March 21

First day of Spring.  It is snowing.  Figures.

I know I have much to be grateful for during this time, like relative youth, a house, a lack of major financial instability.  But I'm too grumpy to be grateful.  I hate being a stay-at-home-parent with a fiery passion, and being a forced stay-at-home-parent who is also trying to work is worse.  I hate the constant demands on my attention, the endless household chores, the constant sensory bombardment, the company of the immature, the lack of ability to produce any creative work, the fact that parenting is never done and can never be crossed off, mommy, hey mommy, mommy mommy MOMMY.  This sucks balls.  And the people who are telling me to enjoy myself or woman up can go suck balls, too.

March 20

I last posted March 10, and that was literally the last day of (uneasy) peace before the floor dropped out from under us and revealed the dystopia beneath.  The walls are closing in; we are headed into dark times.  I am anxious and depressed, but I find it ironic that I am less anxious and depressed, sitting here in the middle of social isolation and a global pandemic, than I was when we had bedbugs.  The bedbugs were my responsibility, and I was alone with my pain and fear.  The pandemic does not require as much decision making of me, and I am one of millions.

Still, it's a terrible ride.  I am viscerally reminded of being on a bumpy flight, scared and unable to evade the experience, only unlike the flight, I don't know when this will end.

March 10

It's grey and brown outside today, and lukewarm, like poor-quality tea.  As I prepare to leave my job, I am running through my last few days of PTO, and I took one, today, so I could vote and prepare our taxes and do six loads of laundry.  (Six is a sight exaggeration.  It is five.  But six sounds better.  Will I ever stop sacrificing substance for style?) I also swept the stairs and changed the furnace filter.  Life in middle age is one long party.