Brought to you by the letter D

June 25, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

Hello.

It’s been a Time, let me tell you. Two weeks since I last wrote, and everything is happening so much.

Drugs. I’m not talking the ones that you were warned against in the fifth grade (aside: when we had D.A.R.E., it was before there were any mascots or anything, and all we had was this… “music video,” if you can even call it that, of what we were supposed to believe were police officers singing, “Dare! For keeping kids off drugs!” and then this guy in the background would radically wail, “KIIIIIDS OFFFFF DRUUUUUGS,” and I will tell you that I do not remember anything about the program besides that specific snippet), but the ones that you get prescribed from your doctor.

When I went to my OB-GYN for my crisis of intrusive thoughts, he had me talk with a behavioral health specialist (which is the new name for a shrink), and said specialist both prescribed me counselling and called my primary care doctor to request an increase in my dosage of my current antidepressant, Effexor. I had been taking 75 mg (the lowest possible therapeutic dosage), so now I’m up to 112.5 mg, which means two little capsules every day instead of one. About a week after that, I had a psychiatric medication review with a nurse whose job is doing only that ever to see if I should continue with the Effexor or if I should switch to a different antidepressant and/or take something else as well. This was a lot like my therapy intake appointment, where you just go through alllll of your issues, realize how long they’ve been issues, and feel like somebody’s just peeled your emotional skin off for a minute.

Like. Normal therapy gets into these issues, but it’s a slower and more gradual process. Intake appointments get to the heart of things all at once. No slow, gentle “so what was it like during that one specific afternoon when you were eleven and those five boys in your class called you ‘ugly’ while you waited for the school bus?” but more of an “OKAY SO YOU’VE EXPERIENCED INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS SINCE YOU WERE ELEVEN AND HAVE HAD SUICIDAL THOUGHTS SINCE YOU WERE A TEENAGER, SOUNDS LIKE CHRONIC SUICIDAL IDEATION, NEXT TOPIC.”

Anyway, the nurse (who was excellent; very to-the-point, and also very practical) ended up prescribing me a sleep aid called Trazodone to theoretically cut down on my bedtime insomnia from 2ish hours to 0ish hours, and I’ve been on that for about a week. I want to say that it’s working (especially in conjunction with Kyle and my decision to start taking melatonin at bedtime every night in very tasty cherry gummy form), but I honestly don’t know. I’m forcing myself to be more well-rested, by which I mean that I’m refusing to take afternoon naps even when circumstances would allow me to (read: no appointments for anyone, either virtual or physical), but I can’t tell if anything is working well because Sam’s in an anxious streak and has woken us up one way or another basically every night for a couple of weeks now.

(more on that in a minute)

So that’ll be fun to talk to my therapist about. Meanwhile, I’ve also had an appointment with an endocrinologist (not a reproductive endocrinologist, because while I’m 100% for snagging one more girl out of our freezies, we need to pay the $3500 to have them tested and have Kyle actually employed before we strike on down that path) to try and start getting my PCOS better under control. Last October, I spent a day in the ER with agonizing pain in my lower left abdomen, which the ER diagnosed as constipation (even though, and this is TMI, I was and am regular for basically the first time in my entire life) but which my OB-GYN figured was probably related to my PCOS. We went down a path there of trying progesterone-only hormonal birth control (review: too much breakthrough bleeding, too much depression, nowhere near enough pain reduction) because I’m prone to migraine with aura, which makes me a poor candidate for estrogen usage; and I got a referral to the endocrinologist to see if we could make my hormones start behaving.

That appointment was supposed to happen in either February or March, but either I was sick as hell or it was during the Great Cancellation Of Things, so the appointment proper didn’t happen until this month. After we talked about my symptoms (I am quite fat, I have wonky periods, I am very hairy, acne is my constant companion, getting pregnant was a pain in the ass, and my ovaries have the distinct “string of pearls” cysts on them), my endocrinologist ordered about six sprillion blood tests to check how my hormones were doing overall. Everything is consistent with PCOS (absurdly high testosterone, which I wish I could donate to some trans men out there, and hallmarks of insulin resistance though not diabetes), so she’s starting me on metformin (500mg to start, gradually increasing to 2000mg/day) to combat the insulin resistance, and I’m adding that to my daily regimen.

Basically, I’ve reached a point in my life where everything is measured in various pills; and that’s not even counting my migraine meds (because I only really take those when I manage to catch a migraine starting). And honestly, I don’t mind it much. There’s some faux wisdom about blah blah blah, being medicated is bad, makes you conform, something something 5G Bill Gates QAnon bullshit (or, on the other side of things, “all you need is fresh air and a positive outlook, plus maybe some crystals and essential oils!” Or both. Silliness has no boundary), but it’s like. Maybe I like not feeling like garbage. Maybe I like it when I’m able to spend an afternoon writing a blog instead of sleeping. Maybe I want to treat my body’s hormonal wackiness. Maybe I want to have the ability to feel genuinely happy, because depression has stolen that from me, and if I need medication to get that back, I will literally take all the pills.

Like not to feel happy all the time. That isn’t how things work. I just want to be able to look at the days and weeks to come and not feel like I’m drowning.

BUT ANYWAY.

Dads. This weekend was both Father’s Day on Sunday and Kyle’s birthday on Monday. I’ve spent a decent amount of time, therefore, baking and also organizing gifts and cards and the like.

The baking was the fun part. I love baking; it’s one of those things that, if you know a few tricks and are very precise with what you do, people will love you for it. Kyle’s cake, catering to the things he adores in a dessert, was a red velvet layer cake with a s’mores filling (marshmallow fluff mixed with crushed graham crackers and mini chocolate chips) and decorated with rich chocolate buttercream, marshmallows, graham crackers, and candy bars. I don’t like to say that I’ve outdone myself when I bake something, but this time, I absolutely outdid myself.

I also outdid myself showering Kyle with multitudinous gifts, each designed to remind him of one of his kids when he used it. From Sammy, he got the game of Sorry, because we pretty much just play board games with Sammy (Sorry is… not anyone’s favorite right now because it’s really frustrating independent of anyone taking revenge on anyone else, and we’re all learning valuable lessons about not trying to stack the deck, because the game Knows). From Isaac, he got what’s called a dice tower; it’s basically a better way of rolling dice that resembles a marble game…

…and makes satisfying “click clack” noises as the colorful math rocks descend. Isaac loves putting things in things, especially if that act creates a Noise, so the idea of him giving a dice tower was just irresistible. And from Carrie, Kyle received some of those colorful math rocks, specifically a dice set with pink and purple butterflies because that’s just who she is. Sparkles, pink and purple, butterflies, rainbows… that may change in the coming years, but for now, she’s my girly girl.

Lockdown has been easing in a good way here in Massachusetts–at least out in our neck of the woods, people have remained compliant with mask orders, so some things are somewhat back to normal, and we’ve felt comfortable enough the past couple of weekends to go and visit my parents at their house (even though our house is now visitable with its delightful couches, we wanted the twins to get some time at their grandparents’ house, since they haven’t had much time there at all). We went there for Father’s Day on Sunday and enjoyed some takeout from Outback Steakhouse and some good visiting. My dad and Kyle both got cards signed by all three kids (some more legibly than others), and I got my dad a book of Dad Jokes, because he is the absolute master of them.

So it was a good weekend with a lot of normalcy, and that was really good for my mental state. Yesterday, for the first time in I don’t even know how long, I felt wide awake without having to go and take a nap when the twins did (I try not to nap when the twins do, but usually when that happens, I end up so tired throughout the afternoon that I can’t function; that I’ve been able to go several days without feeling like I need a nap–today excluded for being a migraine day–has been really nice). I also managed to go out and run some errands like the world was back to something resembling normalcy and not just. Chaotic.

Problems have even started being more normal, too, specifically where Sam is concerned. He’s had a loose tooth for several months, as you do when you are five, and it got really loose the other day, probably earlier than it should have. I guess he bit down too hard on a piece of bacon, and that pulled his tooth away from the gum and, apparently, exposed a nerve. The dentist told us there’s nothing for it except to give him Tylenol or Motrin and Orajel, because pulling it before it’s ready would cause more problems than it would solve.

The trouble is that this small adventure has caused a lot of anxiety for Sam. He’s understandably wary about eating now, because his tooth hurts–last night, despite us having his favorite noodles for dinner, he sobbed hysterically and refused to eat them because he was afraid. And then tonight, he sneaked down to snuggle with me when he was supposed to be in bed and told me, “I know I’m supposed to be happy about my loose tooth, but it hurts so much, and I’m really kind of mad at that bacon.”

I told him that the only way he’s supposed to feel is how he does feel–that it’s alright and even makes sense for him to be angry about this happening, because losing your first tooth should be exciting, fun, and painless, not scary and painful.

And then he wanted to talk about spiders, because he’s six.

His pediatrician recommended us to a therapist to try and help him cope with anxiety better–I think his is worse than it should be because he’s got parents who are prone to anxiety, so there’s that natural tendency to pick up on it, and since the two of us are only just learning healthy coping skills, it’s hard for us to teach him. With any luck, speaking with a therapist will give him tools to use now so that he can grow up and have a handle on this instead of growing up like we Millennials do.

So we’ll see where it all goes. But hopefully, it’ll go good places. Until then…

The Gremlins

June 8, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

Hey, guess what, here’s a TRIGGER WARNING, because I’m going to talk about my depression, and it’s going to be raw and real, so if you have a hard time reading about suicidal ideation or depressive psychosis, please click the little X on your tab. Please also click the little X on your tab if you’re the type of person to make “lol triggered” jokes because fuck you.

Right, so anyway.

I know I’ve talked about depression a lot, but not in a while, because for a really long time, I was doing really well. My meds (Effexor, specifically) were doing their job, I was feeling pretty good about life, even my hormones weren’t stopping me from being healthy. Ish. I still don’t have the high levels of serotonin required to make a cutesy Zoom video (and, in fact, the handful of video collabs I’ve been invited to participate in since quarantine started have whooshed right by me, for which I sorely apologize), and my energy levels have stayed steadily somewhere around “engages kids in play but only if it doesn’t require a lot of frolicking on my part.” I’d been mercifully free from downswings for years, even in the postpartum times, and I’ve been feeling genuinely optimistic, despite the world being a dumpster fire in a lot of ways.

And then 2020 happened.

I felt the first hints of a downswing in January, when the president decided that starting World War III over Twitter was a great idea. It wasn’t anything severe at the time, more of a few nights panicking while trying to fall asleep and thinking, “Really. Fucking really. I cannot emphasize enough how little I and everyone else in existence want this, and yet it is happening, and it might result in massive casualties on all sides and nuclear winter. Yayyyyy.”

But it passed.

And I might’ve gotten through the year without a downswing, despite everything. The nonstop rush of everything happening so much that’s the modern newscycle has actually been good training for me at getting righteously angry while also being able to distance myself when I need a mental health break. We donated to help Australia recover from its wildfires, I spent most of the winter in bed because of bronchitis or norovirus, and once I’d recovered, I went into Sammy’s class twice to read him books. When I wasn’t sick, I went to the twins’ playgroup every week, and as exhausting as it was, it was good for me, because it was getting out of the house and doing a thing.

But then Covid-19 came.

And I hate talking about it as a catalyst for my depression getting worse, because it’s not like I’ve really suffered all that much from it. I have a dear college friend who’s an ICU nurse, and the fact that she’s not just rolling over into a ball of nope every day astounds me. I know people who’ve gotten sick themselves or lost friends and family members. By comparison with all of the above, I should be fine: I’m just homebound. That’s all.

But depression doesn’t work that way. Instead, it sees patterns and recognizes those patterns as itself. For me, the pattern that pushes me into a downswing is monotony. If there’s little to no change in my day-to-day life, it gets hard for my brain to produce serotonin, no matter what good things are happening, like birthdays and new couches and D&D on the weekends. And I knew the second the Commonwealth started locking down that things were going to get ugly. I hoped that maybe, just maybe, the fact that I’m still on my antidepressant might keep things from getting too ugly, that maybe I might be able to come out of this with the lack of depression that makes sense for someone who’s not really suffering from the situation, just bearing emotional weight for the people around her.

I pushed through it as much as I could. I put off talking to someone as long as I could. What were they going to do, give me medication? Tell me that I could start therapy as soon as things were over? I didn’t leave the house because I’m prone to illness induced asthma and got bronchitis just a few months ago. My days fell into the same routine, even once Isaac’s ABA started and we had people coming into the house. The added pressure of keeping up with the twins’ Zoom call therapies didn’t help things at all, especially when I kept missing therapy sessions because I lost track of who was meeting when. Our poor services coordinator texts me at least once a week asking, “Are you still able to meet today?” when I’m 10 minutes late for our Zoom meeting because of basically no reason.

I got through half of March. April passed by. We had Easter. We stayed in our routine. We were good. We didn’t leave the house to do anything but get groceries once a week. We washed our hands all the time. We made Isaac’s ABA therapists wash their hands the second they came into the house. We wore masks. Kyle worked twelve hour days, seven days a week, to keep up with a new project his old company was doing to help with Covid.

And then, on April 30, he was laid off.

Maybe that was the catalyst for the spiral; or maybe it’s that March, April, May, and June are usually my busiest months, spent obsessively organizing birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, and this year, I’m basically just sitting on my butt, doing nothing. I don’t really know.

I just know that one night, I was sitting on my new couch, watching my kids play, and suddenly, it was like a little gremlin in the back of my head, saying, “Isn’t it a shame that you can’t want to die because of your kids?”

I should’ve seen it coming, probably. All of my previous hobbies have gotten kind of lackluster to me. I can’t disappear into writing anything anymore. None of my video games are fun anymore. I can’t make myself get up and read a book anymore. Even looking around at the mess in my house that needs cleaning makes me feel frustrated and empty, like why even bother when we can’t get it done while the kids are here anyway?

But there it was, that first intrusive thought, something I haven’t had since I started Effexor. More followed, usually late at night when I was trying to fall asleep. They really were like little gremlins sitting in the back of my head, saying things I didn’t like. “You know,” they said one night, “if you told Kyle you were going to take a nap, you could sneak up here and do it in a way you can’t sneak away any other time.”

And the rest of my brain was screaming, “But I don’t want to die!”

Another time: “Let’s google ways of doing it painlessly, because pain isn’t fun.”

And the rest of my brain was screaming, “Dying in general isn’t fun either!”

I’m not a self-sacrificing idiot. I did some googling, not of painless ways to die, but rather of potential side effects of all the medications I’m taking. My birth control pill had listed under its name, “Contact your doctor if you experience new or worsening depression,” so that was the first step I took, calling my OB-GYN and saying, “hey, I don’t know if this is because of the progesterone or anything, but…”

And in a heartbeat, although Covid still mattered, it didn’t matter. Immediately, my doctor set up appointments for me to come in and see him. At the same time, he set up an emergency triage with the mental health department, which made the appointments kind of weird: I sat in his office having a pelvic exam, PAP smear, endometrial biopsy, and polyp removal (owwww), and then I went into another room and had a phone call with someone from behavioral health to make sure I wasn’t in any immediate danger.

And I wasn’t, because the gremlins aren’t terribly convincing, but they’re still present, so the mental health provider set me up with one of her colleagues, and we spoke on Friday.

The first appointment with any new doctor is an adventure, because you have to go through your medical history with a stranger and talk about how you’ve only ever smoked tobacco once and it was a pipe in college and it was terrible, and how having three kids and taking progesterone to help with PCOS means that your sex life is a craps shoot as to whether or not it exists and so on.

The first appointment with a therapist, though, is basically an emotional debridement. You don’t just talk about your physical health and history, oh no. You have to go through the history of your mental health, which means delicately going into your background and realizing, as you talk things through, that maybe you haven’t been as okay all along as you previously thought. Like for example, your therapist asks, “How long have you had intrusive thoughts like these?” and you start to answer that it’s just been in the last couple of years, but no wait, you remember them in college, and no, they went back farther than that, and suddenly, you realize that you were having intrusive thoughts as a kid, and you were so scared of them because you grew up in a church that preached demonic possession and didn’t want your parents to think that you were possessed, so you kept it all to yourself.

“What were they like as a kid?” the therapist asks, and at first you think you don’t remember, but then you do remember the thought of wouldn’t it be nice to get hit by a car or be sick in the hospital so that everyone would feel sorry for you. “What a weird thought!” you say laughingly, and the therapist says, “It sounds like you subconsciously wanted to ask for help but didn’t know how.”

So you have to absorb that while also chatting about yes, things were better for a long time after you started meds, but now they inexplicably are not better anymore.

It’s a lot. And as you’re raw from letting this all sink in, the therapist remarks, “I think you’ve got severe depression and depressive psychosis, and also your meds don’t seem to be cutting it anymore. I’m ordering a medication review with your PCP and one of our prescribing RNs to see if we can’t find something that will work better for you. And you and I are going to talk again next week. In the meantime, here are some crisis numbers. Please make sure you’ve got them on hand and make sure your husband has them in case there’s ever an emergency.”

And you’re like, oh, I guess it’s worse than I thought.

I’ve got a lot to unpack over the coming weeks and months, on a lot of levels–judging by that, more than I probably realize. Having therapy to look forward to is helping in the short term, but in the long term… I don’t know. I just want to feel hopeful again, you know?

Anyway. I didn’t write any of this as a ploy for sympathy or to try and divert attention from infinitely more important causes (and if we’re friends on Facebook, you know where my mind’s been this past week), but just because I want to be honest on this blog, as I always have wanted, and that means sometimes telling some hard stories. So there you go.

Stuff is still happening

May 16, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

I think the wildest thing about locking down is that it feels like there’s nothing new to report ever about anything. Stuff is happening, sure, but it’s like being in a major depressive downswing, where it’s all happening in this void of nothing. Days are all bleeding into each other, to the point where I told like three or four separate people today that Monday is Memorial Day.

It’s not.

Stuff is happening! It just is happening in this void that’s usually relegated to memories. Like you know how most of your memories kind of bleed together so you know that a thing happened, but you don’t know specifically when? That’s what it feels like.

It’s like my memories of my choir tours back in college. In four years, I went on twelve choir tours in a huge bus driving all up and down the eastern seaboard of the US, and while some of them are very specific place-related memories (like obviously, that time we went to the beach on Cape Cod was during a tour on Cape Cod), most just sort of blur into a “I know this happened, but I don’t really know when or where.” When did I stay at that person’s house? What year was it? Was it in Pennsylvania or New York or Virginia? Was it in the spring or the fall or the winter?

(if you were in A Cappella Choir at ENC, you know what I mean)

Stuff is happening. Sam’s birthday happened this week! I have a six-year-old now, and it’s crazy. For the most part, there’s very little difference between Sammy the six-year-old and Sammy the five-year-old, except that Sammy the six-year-old has Minecraft guides that he likes to read aloud to us at all hours of the day and night, where Sammy the five-year-old did not have such guides.

I think he had a pretty awesome birthday, all things considered. We’d been promising him for something like two years that we’d have his birthday party this year at our local indoor play place called Luv 2 Play, which is just that kind of McDonald’s Play Place gone wild, Discovery Zone type adventure land, with ball pits and climbing structures and arcades and pizza! It’s like Chuck E Cheese but so much more! And they’d literally just opened a month before the lockdown went into place and then the lockdown happened and so much for that.

So I knew the potential for disappointment was high and because of that, I went a little overboard with the stuff we could do. Our local police department had a program in place from about the time the lockdown started where they’d come to your house for your kid’s birthday, lights flashing and sirens wailing, and I signed us up for that. Sam was super shy about it, but he was also beyond happy, and he got to sit in the front of and pretend to drive a squad car (his comments on it: “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff in here! It’s a mess!”).

I baked him a cake, as I always do, and even though it looked sort of a mess, it tasted great. Black frosting, as he requested, plus Minecraft decor, as he requested, though my favorite part was the Lego brick candles I found on Amazon. Guarantee I wouldn’t have thought to use those if I hadn’t been scrambling to try and find ways to create a spectacular cake for my big guy to help him with what could’ve otherwise been a really sad birthday.

AND. His best friend’s mom got in touch with me and we planned for them to drive up to our house so Sammy and his best friend could see each other. I think that was my favorite part of the day. Sam, being six, says that his favorite part of the day was getting various toys, but I think what really sticks in his mind was seeing Hunter and getting to talk with him, even if they had to stay apart through a car window.

So it was a success, despite everything, and I’m relieved.

Stuff is happening. We broke down our old couch and chair because the furniture outlet we’d gone shopping at literally days before the entire state shut down called us and said, “Hey, are you going to have your couches delivered or what?”

We’ve needed new couches for ages because our living room furniture was not only purchased in the era of “well, the Båckachë model from Ikea is affordable” but has broken in multiple ways and multiple places. It was ugly and stained and had ceased to be comfortable by any definition.

And we had a pretty nice tax return this year and figured, hey, Kyle’s gainfully employed and even though he has to work from home now, we should be fine through this pandemic!

Anyway. We needed new furniture, so we bought new furniture; but when everything went into lockdown, we thought we’d have to wait until whenever restrictions were lifted completely to have it all delivered (since we just did what’s called “threshold” delivery, which means they basically yeet the furniture at you from the back of a moving truck). But no, apparently they’re doing deliveries again, so we’ve broken down the old sofa and rocking chair and made our living room empty and ready for a sofa, loveseat, and coffee table.

(it looks a lot emptier now that we’ve cleaned up all the toys)

It’s wild. Even in this time that feels like miles of endless nothing, I’ve somehow reached the age where I have a coffee table. A really nice one, too!

Isaac is still having his ABA, which is great. He’s so much calmer and happier, and he’s been getting along so much better with Carrie. He’s gaining words, and though he doesn’t necessarily use them unprompted (i.e., he won’t do like Carrie does and point to a picture of something yellow while saying “yellow”), he still has them, and that’s important. He doesn’t melt down as often as he had been, and he’s just… he’s really doing so well. He’s still very obviously autistic, and I’ve made it clear to his therapists and their office that I am perfectly fine with him stimming, with him being obviously autistic; but he’s learning to communicate better, which is helping him both in the short term and in the long run. He’s better able to express his wants and needs, and because of that, he doesn’t get frustrated so easily.

Which is good.

And then for me. Despite not being able to actually physically go to a doctor’s office, I had a breast cancer risk assessment screening thing last week. It wasn’t a huge deal, just something my OB-GYN had recommended because I have a lot of aunts who’ve had breast cancer and other cancers, on both sides. When that’s your family makeup, you want to get yourself assessed, just to make sure that you’re not missing something.

To nobody’s surprise, I’m sitting right in the middle of the high risk category, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m 100% going to get breast cancer, nothing I can do about it, but rather that I need to start being screened more frequently as soon as possible so that if anything does pop up, it can be caught ASAP and stopped before it turns into something unstoppable.

Naturally, with the world locked down, that basically means that I have to hurry up and wait. I received a packet in the mail talking about my risks and medications I could take (that decreased the risk of breast cancer, but also increased the risk of blood clots and uterine cancer, so I’m like ??? that sounds like the opposite of helping?), and I have a note on my chart about getting a mammogram as soon as I can. And I get to follow that up with an MRI and just alternate mammograms and MRIs every six months until I die or someone chops off my boobs or something.

(true story: if I could donate some boob to someone who wants to have more boob, I totally would)

All of this has happened in the last week, since the last time I wrote something, but it feels like nothing is happening. Tomorrow is Saturday, I know, but beyond that? Who even knows? What even is happening? Everything is happening, and it’s all a big, meaningless void of nothing.

And yet, I’m still in favor of keeping locked down as long as it takes to get some sort of actual plan in place or get our act together on treatments and vaccines and whatever the fuck we need because this is not a pleasant illness. I hate being locked down, and if by some miracle, there was no more Covid-19 tomorrow and we could all frolic about freely, I would be the first one out of my house. I want my son to be able to go back to kindergarten and see his friends and finish out the year. I want to take all three of my kids to their well visits without having to wrestle with masks. I want to know without a shadow of a doubt that our trip to Disney World in November is happening. I want people to be able to go back to work. I want to get my roots touched up.

Like that’s the thing. I feel like there’s this misconception that if you’re in favor of things being locked down, you’re having a blast being cooped up inside and don’t see any downsides whatsoever. That is the opposite of true. I am hitting a yellow wallpaper point. I’m worried about the longterm ramifications of the way the world is right now for all three of my kids, regarding not just their educations but also their psychological stability and the economy they’ll be inheriting.

But I also don’t want people to die. I’m generally in favor of that not happening. People die every day, of course, but if we can reduce the number of people dying, I’d like to do that.

And then like… I talk about returning to normal and, okay. I’ve seen the post, too, about how our previous “normal” is what has this country being the laughingstock of the world with how we’re handling this. I don’t want that. When I talk about returning to normal, I mean I want my son to be able to see his friends at school and be taught by someone who’s trained to teach kindergarten rather than by me saying “what the hell is a digraph” during a Zoom call. I want to go to well visits at the doctor to catch problems before they’re major. I want to be able to say, “hey, let’s go visit so-and-so” or “hey, let’s go to the playground” or “hey, let’s go get ice cream” and then do that thing.

But I also want the things that would provide a safety net in situations like this–things like universal healthcare, universal basic income, significantly higher pay for teachers, a living wage for everyone, general compassion and caring for our fellow human beings across the board. I want that change. But I also want the normal of being able to pick up my kids from the school bus after they’ve spent a day with their friends.

I hope that makes sense.

I’m not going to debate anyone about it if you disagree.

But I do wish we could find a nice balance between “endless lockdown because we don’t know what we’re doing” and “we’re just going back to business as usual and screw people if they get sick.”

Sigh.

Uncertainty

May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

317

I wrote this entry a couple of days ago, but then I deleted it and decided to try it again, and again, and again, because no matter what I’ve been writing about things, it doesn’t turn out right.

Here’s the short of the matter: Kyle got laid off last week.

It was 100% unexpected and had nothing to do with the current state of the world. In short, his company was bought out and layoffs happened. We thought he’d be safe from them because of a variety of factors, but in the end, he wasn’t.

We’ve been through this before in our life together, lots of times. Right after we got married, my internship that was supposed to turn into a full time job… well, didn’t. I’d been our primary source of income because Kyle was still finishing his degree, and we went from being able to afford things like an apartment and our car payments to… not being able to afford anything. And it sucked for about eight million reasons, the largest of which being that we were broke. Worse than broke. We were trying to get an education, and the economy tanked after we’d taken out our loans, so there we were, jobless, newly married, with $60k in student loan debt.

Kyle had a savings account, so we used some of that to keep ourselves from going under completely. We both job hunted like mad, as much as we could. Kyle eventually found a seasonal retail position, and I kept hunting. I flew up to Massachusetts to interview for a technical writing position and stayed there for a week, waiting to hear back and hearing nothing. And then, out of the blue, people started finding my resume and I ended up, at least for a little while, at my favorite job I’ve ever worked with my favorite coworkers ever.

But that didn’t last either. That job ended in a layoff as well, because the economy was tough, and my entire department was cut. Kyle and I made a choice then, that we’d both try and find more work, but that if we couldn’t find work in Texas, we’d cut spending where we could and move in with my parents, since they had an in-law apartment they were offering us rent-free.

And, well. No nibbles after a month, bills piling up, stress on our shoulders. We made the move, and it was hard, and I hated it. I hate moving in general, but I hate it most when it’s moving from somewhere you’ve thought would be at least semi-permanent. I hate it when you’re watching your entire life, save for whatever necessities you can squeeze into a couple of small cars, get shuffled off into storage. All of those wedding gifts, all of those books, all of those photographs, boxed up and kept in a U-Haul for who knew how long.

I hated feeling like a failure, too, because even though the layoffs in question were mostly because of a shitty economy, you always feel like you’ve failed when you’re laid off. Even when your manager tells you that your work is exemplary, and when the company owner tells you that he’ll recommend you anywhere you want to go, you still wonder how you could’ve let this happen.

But back then, it was just the two of us, plus a snake and two leopard geckos. We lived as leanly as we could; weeks where we’d saved money ended with a $20 dinner for two at Chili’s, but most of the time, we’d end our week with whatever we could buy for $10 or less at the corner store.

We moved into my parents’ basement, quintessential Millennials. And somehow, once we’d settled in there, things came together. In only about four months, Kyle got a great job, paying way more than I’d been making in Texas or than he could’ve hoped to make there. A year after moving in with my parents, we moved into our own place. A year after that, Kyle got his last job, which was a great experience with great benefits and pay that enabled us to buy our own house and raise three kids.

And now this.

I’m trying to be okay, for everyone’s sake. I know it’s logical to be okay, that every job Kyle and I have gotten in the past decade or so has been offered to us rather than being something we’ve had to hunt down, that we’ve got a surprisingly sturdy safety net at the moment. I know that all of Kyle’s contacts in his industry heard he was available for work again and started sending him jobs immediately. I know that, in the end, it’s probably going to turn out that it’s all for the best, and he’ll be making way more than he was before, and he’ll be happier and more comfortable than he was before.

And yet.

Everything is uncertain now. We’d finally gotten to a point where paychecks didn’t feel stretched paper thin. The twins are done with formula, Sam’s in public school. We’re halfway through buying couches, for heaven’s sake.

(we are going to finish buying the couches, as soon as the furniture store opens back up)

It’s different now than when it was just the two of us and some reptiles. Eight years ago, when we packed up our life and moved away, not knowing what the future would bring us, it was just us (plus a snake and two leopard geckos). Nobody depended on us. We could’ve, if we’d had that sort of kooky young person mindset, just up and moved to Scotland or New Zealand, and it wouldn’t be that hard because it would just be us.

(I mean, it wouldn’t be easy, but big life changes are easier with just two adults who know how to cope with change)

But we’ve got kids now. Three kids depending on us to keep them from starving or being homeless. And in the end, we’ve got enough of a safety net that I know, logically, we’ll be alright, but there’s that little nagging gremlin in the back of my mind saying, “but what if…?”

I remain staggeringly cognizant of the fact that we’re living on a knife’s edge, like pretty much everyone else in our generation. Kyle and I–Kyle especially–are skilled workers who always get compliments on our “work ethic” and other intangibles that people like a lot, but we’re also lucky. Lucky that this happened when it did, lucky that we have families who are able to support us, lucky that we’ve got our safety net in place, lucky that Kyle has great contacts with great connections. Lucky.

We’re taking turns being optimistic. It’s Kyle’s turn tonight. I’m feeling sulky and mildly belligerent, but I’m internalizing the latter and nursing the former with a handful of novels I’ve been meaning to read and the knowledge that Sam’s birthday next week will, at least, be a good time.

One Month on the Inside

April 21, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

The weird thing about lockdown is that not much changes from one minute to the next, even when it’s been a full month+ of hanging out at home all the time. On the plus side, I can safely say that I did not get Covid-19 when I last went to the store back in March. On the minus side, literally everything else.

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The only big thing of note is that Isaac has, despite the lockdown, started ABA therapy. ABA is apparently considered an essential service, so we have his therapists scrub down as soon as they come in the house, and since Isaac is the first kid of the day for them, there’s no huge worry that they’ve gone and gotten something and brought it to us.

Today was day 2 of ABA, and it went… alright, I suppose. We’re still in the “let’s play so he gets used to us and then we can start therapy” stage, so it’s mostly two hours every day of unguided play with a box of toys that doesn’t leave our house but also only comes out when it’s ABA time. Carrie participates as well, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but both of our services coordinators pointed out that her participation is pretty important, because Isaac lives with her, so he needs to learn all of the things he’ll be learning in context of her instead of just in context of a therapist and one or two parents.

The box of toys is all pretty easy stuff–shapes boxes, crayons, stacking toys, a firetruck. Its primary appeal is that it only comes out during ABA time, so even though the kids are playing with those toys every day, they still have some novelty to them. And it’s a plus because between Isaac “cleaning” (read: throwing every single thing he owns into the gated space between the TV and the rest of the living room) and Sam sweeping things out to the dining room/playroom with him, most of the twins’ toys are. Missing.

Sam continues to take this entire situation harder than the rest of us. It’s a huge and difficult change for anyone, and I don’t know a single person who’s looking at the state of the world currently and getting super excited about it, but Kyle and I are at least adults with coping skills. We grumble, and we’re anxious, and when I think about the Worst Case Scenario, I have a panic attack (which is super convenient, because do you know what happens when you have a panic attack? You can’t breathe, that’s what happens, so it sends you on this delightful spiral that never ends :D), but for the most part, we have coping skills. We can conceive of restrictions lightening somewhat, and we know that if we do get sick, odds are that we’ll be fine. Hell, we’ve even got a theory that the bug that took me out for most of January and February (remember that?) was Covid-19 but nobody expected it around then, so nobody knew.

But then there’s Sam.

It’s rough on him, of course, because he’s lost school–at the very least until May 4, possibly for the rest of the year (I would be surprised if school starts up again before September). He’s lost that daily connection to his friends and teachers, his routine has been thrown to the wind, and although he’s kept his academic progress (we check in daily, he does his work, he’s doing just fine), I feel like he’s lost a lot of the non-academic stuff that kindergarten teaches you. Worse, he’s five, so he has no coping skills for just about anything. He’ll be alright for a few days, and then he’ll just completely melt down and sob and throw hours long tantrums, and when we ask him what’s wrong and how can we help, he can’t explain it.

And we know. He’s scared. He’s lonely. He’s sad. He’s angry. He feels what we’re all feeling, but he’s only five, so he doesn’t have the same coping strategies we have as adults, and it’s heartbreaking to watch.

(but hey, at least his eventual therapy won’t be mostly talking about how he’s messed up because of his parents, so that’s a win!)

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I see people protesting because they want to go get haircuts and go to Applebee’s and go back to this arbitrary “normal” they imagine existed, but I’m here hating lockdowns because I can’t help my kid. Yes, it’s hard not being able to go to the mall on the weekend or even just visit my parents. Yeah, I’m frustrated that I’ve had to try and reschedule about 42 doctor’s appointments in the last couple of weeks. But I’m most worried about my son, and I’m most worried about people who needed those nonessential jobs to pay their rent and get groceries and now have to make $1200 stretch for who knows how long?

I’m trying really hard to be optimistic and know that things aren’t going to last forever. By hook or by crook, 2022 seems to be the date that the experts are saying “okay, if normal even existed, look for it then.” Which is A REALLY LONG TIME to be having periods of lockdown and not lockdown and lockdown and not lockdown, but okay.

And humans have this neat superpower of being really adaptable. We’ll find ways to make school happen and we’ll find ways to continue seeing our friends and family and we’ll find ways to reopen various things (because CAPITALISM, gosh darnit!). I know eventually, humanity as a whole will adjust.

But I’m looking at the damage happening in the meantime and feeling awfully sad that some of it could’ve been avoided and some of it couldn’t, and basically, this continues to suck.

BUT. We did get a new iPad so that Sam could do schoolwork and socialize, so there’s that.

Pandemic Dreams

April 10, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

These are stressful times, friends, and stressful times mean weird dreams.

I’m already prone to weird and vivid dreams. Effexor, my antidepressant, tends to make weird dreams a Thing, and in the five years I’ve been on it, I’ve had some real doozies. Sometimes, they relate to what I’m dealing with in my waking life, but more frequently, they’re just really weird. They’re occasionally good, rarely bad (and when they’re bad, they’re really bad), but mostly just vivid, to the point where they embed themselves in my psyche for years and years.

So. Combine my innate tendency towards weird, vivid dreams with these weird and stressful times, and let’s just say that my nights have been… fun lately.

At first, my dreams weren’t bad at all. In fact, they were very reassuring and heavily thematic. Every night, I had a slightly different dream about moving with my parents and siblings (and sometimes Kyle and the kids) into an old house in my hometown. Now, when I say “old” I don’t mean “I used to live here!” old but rather “wow, I think George Washington may have lived here” old. Old, as in “this is about as old as a white person’s house can be in this country.” Old as balls.

As houses that are old as balls tend to be around here, these houses were severely haunted, none more so than the one built beside a CVS and just down the street from my favorite pizza place. It was within walking distance of the high school (which I still attended in my dream), and the ground around it was stark and dusty, like the house had drained the land of its very life. The house itself was solid, dark brown, with a front door as vibrant red as ripe strawberries.

Inside, the house made its hauntedness more than apparent. Ghosts lurked around every corner of its twisted interior, an interior that kept changing shape to suit the house’s moods. Getting upstairs was a challenge, because you never knew where the stairs would turn up. One minute, the stairs would begin in the kitchen and lead to the back yard. The next, the stairs would start right inside the front door and lead to the roof.

The door to the basement remained static, though, ominously so. It didn’t move because it didn’t have to move, you see. It radiated an ominous energy that should have threatened away anyone curious about what was in the basement. The darkness wasn’t visible; it was palpable. Whatever lurked behind that door seethed malevolence. It needed the world to know that nobody was welcome inside.

Nobody, that is, except me.

In my dream, I went through the door without the slightest bit of fright, and when I did, the house rearranged itself for me specifically. It created a sanctuary for me with a huge writing desk, lively green plants, and soft amber lights all around, as if the desk on its pedestal was situated in a field of stars. Perhaps the house was haunted, and perhaps the presence haunting it was malicious, but that old house (built in 1716, I remember clearly) accepted and embraced me. Even if it rejected everyone else that came inside, it wanted me to know that I was home within its walls.

Travel has been common in each stage of pandemic dream series. This first series transitioned with a dream about touring the world with a subset of my college choir, all girls. We took a ship from various ports, but then had to drive from China to Russia in the middle of the night, escorted by the mafia. We passed at lightning speed through a forest of impossibly tall trees, so dark and enormous that their tops melted into the black sky above.

Once we arrived, we were given quarter in another old house, this one renovated within and not at all haunted. “I’d like to live here someday,” I remarked to the old house’s owner, who spoke with a British accent (apparently, the actors in my dreams can’t do Russian accents). “It’s a little odd, but it’s a very nice house.”

“Perhaps you shall someday,” he answered. “Perhaps you shall.”

As the pandemic has continued, and we’ve all coped with Schrodinger’s virus (which we must all act as if we have, so that we cannot contaminate others, but simultaneously as if we’ve never had so that we cannot be contaminated ourselves), my dreams started to change shape. Everything remained haunted, but the comforting feeling of the old house vanished to be replaced with malevolent haunted dolls.

Haunted dolls have always fascinated me. I’ve never had a fear of dolls like a lot of people; in fact, I’ve always loved dolls, and haunted dolls just added a layer of fun to the whole idea. My best friend in the third grade had a whole room full of dolls, those porcelain ones that are always possessed in the movies, and I loved them and the delicious shiver of fear I felt when she’d tell me scary stories about the ghosts she saw moving outside of her window.

Most of the haunted doll dreams have blurred together, save for the first and the last. The first involved a doll my mother and I found about twenty years ago while we were on vacation in Maine (because of course; there’s a reason all of Stephen King’s stories take place in Maine, and it’s not because he’s lived there most of his life. It’s because Maine is scary). My mom and I used to go antiquing during our annual family trip to the lakes region, and on this particular trip, we found an ancient doll that had obviously been very loved but looked very deeply cursed. We agreed that it was probably possessed by something and left the store, never to return.

Well. In the first haunted doll dream, that very doll started following me around, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It didn’t do anything to me; no Chucky-esque murder sprees here. It just followed me around and delighted in popping up whenever it knew its presence would shock me the most.

It was, in short, an asshole.

There were a few more haunted doll dreams, and then, earlier this week, the last haunted doll dream.

This dream took place in London, which I’ve visited about five times in my entire life, never long enough to really get a sense of its vibe beyond the neon tourist glow of Piccadilly Circus and the double decker buses pointing out where the king used to have people beheaded. Based on my dreams, though, London is very dark with amber lighting, except near the airport, where the dark sky gives way to white clouds and surreal glowing interiors.

In this particular dream, I was trapped in a market–not the covered market I knew from my days in Oxford, but a hybrid of a ballet school and a supermarket (don’t ask me, I don’t write these things). I didn’t want to be trapped there; I knew that I wouldn’t be able to leave London if I stayed much longer, because of the pandemic, and I knew the last flight out of Heathrow was leaving soon.

But I was trapped, and I was trapped alongside a boy and another girl (we were all young at the time), all of us in the bodies of dolls. People passed us by and we silently screamed at them to break us free, but they never listened. I don’t know where my real body was.

Night fell, and it soon became apparent that the other girl doll was behind the boy and my entrapment. The boy and I were from modern times and very much alive; the spirit possessing the girl doll was far older, far angrier, far more dangerous. Perhaps she’d trapped us within the dolls because she wanted company in her curse, or perhaps it was just aimless maliciousness. Whatever the case, we struggled with her atop a flight of stairs and through a hallway with doors leading to a candy shop and a cafe. Her fate, we agreed, was horrible, but that didn’t allow her to condemn us to the same miserable future.

Rain began to fall. It looked as if the girl might have the upper hand, but she slipped on the stairs and fell screaming to the cobblestone pavement below, her face shattering as she landed in a shallow puddle. As our porcelain skin reverted to flesh, the boy and I could see her spirit lying in the puddle as well, defeated and destroyed, growing slowly mistier and mistier until it faded away.

But I still had to catch my flight, doll or no doll. I raced through London; the streets went from black to grey to white, and I finally reached Heathrow airport. The last flight out was leaving the next morning, and they offered me a room in the glowing hostel nearby. As I checked in, stowing my luggage behind the front desk, the desk clerk remarked that I looked terrible. I laughed.

“You have no idea,” I told her.

I took a nap yesterday (because I didn’t sleep the night before for reasons that are far beyond my comprehension), and I knew my dreams were shifting theme again because I had a travel dream.

I went to Disney World, as we’re planning to do this fall with my parents (assuming the Rona calms its tits before then), and I’d arrived before anyone else, including Kyle and the kids.

(don’t ask me how that happened)

I waited for everyone in the lobby of our hotel, which was enormous–miles and miles of carpet and lacy white walls and enormous windows showing the warmth outside. Terminals every few yards listed the arrival times of various modes of transportation alongside the park hours; each terminal had a circle of seats around it, and one even had a stage in front of it.

I mention the stage because it was home to, of all things, the entire cast of Lord of the Rings, or at least the Fellowship. They were as beautiful in my dream as they’d been in the theaters 20 years ago, but they also glowed silver, which I assume none of them do in real life (maybe; I’m not really sure. If anyone knows anyone who was in Lord of the Rings, could you let me know if they glow in real life?). I hugged them all, and I lingered in Aragorn’s arms a bit longer than I probably should have.

(wouldn’t you?)

Afterwards, I grew tired of waiting for my family and settled down in a gondola. I didn’t want to go to a park; I just wanted to ride in the gondola, and I did, around and around, enjoying the views of Disney World from my moving room in the sky.

And then there was last night, the only truly thematic pandemic dream.

Things started logically enough. Kyle and I had the kids in the van, and my mom was with us. We were rushing to get Kyle to a commuter rail station so that he could get to work on time; despite the pandemic still being a thing in the dream, he had to go into work, so maybe this dream was about the future.

But the commuter rail station was closer than we thought it would be, and it was right next door to my favorite local supermarket, Wegmans. “We might as well do some grocery shopping while we’re here,” Kyle remarked, and added, “Why don’t you go in? You haven’t been shopping in a while.”

(I haven’t been shopping in a while, it’s true)

So I went in. I was bolstered, emotionally, by the things I saw as I walked into the store: entire pallets of Charmin and Angel Soft toilet paper being brought into the store! Was this really happening? Was the earth really healing?

Yes! I got inside and found that, while the store’s shelves weren’t full, it still had a far more robust selection than most stores I’ve seen and heard about in the last several weeks. I got stuck in the pasta aisle, dumbfounded by the wide selection, thrilled at the idea of buying as much parmesan cheese as my cart could carry. I guess I’d been there too long, though, because Kyle and my mom came inside with the kids and another cart to get me back on track.

We bought everything. Candy, soda, pasta, so much toilet paper. And not just toilet paper, two ply! Really good, cushy toilet paper! We bought fresh fruits and veggies, canned fruits and veggies, frozen fruits and veggies, and food for Easter. The only blip came when we were checking out and Kyle pulled six pounds of ground beef out of my cart.

“They were on sale!” I told him, pleased with myself for finding such a deal.

He clucked his tongue at me. “This,” he said, “is ground chuck. It comes from the chuck truck. I don’t like chuck truck chuck.”

And then he went and put the chuck from the chuck truck back on the chuck truck chuck shelf.

Anyway. There’s no point to this entry beyond that (a) this was a really fun writing exercise, and I hope that you really got a sense of these dreams the way I experienced them, and (b) these were some really weird dreams, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of this weird time brings me while I’m sleeping.

Clinging

March 31, 2020 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
(Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers (314)”)

I was initially doing okay with all of this, and ultimately, it was the thought of a longterm social distancing adventure that drove me to snap with rage that disappeared as quickly as it had come.

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(this happened, like, a week and a half ago)

I can’t remember what set me off, but I think it was Kyle saying the words “…if Disney World is even open by then” about our trip that’s coming up in November. The idea of living life like this the entire rest of the year just made something break a little in me, and I sort of snapped at him in that way moms do when we’ve been carrying it all inside to keep the rest of the family from seeing, because it’s fine to vent to your partner when they’re available, but the emotions show up whenever anyway, and you tamp them down because you don’t want your kids to be scared or pick up on you freaking out.

But eventually, the dam breaks a little.

I snapped, and then it was gone, and I’ve been about as fine as I can be, considering the circumstances, ever since.

That sounds like I’m dismissing things, and I’m not trying to. I’m feeling the emotions everyone’s feeling: grief over the world changing overnight into something unrecognizable. Rage about politics. Fear about what’s coming next. But I feel like I’ve got a better handle on it than I did before, when I was still hovering in the “denial” stage of grief about everything.

(and anyway, I will eat my hat if Disney isn’t open in November)

Which is all good, because we’re kind of floundering a lot with many bizarre emotions in this house.

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Anxiety is, understandably, the big one. I think I’ve got an okay handle on that because yay, antidepressants. Venlafaxine will probably be the reason I go crazy if the world ever does end properly, but for now, I’ve got a healthy supply of it, and it turns my anxiety into either really vivid crazy dreams or just really pleasant but unrelated dreams. Last night, I dreamed about characters from the soap opera One Life to Live, which I never even watched when it was a thing that was on often. The dream also took place in a therapist’s office, but that’s it. Nothing otherwise notable about it. No portentous 19 crows or anything like that.

Nobody else in this house is on antidepressants, which creates some interesting situations, most of them with Sam. He doesn’t have a completely firm grasp of what’s going on, but he knows that he can’t go to school, he knows that his school year is probably over as he knew it (they’re saying schools are closed until May 4, but I’ll be very surprised if they reopen before summer break), and he knows he misses his friends and teachers.

So, of course, he’s scared.

It mostly comes out at night, and he’s too old for the magic jar of dirt stuff I did when he was younger. Too smart, too. He doesn’t believe it when I rub lotion on his hands and tell him it will protect him from bad dreams, because his anxieties are too big to be vanquished with some love and lotion. He knows that the world isn’t the same, and will never be the same again, and it scares him.

He gets out of bed every night after he’s been tucked in. We talk to him, we hold him on the couch, we tell him the truth, but we sprinkle it with generous doses of hope, because he needs that. Still, he’s scared.

He’s kind of shut down about homeschooling, and I’m not sure what to do about it; worse, I’m sort of limited in what I can do about it. He’s in kindergarten, and he’s covered most of the basics he’ll need before first grade in the fall (this will have reached some sort of equilibrium by fall or I am punching this virus in the face myself), so I’m not terribly worried about him falling behind… but I still want to try and help him learn things while he’s at home.

He does alright for about two days when we give him a new routine, but then on day three, he decides he doesn’t like this anymore and has a meltdown. Which… okay, fair. Maybe he should just have Wednesdays off or something? The routine was, briefly, some yoga and then a video about a subject he liked, writing a sentence about the subject, then doing math. And, of course, forever checking his messages on Facebook’s messenger for kids (he’s got a long distance friendship blossoming with my friend’s daughter, and it’s basically destroying me with cute).

I feel bad. I wish that I could be 100% there for Sam, but the twins are another adventure during this, my everyday adventure that hasn’t changed in the slightest, except that Kyle is home for that adventure all the time now, so lunch and naptime are both easier.

But the twins seem to sense that something’s amiss as well. They don’t like to not be on my lap, which makes trying to help Sam with literally anything a struggle, particularly because the twins are not small anymore. They’re two now, had their birthday less than a day after the state started shutting down altogether. Our plans to take them to the aquarium were dashed.

Everyone senses that something’s up, and nobody can really parse their feelings on it. I can’t either, but I’m trying to at least throw positive shit out into the world to see whatever glimmers of hope will stick.

That mostly happens outside. When the weather permits, we throw jackets on the kids and take them out to the front lawn to run around for a little bit after dinner (the backyard is a disaster area, and before all of this, we were going to see about hiring someone to clean it all up for us).

The twins like to run to the edges of the yard and get caught. Carrie especially likes to look at our crocuses nosing up through the dead leaves and greening grass, and Isaac likes to watch trucks rush past on their way to the farms up the street.

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Sam likes to run, just run. He runs from the porch to our big oak tree back to the porch then to the mailbox and back to the porch and to the lilac bushes and back to the porch. Being able to run with abandon helps him, I think, because our house is not a jungle gym, no matter what he thinks.

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I try to plan for Easter, such as it is. We have candy from the Easter Bunny, or at least half of what we’ll need (the other half I need to order from our local candy shop, which is taking orders but not in store shopping). The kids need nice Easter shoes, because even if we’re not DOING anything, I want them to look cute. It’s the twins’ first Easter able to do anything besides be confused about “why is this basket on my desk?”

I mean, they’ll still be confused, just about more things than “why is this basket on my desk?”

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Nothing is normal, but it’s the new normal for at least the next month, probably longer, at least if people are smart about this. I’m still working through my feelings about everything, kind of picking at them a little bit day by day and seeing how my dreams/nightmares play them out. I think the only real waking fear I have is not about famine or a lack of toilet paper or anything like that but of getting sick myself, knowing that my lungs are kind of crap and that, at the very least, I’d likely be one of the young people ending up in the hospital and on a ventilator, away from my husband and kids for weeks on end. Without the kids, I think I could stand it, but just knowing what it would do to them…

I have a friend who’s an RN in an ICU, and even though I don’t really pray, I pray for her, to anyone or anything that might be listening. She has three kids, just like I do, two boys and a girl. She can’t even snuggle with them anymore, not until this has all passed, and it breaks my heart for her.

Basically, I just want everyone to hurry up and stay home and behave. I saw a post earlier about this whole thing being like when you were in elementary school and some kids just wouldn’t stop acting up, so you kept losing more and more recess time, even though you weren’t doing anything wrong. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but the teacher couldn’t let the kids who were behaving outside while she stayed inside with the kids who weren’t behaving. So you watched as the bright spot in your day was gradually eaten away because people didn’t know how to act.

Maybe it’s because I tend autistic, or maybe it’s because it’s in the nature of the oldest child to loathe getting in trouble for something not your fault more than for other kids (like we all hate it, but I think we oldest children hate it the most; I can see the loathing building in Sam’s mind every time we scold him for something the babies are doing too, and I have to remind him that he’s older and knows better), but GOD did I resent those kids. I don’t resent the dumbasses still going out and being Typhoid Marys around the world nowadays, but I do wish that someone would throw dirty diapers at their heads.

I think about them, and I think, “This stupid thing is just going to keep going, and it’s going to be 2021 before anything is over, and we’re going to just have this long, miserable time because people don’t know how to act. There goes everyone’s recess. There go people’s lives. Womp womp.”

dishonor

I let myself think that, and then I take a deep breath.

And I say, the first thing I’m doing when this is over is packing the kids up in the van and going to spend a day with my parents.

I plan for going back to group with Isaac and Carrie and letting them play with all the plastic toys and watching them do more art and wreak more havoc, but this time, it’ll be slightly different havoc because Isaac will have his ABA therapist by then (let’s not get into that can of worms right now, I’m so tired).

I imagine having a weekend day again where I go up to Michael’s and get whatever craft stuff I want for whatever dumb project I’ll never finish. Like maybe I’ll get photo albums or start scrapbooking or something, or at least think about it. And wandering through Barnes & Noble, enjoying the smell of ink on paper and coffee. And going to see a movie, taking all the kids to whatever crappy kids’ movie is out because we’re free to do so.

And eventually going out to the mall, walking those long stretches of gleaming tile and popping my head into my favorite stores. Getting a free chocolate from Godiva. Setting the kids loose in the indoor playground after patiently wandering the Lego Store with Sam. Eating something that’s wretched for me from the food court and just not even caring.

We’ll go to the beach this summer, plan it out a little more than our last trip. We’ll bring quilts and set up a full little camp on the sand, and take off a weekday to go (after all, Kyle has been working 7 days a week the past two weeks; who knows what it is about tech companies that drives them to think, “Ah, you’re working from home, that means all your hours are mine!”) so things will be less crowded and we can get a spot closer to the water.

(probably not Hampton Beach this time, though)

And we’ll have our road trip, in the fall or next fall, one or the other. We’ll pack the kids up in a rented van, we’ll see the roads, we’ll stop for gas and goodies. We’ll take 95 all the way down. We’ll stop at South of the Border, because I’ve always wanted to go but never have. We’ll see enormous fields of cotton and black eyed susans on the sides of the road. We’ll stay on the beach and then we’ll drive to Disney and we’ll be in that delightful bubble for a blissful week.

This will happen, it will all happen eventually. This is what I think about to keep myself sane, because things are really hard and really scary right now, but it’s not forever, and in the end, we’re all in this together.

sharpneglectedgrasshopper-size_restricted

Can I be blamed if I’m angry?
Can I be saved if I’m barely clinging to hope?
I’m clinging to hope

When I say oh, oh
Rain don’t change the sun
Jealous is the night when the morning comes
But it always comes
(Delta Rae, “Morning Comes”)

Love, Science & Nat 20s

The family life of a bunch of nerds.

quarantine 2020