick-up, no sign of life. So I decided, a container pond, I can do that myself (I think). I found this big ol cast iron tub on Craigslist. .. .. to get it, I have to give my address to some guy ... ... I decide it's worth the risk he that he will rape and murder me cz he probably won't, how do you rape and murder and maintain social distance, right? He showed up with his son and wife and lugged it into my yard in exchange for cash I'd washed with bleach water. They want pics when I've transformed it.

At some point, you have to trust people. Some people some of the time. That's another lesson from the pandemic. Cz now you really have to THINK ABOUT IT every time you have human contact. And you have to ACKNOWLEDGE IT, that no human can live without constant support of other humans.

Self reliance is a complete fantasy.

Reading tea leaves.

I'm gonna guess that the hospitalizations number is key, not the ventilated number. Hypothesis: The ventilated number is going down because 1 it's a risk to healthcare workers so they're probably trying to avoid it and 2 it doesn't work (people die almost always) so healthcare workers are just logically not doing it as much. They should probably be reporting use of ECMO, although that machine is also a risky shit show as I recall...

Meanwhile, everything continues to go to utter shit. At least two of my kids are completely bonkers and a giant pain in the ass - one is here, turning into a gay version of his father (NOT an improvement in the BITCHY department, utterly insufferable), and the other one has The Bug held hostage in a 2 residence home with one residence empty that I'm paying for. Either of those people will have a nervous breakdown and threaten suicide at the drop of a hat. Single mothering, for the record, sucks.

And evvvvvveryone I work with has either lost it similarly or is being driven crazy by somebody who has gone crazy.

+CONSTANTSPECTEROFDEATH

And, I still need to get laid + needy boyfriend far away = few upsides.

In sum,
FUCKMEINTHEGOATASS, shit!

o gee is that a gray sky and relentless cold out my window?, what a big fucking surprise!, I wonder when the hornets will arrive (followed by goddamn frogs raining out if the sky ..)

Awesome.

There is always an upside.

Almost always.

despair formula

X = AHHH (fauxAHH! × president's tenure) + Actual Plague / Icebergmeltingfatigue - dwindling Fucks to Give[squared]

Everyone is laid off. Like, 1 of 3 of people I rely on are not there anymore. Healthcare is laying off healthcare workers. And downstream now universities that educate health care workers are in turn dismantling the infrastructure to do that, despite student want and demand to be in school. All day, my bosses tell me to fire people and close classes. All day, advisers beg me for more classes to offer students. It is the start of MAY, and I'm out of resources for AUGUST = a college moonscape for next semester. I raged all day.

No I cried half the day. Because this morning, it became clear that no matter what I do, I can't see Bug until there is a vaccine. That might be freeing, in its way cz there is NO reason to even try, in that case. And trying is so so TRYING.

Then I raged at work like a banshee.  I don't even give a fuck anymore. I'll tell the president right to her face that she is only so smart as the people around her, and that USED TO BE a university's worth. Now it's just her half dozen faghag groupies left.

Then my own elderly secretary got the boot. Her father and brother have cancer, she cares for them both, she will make more on unemployment than she does for me. Except unemployment is a lie. I know zero persons who have actually gotten that benefit, they can't even get through the call wait time to try. So okay, start a fund for her....

...something useful ....

...then remember: I won't hugnzl again before I die. (Back to crying.)

Even when I'm crying, I am furious. And when I'm furious, I'm sad. 

Old friends

https://vimeo.com/401674433

And I seriously need to get laid

weepy

With enough kicks to head, you can learn to protect your heart from other people. Except your kids.

https://youtu.be/A3yyrsWSSN4

https://youtu.be/EjFN5iVKn6w

um, I think this means that I have great oxygen (no covid) ft the heart rate of a squirrel (yes crazy) 

Mondays are still Monday. I wake up, still not sick but tired to the bone, I just don't want to anymore.

Gratitude. Turn it around in my head. I still have a job. I lie here turning my Mind over, like a fat semiconscious patient in my skull, prone to bed sores, I shove it onto its stomach. Feel. Fucking. Grateful. "I want a cold pressed juice and a yoga class." I know Mind, we all want things we can't have any more. "What is the point?" Don't ask that, just move. "Or what?" Sigh, I dunno man, we just gotta stand up and go turn on zoom and do the dishes and shit. "No." Siiiiigh, how about I jack you up on a momentary high?, let's buy a shirt or something on Amazon. "Amazon is evil." It is, Mind, but you're busted and won't work without little doses of serotonin like a tweaker fuckbrain. "Ok show me the tshirts." A woman in a man's t-shirt and boyshorts, c'mon, you can get out of bed for that... "Oh okay 😤"

"aging in place"

streaming "Waco" 

Today
I saw teenagers on bikes and old people walking beagles, all too close and without masks.
I saw a garbage can belonging to elderly neighbors still on the curb 48 hours after pick up, and I wondered what to do.
I saw construction workers parked in driveways, skulking illegally back to work and spitting on the ground.
I saw a hanging basket of pansies and wondered, Where the hell did you get that?
I saw a young man in mask and gloves deliver beer and sandwich meat to my door for our dinner - he waved, I felt guilty, I tipped him more, I bleached the bag of ham (on the outside), and then worried anyway about touching/eating it (but we did).
I saw everyone on zoom looking like they had to pee and found out it was something called "fitdesk".
A friend texted me: "New game: your pandemic alcoholic name is your first name followed by your last name" and I laughed then coughed.
I smoked too much pot then coughed.
I started to think, I might never hug anyone again - the last person I held was TJ, midfight I scooped him to me and held on tight, a week ago. I was in a zoom today with NOLA Guy, remembering what it was like to kiss him, wondering if I would do it again today. Wondering if I'll ever have anyone's face that close to my own again. If I could put my cheek against anyone's, my arms long for the baby girl above all, I concluded. Hers would be my last hug if I had to choose one. But nobody gets to choose.

retro : when it was a choice

Me: hi Dad
Him: I'm lonely
Me: understandable, good thing you hate people
Him: but not like this, I haven't seen a face in weeks, my friends like to text but I want to hear a human voice
Me: (that's just what Nebraska says, drives me fucking nuts) what did you do today?
Him: I have a trap.under the birdfeeder, a live trap, when the squirrel falls in I leave him there and go around him with the lawn mower
Me:
Him: just for the day, off and on to scare the shit out of him
Me: whhhhhy?
Him: so he won't come back
Me: are you in front of your computer?
Him: I'm on the phone with you
Me: dude you can do both, go turn on your computer
Him: ok it's on
Me: open the email I just sent you, then click the blue link
Him: nothing is happening
Me: it's not magic dad, give it a second...
Him: I CAN SEE YOU O MY GOD YOURE GORGEOUS
Me: (that's just what..) hi
Him: HI
Me: how about we stop torturing small animals for fun? I hear that doesn't end well, psychologically
Him: I let him go!
Me: right, that's the crazy part dad, he's game meat
Him: YOURE GORGEOUS
Me: (sigh)

Trump’s Idea to Inject Disinfectant to Kill Coronavirus Alarms Medical Experts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/coronavirus-dies-fastest-under-light-warm-and-humid-conditions speaking of bonkers

https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/catholic-health-to-furlough-up-to-1-200-workers

Oh that'll be great for morale ft as we rush to open a new facility for them on campus.

check in challenge

text me when you get it (it took me an embarrassingly long time, lolol)

Android sent an update that killed my ability to communicate yesterday for 4 hours, and I saw very clearly my breaking point.

I have a friend I love dearly, he is an angel among people truly, pushing 70, didn't respond (he did but I couldn't get it), he's in Boston with his wife, usually sending me pics of his grandkids

every few days to "check in". Then, he seemed "gone". And I buckled.

My dreams are raw worries that I repress all day in order to work. I wake up tangled in fragments of fear.

It doesn't matter anymore, any prior gnarly reason why you stopped, now every "I am ok / you ok?" is humane.

Set your humane benchmark now and then hold yourself to it as this gets worse. Which it will.

https://youtu.be/1Sw2JJ5nSbM

If you don't get close to anybody (which mostly I prefer anyway), not close enough to 'share droplets', then maybe you won't choke to death 


Bonus track - Get yourself an oximeter 

I've been thinking