April 18

A couple of notes:

The next wave of economic destruction is heaving into view.  Artists, freelancers, and low-wage workers were first, but now some of my friends and students are starting to be furloughed or fired..librarians, IT workers, researchers, faculty members.  It makes me sad, and low-grade nervous for my husband's job.  My online teaching at this point I think will survive, even if some students fall away...but that could be overly optimistic.  This pandemic has been worse than my expectations at almost every turn- and I am a pessimist by nature.

My mother snapped a picture of where my father's memorial oak tree will be planted in Bryan Park.  It is a lovely spot, next to a bench and a small creek; he would have approved.  I hope that someday I get to visit it.

I continue to be profoundly thankful that he is already gone.

I did have a couple of nice moments in lessons this week.  I watched a 96-year old new student pour his heart into Bach's Air on a G String, and I talked with a longtime student about the eternity inherent in chaconnes-their harmonies were repeating before you were born; they are repeating now; they will be repeating after you die.  I think she found solace in that, as do I.

April 17

I have basically lost all hope for the future. This crappy existence will be all we have (until my husband loses his job, in which case we will also have terror.)

I have pinpointed that a lot of my misery comes from sensory overload, which is impossible to remediate in a home with two small children and a husband who insists on turning on all the lights and music all the time.

April 11

Out of curiosity, if you stop being the competent/ responsible person in all areas of your life, do other people step in to pick up the slack?

April 10

First it was a few weeks.  Then a few months.  Now people are talking about doing social distancing for a few years.  It is profoundly disheartening.  Yes, we are saving lives, but there comes a point at which the tax, in terms of death & suffering, of social distancing itself will come due.

Stray thoughts:

It is never quiet.

Yesterday I went out to start my car.  That was a big event.

At some point in the future, I will have to cut my son's hair.

Margaret is living her best life.  It is interesting to see, because the rest of us (Mom, Dad, big brother) are clearly debilitated to greater or lesser extents. But Margaret wakes up delighted every morning, and largely stays that way.  She is 100% here for quarantine life. At age one, maybe all you need of the world is your home.

April 8

I am unaccountably filled with rage.  At the usual suspects -Trump, the sorry, sycophantic opportunists of the GOP- but also all the gratitude-spewing, smug, stay-at-home boosters I know, in person and online. I'm glad you are finding being trapped in a never-ending Groundhog Day with no break, ever, from small children, manageable and sometimes pleasant.  Stop sharing it with the rest of us.  And childless people:  I do understand you are experiencing quarantine with no children as difficult, and it is difficult, but stop scolding parents for envying your life, because I promise you, it IS a solid league harder to do this with small kids- you just don't know.

I am usually able to muster compassion and empathy for other perspectives, and somehow, right now, I cannot.  I desperately need a day to be by myself.

Instead, the baby is crying.  Again.

April 6

There is a curious despair to seeing no endpoint to your daily routine.  No festivals or gatherings or vacations; no first or last days of school; nothing to differentiate one grieve slog from the next.  Two years of this I cannot fathom, but I am beginning to think that is what we have in store.

It is perhaps this lack of differentiation that is making me cling all the harder to those very few shifts I know will arrive.  In eight weeks, I will be done with my SLP job.  Oddly, despite the decimation of my music career, I still feel good about this shift. I simply don't have the brain capacity anymore to be pulled in different directions.  This may be a sign of my impending cognitive decline, but I have to meet myself where I am.

So that is one very small thing to look forward to.

April 5

I have lived an eternity in two weeks, during which I have discovered about myself that which I always feared-- namely: If given more time in my domicile, I will be not one shred more motivated to clean it.

Upticks: Drinking, frantic consumption of the news, from-the-jar Nutella consumption.  Also, the pitter patter of little feet now transmits to me EXACTLY as the two-note opening horror theme from
Jaws.

Downgrades: Real pants,