When it Rains...I Don't Care

 Would you look at this! A second blog post in a month. What will I think of next?

It’s still along the same vein as the last one, griping about this, that, and the cryptkeeper’s effects on her caregivers, but to clarify:

A) I’m still not “on” facebook. I can share this post on facebook without actually going TO facebook, and that’s fine by me. Except I can’t see any comments, unless Tammie remembers to share them with me. Every time I think about pulling up facebook on my phone or computer and checking things out, my stomach does this thing that feels a lot like wanting to barf, so I play a game of solitaire and go work on my article or a manuscript or a painting or a card project or baking...

B) I have gone beyond the wishing-I-was no-longer-here feelings and am now firmly ensconced in the I-feel-nothing stage of whatever the hell this is. I suppose it’s a scary place to be, because there’s a tiny part of me that asks, “what will happen if something goes wrong, will you be able to help?” and to be honest, I don’t know. I could pretend, and if that gives comfort, then fine. Whatever. But that’s the deal, everything is just “whatever.”

What.Ever.

Things can still piss me off really bad, probably more so and a lot faster now than before. Just recently I was placing an order online and there was a problem with the address. Because we have a P.O.Box, getting things delivered can be a problem. Not all delivery services will accept a POBox address. That’s fine. We also have a street address, but that one is NOT the address registered with the bank. So, I have to have separate addresses for shipping and billing. Most of the time, it’s not a big deal, however, the business where I was attempting to shop insisted the two addresses be the same, and they do not deliver to POBoxes.

Enter the bad Karen. Bad Karen WILL make you cry and wet your pants, because while Bad Karen has been trying to play the game by the rules, the rules are broken so it doesn’t work. After 30 minutes of attempting, and failing, to make the address thingy match up, Bad Karen was ready to make a phone call that would definitely ruin someone’s day/week/month/whatever. And I didn’t care. I was gonna make all those Karen memes look like child’s play when I finished my phone call. I was gonna dump out my drawer of offensive language and personal attacks to mix in with my rant AND I was going to start the whole thing with them. I didn’t fear hurting someone’s feelings. My “anger filter” has always been fear that I would hurt someone’s feelings or ruin their day just because I’m unhappy about something. But that filter is gone, Bad Karen has no fear and I was ready to go raw on someone.

Thankfully, my Tammie filter is still working and disaster was avoided (she took away my phone). This means at some point I’ll be able to attempt to do business with that company again (since they’re the only store of their kind within a two-and-a-half-hour drive). If the order doesn’t go through because of sheer stupidity on their end, then they’ve lost a sale and I don’t fucking care.

Whatever.

So, am I ok? I don’t think so, but I don’t care. There’s a big hard lump where my all my feelings used to be and anger is all that’s left. It’s pissed off at everything, and most everyone, but I don’t care. I will probably punch the first person who tells me to “smile” or tries to tell me, “it’s not so bad” or “other people have it worse” or even say those things as a joke, because it’s not funny. It hurts.

It fucking hurts, and I’m furious. And I don’t care.

Will there ever be any blog posts that AREN’T fueled by rage? Will I EVER feel like a decent human being who can enjoy watching puppies play, chatting with strangers in the grocery store, or sunsets at the beach, or funny memes on facebook? I don’t know. It will depend on several things over which I have zero control.

So, if after all this you still want to contact me, come on over to the blog and leave a comment because that’s the only way I’m going to interact with anyone online for a while.

It’s been a rough four years with a pandemic chaser and for us, we have a side of old woman to go with it, so I know I’m not alone. If you’re feeling much the same as I am, let me know and we can rant together at the blog.

Let's Play Catch-up. Again

 Here we are, a new year and a long stretch of non-communication since the last time I posted (and promised to post more often, but we can all see how well THAT turned out).

Lots has been happening. Not much of it has been good or happy, either, which totally sucks.

The pandemic is STILL going on and we’re STILL at home, eyeing every stranger (and a few family members) with suspicion and standing fast with face masks and cans of spray disinfectant at the ready. I honestly think we could have enjoyed it a lot more if we hadn’t taken Tammie’s mother in to live with us. Dementia sucks, and her mother, besides being a victim of dementia, is also a HUGE fan of drama and is still quite capable of inflicting all kinds of havoc on the household. On purpose.

Due to several small strokes that have jettisoned most of what was left of her mind, the Old Woman has taken to wittering (a kind of high-pitched mumbling) about whatever she’s doing. For instance, “I’m walkin’. I’m walkin’. Here I come. I’m walkin’.” as she very slowly makes her way down the hallway from her room to the living room. It’s a very long walk. The house isn’t large, but when someone is narrating their adventure from one room to the next, it gets both larger and smaller at the same time.

Most mornings she’ll sit back in her bedroom stuck halfway through getting dressed, with her pants at her ankles, all the while saying, “Stand up, pull up. Stand up, pull up. Stand up…” you get the idea. This will go on for an hour or more, despite being reminded several times that if she wants breakfast she needs to finish getting dressed, which means she needs to STAND UP and PULL UP her pants. Wittering continues once she’s in the living room, because everything must be narrated. It’s like having a mosquito buzzing around your ears for hours and there’s absolutely nothing that will make it stop. Then there’s the regular whining about all kinds of things.

Twice this month she gave us a break and spent a majority of the day in her room, talking to no one, at least no one we can see or hear. I like those very rare days, because with music from the stereo, most of the wittering is drown out and we have some peace. Tammie checks in on her every 20 – 30 minutes or so, brings her food and makes sure she’s okay. Around 4 p.m., right about the time we’re starting dinner preparation, she made her appearance.

Yeah, 2020 was not a fun year, and some of that is leaking into 2021.

Besides the extra help the Old Woman began needing, things were kind of scary all over, especially during the Black Lives Matter marches in Portland and Seattle. That’s when Tammie discovered that friends of ours had strong opinions of the protests and had no compunctions against lobbing them at her. Tammie and I are firm believers and supporters of Black Lives Matter and are doing our best to be anti-racist. It’s hard work with lots to remember (which is the hardest part because stress is beating the hell out of our ability to remember stuff), but it’s work we’re more than happy and willing to do.

Our friends, on the other hand, while insisting they aren’t racist, will not support BLM because “all lives matter” “they’re destroying legitimate businesses just to wreck things” blah, blah, blah and no amount of offering up information would change their mind. They “know things” because they listen to “the deep, dark web where ALL the REAL, unfiltered information comes from” and it’s the same with the “hoax virus” which leads them to not wear masks. Tammie was crushed. We had both hoped that we could nurture a friendship with them, have couples movie night or host dinner and table games. But that doesn’t look likely to happen now. What hurts the most is their cavalier attitude that some high-risk folks are simply expendable (like Tammie, me, and the Old Woman). Nothing says “fuck you” like refusing to keep people safe.

To keep with the theme of 2020, we ended up closing our hat store. We had high hopes for our new location, but between the plague and the Old Woman, we were done, physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. Even though the new location was truly wonderful, any time you move a business, even if it’s to a cleaner, safer location, you lose business. So, with all those things in play, and no end of the pandemic in sight we decided it would be best if we just closed it down. It still hurts like hell.

November rolled around and we had the elections. Then came the fun part. Let me just sum it up: Fuck. Good grief. WTF?!? and, of course, the HOLY SHIT! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME day of January 6^th.

My fear level had already been cranked up into the red zone, and reading things on social media didn’t help, especially with the pundits pundit-ing that there would be more trouble on inauguration day. The thought of seeing all the hopes and dreams we hoped and voted for come to a horrific halt was more than I could bear. Things started to spiral down, hard and fast.

One morning, I woke up and was hit with an old feeling that I hadn’t had in a very long time. A crushing hopelessness, dread, and regret. Regret that I woke up because I knew I was facing another day of the exact same things that we’ve struggled through every day for nearly a year, another day of fear, stress, more stress, and trying to keep Tammie supported while she deals with her mother and her mother driving us both into despair. It was too much. I had reached a point where I wasn’t sure I could, or even wanted to live through it any more. I no longer cared about me, or anyone else.

Tammie had to spend the emotional and physical “spoons” to comfort and support me. It was hard on both of us, as neither of us has the energy to spare. I made the decision to get off of facebook for the foreseeable future. There are not enough videos of baby animals that could lift that mood.

While stepping away from facebook has helped some, we’re still assailed on a daily basis by many of the things that constantly beat us down and contributed to my despair. It goes on every fucking day. ALL FUCKING DAY LONG. Every so often, we can distract her with a magazine or catalog with pretty pictures in them, but she loses interest and if the television is off (“you don’t need to turn it on for my sake”) the wittering begins. On goes the testosterone-poisoned westerns, or the Walton’s with their whiny harmonica soundtrack, or, gods help me, Little House on the Prairie. It’s like being verbally and emotionally beaten by noise that offends. It’s crushing, not just emotionally, but spiritually and mentally. And, to make things even worse, all the elder care support groups are no longer meeting due to the pandemic.

Then on January 20^st, nothing horrible happened. President Biden was sworn in, took the office and began undoing some of the horrors that was caused by the previous administration. It was a HUGE load off our shoulders, both Tammie and I felt it, and from what we’ve seen on the few social media outlets we still look at, we weren’t alone.

My funk has receded enough that I might consider feeling some hope, but it hasn’t shown up yet. We’re working on clearing out the spare room (because it took the brunt of harboring stuff during the holidays) so with luck, Tammie’s sister will come and take care of their mother for a few days and we can go somewhere else. Someplace where we can find that hope, feed it, and allow it to return, even for a little while.