Planning Ahead Is a Luxury

Detail from my wall calendar, which in April 2020 had all colors, no code, because there was no-place to go.

In LBC (Life Before COVID), I was an avid planner-aheader.  I would be at the doctor or dentist or salon or mammogram place and always, always, always set up my next appointment before I walked out of the building from the appointment I just completed.  I do the same with Zoe's appointments and the dog's appointments, as well.  Then I'd put the appointment in my iCal, and when I got home, I'd write the new appointment on the wall-calendar and also in my planner.  Of course the appointment card would get snapped and kept in my photos on my phone, and the original would get stapled to the calendar on the appropriate month.  Just in case.

I never got into fancy planners with breaking out stencils and stuff.  I do a little bit of color-coding by who the appointment or event is centered around.  Nothing too crazy.  And I use stickers to pretty up a page on the calendar or in my planner, more for my own amusement than for meaning.  I have a system that works for me.  I don't forget an appointment, if I have it written on the calendar and backed up with iCal. 

Something about having a planned-ahead plan really does it for me.

Over the last few days, I've been going through my iCal schedule, seeing what's on the horizon, and I've scrolled through appointments that have been missed because the places I'd go for the appointments have been shut down.  I've noticed upcoming appointments that I made in LBC that have butted up against appointments with my therapist, that I can serve here at home, and calls for my schooling that I do here at home. 

Those appointments are all in the future, maybe by a couple months, even, but seeing those remnants of LBC next to evidence of Life Right Now sort of gave me a moment's pause. 

The appointment that really stopped me was Zoe's appointment with her ENT in July.  The last time we were there, it was March 10th.  Things were starting to get a little spooky up around Buffalo, but it really seemed like Life would go on as normal, despite all this Coronavirus talk.  Seriously.  I made her next appointment for July.  We talked about how, if the tubes in her ears didn't come out on their own between March and July, we'd have to schedule her for surgery in the fall to have them taken out.  It's been two years already, since they were placed. 

In a box-within-a-box kind of scenario, that discussion really messed with me on March 10th.  I didn't like the uncertainty of not knowing whether those ear-tubes would come out on their own.  I didn't like having to wait until July to know if we'd have to schedule surgery for the Fall. 

And now I'm wondering if we'll even have the appointment in July, and if we don't, then what?

It's funny.  Two months ago, on March 14, I figured things would be all back to the way they usually are by March 28.  Certainly by May 14.  We're Two Months into this thing.  It feels like Two Forevers.  As I sit here, looking ahead Two Months into July, I just don't know what to count on anymore, other than what's right in front of my face.

Back at the beginning of all this, there was a lot of talk about what the Pause was trying to teach us.  To live in the moment.  To appreciate.  To not take life for granted.  I haven't seen a lot of that talk lately.  I think I haven't seen that talk at all, now that I think about it.  We've all descended into a big funk, and I don't blame us.  When the present day feels like all the days in the recent past, and LBC feels like somebody else's life, you get a little sick of trying to find a lesson.  You just feel like Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, right around the time when he starts getting dark.  We're Dark Phil.  Just don't take the toaster to the tub. 

Ol' Phil eventually got himself righted and started to learn new things while he was Groundhog Daying it.  His ticket out of Purgatory was Getting It Right.  Karma, not Coronavirus.  Everybody's got their opinions on what's going to be our ticket out of Pandemic Purgatory- stay home and flatten the curve more, reopen, murder wasps...  Who knows?

What I do know is that planning ahead and being able to take for granted that the plans will come to pass as scheduled seems like a distant luxury.  A different life we hear tell about.  I'm looking forward to the day I can write stuff on my calendar and anticipate following through with those things written, instead of having to add an asterisk to that day and say "cancelled."

I look forward to having the luxury of getting to Plan Ahead again.  For sure.

And Just Like That...

L-R: 8/21/2019; 3/13/2020; 5/11/2020

On Monday, I took Zoe's last homework packet back to the school, and I think that effectively ended her Second Grade Year. 

What a whimper-ending to a school year that started with a bang. 

For the last two years, the last day of school was Something.  Zoe would leave in the morning on the bus and return home after a half-day of celebrating with her friends and teachers.  She'd come home with her things she accumulated at school over the last 180 weekdays.  We'd be in a mindset of Ready for Summer.

Well, this year, we didn't know the end was the End.  Take a gander at the accompanying photos.  The first one on the left was the First Day of School.  Zoe was going through a phase where she was absolutely fascinated with all things Hogwarts, and she wanted to wear a uniform like Hermione Granger would wear on the first day of school.

That second picture, the one in the middle- that was taken on the last Normal Day- hilariously Friday the 13th of March, just before we went to the bus stop.  Fridays in Second Grade were Farm Fridays, and the kids were encouraged to dress for the farm.  We didn't know that was going to be the Last Day she and her friends stepped foot inside that school. 

Maybe if we had, I would have strewn glitter around in that second picture.

That last picture, I took on Monday, after I'd taken the packet of homework to the school and left it.  I saw a classmate of mine, who was also at school.  We were both behind masks.  There were no teachers, no excited students.  The school should be abuzz this time of year, because it's almost summer vacation!

So I guess that Monday, May 11 was Zoe's last day of being a second grader.

Just like that. 

When I Say Normal...

I want this time of day to feel optimistic to me again.

Because times are what they are at the present juncture of Space and Time and Us, a kid can take a lot of flack for wishing to be "back to Normal," because there's an inevitable refrain from the chorus that "Normal wasn't working!"

And I get it.  The old Normal wasn't working.  Life wasn't fair and the world was a shit-show and people were assholes.  And right now, people are assholes, the world is a shit-show, and life isn't fair... but with COVID-19's specter hanging over us.  There's an exhausting emotional aerosol in the air that sets us on edge and makes us ugly toward one another.  

When I say I want to get back to Normal, what I the mean is that I want to be able to go out and about and not feel like I'm out in the hall without a pass in high school.  I'd like not to have to wear a mask or see everyone else wearing masks.  I'd like not to have feelings of anxiety and panic as they relate to paper products and how much I have left in my house.  

I'd like not to have to worry about whether or not there'll be enough food for us all, come winter.  Think of all the meat-processing plants shut down in the Midwest right now.  Think of all the news-stories of crops being plowed under because there's nobody to pick them and nobody to process them into canned food or frozen food.  In the Northeast, canned and frozen is what helps us survive comfortably in the long winters.  

I'd like to be able to just pick up and go to the grocery store and have the biggest worry be that I remembered my reusable bags.  

I'd like to be able to go to Target and just wander around like I do, and buy nonessential things just nonchalantly, and not feel like an asshole for doing so. 

I'd like to be able to watch this season's hockey teams play.  It'd be Playoffs right now.  

Yeah, it'd also be kind of rad to be able to go get a haircut.  This isn't something I'd take to the streets or the steps of the Capitol to protest, because when I hear the voices of the Scared, it really is petty to put split ends ahead of Saving Lives.  

But holy shit.  

I think that in addition to hair and nail salons and dentists offices and schools, the "If It Bleeds, It Leads" news media should have had to be shut down during this quarantine, as well.  It isn't the bad news that bothers me; it's that the bad news is all there is.  Bad news gets attention, attention gets advertising, and advertising is where the money is.  They've got us whipped up into a frenzy.  

And I hope there's a special place in hell for Social Media Fear-Mongers.  People.  Just because you read it online, doesn't make it true.  Just because someone's wearing scrubs, or a white labcoat, it doesn't mean they're a doctor.  It doesn't mean they have any authority at all to say the things they're saying.  It's likely those people are just after their fifteen minutes.  There are a lot of sick othertruckers in this world who have zero f*cks in their pockets to give about Truth or What's Right, so long as it gets them attention.

I want to get back to Normal, where there's some excitement in the air when the Back to School stuff turns up in the stores after July 4th.  Heck.  I want to get back to Normal where we can celebrate things like July 4th with parades and fireworks and picnics.

I want to get back to Normal where we're allowed to have a sense of humor.  We haven't had that in a while.  It used to be fun to laugh.

When I say "Normal," I want this reptilian Fear that has us all by the throat to go away.  I want us to be better than we were before, and I think we will be, for a while.  I hope it sticks, after this present cataclysm.  

I'm not looking for a fight when I voice my desire for Normal.  When I say "Normal," I mean I want it to be the opposite of whatever the hell this oddness is that we're existing in right now, with no option to Just Get Weirder.

That's all, Friends.  

Resignation

Also, it snowed this weekend.  It's May, if you've lost track.

When COVID-19 shut everything down, I railed against it.  During the initial two weeks of closure, I colored the days black on our home-calendar, and used every glittery poop emoji sticker in my daughter's Justice sticker collection, to illustrate our feelings about the two-week shut-down.  There were also bio-hazard stickers in that collection.  We stuck those to the calendar, too, for the days of March 16- March 27th. 

It felt like the walls were closing in with the sudden stoppage of routine, of Zoe being ripped from in-person school, and my husband being told he couldn't practice dentistry.  I wondered if we'd all kill each other by the end of those first two weeks. 

I was still feeling the Hate as the second round of Kick-the-Closure-Can was announced.  We'd be down until April 9th.  But Zoe and I sat down and colored those closed-school days in rainbow, added glitter stickers.  We made the days look festive.  We figured we might as well hold onto Hope.  April 9th was supposed to be a half-day of school.  It was the Thursday before Easter.  That wouldn't be so bad.  Ease back into it with a half-day, then a weekend. 

You know the rest.  You're living it, too.  Everything shut down, indefinitely. 

You've been walking this Journey Through the Emotional Jungle right along with me, Friends.  I've had my good days where I can be chipper and try to buoy everyone up.  I've had my days where I've been wishing for a comet to swing by, so I could grab its tail and swing on off this planet.  I've had a lot of in-between days, where I'm just glad to exist to see the next day.  I've had days that I've felt almost normal.  I've spent swaths of days in the Dark, letting the mean-girl voices in my own head hurt my feelings.  I've had days where I've been Very Angry, felt Rage building up in my core like lava.

I think we're all experiencing some version of the same emotional loop, Friends.  Hopefully, maybe thank goodness we're not all on Very Angry on the same day.  Hopefully some of us can be Fairly Chipper on some days, to balance out the Dark, Twisty, Very Angry. 

On Friday, the Podunk Portion of PA went on Yellow Status.  Our Governor is adorable in his efforts to color-code a situation like your pal AprilBee.  He has neither the panache nor the whimsy nor the balls to give Pennsylvanians a true Color-Coded Situation experience the way I could.  But that's a rant for another time.  We have Red, Yella, and Green.  Red was the Utter Lockdown.  Yellow is Lockdown Lite, and Green is All Bets Are Off.  And I am sure like me, you're noticing some room for some nuance, and the addition of a few more colors in this plan. 

Without crying too much about our specific Blues, even though we were told the dentist's office can open back up, the wording in the lack of guideline hamstrings us almost as much as or more as the "Emergencies Only" order we've been operating under for the last couple months.  The Yellow Light opens up so many cans of worms, so many unwinnable situations. 

Don't misunderstand me.  I'm sitting here, boiling, thinking about all of this.  I'm overwhelmed and paralyzed, trying to come up with helpful suggestions for my husband, who's shouldering this on his own.  We just need more information.  There's so much at stake, reopening, and we don't know what's what.  We just need more information. 

So for the next couple weeks, at least, we're still pacing the floor and living under the same parameters as we did when we were in the Red Phase.

Red and Resigned.  That's how I feel overall, mostly.  Just like in traffic, the yellow lockdown light is awkward.  Do we stay or do we go?  Speed up to try to beat the red or jam on the brakes?  There are risks and rewards to both, but the rewards don't feel very rewardy right now.  So we're opting for More of the Same until we have further information.  And I'm just resigned to that.  Resigned.  This is what it is.  No sense struggling against it.

If you're also in a ho-hum mood this Monday, and wondering if you're experiencing "Resignation," you're not alone.  Just thought you should know. 

A Tale of Two Scales

Oh, Friends, I have to tell you something I did the other day that had me tied up in KNOTS.  It's kind of a parable for the way we as human-type-people cannot believe the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.

So.  I used to have a Fitbit Aria scale.  It's one of those smart-scales that you stand on and it takes weight and body fat percentage, then uploads it via WiFi to the Fitbit app, and I can track all those things over time, very easily, without having to type in my weight and BF%.  I had the Aria for years, and back in 2017, it stopped syncing.  It also wasn't weighing right, so I dragged back out the Tanita Body Fat Monitor Scale I've had since... Jeez, the Aughts.  That's a better scale, honestly.  It tracks everything from weight to body composition to BMI to body fat percentage, to bone density to percent of water in the body.  But it isn't a smart scale.  It's been around since before the first smart-scales.  I hold onto it because it's such a good scale.

But I like the way the Fitbit scales just upload their data to my Fitbit account.  I wear a Fitbit on my wrist constantly and I'm not that interesting of a person, so I don't mind the constant surveillance from my fitness trackers.  And back in January, Fitbit sent around a discount for the Aria 2, so I jumped on it and have been happily using my Aria 2 for all these crazy months of 2020 so far. 

Keep in mind, and this is important to this tale, that of course I don't get rid of the Tanita scale, and I also hadn't gotten rid of the original Aria.  And Aria and Aria2 look identical from their standing surfaces.

A couple weeks ago, my husband was doing some repairs in the master bathroom, and he had to move everything out of the way, including my cache of bathroom scales.  When he put everything back, he put back a square black glass smart scale that said "Aria" on it.  No big deal.  I've gone through something of a depressy period, the last few weeks, and haven't been working out or weighing in.  So I haven't stepped on the scale.  But Wednesday night, I got curious to see if all the depressy turmoil to my routine and eating and hydrating has had an appreciable difference on my weight, so I stepped on the Aria2 and... nothing.

Well, probably cheap starter-batteries, I thought.  I brought the scale downstairs Thursday morning and replaced the four batteries.  I couldn't get it to sync with my Fitbit App, so I tried to get it back on the wireless network.  It wouldn't pick up a signal.  So I found the "Help" section of the Fitbit website as it pertains to an Aria 2 scale and spent two hours trying to figure this out.  I was perplexed as to why the battery compartment on my Aria 2 held 4 AA batteries, while the illustration showed a more square compartment that held 3 AAs, and why the reset button wasn't readily accessible like the diagram showed.  I found a little hole in the back of the scale that lets you put an unbent paperclip into it, to reset the scale, and it would start the Setup Process.  It kept saying that our wireless network name was Verizon.

"Why is it saying Verizon?" asked my husband.  He's tech-savvy, so you bet I dragged him into this madness.  "We haven't had that router for years!"

"I know!" I screeched, frustrated tears running down my face and a good sweat-mustache on my upper lip.  "I got this stupid scale in JANUARY.  It shouldn't even know about the Verizon router!"

"Maybe it's something to do with the app," my husband said.

"It shouldn't be something with the stupid app!" I snapped.  "It knew which wireless network to use before I changed the batteries!  And I only got this thing in January!  Why did the batteries go dead in it already?"

"I don't know," he said, trying to find me helpful YouTube Aria 2 Troubleshooting videos.

He found them.  I was frustrated that my Aria 2 didn't look like the presenters' Aria 2s.  He pointed out that my Aria 2 didn't look like theirs, either.  We figured I must have gotten one on the beginning or end of a production run.  Out of frustration, I told the app to forget my Aria 2. 

"It's like we're not even talking about the same scale!!!"  I yelled, stomping both feet into the floor so hard it shook the dining room.  Then I looked at him.  "Wait a minute-"

I flew up the stairs and grabbed the other black Fitbit Scale, which was back in the place it's been since I retired it (but, didn't throw it out, because what if I need a broken smart-scale someday, apparently?)  I flipped it over.  THAT scale said "Aria2" on it, and the back of it looked familiar to me, as I'd been looking at schematics and videos with that exact flip-side for the last.  two.  hours.

"Jee.  Zusss," I said, carrying this scale back into the dining room.  "You're not going to believe this. The Aria2 has been up in the bathroom the whole time.  We've been trying to sync the old broken Aria Original all morning."

"Well, how'd that happen?" my husband asked. 

"When you put everything back, you put the Aria where the Aria 2 goes," I said.  "But I should probably just get rid of the Aria now."

"Probably," my husband said, moving on to things in his life more pressing than an impossible-to-sync-or-troubleshoot smart bathroom scale.

As though by magic, I got my Aria2 set back up and synced, and all is right in my world again, at least as far as smart-scales go.

What's bugged and intrigued me since is that it took me over two hours to figure out that I wasn't even using the correct scale, even though there were all kinds of signs to clue me in.  The back of the scale didn't look like the one in the pictures or troubleshooting videos.  The battery compartments were different.  The Aria had no reset button in the battery compartment; the reset button in the battery compartment of the Aria 2 was plain as day and unmissable.  There was that whole thing with the old scale using 4 batteries and the new one only using 3.

Why did it take two hours for it to occur to me to go up and grab the other Fitbit scale?  Just in case? 

Of course, this makes me feel ridiculous. Like a total idiot.  There was a quick and definitive fix to this gaffe.  But how many times in Life do any of us have a picture of What We Think Is Fact right there in our heads, and we fight so hard to hold onto that picture, despite all the evidence that points to the contrary?

We become hellbent that people don't like us, or that a certain person doesn't like us, even if all their words AND actions indicate otherwise.  OR we hold onto people we believe are friends, and believe the best of them, even as they plunge knives into us- there's always a justification, right?  Or we stick around in a fraught situation, whether it's a relationship, organization, or job, because we think this is just how it is for everyone in the same kind of relationship, club, or occupation. 

I don't know why we do this to ourselves, Friends.  I don't know why our brains let us hold on to our own mistaken beliefs while ignoring all the solid evidence that contradicts those beliefs.  Unless it's just more comfortable to stay in our own feedback loops.  They're familiar there. And stepping out of those feedback loops and listening to new evidence requires some heavy-duty work and effort on our part.  Taking action to correct our wrongs takes even more effort, and even some risk. 

I'll tell you why I didn't instantly go get the other Fitbit Scale when things weren't going right with the one I had right in my hands.  It was all the way upstairs.  I was downstairs.  It's silly to think about, considering I could have saved myself literally hours of frustration and stress and time, but I didn't want to traipse upstairs when I was downstairs.  In hindsight, I would have been so much farther ahead, if I'd done so.

At least all I have to feel over the Tale of Two Scales is an acute sense of feeling silly. Sheepishness.  Facepalm.  But it makes me wonder what other Big Contrary Facts I'm looking right at, but am too blind to see. 

The Optimism of Springtime Plants

These guys had a rough trip to my house!

Oh, heck.  Back in January, I got an email from Wayside Gardens about ordering spring flowers. It was an icy evening, and the light from outside was filtering cobalt blue through the windows, and there was snow swirling in the air.  

I thought I might as well order flowers for Spring.  This is sort of a ritual, with me.  The email from Wayside comes in January, with a nice, big, fat limited-time discount, and I order flowers to be planted in my containers, knowing they won't ship until May, when the weather becomes more temperate.  Everybody knows the weather becomes more temperate in May!  (HA!)  Then I slide the flower order to the back of my mind, and when the boxes of live flowers do finally show up in the Spring, it's like a little surprise that Past Me has sent to Present Me.  

What a delight!

Last year caught me off-guard.  I didn't jump on the Wayside email.  I think I was having a particularly petulant winter in 2018-2019.  Well, pissy, if you want to put a very fine point on things.  It was a combination of lingering illness and dithering over what to do about the plane and tying myself up in knots about what it meant to keep it and what it would mean if I sold it and let go of that part of my life for now.  I wasn't in a good place mentally in that winter, and the thought of planting flowers in the Spring was just too, too much optimism.  So I ended up waiting until June, after School was out, after all the more local nurseries had already had their flower-clear-out sales, and looking with dismay at my empty whiskey-barrel planters on the deck.  Zoe and I made a run up to Hornell Lowes and selected the best-looking overgrown and dried-out-looking Zinnias and pincushion flowers from their picked-over garden center.  It was touch-and-go for those flowers for a few weeks, but as Summer 2019 wore on, they thrived.  

Petunias do really well up here.  They've never been my favorite flowers.  I think I'm biased against them because they're everywhere.  But after a few years of planting flowers and noticing that the petunias take off like weeds, pretty much, they're my go-to, when I plan ahead.  I understand why they're everywhere.  They stand up to hot sun, and to the abuse of not being watered super-regularly.  They grow lots of colorful, trumpet-shaped flowers.  

So I jumped on the January Wayside email this year, before we knew that if 2019 was a ride on the Crazy Mouse, 2020 was going to be a ride on the Rabid Rat.  I mean, really.  It felt optimistic enough, ordering flowers for Spring when the air outside was cobalt blue and swirling with big white snowflakes.  Once 2020 really started to shape up, I'd think of those flowers I ordered and think about how nice it would be in May, when everything was back to some semblance of Normal.  It'd be a new beginning, planting those little baby petunias in my whiskey barrel planters, and we'd get to salvage the rest of 2020 and all this Pandemic Purgatory would be just a story we tell!

Wrong again.

I'd forgotten about the flowers by yesterday, honestly.  I got the School-Reach call and saw pictures of the flowers PTO sold as a fund-raiser.  I didn't know about the flower sale until well after I'd already loaded up on Wayside Petunias.  Those PTO flowers looked beautiful, and I was kicking myself for not ordering any, and I couldn't remember why it was that I hadn't ordered any.  Then my Wayside boxes showed up.

I'll tell you what.  As I unboxed those poor petunias, all I could think was that their condition was the most appropriate depiction of 2020 that I've seen yet, I think.

They were too big for their pots and root-bound.  Confined for too long in a small space.  Their leaves were pale and wilting.  Their stems were on the floppy side. They looked like they could use a good drink.

I expect mail-order plants to look less than spectacular upon arrival, but for these, I was Concerned as I carefully unwrapped them.  Even Sylvie, who usually brutalizes any plants that are in her way came over to where I was sitting on the floor.  She took a sniff, (I held my breath, waiting to see those teeth of hers bare), and she looked at me as if to say "They might be hopeless," then off she trotted.

But there's something about plants in Springtime that inspires even the smallest optimism, even when those plants have had a rough trip.  Even when we're supposed to get snow this weekend, and can't get those flowers in their final destinations.  

I stood those petunias in their too-petite pots up in my dishpans, and watered them with the kitchen-sink sprayer.  They rested in the sink overnight, and were looking a little more lively by morning.  Now they're hanging out in front of the French doors to get some warmth and sunlight while we wait out the weather.  

For the petunias, it's just a few more days of lockdown in too-small pots before they can get outside and live their normal lives.  

It's comforting, in a way, to see that things like dandelions and petunias and the rise and set of the sun go on, just the same.  

I have a feeling that once these travel-weary petunias get into their new digs, they'll green up and perk up and put on a spectacular show all summer long.  And that's the payoff of the optimism of springtime plants, Friends.

I Want To Be Where the People Are

Unfortunate resemblance to Ariel aside, I DO want to be where the people are!

Please don't get mad at me and flame me, Friends.  I'm not looking to pick a fight with anyone.  I'm just feeling some ugly feelings right now. 

I'm angry.  I'm frustrated.  I'm impatient.  I'm restless.  I'm bored.  I'm depressed.  I feel out of control.  I feel like a petulant, grounded thirteen-year-old.

I don't think I'm alone.  I think we're all feeling like this.

We're all sick of this, Friends.  Pandemic Purgatory.  I think we're sick of hearing about it.  We're sick of talking about it.  We're sick of living it.

I'm sick and tired of Zoom meetings.  Those things are only as good as people's skill with their microphones and cameras and their willingness not to mumble. 

I'm tired of take-out.  Don't get me wrong- I'm thankful that take-out is an option.  I'm grateful to have enough food.  It's nice sometimes to put on decent clothes and dine-in at an establishment. 

I'm tired of not being able to go to the skating rink.  I'm tired of having to drive past stores.  I'm tired of knowing if I do go into a store, I have to wear a mask and stick to The Essentials and Socially Distance.  I'm tired of driving to the school to drop off my daughter's work-packets and seeing the building silent and lifeless when, on these beautiful May Days, it should be positively Electric with activity and excitement that the school year is drawing to an end. 

I'm tired of the fact that there will be no proms, trips, in-person graduations this year. 

I'm tired of people being snapped at and chastised for voicing their disdain for being tired of Pandemic Purgatory, to be honest.  I'm tired of the sanctimony on both sides of this.  And here's why- I think we're all feeling restless.  I think we're ALL tired of all of this.  I think the "For F*ck's Sake Just Stay Home!" people are just as tired of Pandemic Purgatory as the "I Want A F*cking Haircut and Drink at the Bar!" people, but we're just voicing it in different ways, and everybody's just so invested in their particular flavor of Fed Uppitude at it all that they can't see that we're all saying basically the same thing. 

Everybody is TIRED OF, SICK OF the restrictions.  Of course saving lives is a priority to uphold.  Of course.  People are also concerned about their livelihoods.  How are they going to pay their bills, buy food, pay taxes?  Add to that, it doesn't seem likely that anybody has a bloody clue about what's happening or how best to handle it, especially not the people at the top who are calling the shots.  There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation getting disseminated.  Conflicting reports.  Conflicting advice.  Conflicting rules.  Fear is everywhere, and where there's fear, it often wears the mask of anger.  It is so easy to lash out when you're afraid and wearing the mask of anger.

Pandemic Purgatory isn't bringing out the best in any of us.  I don't suppose Purgatory would bring out people's best.  I just wish we could ALL step back and give each other room, without turning into a forest full of howler monkeys flinging shit at one another.  That's what my newsfeed feels like sometimes, especially in the comment section.  Just a bunch of howler monkeys flinging shit at one another.

It is possible to comply with the Pandemic Purgatory Restrictions, to follow the guidelines for social distancing and everything, while not "liking" to do so, one bit. 

Me?  Believe it or not, I just want to be where the people are.  Even taking into consideration all of this.  Especially taking into consideration all of this.  Because we are different with each other when we're in person.  Remember how, Before Corona, we'd roll our eyes at the Keyboard Warriors who talk big in the comments sections, but in person are actually quite reasonable to talk to?  Guess what?  We've all become Keyboard Warriors.  We've forgotten each other's humanity, and we've forgotten our own, because the only interactions we have are from the safety of being behind a screen.

I want to be where the people are, because once people start gathering again, it means that the worst is maybe behind us.  It'll mean we emerged from the fog, or maybe it lifted.  We all want to get back to... well, things are never going to be "normal" again.  I guess we all want to see that we'll get through this and be okay with whatever may come Next.  And once we all feel safe enough to gather again, we'll know we're there.  That's where I want to be.

I want to be part of THAT world.