Cancel Thanksgiving
I forgot creamer when I went to the store to order CK's turkey. It felt like a failure.
I thought I'd run to another market, but CK said she'd rather I hold off making that trip until I need things next week for Thanksgiving next week.
Fred Meyer stores, Kroger, have the same careless, "Don't confront non-mask wearing customers" policy that lead me to stop shopping at Natural Grocers. It is so heartless to the employees and customers.
COVID rates hit a new record daily. People still want their fucking Thanksgiving.
I'm so angry I thought about screaming again but I haven't learned how to without losing my voice. I actually cried for a few minutes because I couldn't even think about making art.
After some art studio organization so I can set up the gift from a friend tomorrow, I felt able to make a comic about feeling so sad and angry today. I get 2 of 3 chores I myself done and told the Inner Jerk to, "Fuck Off!", because it isn't the end of the world if there's wrinkles in the laundry.
The kitten rides my shoulders! While folding laundry! He also flops into my hand or up against my body with tiny, happy squeaks, and goes to sleep.
I'm not sure how this will work if he grows into a big kitty, but it's pretty delightful now. Kittens definitely help the moments where I feel the losses of 2020 so keenly.
Days of Exhaustion
Today we have both been tired and our low energy has been making use both blue. It doesn't help that the headlines after full of T* supporters holding a parade and rally rejecting the election, most of them without masks.
COVID is so bad right now and people are intending to have Thanksgiving dinners with 10 or more people attending! Hospitals are once again low on supplies and beds.
I'm feeling so irritable about it all that I want to scream again. I realize that my self-directed anger has been very high today too.
This is why I was up at midnight playing Animal Crossing while the kitten sleeps on me.
The tiny kitten is helping. The way Dora had taken to mothering him is sleeping very sweet. I also lay down with Obie for a while today, who was very happy about that.
Perfect Kitten
He's demanding, it's surprising house loud a creature that's 2 pounds, 9 ounces, makes! He wants out of the bathroom and into the yoga room with one of us. CK's den is fine too, he spent much of the afternoon in there with her.
Mostly he wants to be held. Bursts of kitten exuberance, old shoelaces are the best, but mostly snuggles. Right now he's trying to eat my hoodie tie.
He loves you get up on our shoulders!
We've introduced him to the dogs. Dora became Momma Dog, she had a litter years ago, and groomed him. He was unafraid of her and was playing!
Bertie will take more work. He's so over excited that he jumps up still.
CK posted online that he's perfect. I'm really glad since I feel like I keep being there one with unplanned creatures that fall in love with me and I them!
He's such a good antidote to the incoming winter blues alongside another COVID shutdown.
Kitten Day
Today I finally got to bring home the tiny kitten our friend fostered and I fell for. When CK meet him he wasn't quite the same, but today he put his paw on her forehead as she leaned over to look at him and now she's as smitten as I was.
He's loudly crying right now because I spent a little time with him while brushing my teeth. It's good first night all alone and my heart breaks a little, but we're being strong and are going to try and get him to have a bedtime routine.
Given the surging COVID totals and mayhem being caused by the GOP, T* still hasn't conceded, a day with a new kitten is really welcome.
Midweek Holidays and Other Interruptions
Today's Veterans' Day. I thought about my Father and the tangle of bluster and myth he told about his time in the Navy and his "Service Connected Disability".
I've read paperwork that came to me when he died. He'd actually been drinking on duty, but it still came out for him. The VA's attempt to treat his back created more problems. He was also emotionally and mentally unstable his whole life, making frequent in-patient stays in the psychiatric ward at the VA here in Portland.
Mostly I tried to keep our day as even as possible. Midweek holidays throw CK off, but we managed to keep both our moods pretty even today by checking in. I was disappointed with dinner, mine was kind of experimental and it turned out edible enough.
We made some mutual progress on basement cleanup. CK continued on with her project to build us a NAS. It's already built and now she's going through old hard drives and is moving the data onto the NAS she built out of mostly spare parts! I started tackling the towers of unsorted stuff around my desk.
My therapist once suggested that my having random areas of unsorted stuff needing attention at some point in the future might not be the failing I feel it is. It might just be how my brain works. I'm not wild about this, I'd like to be a highly organized person who knows where everything is at all times.
Kitten tomorrow! I was sad to discover that while CK and I were talking about hard drives I missed the call to come pick him up today.
Age Five
Today I installed the memory from age five that connects to my belief that I'm worthless, not worth keeping safe. An awful memory where I'm witness to terrible physical abuse.
A side effect of low income housing was seeing the casual abuse that happened all the time. It was the 1970s, no one was thinking about anger management. On top of that were the complicated interplay of poverty and interpersonal violence.
It was an unfair, sometimes brutal time. I learned how to be deeply observant, watching for energy shifts in the unstable adults around me.
Then, as now, I learned on my curiosity, creativity, and wonder to survive.
Extreme Wife-ing
I took care of something unpleasant today that involved talking with the IRS.
I also confirmed that there IRS still is working their way through the backlog of taxes submitted during the period they closed down last spring. Which is to say the 2017 taxes might not be truly lost, just under the pile waiting to come up.
It brought up the Shame Monster and got in the way of making dinner, I got us takeout.
CK spent time telling me what a good job I did, am doing now. That it means more than the job I wasn't able to do well before.
Obie is increasingly social and sweet. I spent some time laying by him in the yoga room.
Disbelief
We both just dragged all day. Obie woke me up at 2:20 for food. I'll order some things tomorrow, possibly morsels to try and speed up the middle of the night feeding.
Why I couldn't go to bed sooner; brain spin preventing me from taking a hot shower. I wanted so many things done for morning.
We're also in this state of disbelief that Biden/Harris won. Not able to fully take it in, so we're just feeling the tremendous load our stress response systems have been under! All weekend food hasn't been very appealing.
T* hasn't conceded. The lawsuits start tomorrow.
A highlight of the day was putting our flagpole mount to use and hanging the Progress Pride Flag.
Relief and Exhaustion
Just before 9am this morning CK shrieked with joy as I was playing a computer game (Animal Crossing New Horizons) in the yoga room.
She came in a few moments later to tell me that the numbers for Pennsylvania and Arizona had come in. The dreaded Electoral College had called the states for Joe Biden. Nevada came in shortly after that, also for Biden.
While there's still plentiful ghouls out there saying that the election isn't over until all the "legal votes" are counted. This is another dog whistle since there aren't illegal votes, there isn't voter fraud. The more outstanding votes that are counted, the more certain a Biden/Harris win becomes.
T* hasn't made a concession speech yet.
This morning my art group met online and it felt good to share the joy with everyone. Fittingly the topic today was "Gratitude Cards" and it led to a lot of good discussions. I'm making some bookmarks to give as gifts for my cards.
The rest of the day I just dragged. CK took a nap. I thought about it, but didn't. I mostly played my game, read the latest ebook from the library (The City We Became), and tried to convince myself to eat a real meal. I eventually had a larger meal when I got takeout sushi for us.
We did have a celebratory adult beverage. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have more energy to feel some pleasure.
The thing is, this doesn't change our plans. Yes, it will make our planning far easier and we'll be able to accomplish our goal more quickly. There is a tremendous feeling of relief and definite joy felt at seeing the positive outcome of countless grassroots organizers who got out the vote of so many disenfranchised communities.
I'm just not ready to put up an American flag again. I'm not sure I'll ever return to that kind of nationalism. I'll put up the new Pride flag or an Iron Front flag, even an Earth flag or the Thorns FC flag. But the sudden outpouring of "reclaim the flag" rhetoric I'm seeing just doesn't connect to my heart.
We're still a broken country that had to pull out all the stops to beat back fascism. We're still nearly half full of people who were just fine with the "Make the liberals cry again!" line. People who quite happily supported the cruelty of the T* regime, if not explicitly than complicity.
People who happily politicized wearing masks and following precautions during a pandemic, thus contributing to the 234,264 deaths from COVID19, as of today.
While there is a need for bridge building and rebuilding. There's also a need to put down our collective foot and say that we're done with tolerating the kind of viciousness we've seen. I'm not making peace with some of these people, nor am I wasting my empathy on them.
They aren't stupid or crazy, they're willfully cruel and need to be treated as such.
Shame Monster Again
I tried to get 5 houses worth of hazardous materials to the transfer station today and missed the cutoff by a few minutes. The minutes I spent visiting our kitten at our friend's.
Then I got home to an IRS letter.
I know how to handle it and we agree getting closer to being caught up, but it still left me feeling like a failure and a burden.
It didn't matter what I did during the day or how grateful our made our friends, our family of choice. The Shame Monster could only focus on my not getting there on time.
The whole evening just saw my anxiety build and the Shame Monster stomping around telling me I suck.
Then I stopped my phone and it bounced across the floor and into the water bowl! It is just fine, the OtterBox helped and I was damn fast to grab it and wrap it in a towel!
I finally gave up on cleaning the kitchen, worked on art, then took as long shower. As I got ready for the shower it finally got me that I forgot to take my bedtime pills!
I'm wondering if I worker need more of the medication for my brain, particularly the part of CPTSD that creates the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or if I might benefit from taking it at dinner with my antidepressant.
This might help with Shame Monster's nightly rampaging.