I like to see what comes up when nothing but everything is coming up. Not a single solid thing I’m stuck on. I’m not even sitting where I usually sit. I can’t. My daughter took all the kitchen chairs and made a fort. It was engineering day. She has to build and design. Per me. It’s part of my remote learning for her. Because we are remoteness. I’m controlling her education right now. And its not remotely. It’s hands on. So I’m sitting on my sofa which I had to climb over and under the fort to get to,with my coffee which is breaking my coffee on sofa rule. It’s new and it’s my first ever and I drop things like a child learning to walk and carry coffee through a fort. She will make an excellent engineer. If she wants to.
My cats are behaving oddly. They have taken to licking the sides of the tub and my shampoo container after a shower. I open the curtain and they both are sitting there staring at me waiting to lick the tub. I’m wondering if their iron could be low. When I was pregnant I craved eating soap. I didn’t, well I licked it once but never ate it, I was just curious and apparently hungry for soap which lead the doctor to say I needed extra iron or I could also crave eating rocks. Which made me even more curious that I struggled to take the iron to know if it would be true. My cats are just confused about the new routine which is no routine.
I didn’t want to get up. I was cozy in my bed listening to the birds and the interstate. Both seemed quieter than normal. Is that because I’m quieter than normal? Normally the interstate sounds like it’s in my head. The birds in my room. This morning they felt like background noise to blankets cooled slightly from the cool spring breeze . I could have kept laying there. I really don’t have to work until later today as I work longer today. But I know I will lay there and spend the time debating why I should lay there not actually lay there. Then the birds and the interstate will come back in my room with me. Plus I need to move tropical plants. So I need a longer than long day.
I dreamt I was left at the alter. By my ex. Odd right? It was even odder because his mother was also getting married and to someone I don’t know. I’m not even sure if it was his mother it looked like her. But it was a double wedding. Except when I looked down my groom was missing. That’s how dreams are. Nonsense. Everyone was wearing masks. Which is also nonsense. But they had them over their eyes too. Again, non-sense, except is it? Scary world, just cover your eyes, don’t look. As I was walking down the stairs. Which for some reason was inside a castle I once worked for, I look in the crowd and everyone is sitting away from each other with giant tropical plants between them. Because my subconscious is telling me I need to move plants and my subconscious is saying people are too far away from each other. Because they are. I couldn’t grasp anything more. I was wearing a dress that looked like I made it from curtains. I cried in my sleep. It woke me. I felt like my throat hurt from screaming about something. Probably being stood up at my wedding day and having too many tropical plants and masks. Then I woke.
My son is up. He stays up all night long playing games. He talks deeper and it’s annoying me this morning. He is becoming a man. He is behaving oddly, like the cats, because there is no structure or routine in the world anymore. What is a preteen to do all day long with no school? One who doesn’t grasp or understand remote learning? If it were like 1920 maybe he could get out in the fields and plant rice or harvest or do something. I don’t know what people did in the early 1900. Especially during the Spanish flu. It’s the early 2000’s and no one knows what to do. And it’s during coronavirus not the flu. Maybe we could plant rice? But I let him play games. I just do. I don’t have rice fields. Or any fields. He will straighten this out. I can’t make him. I don’t control him. Just the access to WiFi.
The sense of normal has to come back. We can’t control the world. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. I’ve spent years learning to not control anything but myself and maybe my toddler. And to operate equipment. And also I control the WiFi’s in the house. I control little else. I wish we could just all coop up and avoid for ever but we can’t. We have to live. I want to believe they will find the mask thing is not even doing anything because it turns out to just be all wrong. Or they find some mysterious answer why some get it and some don’t. Or they make a vaccine. Or it just goes away. Or maybe it’s a conspiracy. Or maybe it will get worse. The more we try to control it the worse it’s going to get is my fear. People are getting angry. I feel tension from my customers waiting in longer lines. I feel them irritated when I step away from them to show I know they are afraid and I can’t really tell. I know they are. Some aren’t. I’m not. Except I am.
I am afraid. But I am also going to keep living my life. I walked to a restaurant yesterday and went to open the door to go in and it was locked. I’m an idiot. I can’t go in places. My habits are to go into places still. I could see the staff looking at me like I was an idiot. Then I walked back got my car and drove the 300 feet to the drive through where the lady scratched her nose and face the whole time she was delivering my food. She also grazed my hand lightly. Was she not afraid? Didn’t they tell her? She isn’t supposed to touch me.
I went to another drive through once where they handed a large cup to you to put your card in and then they take the card out. It didn’t change anything. Except adding a cup to the process that everyone touches. He wiped the cup down but just the inside. Why wouldn’t he also wipe the card before touching it? The whole thing was a nightmare to watch. The whole time he is touching his mask and face. He isn’t in the medical field, it takes time.
We tell our customers to pick up a hand sanitizer container to spray it on their hands. But never wipe that container down. Hundreds touch it. I can’t figure out the gloves thing. Some wear gloves like they are doing dishes, some are winter gloves. Se those cheap fuzzy ones that cost like a dollar. They walk around touching things with their dirty gloves. Some rubber medical gloves. They litter my parking lot.
A lady told me my mask was dirty and gross. I was offended. I work in dirt. The expectation of a clean mask is ridiculous. I touch my face now more than I have in my life. It is haunting my dreams now. I am being controlled and consumed with mask fears. It’s creeping into my sleep now.
Now my son is actually up and out here. He made coffee. He is talking and playing with the odd confused cats. I explained this is my time. I get 1.5 hours a day where I am alone to write. With no noises except the ones I am trying to control. He is not mad but overly nice. I control the WiFi. With a touch of a button I can pause devices connected to it. I paused it to make him quit clicking his controller so I can write. He knows getting mad won’t get it back. He knows he had to cooperate. I love this little control I have. If anything ever breaks to make it not work it would frustrate me. He tells me my oldest son has a girlfriend. He saw it on Instagram, he shows me. I didn’t want to see. I miss him too much. I will struggle to not open an account and obsessively research his life without me. Which will lead me to obsessively research everyone’s life without me and I will quit researching my life with me. I don’t have solid control of myself not to want to control others. To make them want to be with me. I just barely know I control just me, little else. Just like two things. Which all come back to me. I control me.
When my one cat drinks water she has to scratch at the floor at the same time. She also then knocks the whole thing over spilling it. I’ve tried to control what bowls to use and make it harder for her. It’s probably why she licks the tub now. She doesn’t like her bowl raised off the ground. She can’t figure out why there is space between the bowl and the ground now. I’ve confused the cat. By trying to control the cat.
I don’t even really like cats much. I like them I just don’t love them. I’m not a cat person as people say. I’m not any kind of animal person. I like all of them kind of equally. Some I couldn’t have as pets. Some I want as pets. My cats are more entertainment than anything. Somewhat annoying. Mostly just they lay around and bat around my daughters LOL pieces and put dents in the pillows on the back of the new sofa. I don’t have cats on the sofa rules just coffee. But I have no chairs for the morning and I can be careful. Now the cat has jumped up here to see why I am on the sofa. I’m just hanging out with my cat and coffee on my new sofa and my son chatting. A little less noise than usual. Cats are just kind of ok. But you can’t control cats. Or coronavirus. Just yourself. And the WiFi. Really just yourself.
Aspenleaf 