What's YOUR problem?

[Ronster]

Foot is almost well. It is doing very well. The arm thing though is troublesome. I have to wear the brace and now that the work nurse is involved ZI have to do transitional work...meaning I won't be able to get 40 hrs a week.

things are looking up though. Youngling was home from college yesterday and I had missed her a lot. She is really working hard and doing well.

[akiva]

Just so tired of being me.

[Phoebe]

I am so sorry, I hope today is better. Hope you get the long weekend. We could trade because right now I am feeling tired not so much of being me, but being the me that other people are mad at for the flimsiest reasons. People are mad that I want to wear a mask AND stay several feet away from them, that I don't want to commit my kids to in-person activities, that I don't trust people to stay far enough away from each other to go maskless, that I eat mammals, that I will readily kill a mammal if it means protecting the life of my dog or kid, that I expect everyone at work to be held to the same neutral and objective rules and standards, and my youngest kid is mad because he wants pizza, which is a totally reasonable excuse to be mad for a change, because he's hungry, but you know, be patient!

[akiva]

I doubt the weekend will be that restful--school starts on Monday, and there's still a huge amount of confusion about how things will go. So I expect I'll be working and/or stressing about that.

[Ronster]

[Ronster]

Another trip home, stopped for gas...no masks, nobody cares.

[Phoebe]

Six months of pandemic = six months of everyone in the household thinking that Mom is the concierge of an all-inclusive resort and she has no other job whatsoever. Family having difficulty adjusting to the idea that Mom has to work and - particularly if you force her to work in the kitchen in order to manage everything else going on WHILE WORKING - she will need you to treat her kitchen as if it were an office. She may need you to leave her totally THE FUCK ALONE for at least two to three hours per day to do a job that requires at least ten per day, because she is approximately 70-80% more awesome than normal people, but she is not 90-100% better, sorry. If you are a husband and you make any type of shitty remark that disrespects the idea that she is doing a full time job in a quarter of the normal time allotted to anyone for it, she will cut you so move quickly through the room with all the implements and get out.

[Phoebe]

Narcissism, a trip to deal with.

[Phoebe]

I no longer feel capable of dealing with all the things and yet, I'm still getting up and trying to deal with them, so maybe I can. Things have come to a place of, well, I can't live like this!!! Covid is to blame for creating the strange new circumstances of life that are making things difficult, but whatever the ultimate cause, it has put me in an unreasonable position. Meanwhile, each person for whom I'm responsible, including parents, and pets, and including the house itself, is either suffering some sort of great difficulty or creating some sort of great problem, all of which falls to me. The stress of all the s*** is just unbearable. The only reason I am making it through is the prior lifetime of being trained up to be strong in the midst of all this type of thing. I continue to barrel through like an ox but oxen function best as a team.

[Phoebe]

Things even at their best are always about 2 mm from utterly falling apart. I've got this, I've got this, I've got this, but for how much longer? How poorly will things have to go and what will be sacrificed for the sake of what else?

[Phoebe]

I am so stressed out. I feel bad because there are people among the readers of this group who have so many more reasons to be stressed out than I do. My reasons are not serious. But they are legitimate. This pandemic living is crap. I cannot continue to live like this and get things done the way that they need to be done. I can either be a full-time housewife and mom or I can be a person with a full-time job, Doing both is not working.

I've been doing both for years, but I had lots of quiet time, and there was less going on. Somehow the juggling worked. Now I am completely overwhelmed. When you do not have an outlet for the massive anxiety, dumb things happen, like you scratch the side of your foot a thousand times and now you can't walk without pain. True! I also used to exercise regularly, which is a huge help to dealing with anxiety, but I haven't been to the gym since pandemic things happened, and I don't prioritize it at home when everything else is going on, so now only exercise is dog walks and an occasional workout at home. I love working out and it's one of the half dozen things that used to make life pleasant that can no longer happen. I'm totally incapable of juggling all the work I have to do, and a lot of it requires a certain level of mental concentration that is often impossible to achieve. I am left at moments like this with nothing to do but pick up my phone because I have to monitor three other things going on, and my own work cannot be done during that time.

I know tons of people now who have covid, luckily nobody I see in person, but there are so many routes of exposure and those are only going to increase over the next month. The depression and guilt over not being able to see my elderly relatives and he fear of infecting them is back, doubled, luckily without the actual stomach butterflies that used to accompany it. Need to make a bunch more homemade masks, which puts the issue in the front of the mind. All of my kids have major problems; the covid school situation goes very poorly despite best efforts. Each one of them has some kind of health issue. each one of them has some other kind of problem that needs to be dealt with as well; everyone deals with some form of quarantine stress, and it's my job to help process and improve the situation. I'm not sure I'm great at it, I'm not sure I'm even functional at it.

We have had all kinds of problems in the house that are not even worth going into, but they are myriad and expensive. My vehicle keeps breaking. What a crap time to buy a new car, so I keep driving it, but just one problem after another with that. Husband is under terrible stress as well; it manifests as criticism. One can imagine how welcome this is. He's doing really important things for work so it's really important that I can be supportive, and my entire efforts basically amount to a house of cards in a stiff breeze. There is a perma migraine, there is a baseline feeling of nausea. Pretty sure one thread running through all this is terror about the election, actual raw terror on some level. So you know... The lovely thing I try to remind myself of is that I seem to be doing the best of all the friends I know right now.
This is good; have to remind myself constantly that this is good; this is what good looks like right now for anyone.

[Tahlvin]

Hugs

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

Thank you today is a better day; been trying to get more fresh air and deal with other people's health issues, which puts life problems in perspective.

[Phoebe]

Um, hello, hi, Hello.

So it is not just me... it doesn't really do us any good to repeat the same old stuff about how women do more of the work without explaining why they do it. I do it because of whose job demands it, and reasons of, uh, I can function on this schedule. Kind of.

[akiva]

Feeling almost overwhelmed with dread and self-hatred this morning. All the makings of a fun day.

[Tahlvin]

Please know that you are loved and valued.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

Ditto, seconded, agreed, yes! Keep on rolling.