11:59 a.m. - 2020-04-24
youngest is watching the walloughbys for the 56th time
Despite staying up until almost 3am (whyy do i do that to myself, fuck) I managed to get the garbage out (including the planned bag of notgarbage) and discovered that while i can easily throw away some things, books will likely not be disappearing into the garbage bags. BUT I might be able to bring them in to work when i work on the weekends, and add to the collection of random books in the lunchroom, slowly, without anyone noticing that the collection is weirder than they remember.
Im thinking of throwing away the vhs tapes. The kids never watch them, and the only reason Ive kept them this long is because most of them are disney and I know I wont be able to replace those movies, as I'm not paying the mouse monopoly for the fabricated 'demand' for the movies to satisfy greeeeeeed of a multimillion dollar company... blergh.
Since that's the reason I'm keeping them, i should probably throw them away. All but the ones belonging to a friend from highschool, I should get her mailing address again so I can mail those ones back to her. Or probably ask her if she wants them back or if they should go to her parents place... or maybe none in her sphere wants them at all and I've been holding them all this time for no reason. She gave them to me when Eldest was.... three maybe? And now she has two kiddos of her own.
I tried to buy a gold membership, then supergold, then any membership at all to this wonky website and none of the links did anything on that 'sign up for paid membership' page. Sucks that I finally have money to give to the running of this place and now I cant. I kind of want to email Andrew and kind of not. I mean, he has to already be aware that the links are broken right? Or maybe he made an entry about it and i missed it. i dunno. im not sure i care enough to put in the effort to find out why i cant give him money from the page thats designed specifically for that.
I picked up my drill,etc order from canadian tire. that was, interesting. the signage gives you a number to call, so you park and call, and then have to guess which department you should be talking to? There's no clear instruction in the voice recording (I listened to it at least 4 times to make sure I wasn't missing something) so I ended up pressing 0, which is apparently the right option? I don't know why it's so hard to make instructions clear...
Also, the bins I chose from the online picture are crap, thin clear plastic, and i can tell the lids are going to crack, but they should last long enough to get through my plans for them
I keep looking at shelving, and reminding myself I don't need more storage, I need to go through all my shit first.
I like the idea of all my stuff in boxes/containers of some kind, on shelves.But just the idea of it. I hate dusting more than i hate dishes
I also know I have too much stuff for that to work and it would just stress me out when i didn't end up having enough shelves/boxes for all the shit ive accumulated, and would turn into an obsessive shelf/box obtaining marathon while not addressing the original too much fucking stuff issue.
It's so weird to think of how calm I felt in the shelter, when we had an entire storage unit of household stuff, and I didn't miss anything but my own blankets/pillow and my computer. And how agonized I felt when the shelter started giving us toys and clothes and other crap we literally had no use for but it was important to the therapy that we have things that we chose ourselves.... even though for me personally it was bad. I ended up 'packing' all that stuff into garbage bags to move it into our new place, and then unpacking it just to put it in drawers and totes and forget about that crap entirely.
and now I'm still finding things like nail polishes in colours I will never ever wear, costume jewelry that is not my style at fucking all but was the closest of what was on offer. Anyway, I need to throw that stuff out whenever i come across it. It was shit when it was donated to begin with.
Some times I wake up and don't know where I am when I'm not in that small room with three beds, two dressers, and a bedside table crammed in, with a window that had the thickest curtains that we were never allowed to open (safety hazard)
And actually the feeling of living there has some similarities to the feeling of living in the general world now. Lots of thoughts of I'm probably okay, I'm probably fine, I don't have to hide inside, I can go out, as long as I'm careful and think things through and be aware of my surroundings
I dunno if I'm making sense, it makes sense in my head, and probably would make sense to someone that's lived at a domestic abuse shelter.. maybe not to anyone else though.
The news does mimic the sharing of trauma in group therapy. And maybe the little bits I'm getting through dland entries and tumblr posts of people going through the shit. Still distant to me.
I need to do dishes, lol, story of my week right.
I need to put my clothes into the bin I got and break down the empty boxes in my room from the printer and shredder
But first I think Im crashing, so Im going to lie down for an hour nap. Mom hasn't been on zoom during the day all week... i havent heard from her either, except random texts... i need to connect with her soon, maybe after work tomorrow...
one more thing i want to mention before i go,
I keep reading random posts about how this pandemic is mimicking the spanish flu, how there was a summer in between sweeping outbreaks then, and how during the summer people were tired of physical distancing and stopped doing it, and the second outbreak was 10x worse than the first..
I don't know if we will be the same, we have tech to help us keep connected to other people, but we also have governments of the world wanting more authority over people in general,
and I feel like this is reverse psychology almost, tell people to stay home, but have one government encourage the people to protest any stay home order, which leads to a second outbreak, which leads to government intervention in all areas of life, not just airports, or phone tapping, or having the cops pick you up because you didnt use your blinker or whatever. And those things will last longer than this virus does.
A second outbreak in the fall, could allow any government to use fear to do anything it wanted to.. I'm not saying protesting is the thing to do, obviously wandering around with an AK strapped to your back with gloves and a mask on about the most baffling thing to do right now. But I'm saying take care of you, pay attention to what you need to keep yourself from sliding into panic mode, and take care of those you care about as best you can right now.
If we are going to be herded like sheep the best thing we can do is keep our heads and not respond to everything out of fear. I'm not really sure what that looks like, because im not sure whether anxiety counts as fear? or is anxiety the lesser and therefore okay cousin to fear....
