The Green Horse

Inspirational song: Don't Eat the Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)

Pretty much everyone I know who has gone through the Rona so far has said they started getting better and then had a slight relapse. I believe I am in that relapse period. Maybe I just hit my emotional limit for coughing. Last night I went back to NyQuil, and when it wore off this morning, I gave myself permission to take it again. I slept almost the entire day, occasionally opening my eyes to watch it snow. I don't think this has been a terribly dramatic backslide. It's just a predictable step in the dance. It might even portend reaching the end of the cycle, so I can finally be done with it all.

Thank goodness for large cuddly animals to keep me company while I wait it out. Alfred and Harvey kept tabs on me during the day, and Saoirse has been draped over my lap for the last half hour. (She took a long time to settle down to snooze. She was sitting up on my lap, staring down at me in what Mr S-P described as a "Snoopy vulture pose.")

Little Loves

Inspirational song: My Funny Valentine (Chet Baker)

Valentines Day was never that big a deal around here. Yes, we exchanged gifts on several occasions, usually had a nice dinner or at least an abundance of chocolate, and you know. The other stuff. But it wasn't a high pressure holiday. Nice, but not a deal-breaker. If anything, it was about the time we would cave in and buy our first bare-root roses of the season, because neither of us has a lick of sense when we set foot in a stocked garden center.

But this year... This year I have an almost-three year old little girl who loves hearts. It's her favorite shape, and ever since she was old enough to understand that shapes have patterns, she has asked her mother and me to draw them for her before any other. I intended on going to get her a little heart-shaped stuffy as a gift, just a goofy little thing from Walmart. I never managed to acquire one, and by the time it became the 14th, I thought really, will she know if I got one day of or day after on 70% off clearance? 

Then we completely ran out of dog and cat food, other than cat crunchies, and had to make a Costco and Petco run. I told Mr S-P I wanted to give something to that sweet little girl, and as proof of how much she has her grandpa's heart in her dainty hands, he saw flowers when we first walked in Costco, and said those--let's get those. They were tulip bulbs blooming in a hydroponics vase. Of course I agreed. Got some heart-shaped chocolates while we were at it.

We couldn't spend much time with the babies. We had too much to do at home, starting with feeding those starving cats and dogs. But we were there long enough to get hugs and kisses, and more than anything giggles. I don't think any version of grown-up Valentines Day could have prepared me for how much better it is as grandparents and little kids.

Just Started Rearranging

Inspirational song: We've Only Just Begun (The Carpenters)

Sketching out room designs on paper is all well and good, but I say the way to really see whether a room arrangement is going to work is to actually try it. So that's what I did. It's a good thing I did. I encountered several unexpected challenges, and was able to make adjustments on the fly.

I'm nowhere near done. I mean, really, I've barely started. I am trying to clean as I go, and that has slowed me down a bit. Holy moly, is that slowing me down. From the first moments, when I moved a bedside table for the first time in two and a half years, and found what appeared to be cat hair curtains in the corner. I did learn that Murphys oil soap actually can go bad. I have a sixth of a bottle that is a family heirloom. The oil has gone a bit off. Still works to clean cat barf off dusty wood floors, though.

I am trying to wean myself off of the cough medicine, so I hacked extra hard between dust and viral infection. I'm so over this crud. I guess I have to accept that I won't be going to Rotary tomorrow. I feel mostly fine, other than the wettest cough I have ever experienced. Even if I sat in the room full of people older than I am with a mask in place the whole time, there is no way I would be able to avoid coughing loudly at inopportune moments during the meeting and program. Discretion is the better part of valor. I shall stay home, and clean my room.

 

Superb

Inspirational song: We Found Love (Rihanna)

Whew. That was the desired outcome to a rather superb football game, as it were. There is a meme of a high school football player giving an interview, saying, "not gonna lie, they had us in the first half." That's how I felt about today's spectacle. I felt Kansas City was struggling in the first half, and I was concerned. Both KC and Philly proved they belonged in the championship game today. They were evenly matched, and well coached. But seeing as how I am still decked out head to toe in bright red (even though it clashes horribly with the color I dye my hair), obviously I am pleased that my team came out victorious.

I had to remind myself to take time out to watch the Superbowl. Now that I have decided to redecorate my room, it is all I can think about. I've been so focused on how I want to rearrange furniture once it is painted that I keep forgetting I haven't even bought the paint yet. In my head, the room is basically done. I might go ahead and turn a few pieces around, and get used to the new/old orientation. At least that way I could start leaving the curtains open a little more for the plants without being blinded when the sun first peeks in. I collected a few more things to donate today, and straightened my bookshelf. It has been a wreck so long, even that much feels a bit disorienting. 

I suppose my next steps will be taking art off the walls and finding a safe place to store it. Most of the furniture can stay here, just pushed to the middle of the room while I paint. This counts as spring cleaning, right? I've been wanting to do this for months, but winter cleaning isn't as much of a tradition, so I held off. Can't stop me now.

Zoom Bah

Inspirational song: Helpless (Hamilton)

I sacrificed my entire Saturday in the service of small d democracy, once again. In years past, the biennial reorganization meetings were busy in-person events, with a lot of networking, key issues raised, multiple candidates for officer positions to evaluate, and active voting by raising our color-coded credentials up for volunteers to count. These days, all business is conducted via Zoom, which is good considering how often I drowned out the sound coming from my cell phone with soupy coughing. I didn't get a shower until the lunch break, and ate food between my house district and senate district breakout meetings. In the entire day of central committee reorg, I actively voted one single time, for a minor officer role in our house district committee. For every other issue and candidate, all I had to do was be present on the call (to provide quorum), and not object during unanimous consent. I've had worse experiences with this party, that's for sure.

When I was in middle school, the bedroom I lived in, back in our ancestral home, was one that had been painted deepest, darkest green, in the hopes of keeping my then-infant brother sleeping past dawn. Blackout curtains completed the cave effect. I tolerated the color for about two years, before I started pleading with my parents to let me paint it the brightest "chalk white" they could find. I had reached my limit with the dark room. I don't remember if it was the summer before or after 8th grade, but one of those years, I went away to summer camp, and came back to find they had painted it without me. I was disappointed that I didn't get to do it, but I couldn't really be mad that they gave it to me as a fun surprise, especially since they added a unique twist. This was around 1980, and Garfield the cat was suddenly huge then. My step-dad painted a giant Garfield comic strip on the wall, like 8 feet of black art on my vivid white walls. No one else had anything like this, and I loved the crap out of it. That room stayed like that for at least 10 years, I think, until my mom decided to grow the space up a bit, and painted it a color she equated to cholesterol.

When we first moved into this house, every room was the same antique white. The contractor who fixed up this former rental just got a couple five-gallon buckets of it and covered everything. I experimented with colors I'd never tried before to get rid of the relentless white. A pale blue living room. A seafoam green bathroom. A freaking lilac craft room! But my bedroom was sort of something we had tried before. I wanted a neutral taupe, and I let Mr S-P pick it out. I think he came home with something called "mushroom." It was fine, but it really did end up being another dark cave. Now that I'm past a lot of my hide-in-my-room medical issues (not coming back knock on wood), I'm making almost as extreme of a trajectory change as that summer of 1980. I'm looking at colors like "warm milk," and "halogen." The lightest colors look better in the weird light of my ceiling fan. No decisions until I see it in different angles of sunlight.

As of right now, I'm not planning on a comic strip mural. I reserve the right to change my mind.

Plague Pals

Inspirational song: The Kids Are Alright (The Who)

Yesterday we got the bad news that Dmitri has followed us on this viral adventure. He tested positive, and is so not happy about it. So far Val remains negative, but she is doing a bit more sleeping than she might have, so not sure whether that is indicative or not.

I needed food and cough drops, so I masked up good and trekked to Walmart. Got myself some storage solutions while there, and started doing a little more purging of stuff. I've decided it's time to do a refresh of my bedroom, after seven years of it being a somewhat dark cave. I'm planning on painting soon, once I empty it a bit. The amount of activity I was able to squeeze into a single day was my biggest indicator that I am feeling better. I still cough like a 19th century coal miner, but I'm taking every small win that I can.

This evening we had had enough forced distance from the babies, and we asked to be allowed to come over and play. We wore masks and all, as if that horse isn't already out of the barn. Val needed all the snuggles, even if her attention was wholly fixed on Moana. It reminded me of our early days together, her on my lap drinking juice and watching her first favorite movie. Dmitri tore our hearts apart. He couldn't sleep more than about five minutes at a time, and his cries were more than just baby noises. There was real grief over his literal pain in his voice. After an hour of that, I asked when his last dose of baby Tylenol was. My daughter checked his temperature to be sure he was in line with what the doctor recommended, and then gave him a dose. Within minutes, you could see his little face and body relax. Poor kid had just gone too long with the achy part. Once we left, they gave him a shower and said it worked magic on him. He was finally sleeping peacefully. 

I know those kids missed us as much as we missed them while everyone was sick and trying not to infect everyone else. At this point, it's almost a relief that we all have it so we don't have to stay separated as much. My daughter started calling us Plague Pals. It fits.

So Close

Inspirational song: Neverland (Marillion)

I'm ready for this crap to be over, even if the crap has other opinions. I wanted to feel like being out and about, maybe doing a quick grocery run. I could even peek in at the babies, right? Wrong. Did none of that. Couldn't sleep at all last night, despite NyQuil. Felt loopy all day, so definitely no driving. Couldn't stop hacking and coughing to the point of needing to pee every ten minutes, so definitely no visiting the kids. I see no point in taking the last home test to see whether I'm negative, when the only symptoms that really went away were fever and sleepiness. 

I found that we did have store brand mucinex pills, so I have stepped down from my beloved green horse to just treating the cough. It's helping. Not perfect, but much better. It fooled me into trying to convince myself and my kids that I'd probably be up for babysitting tomorrow. Then this evening as I stood in the bathroom, water running, about to get clean so I could put on fresh jammies, I reached for the curtain and suddenly forgot how to take a shower. My head was all weird, and it felt like I had never made these motions before. Was I doing it right? I wasn't going to fall over or break something, was I? It was the strangest feeling. I don't think the virus is done with my brain box yet.

It's getting pretty boring just watching videos all day. I tried doing dishes, and sort of made progress. No laundry, no floor pickup. A little plant care. Once I have energy for these basics again, I will know the virus has been vanquished.