Tina’s TEOTWAWKI Journal, Day 62-63

I called my BFF to vent this morning.

I feel tense and jumpy, waiting to be interrupted all.the.time.

If I wake up before my husband, I run the risk of waking HIM up.  Our dressers are on the same side of the room, his side (they also serve as a divider between the bedroom area and the “office” area which I am now using.)

I KNOW the Christian homemaking books say that the wife is supposed to get up first, have her “quiet time” or “devotional time” and then fix breakfast for everyone, but both Frank and Matthew get up anywhere between 4 and 4:30.  I absolutely cannot get up that early.  (And a decent “quiet time” has been beyond my ken for years.  I listen to an audio Bible app.  I stopped trying to keep up with a Beth Moore and a Priscilla Shirer study that my Sunday school class and my ladies’ Bible study was doing because it got to be too much.).

I started back working this week (yay!) but I’ve been putting in about seven hours’ worth of work daily since I’ve been working.  Yesterday I wanted to go walking with Frank and Matthew.  I finally told them to go on alone.  The major problem I was having was the spinning blue circle of death that was happening nearly every single time I tried to move the cursor!  The circle can spin from ten seconds up to over a full minute.  AND, all of the depositions I am listening to are done by videoconference.  For obvious reasons.  Which can affect the sound quality.

Our preacher has been talking a lot about current events lately, particularly Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting (and now, the horrific shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky) because we have people of color in our congregation that have been deeply affected.  And as much as I want to support people, I have a limited amount of time and energy, physically and emotionally.  But, if I don’t put forth the energy to listen to people’s concerns and get educated on those concerns, I fear being told that “you don’t care about your brothers and sisters in Christ.”

And *both* of my knees hurt.  I may have to head back to the orthopedic doc.  They hurt in the same way that my knee hurt about a year and a half or so ago when I ended up having a torn meniscus and needed knee surgery.  One of my docs wants me to walk.  How am I supposed to walk when my knees hurt?

I have pages to proof that are due by Monday.

Today I am scheduled for an eye exam, which I was scheduled for last month and I forgot the appointment.

Next week Matthew has an appointment and one or both of us will have to take him (and it’s 45 minutes one way.)

Frank STILL has not heard when he’s going back to work.  He is getting paid, and I’m thankful for that.  But he’d rather be working and I don’t blame him for that.

Next week Matthew’s school ends for the semester.  We have gotten his paperwork sent in for vocational rehab.  I have a copy of The Loving Push by Temple Grandin, and every time I pick it up and see what she has to say about electronics addiction, and how staying in a room is not acceptable, I want to scream, “But that is ALL of what Matthew wants to do!  Stay in his room and play with the electronics!  That is IT, and it will be a full-time job just to get him out of there!  I don’t have the energy, especially the emotional energy, to do it, especially when most of the job is going to fall on ME!”

My BFF told me, ‘you be you’, but sometimes I just think that ‘me’ is not acceptable.  I don’t know if I could consider myself “shy” anymore, but shyness is NOT acceptable in our culture.  In American Christian culture, a working mother is just barely acceptable.  An intellectual woman is an anomaly.  And being fat and not that attractive is not acceptable.  I’m way overweight, have tried Weight Watchers, have tried at least one other program, and I just cannot stick with it.  It’s too overwhelming to think about food, and exercise, and everything else.

Such is life on Day 63 of quarantine!

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.