on Co-Parenting/the Pandemic

january 4th journal

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It’s Monday, and the first day back to school after winter break. My 15-year-old’s school computer had gone completely out of battery and the school-issued modem was also completely out of power, so we put off school start until everything could charge for about a half hour.

In true form, my teenager made some really funny comments as he was doing his work; here’s my favorite from today, which I also posted on twitter:

teenager: there are ten to one hundred quadrillion ants on the planet
me: AUGH
teenager: TIME TO GET THEM TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL

I like to start my weeks on Mondays; Sunday, for me, is still part of the weekend and since I don’t attend any religious services on Sundays, it makes sense to me that Monday starts the week. Even though I don’t have a lot to do right now that might qualify as ‘work,’ having the structure is still helpful.

I read a tweet by @prisonculture, Mariame Kaba, (who is amazing, please follow them if possible) that pointed out that we aren’t going to fix this *waves generally at things* in 2021.

“The United States won’t have COVID under control in 2021 and the population is in no way ready for the implications.”

@prisonculture (click to see the tweet)

Based only on the fucked-up and ridiculous way the vaccines are being rolled out here, I think she is completely right about this. I don’t expect to come out of personal quarantine until probably 2022. I want my children to be safe and I want to be safe and I want the world to be at least safe enough to breathe near others that don’t live in your own house without catching the virus; but I don’t know how we can get to that place. In the meantime, I’ve come to a place of acceptance regarding all the staying-inside that needs to happen now and for the foreseeable future. This is made somewhat easier by already being introverted with chronic illnesses, but I miss things like coffee shops and how the inside of the post office smells and running errands followed by a sandwich at a nearby restaurant.

The world will not be the same post-pandemic as it was in the Before Times, and I am still mentally wrestling with what this means, even just for me as an individual. The way I learned to live my life over the past four decades can’t be how I live in my right now and in my future decades. It’s almost all new, and no matter how accustomed I am at the moment to the various safety measures we’ve taken as a household to keep ourselves safe, I know that I haven’t fully realized yet how I’m going to cope with never doing life the way I did before. It’s almost too complex to get my head around it.

It reminds me of the way I read speculative fiction (like Octavia Butler or Andre Norton) and wonder what it might feel like to be the first people on a terraformed planet and how everything that needs doing will be totally different from anything those people did before, even though they might have practiced doing all those things. It’s an uncomfortable, doubtful feeling. It feels potentially nightmarish, living in a place where you can’t breathe the air or the gravity is different or all your time needs to be taken up with getting potable water with the tech you brought with you. It scares me and I wonder how a person survives something like that. I guess you would just have to keep doing what works and stop doing what doesn’t, and hope that mistakes don’t do huge amounts of harm.

Yikes.

on Chronic Illness/on Co-Parenting

january 3rd journal

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Today has been filtered through the lens of the migraine I woke up with and that is still kicking around inside my skull. I went on Twitter and got VERY INVOLVED in the Bean Dad discourse, and the screenshots of my tweet thread on it are on my Instagram and Facebook stories today because holy hell does that guy need to shut the fuck up and do a much better job as a parent.

I hear he’s great at being an anti-semitic Nazi, but I can’t prove that to you because he’s deleted his account. There are screenshots floating around, though, so if you have a Twitter account you can probably find them easily (and I’m sure it’ll be showing up on Facebook as screenshots of tweets with screenshots in them soon enough).

My main beef(s) [beeves??] with his self-congratulatory discourse on Teaching Moments and how he decided to use one to shame his daughter into trying to understand the mechanics inherent in a can opener is that he is abusing her, specifically by neglecting her physical needs (she was hungry), treating her like shit because of a power trip, and actively creating a situation and context for her to develop disordered eating. So, yeah. It made me angry.

That up there is a view from my bedroom because this migraine has kept me from doing much other than trying to be comfortable in my bed so far today. I hope I feel well enough to get out of bed after a bit, so that I can move my joints which are currently pretty sore from all the fucking sitting I’ve had to do lately. Last night I had such an intense MCAS reaction to … something, I still don’t know … that I had to take two extra of my rescue antihistamines and also use a nebulizer and after that I was sore and exhausted.

But I journaled today in my written bullet-style journal, and I’m writing here, and I took a picture of the wintry outside, and I’m not a shit parent like Bean Dad so I think overall this day has more wins than losses in it.

on Co-Parenting/on Hope/the Pandemic/the Work

january 2nd journal

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I don’t know about you, but two posts two days in a row is NOT NORMAL for me. I’m just going to go with it for as long as it lasts, and if/when I fall off the rotation I won’t hate myself for it.

I just posted this photo to Instagram. It’s dark in my room because it’s after 6pm and even though I have several lamps on, civil twilight was at 5:49pm here so it’s well and truly dark outside. These are my carry-with-me meds, my clean-my-face toiletries, my coffee cup, a bottle of water, and my best and most favorite lotion. In the background you can see a small stack of books that’s been there for months because I am going to “read them soon” hahaha. At least looking at them makes me feel happy.

My second youngest is spending extended parenting time at her dad’s house because … well, because pandemic. It’s not safe for her to go back and forth between houses every two weeks, not for my household or her dad’s household or for her. There’s no easy way to work in a 14-day quarantine for a person who whose life would end up being a constant quarantine sandwiched between every other weekend. My depression has spiked pretty seriously because of the decision to do this, but I have good support in my family and my attorney and I know this is the right thing to do for now.

I’ll call her in a little while for our regular twice-weekly phone call and we’ll talk about random things like what her day’s been like and whether it snowed there today and, if I’m lucky, she’ll go on a tangent and tell me everything she knows about whatever her favorite book or manga series is right now. Neither of us is very good at conversation without a topic, so I try to get on the phone with at least a couple of things I can bring up or talk about. She’ll be twelve in six days and I need to order birthday gifts and it is going to be so weird without her here this year.

Today is Twelfth Night in my tradition, and we are emerging from the dark of these past days since Yule with the hope of seeing more light. Of being more light. It’s a paradox I am still learning, that there can be both darkness and light in me. It is truly an experience of being in the shadows but constantly turning toward what illuminates, reveals, and warms.

It’s almost time, I think, for me to decide how to bring my brand-new baby steps death doula work into the world. There is so much death and so much separation from the dying, even more so than in the Before Times. I am overwhelmed by the sheer pain and need, but in the times I can think about it without being crushed by it, I know that my Work has a time and a place this year. Here’s to figuring it out as I go.