Category: Daily

I set the goal of going the entire week without mentioning The Virus, but all I really had to go with was, “Hey guys I’ve decided to grow my hair out and I guess so have you. Words can’t bring us down.”

This morning I saw my (probably in her late 70s or maybe 80s) neighbor backing out of her driveway. Last week I told her to yell if she needs anything, but I guess she didn’t want to bother us. She lives by herself and I don’t want her to die, so tonight I’ll probably go over and break both of her legs. I’ll sleep better at night knowing she can’t leave her house. Who knew it would come down to this?

Henry can’t remember the last time he was crated during the day, and he believes we are staying home just to hang out with him. (He’s not entirely wrong.)

Complaints (withdrawn): I just typed out three complaints, and then I deleted each one because I’m tired of absurd complaints, so why should I add to the stack? I hereby donate all of my complaints to people who deserve them—healthcare workers, people who are sick and/or dying, people who have lost friends or family members, folks who might be hungry or struggling to pay bills, leaders who are simply trying to score more ventilators for their state but are being outbid because the system is screwed up…

It’s National Letter Writing Month. Grab a pen.

Online school started up this week, and it’s been going surprisingly well. The girls get up at around 9:00, they sit in for conference calls, and they’re actually studying and getting stuff done.

This afternoon Meredith asked for some notecards.

Me: How many do you need?
Meredith: Two.
Me: Is it okay if they aren’t lined?
Meredith: It’s fine. I’m doing some science.

Ten minutes later, the girls were huddled up in the family room and I was hearing words like Dominant and Recessive and Heterozygous.

Me: What are you guys doing?
Meredith: We’re building a Punnett Square for Drake’s baby.
Me: Is that for an assignment?
Meredith: Nope.

I don’t mind having them home.

Let’s just act like none of this is happening, okay? NO! It’s not okay. AND, to the people who are all like, Ho-dee-ho, I’m gonna live my life the way I want because none of this is as bad as it seems and I have hand sanitizer in my car so I’ll see you in church on Easter! well, I can barely type right now because I’m shaking my head SO HARD in your direction, and if I wasn’t afraid that you might contaminate me, I would try to fistfight you.

I finished my cardigan and I love it, so there is joy in the cardigan.

All the boring stuff is in this paragraph: My website was hacked earlier this week and I couldn’t log in, so I’ve been without access and my host was like, Sorry, CHUMP, and I (ONCE AGAIN) got mopey and said, “Let it die because I no longer want to deal with this because woe is me.” But then Jeff said, “Let’s just see what else we can do because I’m always optimistic.” So, this morning I paid $200 damn dollars to get my website fixed and keep it protected for the next year and why in the hell does anyone want to take me down? Why does this keep happening? Am I not harmless? Any bug who finds their way into our house is kindly escorted out! It’s all such crap, but it’s also so tiny and unimportant.

Please support your local businesses.

This is my new favorite shirt. It was purchased during the isolation days.

I taught myself to crochet a circle during the isolation days.

I’ve been tuning in for church services during the isolation days.

I’ve knit 1/12 of a linen cardigan during the isolation days. (Knitters: It is two pieces—one for each side. Each piece goes up the sleeve and then divides for front and back. Oh, this world.)

Does anyone need anything from me?

You know, absolutely no one has reached out to ask me how I feel about the coronavirus pandemic. I’m glad, too, because I’m not a doctor, nor do I know what we can or can’t expect from this thing. I don’t feel like I can puke out advice or judgment, but luckily, enough people on Facebook (who are also not doctors) can!

Today I learned that the virus is biblical, so get ready to meet your maker. Also, even though it’s everywhere, the virus is a US election thing and the Democrats are ruining March Madness! And another thing: It’s just media hype. More people will die this week from getting their eyes pecked out by rabid cross-eyed hummingbirds than by catching the coronavirus.

I can’t speak for everyone in my house, but I’ve decided to take my cues from one of my very favorite films.

Truth: I am taking the virus very seriously, mainly because:
1. I love 17 people who just might die if they catch it.
2. My only New Year’s resolution was to stop spreading so many communicable diseases around. (My nickname in college was Sexy Cesspool, and of course I’m lying, but it IS a very fun thing to say out loud, isn’t it?)

For now, these days are over:

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
For now.

I’ve spent the past several years saying this annoying sentence: “I need to get my steps in.” No more! (Similarly, I will no longer say, “I took xx,xxx steps today!” Honestly, isn’t it a little conceited to think anyone cares about how many times my feet lift and then touch the ground again?)

I retired my Fitbit three months ago, and I have no regrets. (Clarification: I have many regrets, but none of them involve taking off the Fitbit.)

My Fitbit has been replaced with a color wheel watch. The guilt-inducing plastic band that rewarded me (with a digital fireworks display) for hitting a step goal after I frantically ran in place before going to bed has been replaced with the creativity-sparking plastic band that inspires me to imagine and build my own rewards. Best of all, the watch doesn’t give me any “Dance, Monkey, Dance!” vibes when I just want to get some sleep.

My only complaint? The ticking. When the house is quiet, I can hear the seconds ticking away on my wrist and suddenly I’m Edgar Allen Poe and I’m pushing chairs across the floor to cover the sound and I talk louder, and why does it not stop?! And it takes approximately ten steps to move this particular chair from one side of the room to the other, and I’ve moved it approximately 1,000 times, so I’ve taken at least 10,000 steps today so I guess I no longer need to get my steps in, and why do you say that I am mad?

Working from home seems nice, doesn’t it?
Carol Channing seemed nice, too.

Peek into my world:
I don’t have a full-length mirror, so this is how I try on clothes.

Every morning:
Get out of bed and shower.
Get dressed and look up all local pets who are currently missing, because if I see Melia, Lucy, or Olivia wandering around, I want to greet them by name.

Every night:
Wash face and put on pajamas.
Crawl into bed and arrange my legs into a diamond so the cats have a warm leg bed.
Look up all local pets who are currently missing. Think about how cold it is outside. Clench jaw. Tighter. Play Candy Crush until I fall asleep with my glasses on.

Unrelated, but sort of related:
My doctor (whom I adore) ((WHOM!!!)) switched up my medications this morning because I’ve been feeling challenged. Without giving you the actual details, let me just say this: If, in two weeks, you find me sitting in the corner chewing on frozen biscuits and listening to some bullshit Celine Dion sludge, please know that I need help. If, in two weeks, you find me sitting in the corner planning an adventure and listening to this, the proper switches have been flipped.

I bought this cleaning cloth last week when Jeff and I saw Ben Folds playing with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. (It was one dollar!) I’ve seen him (Ben Folds, but also Jeff) more than I’ve seen anyone, and his shows never get old. (Related: Photos of Jeff from 2003 look just like photos of Jeff from 2019. Like Ben Folds’s shows, Jeff never gets old. Dorian Gray.)

I’ll come back in a few days to talk about knitting. Why? Because I’ve been knitting.

Back in 2016 I told myself I would no longer tear apart one of the presidential candidates in order to promote the other. I’m going to try (my damndest) to do that again this year, but it might be difficult.

Similarly, I’m going to try (my damndest) to not dehumanize any of the candidates, but it’s important to note that personification is not the same as dehumanization.

Here’s an example. I recently finished reading Quichotte by Salman Rushdie. One of the quotes I enjoyed from the book is:

Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky.
We’re America, bitch. 

(Now, before you get all tied up in knots, please know that the book is a work of FICTION. 100% fiction, probably. Back to the example!)

It’s too easy to say our (hypothetical) president looks like a Christmas ham.

However, it smells like delicious magical realism to say a Christmas ham looks like our (hypothetical) president.

I’m trying to be a better person during this election cycle. I would say I’m trying to be more like Jesus, but then I might be accused of using my faith as justification for doing what I know is wrong.
(All presidents in this entry are fictional, and any resemblance to presidents living or dead is purely coincidental.)

Scout had a tumor removed from her left ear today. Last night we sat and told her what she could expect with surgery and recovery. She listened, but she refused to let our medical explanations bring her down. “Cauterization, schmauterization!” she laughed, before diving headfirst into a bowl of cheesy scrambled eggs. (It’s her favorite meal.) The surgery went well, we picked her up after the anesthesia wore off, and as I type this paragraph, she is sitting in the corner strung out on opiates and nerve blocks.

Speaking of being strung out, I’m in the midst of a medication change. The first step? Cut my current meds in half. I’ve done the half dose thing for a week now, and I feel like I have cobwebs wrapped around my brain, so it seems like art therapy is a good idea, thus I’ve been drawing and painting. This habit may stick.

Also, I’m not a fan of doing the whole selfie thing, and when I post photos of myself on Instagram, I usually cut off my face because it’s my face. Ah, but earlier this week I discovered that I can use filters to make my selfies look magical, so maybe I’m a selfie person after all. The word selfie appears four times in this paragraph, and that’s probably three or four times too many.

Here I am as a baby!

One more thing. I bought Kusama socks and then used photo editing stuff to throw my leg (and socks) into a Kusama room, and this is exactly how I want my life to be.

About a week after Christmas, American Eagle sent an e-mail that said something like, “You just scored a free pair of jeans.” I immediately deleted the e-mail, because that’s what I do to crap liar messages. Early last week I received another e-mail from them that grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled, “Hey! Your free jeans thing is about to expire!”

I decided to call their bluff.

I went over to the website and spent around four minutes browsing through the jeans. I decided to go with the 90s Boyfriend Jeans, because I’m a bit of a dope for the music I listened to in the 90s and the clothes I wore in the 90s and a lot of the experiences I had in the 90s. I then decided to NOT go with the size I currently wear, but the size I WANT to wear. (We all have our problems, don’t we?) I put the jeans in my cart, and I was surprised to NOT receive any sort of pop-up saying “Nice work! You’re only $250 away from your free jeans!”

Over to the check-out info. I signed in and entered my address and flipped it over to the payment info where I kept waiting for the ball to drop, but it didn’t drop. This paragraph is boring, the jeans were free, and the shipping cost was $0.01.

Three days later the free jeans arrived. They did not fit, which is exactly what I expected. When I tried them on and buttoned the BUTTON FLY, my spaghetti octopus of intestines had nowhere to go, so it sucked itself INTO itself (imagine that!) and suddenly my rectum popped out of my left ear.

A few days later, I tried the jeans on right after I got out of bed (when my intestines are the least convoluted), and that’s when I took this photo.

My goal is to wear the jeans comfortably (with my rectum right where it needs to be) on my 50th birthday. I have 104 days to get my shit together. Figuratively. (Also, maybe literally.)

This felt good: Yesterday I took my e-mail inbox from 2,658 messages down to 6 messages. I’m no longer sitting on alerts that say things like “The teabags you ordered in February of 2018 have shipped.”

Meredith has been working a mall job and it’s fun to see how she chooses to spend her money. (She recently purchased pants with faces on them!)
Meredith: Mom, do you care if I buy a tank top that says “Don’t do coke in the bathroom”?
Me: I guess that’s fine?
(She had no intention of buying the tank top. She just wanted to gauge and file my response for the future.)

School was called off today because of ice. The minute the cancellation was announced, many parents felt the need to jump over to the school’s Facebook page to get all angry-faced because, in their opinion, school should NOT have been cancelled. One woman typed that she is “beyond furious” that school is cancelled. BEYOND FURIOUS!!! I can’t even REMEMBER the last time I was beyond furious!

If you were given only 100 whines/complaints to use after age 18, would a school cancellation be worthy? What if we were all forced (by the government, obviously) to balance every whine/complaint with a positive thought? “I would like to complain about the media’s seemingly nonstop coverage of the royal family. With that said, they are all very pretty and/or handsome, aren’t they?”

I was texting with my sister last week, and the autofill feature on my phone was trying to make me choose between Jesus and balls when I wanted to say “sweet veggie-loving hogs”. (I was beyond furious, obviously.)