Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash
Well holy sweet motherfucking TITS, it’s been quite a week! (Can I say that? Is that far too crass and immature? I find myself past caring…) I suppose I’m glad it’s the weekend, but I almost feel like I would rather just wake up on Monday morning and try this one all over again.
Or then again, maybe not. It was a stressful one any way you look at it.
Last Sunday evening we had plans to see some folks we don’t see all that often (Ha! Not going to be seeing anyone else for a while, either) and that didn’t quite go as planned. I made the mistake of saying something off-the-cuff about how there is extremism within the Conservative party, and one of the people with whom we were dining sort of let me have it.
Now on one hand, oops, my bad. I broke one of the golden rules. One knows that one should never bring up certain conversational topics at a polite dinner, like religion, or abortion, or politics, and look at what I’ve gone and done. I have made people mad and uncomfortable. Bad me.
On the other hand, it’s at least kinda true, and I’m not an absolute moron for thinking so. (I am extra peeved, because I like to debate, and I know it’s possible to disagree with someone without telling them that you think they’re stupid.) I mean maybe we should be able to have these discussions, and disagree with each other without losing our minds. However, I do wish I hadn’t gotten quite so flustered after the shit hit the fan, because I am sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that yours truly did an absolutely TERRIBLE job of explaining herself once riled up. As usual. Sigh.
ANYWAY, after that little dust-up, I went off to choir practice, where I just didn’t enjoy things the way I normally would. (Huge bummer in retrospect, since now there’s no choir.) I just felt off, after basically being told I was a dumbass for my viewpoint. I was there the whole time, singing with my moist mask on, doing my best, but I guess I just couldn’t lose myself in the music, and I really felt like I was putting off some negative energy. Unpleasant for me and for my fellow choristers, even if they were 2 meters away. (Ha ha, “chorister” that has got to be one of the dorkiest words ever.)
The next day, on Monday, there was the snowstorm which pretty much shut down the entire city. Lots of snowy weather and wind. White-out conditions. A real storm. But then, people have hardly cared, because the Covid numbers have been drastically rising.
And isn’t that just the most mentally-challenging thing? We’ve been so lucky here. It’s been months of a few cases here or there, with no community spread, and honestly, not a huge sense of risk. I hadn’t been feeling trepidation about going to the grocery store or running errands at all, really (although I still am not much of a shopper). I would of course wear a mask, and maintain distance, but I never really felt like I was in harm’s way.
That changed for us this week. 11 cases Monday, 30 Tuesday, 53 Wednesday, 100 Thursday, and about 60 Friday, I think. (Update; Saturday saw under 30 new cases, and today we’ve only got 11! Huzzah!) We now DO have community spread, so things are a lot riskier, and there is palpable tension in the air.
While all this has been going on, I accidentally stumbled onto a local politician’s Twitter account and it was…um…elucidating. Basically, a quick perusal of his feed revealed that the guy’s a knob. Seriously! This guy is regularly liking a bunch of pro-trump extremist bullshit. (Doesn’t have the guts to tweet the worst stuff, but has no problem “liking” it, the coward.) Stuff about how Trump really won the election, how great MAGA is and lots of tweets that are just chock-full of ugly misinformation. I roll my eyes in his general direction.
But come on, you guys know that’s not enough for me. Of course I challenged him on his BS. (Why on earth is an Atlantic Canadian politician such a diehard MAGA supporter?) He didn’t actually respond, but immediately blocked me. (I’ve since written a letter of complaint about the guy, but I doubt much will come of it.)
But…you do see what this is, don’t you? It’s evidence of exactly what I was talking about! It’s the crazy fringe that I see sometimes within the conservative party now; bolstering dangerous lies and “liking” the posturing of these Trumpian clowns. The ones who tweet all-out garbage. (Barely a step above the “pizzagate” and Q-anon crowd. The real winners.)
I’m still working from home, and with everything going on, I admit that it has been a less-than focussed week for me. I have not been at my best. Still, I swear to do better now than I did at the beginning of the pandemic. No wallowing in food, weight gain and depression! I am motivated to make this work. I will exercise, make healthy choices and be sure to meditate.
That’s good, because in the meantime, as of Friday night we also learned that this latest influx of cases is actually a more transmissible variant of Covid which first arose in the UK. Oh joy. It’s even scarier than we thought! Guess I will be putting in that grocery delivery order after all.
On the whole, my family and I are ok. (Although I constantly feel like my 60+ mother isn’t taking this seriously enough, but that’s another story!) Lately I find myself daydreaming of travelling somewhere warm, away from this cold winter. I so want to feel the carefree sun on my back. Mmmm! (I have never really travelled, so this is exclusively wishful thinking!)
Yours ever, in this mad world of ours,
Minerva
Categories: Writing
Lady Psychonaut 
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