Stress Test—CoronaLife 341

February 18, 2021 By Leave a Comment

I took my first cardiac stress test today. For those who have never had one, you walk on a treadmill. It’s slow at first, then gets faster and the incline gets steeper, all to push your heart rate up while you are being monitored so the doctors can look for abnormalities in your heart function.

I didn’t die. And nothing abnormal was found (as expected).

I got to thinking, though, that this entire last year has been a stress test. The building racial inequality crisis, the unrelenting nature of a pandemic, the political divisions ending in violence in Washington. If all that isn’t stressful, I don’t know what it.

This thought was reinforced as I sat in the waiting room while the doctor looked at my results. Three older people, all in their 70s, were there with me. They were talking amongst themselves, socially distanced, masked. And one of them says, “I really don’t know what’s going to happen. Back in the day, there was stability. Now…nobody knows what’s going to happen.” The others agreed with him.

I agreed with him.

All this chaos, all this hardship, all this upheaval…it’s bringing in something new. A new world. There is no guarantee it will be a better world than the old. I don’t worry for myself so much. I am 50 years old; I can handle what comes my way. I worry for my daughter. She has already had a year of her childhood stolen from her. How will the continuing spasms of change warp the remainder of her childhood? What sort of a world will she step into as an adult?

We are all in a stress test.

And the results are going to determine the future of America, the world, and my daughter.

We need to get the diagnosis and treatment right.

The In-Between—CoronaLife Day 334

February 11, 2021 By 1 Comment

Have you ever been sick for a few days or more? Long enough for it to really drain you? As you recover, there is a time I call the in-between, where your spirit has rallied, but your body isn’t there yet. It is a restless, impatient time, where you WANT to do things, you feel READY to do things…but you don’t have the stamina or strength to do those things. It usually only lasts a few days, but it is an incredibly frustrating time.

I am in the in-between right now. I have not been physically ill (thankfully), but I have been in a creative slump for many years now. It started in November 2016. I am not the only creative deeply affected by that election and the years that followed. My anxiety ratcheted up, and that always saps my creative energy. Still, I was able to work in spurts—I would be very productive for a week or two, then crash back into nothing.

The pandemic wiped me out completely. Lockdowns, remote schooling, anxiety overload…I had not a drop of anything left for creating. I went from berating myself for not doing ENOUGH to berating myself for not doing ANYTHING. It got to the point where, when I turned 50, I thought, “Maybe I should just be done with this. I clearly don’t have what it takes.”

But.

I am stubborn. And I am still here.

The vaccine—as imperfect as the rollout has been—is promising a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Promising a time when we might get back to something approaching normalcy. And, after the horrific events of January 6th, having Biden sworn in successfully has slowly brought me some peace. Promising a time when we as neighbors can talk to each other again without insults, without shouting. When we can listen to understand, not just to respond.

Thus, I find myself once again at the in-between. I am, finally, feeling like I WANT to work on my projects. However, my writing muscles, so long out of use, are flabby and weak. It will take more time for me to have the strength of mind to get back to my work. So for now I am poking at one project, then another, trying to see which of them sparks something. Maybe I will round-robin them for a while—write a scene here, edit a chapter there, wonder what the heck I was even thinking on the other. When I first started writing, I always had more than one story going at the same time. It kept me from getting stuck, because if I did I would jump to another until I figured out the problem. When I got older and the demands of adulthood and motherhood constrained my time, I focused on one project at a time, just so I could finish.

The in-between is painful. It is frustrating. But it is also hopeful.

Maybe it’s not time to hang up this dream after all.

Multi-faceted Fatigue – CoronaLife Day 327

February 4, 2021 By 1 Comment

We all know about pandemic fatigue. Most of us have it. For me, it seems almost harder now that the vaccines are here but hard to get. It’s a “so near and yet so far” feeling, and it’s flaring my anxiety.

But January turned out to be a much more difficult month than I expected. My aunt and uncle got COVID, and my uncle died. My husband had a stroke (he is fully recovered, thankfully), and now my sister and brother-in-law have COVID. I’m suffering from crisis fatigue as well as pandemic fatigue. And remote schooling fatigue. And hunting for vaccine fatigue.

I am apparently multi-tasking my fatigue.

At any rate, my brain is not very functional, so I am not going to attempt an in-depth blog post tonight.

Zippy the fish is still alive, so he has lasted with us almost 3 months so far. I have the ammonia in the tank pretty well under control, but now am battling a strange algae we never had before in all the years we’ve had the tank. It’s gray and fuzzy and grows like wildfire. It also makes the tank stink. I think I have tamed it by limiting the tank light use to no more than 6 hours a day (I turn on another light in the room for the fish when it’s off), and turning the bubbler to the lowest level. I read that this algae thrives when the CO2 levels in the water are lower, and I hypothesize that the bubbler (part of a sponge filter system) is putting more O2 into the water and driving the CO2 levels down. I know correlation is not causation, but I didn’t start having the algae issue until after I installed the new sponge filter, so I suspect it is somehow connected.

So that’s been my life lately. Writing has been nowhere for me—I am far too exhausted. I sincerely hope your January has been better!

Where Do We Go From Here?—CoronaLife Day 306

January 14, 2021 By 1 Comment

The Trump years have been rife with growing tensions, but the election has forced a flash point. Trump’s supporters believe there was massive voter fraud and the election was stolen from him, while Biden’s supports believe it was a fair election. I will not argue the points here, largely because it will change nobody’s mind, and, besides, that is not the purpose of this post. The purpose of this post is to ask: “Where do we go from here?”

Over the past four years, the growth of a divided reality has accelerated, and we now have two camps in America who do not see the world with a shared set of facts—or even the belief that facts actually matter. The fragmentation of media has allowed people to find “sources” that reinforce what they already believe, and avoid anything that challenges their world view. This “silo-ing” phenomenon is not new, but has intensified with the advent of the internet and social media. This, combined with a toxic selfishness, has led us to a place that I am not sure we can come back from.

This is more than just a difference over policy. Policy differences are a fact of governmental life, and have been with us always. Constructive discussions of the pros and cons of alternate policies, and viewing a problem from different viewpoints, is necessary and healthy in a democracy. But when advocating a certain policy brings death threats—witness Gretchen Whitmer, Brad Raffensperger, Dr. Fauci and his family, and most recently Mike Pence—that is beyond the pale. That is a line you cannot step back over once crossed. How do you threaten someone’s life and then dial that back? How can you move forward from that?

I don’t know. I just know that I am tired. I am tired of the hateful rhetoric, tired of the insults, tired of the lies. Tired of people who care nothing for other people. Tired of people who are so entitled they think a little inconvenience is oppression. Tired of the unrelenting chaos of every day. I would like to return to the days where you could disagree with your neighbor without fear of vandalism or death. Where we could agree that truth matters—or that it even exists.

I’m afraid that the attack on the Capitol is a sign that America is fundamentally broken. Time will tell if it is broken beyond repair. I believe our democratic institutions held strong; others believe they have been subverted. And so I am left staring at two diametrically opposed Americas, with one thought repeating in my head: “Where do we go from here?”

I fear, nowhere good.

Happy New Year 2021 – CoronaLife Day 292

December 31, 2020 By Leave a Comment

I think I speak for many people when I say there has never been a year I wanted to see the back of more than 2020. This year has lasted a decade, and I can’t wait to turn the page.

Having had a milestone birthday this year (thanks, 2020!), I am old enough to know that turning the calendar doesn’t magically make all our problems disappear. But it is a time to reset and take the lessons learned in the previous year and carry them forward.

So what have I learned in 2020? First, I learned that there are many things out of my control. This year was certainly a lesson in that, if nothing else. The coronavirus took any plans we had for this year and dumped them into the incinerator. The sphere of what I can actually control is a lot smaller than my ego would like to think it is.

Second, sometimes I have to just let things go. My anxiety disorder has been in overdrive this year, and that wreaks havoc on my writing. My creativity vanishes into the malaise. And I have to be okay with that, because there’s not much I can do about it. My creativity has been a roller coaster this year. I have days, even a week at a time, where the words come and I drive forward. Then a desert for weeks. I have had to learn to not beat myself up over that (a lesson I am still learning).

Third, I have had to learn to be less of an introvert. Wait, wait, wait, I hear you saying. You are stuck home, rarely going out, seeing nobody outside your family. How does that make you LESS of an introvert?

It is counter-intuitive, I grant you. I am an introvert’s introvert. I need alone time to recharge. And by alone time, I mean completely alone, no one else in the house. Not in another room, not on another floor, but not here AT ALL. Since March I have had both my daughter and my husband home 24/7. I love them dearly and I am so grateful we have the ability to be safe together. But I have had to get used to much less alone time (read: none), and figure out how to recharge anyway.

Fourth, it has highlighted many of the inequities that are baked into our country, and the desperate need to address them moving forward. I for one do not want to simply “go back to normal” because so much of what was normal was not working. This year that has shaken the world to the foundation has not merely exposed the cracks we have been papering over for decades, it wrenched those cracks wide open. We need to do better. Business as usual is no longer acceptable.

Finally, it has been a lesson in gratitude. I know, without a doubt, that my family has been incredibly lucky throughout this year. We have been able to work from home with no loss of income, and our immediate extended family have so far come through physically unscathed. For all the things we missed and were saddened to not have or do this year, we still have the people that we love, and that is everything.

I intend to take those lessons and go forward into 2021 knowing that we still have a long road ahead of us. None of the problems we face will vanish with the ball drop. But if we truly learn the lessons of 2020, we can make 2021 the beginning of something new, different, and better.

And by the end of the year, I might even get to be alone in the house again.

I wish all of you and your loved ones a healthy, happy, and much, much better 2021. Be safe, and have a Happy New Year.

And The Stockings Were Hung—CoronaLife Day 285

December 24, 2020 By Leave a Comment

You are reading this on Christmas Eve, but I wrote it on Christmas Eve Eve. We are rolling into the holiday, and for once I am actually on top of things. Well, my Christmas cards only just arrived today, so they will not go out until after Christmas, but it’s actually pretty normal for me to not have them go out before Christmas, so I’m not concerned. I figure it just helps extend the Christmas season, LOL.

The presents are wrapped and under the tree. Our little family is tucked in tight against the coronavirus. Our Christmas dinner is in the fridge waiting to be cooked. Cookies will be made sometime on Christmas Eve.

We got to see the great conjunction tonight. A few days past its prime, but we had clouds the last two nights. We got out the binoculars and the telescope and saw the pretty sight until a bank of clouds rolled over them. But I am content that we saw it, even for a short time. There is a beauty in the dance of the stars that removes you from the cares of this world.

Christmas is my favorite holiday, and even this year I am feeling a bit of peace. I often stop and admire the tree, which I think we got just right this year. My family, although not all together, is all healthy and safe. My mom-in-law has been with us since before Thanksgiving so we could all celebrate together safely. And we have been incredibly lucky to escape the economic fallout of this pandemic, as we had the ability to work from home.

2020 has not been kind to a lot of people, and my Christmas wish is for them to find peace and the help they need to get back on their feet. To those grieving a lost loved one, I hope they find comfort. And I hope all of us find a truly happier, healthier year in 2021.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all.

Warm & Fuzzy – CoronaLife Day 278

December 17, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Even this year, which has been missing some of the traditions of the season, still gives me a glow. I stop and look at our beautiful tree every now and then. We mixed white lights and colored lights and this year I think we got the mix perfect.

It’s also snowing, and I don’t know about you, but my brain kicks into “snow day” mode when that happens. I don’t feel much like working or doing anything except watching the snow fall until I inadvertently take a nap.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas break this year. Normally this break is a time of year to spend more time with family, but since we are all home 24/7 since March, that part of it will not change. However, taking a break from remote schooling will be nice, and sleeping in is good any time of year.

Will I get any writing done over the break? I’d love to say yes, but past history of the rest of this year says no. It’s been a difficult year, writing-wise for me, and I see no reason why Christmas break will change that. But perhaps I will have a Christmas miracle and get some words on the page.

Right now, I am in a warm, fuzzy, snowy, Christmas-y mood, and that means no real productivity at the moment. For me, that’s part of this time of year—an ability, perhaps even a permission, to remove yourself from the regular hustle and bustle of life. As a kid, I used to take a book and sit next to the tree and read by the colored lights. My daughter likes to lay behind/under the tree and just stare up through the branches. Placing yourself in a different world is part of the magic of the season.

And maybe, after the year we’ve slogged through, that’s what we need. A moment to be outside this world and all its cares and woes. We can’t escape it long, not as adults, but if we can grab enough of those moments of peace, maybe we can emerge from this Christmas season refreshed, ready to face 2021 with whatever it brings.

No matter what holiday you celebrate, I want to wish everyone peace and joy. We certainly all deserve it, after the year we have had.

Milestone Birthday – CoronaLife Day 271

December 10, 2020 By Leave a Comment

The year 2020 has been a weird, difficult year, so I guess my having a milestone birthday during it is rather appropriate. As this interminable year drags to a close, I have closed out the first half-century of my life.

It’s kind of a weird feeling, reaching fifty, because I really don’t feel fifty. I mean, I am fifty so I guess this is what fifty feels like, but it’s not really what I pictured. Fifty was OLD. Now it’s not old. It just middlin’.

There came a time, at least for me, where age became just a number. I never was much of a birthday celebrator once childhood passed, and frankly, I would be just as happy to let it pass unheralded. But my daughter is, for some reason, excessively excited about celebrating my birthday, so we are having some cupcakes and presents and a special meal (that I am not making). She even allowed me the honor of opening the Advent calendar today, and putting together the Lego piece inside it (our calendar is Lego Harry Potter).

Every birthday is a time for reflection, and fifty is even more so. With the year we have behind us, I am grateful to still be here, and that all my loved ones are healthy and safe. I am not where I thought I would be when I turned fifty, and there is some regret in that, but I have a good life. While some career goals have not been reached, there is still time, and the more important life goals like a husband and child I love and am proud of have been achieved.

It’s a long time, fifty times around the sun, and I have seen many things in those 5 decades. This year has broken my heart in a thousand ways, but I have also seen the tremendous goodness and kindness people are capable of, and the things people can achieve when they work together in good faith. I have lived long enough to know that hard times pass, if we hang on long enough. The inevitability of change is, rather ironically, the only thing in life that never changes.

Be safe, be smart, so you all will be here for my next trip around the sun.

The Aquarium Wars Continue—CoronaLife Day 264

December 3, 2020 By 1 Comment

It’s been a pretty quiet week following our unusually quiet Thanksgiving. My main excitement—and one I could do without—was a resumption of my fighting ammonia spikes in our aquarium.

We have one fish. One puny little 2-inch fish. Little orange guppy named Zippy. He has proven to be pretty hardy, having survived the initial ammonia spike starting November 8th, when we got him and two others. His two tank mates died from a combination of the ammonia and a mouth fungus. But Zippy survived.

Our tank settled for a while, but the ammonia continued to creep up too high every day. For a while it would go up to 0.5, and I would change out the water and put in chemicals. I even installed a new sponge filter with air pump to increase filtration, which will hopefully bring the ammonia under control once it gets established.

Instead, the ammonia went crazy (coincidentally, not to do with the new filter). Spiking up to 1.0 every few hours. The recommended way to remove excess ammonia is to change out some water. At one point I changed out 6 gallons of water a day—and we only have a 5-gallon tank! This could not go on.

Upon advice from an author friend who is also an experienced aquarium person, I did what felt counter-intuitive. I stopped changing out the water. My friend said changing out so much water might have “broken” the bio filer cycle, because while it gets ammonia out, it also removes the good bacteria that eats the ammonia. So she said to leave the water but bomb it with nitrifying bacteria (“good bacteria”). Put in many times the recommended amount. So at my daughter’s bedtime, I changed out half the water in the tank and then I poured in 4 capfuls of the bacteria (and a capful of the ammonia detoxifier). Four hours later, when I went to bed, I put in another capful of ammonia detoxifier and another 4 capfuls of the bacteria. Then I went to bed and hoped Zippy would still be alive in the morning.

Zippy almost gave me a heart attack in the morning, because I couldn’t find him in the tank. Often that means they died and are laying on the bottom somewhere, obscured by gravel, shells, etc. But I found him eventually, hiding half-asleep behind his favorite plant. Whew!

I tested the water, fearful the ammonia would be sky-high. Instead it was 0.25—normal for my tank (although it should be 0, but never has been in 3 years). I could hardly believe it. I tested the water every 2 hours the rest of the day, and so far it has stayed at 0.25. I did add more bacteria and more ammonia detoxifier a few times through the day.

So, fingers crossed the ammonia stays stable. Poor Zippy has been through a lot, and frankly I am shocked he is not dead. It would be nice if he could just enjoy his tank without my constant intrusions for a while. And our water bill will be much lower!

So how have you spent this week that transitions us into December?

Thanksgiving 2020 – CoronaLife Day 257

November 26, 2020 By Leave a Comment

The year 2020 has been brutal for a lot of people. The world is in a tailspin and division in America has never been higher. The pandemic has sickened millions and killed more than 268,000 people in the USA. Many people are out of work, facing food hardships and eviction in the middle of winter. This is a year most people will be thankful to forget.

Still, there are things to be thankful for in my life. My family is healthy, even if we are not together in the traditional way this Thanksgiving. We are secure in food supply and in our home. My daughter is able to attend school remotely, and therefore safely, even as COVID cases spike to levels higher than we saw at the beginning of the pandemic in March.

I am thankful for friends to help ride out the isolation, and the technology to keep friends and family close even when apart. I am thankful for the services that allow us to get food and other necessities delivered to our homes. I am thankful for the vast amount of entertainment at our fingertips to while away the hours. And I am thankful for stretches of good weather that allow us to get outside the house to exercise safely distanced from others.

I am thankful to the scientists who are swiftly accumulating knowledge about this coronavirus that we may better battle it, and who are working to get us safe and effective vaccines to end this nightmare. I am more grateful than words can say to the healthcare professionals who are shouldering the brunt of this burden while sacrificing so much. And I am thankful for all the citizens who are acting as firewalls as the virus burns through our country, wearing their masks properly, respectfully distancing, staying home whenever possible, and giving up so much to try and stem the viral tide.

I am thankful for all the goodness and kindness I have seen people doing in this horrid year. The sometimes small things that make a huge difference, such as shopping for an at-risk neighbor, working at food banks, and donating money to causes that help those in need.

That is what I am going to try to take away from 2020. The good that lies in the hearts of so many people. I don’t want to remember the vitriol and the hate and the fear. I want to remember the love.

For all that I have been jaded by a half-century on this planet, there’s still a part of me that wants to believe that in the end light drives out darkness and that love conquers all.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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