I spent time this weekend looking at friends’ faces. That boosted my spirits a lot and I need to remember that when things get rough.
The weather is gorgeous. I’m trying to decide if I should work on the porch this morning. I probably will.
My therapist wonders if this crisis is showing me that I would like some companionship. I laughed at that, because it would be just like me to decide now, during an apocalypse, is the time for love.
I finished this afghan. I haven’t washed or blocked it yet but I’m really pleased with how it turned out. I even ended up liking the big flowers, even though I thought at first they would annoy me.
The afghan I’m working on now is delightfully ridiculous. We had this design for our subject catalogs that I loved that we didn’t end up using and I decided I would try and see if I could make it into an afghan.
So, I took the design (left) and cut it up into squares (right) and I dyed up a bunch of fiber and now I’m making it. I really love the contrast of the super modernist design with the rustic crochet and handspun yarn. It just makes me laugh.
I went to the therapist yesterday. I thought i was feeling pretty good, but I cried almost immediately when I saw her. And just kept crying.
She said a lot of really helpful things. But a thing I’m dwelling on and trying to take to heart is that there’s a kind of connection I make with people that makes me unhappy, but I keep searching it out because it feels intense and thus real. And instead I need to put more time into cultivating relationships that make me happy, even if they don’t carry the same intensity of feeling.
She said it was like scratching at a scab. It feels good, but it keeps the wound from healing.
Damn.
I guess that’s why she’s the therapist.
The Butcher is going to lose his job.
One of my dearest friends is going to have to give birth alone.
The person who first published my fiction has Covid-19 and it’s very likely she will die.
Fuck yes, I’m keeping a list. And fuck yes, I will burn with rage about it for the rest of my life. These evil dumb fucks did this to us. They wanted to hurt us as bad as they could and they did. And I will never forgive them.
Last night I finished piecing this all together. Now I have to decide on a border. I really love this part, though, where all the squares are put together but they don’t yet belong to one another.
Everything’s still trying to maintain its own shape and size and elbow its neighbors out of its way. It’ll be different after it’s washed. Everyone will lie together how they should. They’ll work more like one piece of fabric.
But things are still a bit unsettled at this stage.
I’ve been working on my afghan!
This picture represents the moment when I realized the pattern had an error in it and was a square short. This is for Angela at the post office. She likes pastels and a “Monet” feel, but she also really likes turquoise.
In real life, turquoise has more green in it but, oh well, she’s getting blue.
I’ve also started dyeing for my next afghan. Did I already tell y’all about this?
It’s going to be so hard! I can’t wait. I want a challenge that’s difficult but where the stakes are low.
Step one was getting the base color right.
The definition of nerve-wracking is having someone’s Pantone swatches to try to match a color when they’ve told you they paid almost a thousand dollars for them. I’M MESSY! Don’t give me valuable shit to borrow.
Lord.
But it worked out.
Well, for the first time since Sunday, I have to go out. The dog needs to go to the vet (I got six long texts on the protocol for when I get there and I’m still not sure if I’m allowed in the building with him, but it’s fine. He likes them, so either way.) and I have to find toilet paper or a reasonable substitute.
So, I’m also trying to figure out what else I need to do while I’m out so that I can refrain from going out again for a while.
I found that Washington Post graphic with all the bouncy dots really useful for envisioning the best way to stay safe–basically, don’t be out where the dots are bouncing around.
But I’m still not entirely sure–other than just staying way far away from people–how to reduce my chances when I have to be out in the mix.
Should I be wearing a bandana like an old timey bank robber?
Yesterday I just got a little sad and scared. I don’t know how to do my job if people don’t have money to buy things. Libraries don’t need books if there aren’t any libraries.
And what do I do if I don’t do this?
I can’t sell my house and move into someplace cheaper. No one is buying and selling houses.
I can’t go move in with family and fuck the house because everyone is so far away.
I don’t know, y’all. It’s hard. And I think about us all living in an economy where the less sick deliver shit to the more sick until we are the more sick, but even that depends on the more sick having money.
Working from home yesterday was pretty fine. I was surprised at how much I got done. Today I’m in a little panic because I’m running low on Diet Dr Pepper and toilet paper, but I’m going to try to hold off going to the store for as long as possible.
But other than that bit of glitchy weirdness, I’m so far doing okay.
I’m working on an afghan, again, as always.
I’ve got some plain squares, too.
I really love making my own yarn. It’s so satisfying to have something beautiful and unique.
We’re home for the next two weeks. I’m kind of excited, kind of nervous, about having that much time to just let my brain concentrate on things other than personal interactions.
I still will never forgive the people who voted for this incompetent monster.
There’s something about having the world go to shit as you feel like shit that is a little okay. Like, finally, the outside matches my insides. These feelings I have are appropriate to the situation.
Yesterday was the first day in months I felt like things were okay. I’m trying to cultivate that feeling and help it grow.
But, I admit, it’s hard. I worry a lot even when I’m feeling great. I worry when I’m feeling bad in order to feel safe about being able to anticipate more worse shit.
But, if I want to cultivate okayness, I have to stop making worry such a major part of what my brain does all day.
It’s a small thing, but I’ll take it. I tried for something very hard this weekend. Yesterday, I found out I didn’t get it. And I briefly felt like I’d fucked my life, so I cried in the bathroom.
And then I pulled my shit together and thought about it some and I don’t feel bad about it.
It’s not dragging down my whole life.
That feels like a big improvement.
I finished this afghan! I really love how it turned out.
I didn’t get all my tasks done yesterday. And I felt a little slow all day, but more like being wrapped in a nice blanket than moving through Jello, so that feels like an improvement.
As part of my duties as a history person, I went down to help salvage a historic building that had been destroyed by the tornado. The woman who ran the business in the building was there.
After a while I went to talk to her, to just check on her, and to apologize. I mean, yes, we’re saving stuff from the building, but we can’t save her business. And she had to stand there watching us look at the rubble of her life and decide what’s valuable and what’s not.
It breaks my heart.
Also, I’m just about finished with this afghan.
All it needs is a border. I had to make some yarn last night to be the border, but as soon as it’s dry, I can finish this puppy right up.
We decided not to change my meds, just up the dosage. But, if this doesn’t do the trick, then I’m going to a psychiatrist.
A part that’s hard is how ingrained in me it is to downplay my own discomfort, to just assume I should suck it up and “deal” with it, whatever that means.
So, like, when the doctor asked me if I had missed work over this–even though I had just left work early on Monday to come home and go to bed–my first instinct was to say “no,” because I didn’t want to bother her with my problems.
I told her I was crying every day, but I tried to downplay it by saying, “but for no reason. Nothing bad is happening to me everyday. Obviously.”
I told her that I think my therapist is concerned I might be suicidal. “I’m not suicidal, but I wouldn’t mind if I died.”
See? All is well. I’m not actively harming myself. I’m just passively laying around hoping my suffering will end.
A thing I can’t explain, though,–and maybe it’s just a sign of how desperate I am to feel better or maybe it is because I do still have some self-preservation instinct–is that I’m not outright lying to her. That I’m there at all instead of just being at home not bothering anyone. And that I am making my thought processes clear to her, even when, as I say them out loud, I see how fucked up they are.
Anyway, I started my new dosage last night. I felt tired and nauseous. I also felt like I should write C. a long letter about how awesome he is, but I just sent a short text instead.
I dreamed about this grouchy guy I know laughing.
Today I feel weird. Like, obviously, this is the most I’ve wanted to write here in a long time, but it’s also taken me a long time to write it. I keep getting distracted by nothing. But, unlike usual, where I’d just get distracted and stop or distracted and not start, I keep drifting back here.
I feel super tired, but I tried to sleep in and couldn’t. And I feel this kind of weird… not a tingle… but like a pre-tingle… across my shoulders.
So, I don’t know. That’s where I am. I would say that I’m going to take it easy this weekend but my dog needs me and I’ve got to do some saving history stuff. But maybe that’s just today. Maybe tomorrow I take it easy.
I left work early yesterday because I just kind of gave up on the day, which is not a great state to be in. I slept until dinner and then I slept after dinner until it was time to let the dog out and then I slept until the storm.
The tornado went south of here. The devastation is hard to talk about in any meaningful way. It’s just really bad.
I go to the doctor on Friday. I really hope she can help.
I wrote 4,000 words this weekend. I’m a little tired and frazzled about it, but happy.
C, M, and I went out to a different cemetery looking for Edmondsons. We found them. Here’s a cool one:
Also, after much trying, I found the Mt. Pisgah cemetery and saw this for myself:
The people Edmondson made stones for seem to fall into two categories: people in his neighborhood (even people in his neighborhood who were taken to Franklin to be buried) and a few folks in Mt. Pisgah.
Mt. Pisgah is an old black farming community off Edmondson Pike and, though I haven’t been able to show it, I deeply wonder if Edmondson’s people had ties to the area.
Tiny Cat Pants 