Quarantine Journals - Toilet Paper and Donations

It dropped down to 38° last night, and only got up to about 54 today, so it was definitely a day for hanging out indoors.

Honestly, the day was kind of a blur, and I'm racking my brain to remember what even happened this morning. But I think we spent most of the time Coloring until Oliver yelled "it's animal crossing time!!" And got Penny all excited to play video games. So I let her play video games for half an hour while I organize some of the dining room to make for a cleaner work area for everyone.

We all had lunch together in the dining room, and then Oliver took a nice long nap. When he woke up, we played some more video games. This time the Katamari that Richard to download it. Penny was super excited to watch me play, and it was a nice break from reality. I'm feeling super exhausted these days, and still doesn't matter because I'm up at 1 AM again. I just can't break the cycle of needing a few minutes of quiet before I go to bed. And then a few minutes and that being an hour, and so on and so forth. I thought about staying up half the night to catch up on laundry, but instead I just watched the shooting stars in animal crossing and a couple episodes of Schitts creek.

This afternoon I spent gathering up the donations that the parents had sent over to help pay for Miss Oswald's vet bills. I think I mentioned to her dog passed away over the weekend. We ended up raising over $500, before our contribution, so I'll be sending her about 700 bucks tomorrow. Five or six kids sent cards over, and penni made her a card from the entire class, which I have attached to the email I'm going to send her.

On and off throughout the day I spent my time helping folks who were out of toilet paper find some on Amazon. They seem to be restocking different brands and different amounts on and off throughout the day. I grabbed another pack for here, and Richard managed to get some for work. Later, I was able to connect with Amy up at work and get her a big pack of toilet paper just as she was pulling into the driveway home from work.  Then later on in the evening I was able to help Dannah score a big pack of toilet paper so she no longer has to go out to do grocery shopping this month. And then I helped Tom stock up his toilet paper, though I'm not convinced that he doesn't already have an entire closet of it. Our friend and Doula from Olivers bursts informed me that she was out of toilet paper, so when it restocked again I tried to message her to grab it. But, she wasn't online, so I went ahead and purchased it and sent it to her house. At this point, I think I've got everybody settled up with toilet paper and it told me they needed it. Even though that's a small contribution in the grand scheme of things, it made me feel good to be able to help people and remove that small stressor from their day.

Stimulus checks are supposed to be arriving tomorrow for digital deposit. Our showed up in our account earlier today, but it still shows as pending or at least the transaction wouldn't pull up. From what I gathered, we got $1200 per adult and $500 per child. But then Richard said something about $6000, so I don't know if he's including our tax return or what.  My dad says the stock market has been up like 25% over the last three days, no with absolutely no reason to be. Things are only getting worse around here, but our president is going on the television daily to tell everyone what a great job he's doing and how wonderful things are.  He delayed sending out the physical stimulus checks so that he could have his name Printed on them. Everyone's hustling to get out relief as soon as possible, and he's pulling back every thing a week so that he can fluff his ego. As usual.

Penni's resume classes have been reduced to once a week because I guess some of the parents were complaining that it took up too much time. I'm actually kind of disappointed because I really enjoyed seeing all the kids together, and Penny seem to really enjoy it as well. Miss Oswald is starting up a lunch Bunch though, where kids can sign up to have lunch with Miss Oswald and 3 other kids once a week. Penni is really excited to participate in that. She's also excited that Miss Our, her speech teacher, and Miss Oswald both said that they would do one on one zoom meetings with her if she just wanted to say hello. So she's waiting for me to get those scheduled.

Our caterpillar's are getting big and chunky and starting to arrange themselves on the lid of the container. So, it looks like they're getting ready to go into a chrysalis. I hope they take their time, since the temperatures keep dropping outside to 30 something. I guess we all feel like we're circling lead getting ready to go into a chrysalis, or are we already in it? I can definitely relate to digesting myself from inside out and turning into nothing but a weird liquidy substance is waiting to reassemble into something new. Honestly, that sounds like our country for the last four years. I had big hopes that Bernie was going to be the big beautiful butterfly they came out of this shit fest, but now I'm not so sure.

I absolutely could not believe it, but Deanna told me tonight that she did a video chat with a couple of our friends from Dna. I gave her a hard time about how she wasn't video chatting with me, and she said it was her first time. I called her as a joke on the video chat thing, but almost instantly hung up. I was shocked to see that she called me back! So we chatted very briefly, but I could tell she was uncomfortable. I put Oliver on the screen and he was quick to be all done because he had been watching a movie. But he slapped a filter on and made us both giggle for quite some time. She promised that we would start video chatting more often since it's probably the only way we're going to see each other this year. What a weird world we are living in. I feel like in some ways I talk to more people over the last week than I would have otherwise, but in other ways it's just a very stressful toxic environment that we're living at right now. Constantly wondering what's going on with this virus and how the president is going to throw us all to the wolves. Which I guess, again, explains why I'm up until 1 AM. I saw someone post a thing on Facebook today that pretty much describes how I feel most of the time, but it's definitely 9-to-5 with a pandemic going on. I'll include it here:

" Weird and lesser known mental health related problems that some of you may be experiencing for the first time cause of this traumatic situation and not recognizing as mental health symptoms cause normally you're not so traumatized:

-memory loss and memory issues, especially short term, and a distorted sense of time

-executive dysfunction. If you don't know the term, I like to think of it as the human version of buffering. It's when you sit there and think "I need to get up and do the dishes" and then you sit there. And sit there. And sit there. And you think over and over "get up and do the dishes" as hard as you can, but you don't, your body just doesn't listen to you, like a slow computer trying over and over to load a page and failing. That's not laziness, that's a mental health symptom. 

-confusion and brain fog (and even slight dizziness and balance issues as well)

-sleeping too much or too little 

-feeling nauseous all the time/not being interested in food even if you're hungry

-on a similar note "forgetting" to eat or shower or pee, etc. I put it in quotes because what's really happening isn't a memory issue: instead, you're not getting the cues from your body asking for food or water or hygiene or the bathroom. I haven't quite figured out whether the "I need this" signals aren't being sent or aren't being received, although I'd be willing to bet it's the second, but either way it results in the slightly oversimplified "forgetting" to take care of yourself because you can't hear your body asking for its basic needs, and you're instinctively used to the reminders. (It's a LITTLE like how we don't have to think about breathing because our bodies naturally remind us every few seconds that we need more air. If somehow those "i need air" signals weren't getting where they needed to go, we would not be used to consciously thinking about when to breathe.)

-the "bell jar" feeling, or as it's otherwise known, dissociation, where you feel like somehow there's glass between you and everything and everyone else in the whole world, and it takes a lot of effort to engage with anything outside yourself. It's not a sad feeling in and of itself- it has no flavor, it's just exhausting. 

-intrusive thoughts. These are thought loops you get stuck in, usually bad ones, and they're easy to miss the signs of in traumatic times. If you notice yourself just irresistibly cycling through a sequence of bad thoughts that you don't want to have, that's an intrusive thought pattern. 

-inability to make decisions, even small ones (resulting in disproportionately intense distress if you try to force yourself)

-shortness of breath and heart palpitations. Yes, really. 

-auditory processing issues- staring at someone for a good 10 seconds after they speak just trying to make your brain decipher what they said, or missing what someone said entirely multiple times, even though you could hear them perfectly well, or being unable to separate a conversation you're having from the background noise of a television in the other room, sometimes to the point where you can't finish your own sentences because the combination of sounds is distracting you. 

-on that subject, also finding sounds** and sensations more annoying and intolerable than usual- forks scraping, plastic bags rustling in the breeze from a fan, birds outside, etc. The way to really recognize this one is that it's not even just annoyance, it's an instant knee jerk reaction of distress and rage, and your brain can't fully function until you make the sound stop somehow. (**interestingly, this category INCLUDES silence) That goes for sensations as well- getting suddenly negatively overwhelmed by being touched, or having tags in your clothes or scratchy fabrics bother you to the point where you can't think."