Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (232)
November 11, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 201: I did a bunch of work on the weekend to make it possible to be relatively caught up today for the first time in months. I really needed this to free me up for my shift of phonebanking tomorrow, couldn’t make that if I was starting the week neck-deep in work like most Mondays, and usually things don’t break my way, but so far so good! 🤞🏼
I really appreciated the very brief, very temporary reprieve.
Year 5, Day 202: A hugely busy day for both of us. PiC had to do two round trips to work because he was chaperoning a school thing for JB. I had an early meeting and a ballot curing volunteer slot, plus the usual school run and afterschool activity. All my Election Day anxiety, knowing that we’d be on tenterhooks for some prolonged period of time, was channeled into the phone calls. Surprise, I forgot how much I hate phone calls until I started feeling all kinds of anxiety during the training. Still. For democracy. I made as many calls as I could before my voice got tired and face hurt, mostly leaving voicemails, alerting likely Democratic voters that their ballots had not been received. Only one woman picked up, my age, and she was VERY anti-Harris, so that was not fun. I hung up immediately (as they instructed us to), with a fast OKTHANKYOU. Then one of the people I’d left a message for texted me back saying they had voted for Harris, so that was a nice way to end that part of the day. Friends and I agreed not to watch returns that could take days to come in completely. Heck, having seen a bit behind the curtain, I knew that ballot curing could still take another several days. The remaining bit of my anxiety was spent on doing my workout for the night.
Year 5, Day 203: It took me two hours to come to terms with the fact that this country has really elected a rapist felon intent on ushering in fascism, TWICE. I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t want it to be real. I knew it was a strong possibility but I briefly allowed myself to hope. My feelings towards more than half this voting population are unspeakable. These people hate us so much and, you know what, the feeling is mutual.
Ballot curing is still important and needed for us to hold the House.
Year 5, Day 204: An exceptionally busy day for PiC, with several appts and meetings, and a moderately busy but emotionally very heavy day for me trying to get through as much work as possible. I’m still processing my feelings about the election and my brain is pingponging all over the place in reaction to all the feelings. Friend and I exchanged venting time about the loss and the reasons for the loss (that we could see) and the frustrations with the current administration continuing to fund genocide, and cracking down on people who are protesting that genocide.
The gentlest I can be with myself, since curling up into a ball and hiding under the covers pretending this didn’t happen and screaming all day to let out the rage isn’t an option, is to just let my brain do what it wants in the order it wants even if it’s not the ideal order. Sounds small but it makes a huge difference in my physical tension.
Had another go-round with JB about keeping our commitments even on the harder days because we can’t cut and run or rather refuse to go when we’re frustated with something totally unrelated to the commitment. In this case it’s fourth grade math doing our heads in and causing collective dismay and they’re really struggling with it right now. We’re spending way more time on explaining it than we ever have before and this brings up all my own math inadequacies again. Though they were mightily displeased with my decision, unlike last week they managed to go blow off steam and then get themselves back together. Last week was so much worse. Tiny ephemeral wins, I suppose.
Year 5, Day 205: This was a day of complete overwhelm, trying to finish work in time to deal with family stuff and blowing my deadlines by a few hours, no wonder I didn’t notice this day’s entry didn’t save! I picked up 2 Lakota families for November even though I am still tracking the October shipments that haven’t been completed yet.
If it would help you to be doing direct aid for people who will really need it for this coming winter, we’d very much welcome your help. Info here.
ah yes, the rage is real.
Thank you for sharing the link about how to send aid, I sent some last week when I was in my feelings about All This.
Thank you so much for sending aid!
There’s going to be so much rage here for a while so you are welcome to come vent if you need.
I am still finding it impossible to get past my initial reaction to what happened and the prospect of what’s to come. My brain keeps circling back to it.
Yes a thousand times. Several times a day. Likewise, you are welcome to come vent here because goodness knows I am FEELING it.