So tired. So not sure why I'm so tired.

Had a little scare yesterday when my throat felt "funny" - it didn't hurt or tickle, but it felt like I'd been screaming all day and wore my voice out. It was better today making me think it might have been reflux because I gagged on the antibiotic which is huge and chalky and may be irritating my throat. At any rate, I feel fine today, so false alarm I guess.

I went to bed around 2 last night and woke up around 1 today. I did a little dancing, but only once. I never seemed to notice the top of the hour, and I was depressed beyond all functioning anyway. I know the dancing probably would have helped the depression, but I couldn't actually convince myself to do it. I did the bare minimum I said was going to make up a day for this year, which is 5 minutes of exercise and some stretching and 10 minutes of meditation. I have to admit I felt a lot better after the meditation, and maybe I could have convinced myself to dance, but I already felt like a failure for it so I didn't do it.

After dancing around I read LJ and DW and did the parts of my reading I hadn't already done this week. Then Kevin told me to turn on the news, and I did, and there went the rest of my day. Sort of.

I did serve dinner at 5, which was a new recipe called taco chicken chili, and we both liked although Kevin thought I should add more of the spices. I agree it was a little bland, but holy hell, I put so much spice in that thing I have no idea how it was bland. Kevin ate it as chili and left the tortilla shell on his plate. He said next time make it with some cornbread, but not sweet cornbread. I have no idea how to make not sweet cornbread. Overall: success!

Then the SCA decided to do our meeting next week and project night this week because of the political violence going on and we didn't want the discussion to become political. We're a very liberal barony in the midst of a very conservative southern kingdom, and we have enough problems with this. Plus we don't want to scare off any conservative members we may have, although if I had my way we would scare off anyone who supports insurrection.

Instead, I wound up playing jackbox games with about 10 people in NaNoLanta chat. We played a new game tonight, which was Monster seeking Monster, which basically asked you to chat with people and then secretly ask one of them on a date. If you matched, you got points. I was ahead for most of the game, but lost when bonus points were assigned at the end.

We quit at 8 and I raced through some dailies and caught up with Victor's board, which, of course, had a ton of activity today. Mostly I've been listening to Kevin rant about the insurrection and wanting Trump dead. Personally, I'm past wanting him dead. I want him to live every single day of Biden's presidency, and have someone buzz his cell with "you lost" every single day. Kevin is afraid he will run again in 2024 and still have the majority support of republicans.

At 9 I started writing here, and I've gotten through most of my day in only 15 minutes. I'm not sure what else to do with myself. I don't want to turn the news back on. It's stressing me out.

My sister went home yesterday, and I think this was a mistake. It wouldn't have cost too much to extend her stay and LA is a scary place to be right now. Nonetheless, she's back home.

I drew a picture of the snowman from Frozen today on a learn to draw chanel with the guy who actually invented him for Disney. But it came out poorly. He clearly is used to teaching people who know how to draw already how to draw a specific thing rather than teaching people who don't know how to draw.

I'm so tired. I just want a nap. But it's 9:30pm and if I nap now I'll wake up at midnight and be wide awake. Also, I haven't eaten nearly enough food today, so I have to figure out how to fix that. Not at all hungry, but that's par for the course lately.

Not much of a day today. I was up all night, despite trying desperately to sleep. I couldn't quiet my mind, and lying there just made me more and more antsy until I got up to avoid waking Kevin with my fidgeting. I spent the night talking to Alex, some people in Australia on the GYWO discord, and Gerda, Sarah and Kali. I also did my usual nightly tasks a little late because Kevin was up and talking to me until 12:30 or so. I was up until 5 or so in the morning.

Then I woke up with my alarm for my therapy group. I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it. The nurse in charge is Nurse Hixon, who once told me that it is impossible to have diabetes and be a happy person. And another time told me my religious beliefs are all wrong. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing for a therapist to be saying, so I fired her. I'm not sure I'm willing to be in a group led by her.

I was pretty fed up with the group anyway. We're talking about emotional intelligence and it was just people repeating the definition over and over again but adding "I think" or "Sometimes I" to the start of it, and acting like the definition was an experience. I turned my video off and went back to bed about halfway through.

Then I woke up with my alarm to talk to Zoe. I think we're both getting frustrated with the book taking too many words to say the same thing over and over again. I'm also fed up with it acting like this somehow applies to modern America when all of her examples take place in the 60s. We only talked for about 20 minutes. Then I went back to bed.

I woke up again at 5. We ordered dinner, as we often do when I can't go to sleep or wake up at reasonable hours. I read LJ and DW while we waited for the food. Then I poked around with photoshop a little bit, and did a 5 minute abs work out (the same one as Saturday). I logged onto the SCA meeting tonight but then quickly logged off because it just seemed like a lot of noise. I'm too stressed out from waking up so early.

I took a shower and Jack wanted to come in so he got a shower too. Then he was displeased about being wet but that's what you get, doggo.

Otherwise, occasionally looking at the election results. It looked good initially, but now both republicans have taken leads as they start counting election day results (as opposed to mail in results which came out first). They haven't counted any of Atlanta's election day results though, so that may be ok?

I've been reading some stuff and talking to people about the benefits of exercise on serotonin levels. This sounds like it could be the boost I need lately, but unfortunately they say you need an hour of movement a day to get benefits. That's a lot. Three 20 minute sessions, which is more than my back will tolerate. Although Rac points out that it is also twelve 5 minute sessions, which seems a little more doable.

5 minutes at the top of each hour isn't much, and it's not like I'm often doing anything between xx:55 and xy:00 I'm having issues getting motivated in the morning, though, and then I can't do it if I'm going to take a shower that hour because it's more standing still than I can do. I don't know. I guess that I am doomed. Anyway, I've danced a little 2ce now today and once yesterday for 5 minutes but I kind of hurt my hip doing it two times. I'm going to try to keep it up. I even made a playlist of songs I like with a fast beat.

I guess there isn't much to say for today. It has only been 5 hours long so far anyway, so I've said a lot for 5 hours worth of time I think.

I don't want to get behind in my writing. It's only the first month of the year so I haven't built up any extra words yet, and yet I'm not sure what else to write about. I don't really have a story idea other than "people on the moon working as slaves" but I just wrote a dystopia for NaNo, I'm not sure I want to write another one. I need some kind of an idea before April, though. I'm not sure how much I'm writing in April. I'm spending the first week of it in Hilton Head with Tabby.

Well, first of all, thanks to my husband who figured out what was wrong with LJ and got me to fix it (although I lost all my cookies in the process. Boo!)

I had another night of very broken sleep last night. I went to bed at 11 woke up at 12, did all my nightly tasks and went to bed again around 2 or 3 and woke up at 4. I read LJ and DW and painted my dragon that I drew last month. Then I went back to sleep at 6 and woke up at 8. Kevin also woke up at 8, so we ordered breakfast. I was up for the day at that point. I struggled to find things to do with myself all day, though. I did my reading, and photoshopped some images from the park a couple months ago. Then I really just stared through space, occasionally poking the internet. I've also been having the kinds of intestinal issues that often come with antibiotics, so that's a lot of fun. Jack puked twice, and I gagged trying to clean it up, so that was also fun. Also I'm worried about my dog who does not usually puke. But it was twice only seconds apart and then not again, so maybe he got whatever it was out of his system.

At 3, my social worker called. We talked about my exercise goals and how I'm doing with them. I expressed frustration because even the "low impact" exercises I tried this morning all required me to be able to get into the downward facing dog position for probably 80% of the exercises. I just sort of danced around instead of actually doing the exercises. I gave up after 7.5 minutes. Tomorrow I'm going to do an abs workout, probably the one I did on the 2nd, but after that I'm going to have to find something else. Maybe Zumba or some kind of dance work out. I do like choreographed dances. I need to do some kind of strength training, but I can always just do push ups maybe with that 100 push ups app if I can find it again.

At 4, Loki offered to teach a free online Latin class to the members of NaNoLanta. I'm hoping it ends up being on a day I can take it, which pretty much means Tuesday. He sent out a survey asking which days were best, and I was the frustrating person who only put one day on there, but honestly most of my days are taken with things. There are days I could do an every-other-week schedule (Saturday or Sunday) but if you want me every week, it has to be Tuesday. Or before 7pm on Wednesday or Friday. I didn't buy the book until we confirm that I can actually do the lessons.

At 4:30 I went to my mother's house for dinner. She wanted to go to Marlow's Tavern and my sister had already picked out something she wanted from there. I actually picked the same thing, which was a pulled pork sandwich with fried onions on it. Dad said he didn't want anything, but then ate half of mom's dinner. We talked about whether we think Pennsic will happen (no) and whether we think our cruises will happen this year (maybe - three of us have cruise plans in October). We also talked about what we wanted to do instead of the Europe trip that didn't happen. Dad's thinking cruises aren't going to be safe for quite a while and maybe we should do a land tour of Iceland instead of a cruise. Kelly, dad, and I all want to see Ireland, so maybe something will happen with that. We're not making plans until Kelly is vaccinated since she goes last of all of us, with the other healthy young adults.

I came home just in time for improv. We played several games and then did two scenes. There were a lot of us today - 7 I think, although several didn't stay the whole time or came late. Usually Sandi says until 8:15 and we go to 8:30. Today she said until 8:30 and we went until 8:45. Not that I mind since it's a lot of fun, but it does put a crunch on my time to finish my dailies before writing time. I guess there's no rule that I must start writing promptly at 9, but... I am a creature of habit.

Anyway when we finished, I raced through my last 10 dailies, and then started writing here.

I'm several hundred calories below where I need to be for the day, yet again. I have to eat something but I'm not at all hungry. I guess I can wait up to another hour but good grief. Bodies require so much food. No me gusta.

Someone did what I kept threatening to do and wrote the 2020 verse(s) of We Didn't Start The Fire. It's worth a listen. I love how it took Billy Joel 4 decades to get enough material for a song and yet we've got another song in one year.



Wistric emailed that he wants to get together on zoom with me and the kingdom webminister Thursday or Friday. I said I could do 6 either day so hopefully that works for the others. Otherwise they might have to wait until Tuesday (assuming I'm not like studying Latin on Tuesday!)

I really hate how spammers have gotten wise to the fact that the majority of phones can block unknown numbers from calling, so now they've started texting. I've gotten three spam texts in the last 4 hours, two from republicans wanting me to vote for shit head and bitch face tomorrow. At least those should end after tomorrow. But the ones I keep getting that say "Lucky you! We've put cash in your account. Text Go to see how much!" probably aren't going away any time soon. Dear Apple, I want the ability to stop texts from numbers I don't know, too. Of course that would kill two factor authentication, but I think it's worth it. Companies who want to use two factor authentication can tell you the number they're texting from. By the way, I still pay per text, so I have to pay every time these assholes message me. But no one but my mother or Kevin ever text me, so it's not really worth investing in an unlimited plan. Maybe it is just to lower my blood pressure about these spammers. I'll have to talk to my father and see how much more it would be a month.

I spent last night talking to Alex while I wrote my reading "Wednesday" post and finished up the rest of my midnight dailies. I went to bed around 2 and woke up around 1. I got up and read lj and dw, and then did my exercises, although I couldn't actually do any of the exercises on the video I was trying to watch. I'm not strong enough, but there were no level 2 cardio or circuit videos, so nothing easier. Two of the exercises required you to start in downward facing dog position, and I can't even start to get myself into it to start so I couldn't do those. And then one required me to get in a crab walk position and I couldn't do that either because my abs weren't strong enough. So that was 3 out of 6 exercises that I couldn't do. Then all of the others required jumping and I wound up having an asthma attack on the second jump. Clearly I need to google this "no jump fitness" or whatever it was called that Rac said she does.

After that I tried to watch Mank but after 20 minutes was bored and counting down until it ended, so I stopped watching it. I figured when I didn't care that a major character lost her husband they weren't doing a very good job of making relatable characters and there really was no plot.

Kevin got cranky because he wanted dinner half an hour before I usually start cooking, so I made something new - tortilla pie. He didn't like it because it had tomatoes in it, which like seriously? Now I'm supposed to cook without tomatoes, onions, mayo, pineapple, fish, shellfish, or bell peppers? What exactly does that leave? Nothing. Literally nothing.

After dinner I started my reading, and did that pretty quickly. Then I showered and spent most of the rest of the night staring through space trying to come up with something to do that wasn't staring through space. I couldn't convince myself to do anything and I was exhausted so I started writing here about half an hour early because I was thinking I might go to sleep. Now that I'm actually doing something that uses my brain, I'm a little less sleepy, but IDK I still might go to bed. Kevin will be unhappy because he's in the bedroom watching youtube but I'm so tired.

I drew a picture of Moana today which came out really well.

Happy New Year Everyone. I spent last night playing Jackbox games with some people in the NaNoLanta Discord. We had a great time, laughing the last hours of 2020 away until we heard the fireworks go off indicating that it was a new year. The game then glitched (maybe because we left it on pause too long) and we all logged off.

Today has been a really stressful day, which I hope does not portend stress for the rest of the year.

I fell asleep at 1am, after doing a couple of my midnight tasks, but not most of them. Then I woke up at noon. I finished my midnight tasks and glared at my todo list which is suddenly really long. I mean on top of my new years resolutions, I had all the first of the month tasks to do, too. *Sighs* So I started the day with testing how many push ups and sit ups I can do (7 and 0), then downloaded my trackers for the year from GYWO. I drew a leprechaun even though it's not at all the season for that.

I did the meditation video that I promised my shrink I'd look into. It was a little newagey for me, so I'll have to find something else. Surely there is mindfulness meditations that are not religious? Within 10 minutes of quitting that I was super stressed out because the dog was barking, Kevin had friends over and was asking me for "help" every 2 minutes. I couldn't even read a 1000 word article without him calling me 5 separate times to do something.

I read LJ and DW and started on my reading although I did less than half of it.

Our governor, Kovid Killer Kemp, has announced that Georgia will not follow the CDC's guidelines for who gets vaccinated, and seniors over 65, who should be in group 1-C, will actually be in group 1-A, ahead of essential workers (except for police, fire, and EMS who will also get bumped into group 1-A. You know what he is doing? He is intentionally using the virus to kill his political opposition. Essential workers, especially those in low income jobs, are much more likely than average to be African Americans, and to vote democratic. Those over 65 are much more likely to vote republican. So he's intentionally bumping forward the republicans at the expense of the democrats and committing mass murder in the process. If he were actually interested in lowering the death rate he would have bumped forward those with heart conditions and diabetes rather than the seniors, but again, people with those conditions are more likely to be African American.

That said, both of my parents are getting their first shot on the 8th, and I'm actually glad that I won't have to worry about killing them from Kevin's irresponsibility, and once they are fully vaccinated, I think I'll feel comfortable enough to go to my volunteer job, which is outdoor and masked, but public facing.

My aunt called for New years and to thank me for my Christmas gift which she claims to have received today. Personally, I'm of the opinion that she's wrong because USPS doesn't run on New Years Day. Plus the package was guaranteed to arrive by the 28th. She also did this to my parents, claiming to have gotten a package from them last Sunday. Anyway we talked for like an hour about absolutely nothing and then she said she had mailed not one but two packages with gifts, and one of them she hasn't mailed yet. This means I'm going to have to talk to her two more times within the next couple weeks. Also she mailed them both to my parents' house, so I have to actually go out of my way to get this thing which I don't even want. She bought me clothes again, and I keep telling her not to do that. I literally just finished cleaning out my closet and donating almost half of my clothing, and the closet is still so full I can't fit another single hanger in there. I can't use anything from a clothing store and will 99% sure wind up just tossing it with the bags of Kevin's clothes I need to bring over to the thrift shop and get rid of. She doesn't listen and it's just a waste of her limited resources, and very frustrating for me.

I don't know how it got to be 6pm, but it did. Kevin's friends were just packing up their toys to go home, which made me cranky and stressed because 6 is supposed to be dinner time. We had planned on ordering pizza with Scott and Ben, but they said they had to go to Ben's mother's house for New Year's Dinner. So we ordered the pizza at 6:30 when Scott and Ben finally got the hell out but that meant I missed my 7:00 thing because that's when the pizza showed up and then I had to eat. Never mind the fact that the pizza came without breadsticks or soda, both of which we had also ordered. Kevin spent more than 20 minutes on hold to complain to someone about this and get our money back, but at least they're actually refunding the entire combo which included those two things, even though we did get the pizza from it.

Anyway, at 7:30 I logged onto Temple services. Both the rabbi and the cantor were missing today and services were led by Rachel and Kyra. It was a good service, and featured several original compositions by Kyra. Good to shake things up a little bit. They ended at 9, promptly, which is a thing the old Rabbi valued, but the new rabbi clearly does not.

We did a grocery order and then I started writing here. I have no idea why this week's grocery order was super expensive. I didn't even get a single snack for myself. But it was $150, and I don't understand why it was so much. And it is adding to an already very stressful day. But anyway, I think I'm going to try to head to sleep soon. I'm going to take some CBD oil and some melatonin and hope my brain will shut off long enough to sleep, because my eyes are already closing and I'm having to fight to stay awake and finish here.

I fell asleep immediately upon finishing writing here last night. It was about 10pm and I had only slept 3 hours the night before. I must have needed the sleep because the next thing I was conscious of it was 12pm. I got up and took my dogs out. My mom said she had tried to take my dogs out around 7 and Rogue had gone with her, but Jack had peed in the hallway and run back to me. That's my little bastard. I tried to suggest she pick him up since he doesn't pee on me when I do that, but apparently he peed on my mother once, and now she won't pick him up. I guess that means it is my job to get up and take the doggos out.

Anyway, I ate breakfast and then headed over to my house to pick up a back pack full of things I'll need if I'm staying for any amount of time. I still managed to forget a few though. Well, two. Kevin had managed to get the house down to about 75 degrees, which isn't too unreasonable, but also it was early in the day and he said it was significantly warmer by the time the day was over. I came back to my mom's house and did the laundry.

While I was working on that, I did all my usual midnight tasks and then read LJ. I got started on DW but Kevin called and we chatted for a while. Then my dad told me he and my mother were in the pool so I got dressed in my bathing suit and went downstairs. We swam laps for half an hour and then mom said she was going to do a water aerobics video if I wanted to stay out. We did 21 minutes of that before it started raining and we had to go inside.

I came back inside and read DW and spent some time lying in bed with the dog since he's used to me having a recliner he can sit on with me and not this office chair I sit in here and he can't climb up with me, so he's not getting enough cuddles.

I don't think I did anything else interesting before dinner. We had chicken and vegetables sitting on the porch despite the thunder that scared Rogue and Bennett and Jack kept barking at. Our walk was rained out, so I came back upstairs. I read for an hour, 15 minutes from each of 4 books. Then I took the dogs out despite the continuing thunder storm, and started writing here. When I came back upstairs, Jack followed me but Rogue did not. She eventually came up and started barking at the door though.

Poor Kevin must have been broiling today as the Real Feel temperature climbed above 100F for what I think is the first time this year.

I'm suffering from the problem of the man with too many clocks. Weather Underground tells me Saturday should be the end of the high temperatures and it's going down to the low 80s after that. Accuweather tells me Sunday will be 90F and the week of the 13th has several days in the mid 80s. Still, I guess there is an end in sight now. There should be one more week of high temps, then a week of reasonable temps, followed by a week of high and then lower for the rest of the year. The bad news is they are predicting rain on both the day of and the rain makeup day of the shootout at the cemetery. I don't know if they reschedule twice.

Kevin told me he saw somewhere that there is a bipartisan bill to legalize marijuana on the national level coming up for a vote in September. Guys, please, please tell me 2020 can bring us at least two good things? I know it has been a shit year, but if we can get legal weed and the end of Trump... it might, might all have been worth it? OK probably not worth it, but surely the year can't universally suck and we can get two good things out of it? Please? Although apparently if it does go through it becomes a state's choice rather than just being legalized, and I live in a republican stronghold, so God knows if I get any advantage to this. Although, honestly, I've found CBD oil to be helpful for all the things I found pot helpful for when I lived in Colorado, plus added bonus of ability to drive a car while getting that help.

I just got the estimate from the guy the insurance agency sent out. I thought he was only going to fix the roof. But it turns out he was supposed to fix the fence. So he sent a bill to the insurance company for the fence, and I've already paid someone else to fix the fence. I really hope that I can get my money back on this. Apparently I need to call the insurance company tomorrow and try to explain this. But also I apparently need to pay another $1000 to get this done. I have it, but this really hurts. And eventually I will need to get it back from the insurance company because I absolutely do not have that amount in a place where I can not repay it. (In fact, I do not have it at all, but my mother has told me I can borrow it, so it needs to be repaid quickly).

Anyway, somehow time has happened again, and it is 30 minutes after the last time I looked at the clock, which was only a paragraph ago. Apparently I'm spending considerable time staring through space or something, I don't know. But either way, I guess it's time for me to stop writing.

I didn't sleep last night. I did all my usual tasks at midnight, plus, big excitement! It was officially the day to open my art supply box. So what this is is that my barony got together and everyone mailed art supplies to someone else. Now we have 12 days to create our masterpiece out of whatever we were given. So at midnight I opened my box. It contained beads, fabric, fabric paint, wood, wood carving tools, embroidery floss, and a small wooden shield cut out. I'm thinking of making my arms out of fabric on the wooden shield cut out, and then I really don't know what else to make. I feel like I have too much stuff for that to be the sum total of what I make out of it. I have to actually look and see how much fabric I have. Maybe I can make like a shoulder cape or something? I really don't know.

So. Then at 2am Kevin says, "hey does it feel warm in here to you?" I agree that it does, indeed, feel warm to me. So then he says "I have the AC set to 67 but it says it is 73." Yep. The AC is broken again, and in the exact same way that it broke a month ago. This time instead of bullshitting us and telling us they send someone last night they just fess up that they won't send anyone until 10-12 today. They'll call when they are half an hour out. It's so hot I can't get to sleep, and I'm up talking to Gerta and Alex until 6am.

Then at 9:30am Kevin wakes me up and tells me the guy is half an hour out. I get up and start talking to Sarah. For half an hour. An hour. An hour and a half. Finally at 11:45 he calls and says he might be late. I go back to sleep for 20 minutes before getting back up. It's the same guy who came out a month ago and told us it was just dirty. This time he says a motor is broken and needs to be replaced. Also, he can't order parts until Monday.

Kevin sends me out to buy some swamp coolers. I look for them at Walmart, Lowes, and finally Home Depot, even though I hate Home Depot. Still, they have the swamp coolers and I buy three of them. We turn the thing on and it is not helping as far away from it as my side of the bed. I get fed up and call my mom. She agrees that Jack, Rogue, and I can come visit for a few days. I pack a suitcase and my dogs, and we go to my mom's.

I'm not there for 30 minutes before I realize I haven't brought any books, but worse than that, I haven't brought any meds. I turn around and go back home and pack a plastic bag with the things I know I've forgotten. I get back to my mom's house. She's doing Spanish homework. Dad is about to head out to play golf, but agrees to give me the internet password before he leaves. I read LJ and DW.

Dad comes home from playing golf around 3 and he and my mom invite me to join them in the pool for their daily 30 minutes of exercise. I kind of march in place in the water for half an hour. Then we go inside and I realize it is 4:15.

This is problematic because I was supposed to be leading the voice chat write in at 4. I go inside and apologize for being late. Two people join me for voice chat. We try to run two word wars, but honestly, we're all talking through them and I only get 500 words written in half an hour. I'm not really upset because I'm already past my goal by over 10k and I'm not going to hit another milestone unless I write another 3k and hit 66,666. I'm not sure that's a milestone, but it is fun. Somewhere during the voice chat I cancel going to the zoo tomorrow. I can't leave my dogs here alone - they cry the entire time I'm not here.

After my voice chat mom asks if I would prefer leftover spaghetti or something else I've forgotten for dinner because she and my father are eating fish. I decide on the leftover spaghetti and we eat dinner. After dinner, we decide to take a short walk. Jack starts acting like he's lagging and maybe hurting so we turn around after 5 minutes. The whole way back Jack is galloping along and running out ahead of everyone to try to get there first. This is how I know I'm not hurting him, because if I were he couldn't run home. He's just a weird lazy dog who doesn't like walks.

I come back and call Kevin. He asks me to come back and do a couple chores tomorrow such as the laundry and cleaning the litter box. He says it is so warm in the house that he can smell the litter box through the door to the bathroom and not only is it stinky for him, but the cats are refusing to go in there. I'll probably need to do that a couple times this week then. I need more than a few things from home anyway, so I guess I'll go over there tomorrow. I may pick up the laundry and do it here and then deliver it back on Monday so that I don't have to sit in the heat and also so that the dryer doesn't heat up the house on him any more than it has to heat up.

Wells Fargo just gave me a heart attack by telling me there was a $1,500 balance on my credit card. When I looked it was our home repair account that had that balance, and I don't know why they said credit card.

Ugh. Summer. Oh well, happy Summer Solstice (unless you lucky bastards are in the southern hemisphere, then happy Winter Solstice) I guess the good news is that every day now is one more day of summer that is over.

Bardic ended around 1am last night, and that's when I went to sleep. I slept until noon. I woke up a few times having bad dreams, but nothing that stuck with me into the day. When I woke up I read lj and dw and did those dailies that I usually do at midnight. Then Kevin and I worked on creating my character for our game. He did most of the work; I just had general ideas and he put them into action.

The groceries came and we put them away and then started cooking dinner. Kevin had offered to cook dinner, but really we ended up doing it together because he won't actually stand up to move to the sink to drain cans of chicken, or move to put the thing in the oven. Then he left the kitchen before it was done, and I had to take it out. While I was waiting for dinner to finish baking, I did some weaving and a very small amount of reading.

We finished dinner, and I finished as many dailies as I could in half an hour other than taking a walk because 89F is quite sufficient to keep me in my AC all day. I mean it's not even fair to my dogs to make them walk on the pavement with their wee little paws when that pavement gets hot enough that I wouldn't be willing to walk on it without my shoes. I guess they can walk mostly in the grass but I don't think they're smart enough to do that. About half of the walk is on sidewalk so that shouldn't hurt their paws. I don't know. Maybe it's alright. But I didn't want to do it today. Clearly I need to come up with some other form of exercise, though, if I'm not going to walk when it is too hot. Ideas?

At 7 we had "Session 0" of our gaming group which was basically Kevin explaining his concept of the game and asking what our concept of the game was. Since we were already supposed to be working together and know each other, we each described ourselves, and worked out minor details. Someone taught Kevin how to put a bot into a discord server, and then we were done, but it still took about 2 hours.

Then it was 9pm, and I finished off my dailies and then started writing here.

I was hoping the pollen was going to go away since pollen season was only 2 weeks last year, and it hit so hard this year, but alas, no. It is still double the "extreme" limit.

I fell asleep just after posting last night and actually stayed there until 11am. I am pleased. When I woke up I read lj and dw, and then started on my reading. Something interrupted my reading, and I don't remember what it was, either Kevin demanding something or Jack demanding something. But anyway, mostly I got through my reading. Then I took the dogs for a walk and we went out to the longer target while I listened to my book. The vet called me to see if I still intended to bring my cats in tomorrow, so now I guess I gotta do that, but hopefully I'll get tired around midnight or before and actually get some sleep tonight. I guess I can sleep after I get home, too.

I got home and worked on my dailies until there was pretty much just getting ready for bed left. Then I went to the "Virtual Revel" that my kingdom was holding instead of Coronation today. It turned out to just be the king, queen, prince, and princess reading and answering questions from the populace on facebook live (well they were on zoom, we were watching on facebook live). Then as they answered questions we answered them also in the comments of the video. Some of them were SCA related but others of them were not and still others were just bizarre (would you rather fight 100 duck sized dukes or 1 duke sized duck?). This wound up with an offer to buy a specific duke a duck onesie to wear to Castle Wars. I hope he actually does it - we do have the annual Onesie party every year at Castle Wars. Anyway, it was an alright way to pass a couple hours, and it's not like I had anything else to do, but a "revel" it was not.

The big news from that is that all events until July 1 are canceled. That means that the first event of the year should be RUM and then Pennsic. Artsy Crown is canceled, which we had been assuming would be the first event of the year and were planning already. So it would have been nice if they had told the autocrat before they told the populace, but whatever. The South Downs officers chat went crazy with people talking about this frantically, but there's nothing we can do to change it. We discussed trying to do some kind of online thing instead, but no one had any ideas.

When that was over it was time for dinner. I went out into the kitchen to gather my ingredients and discovered that corn is one of the things that were not delivered with the last grocery delivery. There were 15 things not delivered, but they never told me what those 15 things were, so we're discovering them as we start to cook, and hopefully they are skippable ingredients in whatever we are making. Corn in corn chowder is not a skippable ingredient, although I guess I could have made potato soup? That would have required finding a recipe and seeing if I had everything I needed since mostly I had potatoes and celery set aside for today's meal. Anyway, we wound up ordering bbq from Que. It was delicious. I was quite pleased with it as my first eat out in like 2 weeks other than the bagel place for breakfast.

After dinner, I found some people in the SCA Discord using voice chat. I joined in and we're talking a little bit with long periods of silence and have been for the past 3 hours. I complained that I'm running out of things I can cook that we haven't had within the past 2 weeks now that I'm cooking every day and Asa suggested trying some period recipes. The ones for peasants are really pretty simple - throw stuff together in a pot an heat, you can even use a slow cooker for most of them if you have some time. So I'm going to research that and maybe see about adding to my repertoire of cooking things that Kevin will eat with an SCA skill. Maybe it will give me something that is actually period to bring for 5th Wednesday meetings when we have a pot luck in the SCA? At any rate, I need to cook something that is not carb, meat, vegetable, sauce tossed together and heated through. We are both getting tired of this, unfortunately. No time like a pandemic to expand your skill set. It's not like I have a lot better to do than research recipes, and focusing on period stuff gives me an SCA skill and adds to my "not a stick jock" repertoire.

At some point Kevin asked me to go outside and start his car and sit in it for a few minutes because it hadn't been started in 3 weeks. Ya'll. It REEKED. It smelled like mildew or something. I know he said his car was leaking from somewhere, but this was bad! I sat out there for like a minute and noticed the check engine light was on and it didn't make as much noise as usual, so I tried backing it up. It backed up. I almost hit our retaining wall because his car is enormous and parked at an angle. Then I parked it again and came inside, and now I have a headache that I'm pretty sure was caused by being in his car. He said he suspects the check engine light is actually on because he needs an oil change not because there's something wrong with the car, so hopefully he's right, and at any rate if he needs an oil change, he can have them look at the check engine light. But we really need to get him a new car. I'm not sure how to afford that, but, ugh. If it's leaking, it's going to be an expensive fix and that car is pretty old anyway. Kevin's mom died in 2008, and he spent his inheritance on that car. I guess it's not as old as I thought. I should know how old the car is - he also bought Rogue with his inheritance, and she was a puppy, so I should know how old she is now since I'm the one who has to take her to the vet, etc.

Around 8:30, I finished off the last of my dailies and got ready for bed. Then I continued my chat with the SCA people, and working on my kumihimo project. I asked Kevin to go through his mother's cookbooks and tell me what he would like for me to cook but he countered that I should go through them and figure out what is actually within my skill set to cook and we'd go from there. I agreed that was probably sensible. While some of the limitation on what we eat is Kevin being a picky eater, a lot of it is my lack of skills. Hopefully with them being his mother's cookbooks, we can find things that satisfy both criteria, but his mother was a really good cook and I'm worried about making almost-as-good or not-quite-as-good and disappointing him.

Most of the 50% chances of rain for next week have gone away, leaving us with short showers two days (at about 30% chance) and 3 sunny days. I'm excited - maybe I can get to a park and do some photography. Surely if I'm allowed to go to a park to exercise, I'm allowed to go to one to shoot some pictures? We are under shelter in place" orders, but I think walking trails at parks are still open as long as you stay 6 feet away from each other? There might even be flowers at this time of year.

Would anyone be interested in a zoom party tomorrow (April 2) evening, say at 7pm EST? If anyone is interested, reply here and I'll set it up if I get some interest.

In my slowest NaNo start ever, I wrote 1749 words last night before bed. This is the first time I haven't done at least 5k before bed, but I just wasn't feeling it. I did write my entire introduction though. Soooo I guess that's progress. I also didn't get my Reading Wednesday post done until the afternoon because I was more focused on trying to spit out some words to start NaNo with. Yay, words!

I went to sleep shortly after finishing that, around 1am. Then I woke up again around 11am. I read dw and then lj. By that point it was 2pm and time for Veteran Yoga through Blaze Sports. I did about a 30 minute yoga routine with them. Then Kevin started agitating for me to take the dogs for a walk and telling me the weather was as good as it was going to get. I'm not sure why he wanted the dogs walked right then. Maybe he was just trying to be helpful, but going about it all wrong because I took it as a command to walk the dogs right then and then I resented him for assigning tasks again. But I did walk the dogs. I forgot to bring my head phones, so I walked alone with my thoughts. It's actually my preference, but I also want to get through that book, so I guess I should actually listen to the book while I walk since I can't come up with any other time that it wouldn't just bug me.

I got home and looked at the Book of the Month's selections, and decided against getting any of them. Then I looked up First Reads and wanted two of them, but I could only have one for free, and I am not spending money on books until I get through some of the backlog. I picked a memoir called In the Shadow of the Valley. It's about a girl who grows up in Appalachia and then moves out and gets an education. It sort of reminds me of Educated.

Then I wrote my Reading Wednesday post, which brought us to 4:30. I went out in the kitchen and pulled out everything I would need to cook dinner because I thought I'd be going to phenomenal's zoom party but she had to cancel it so I went back in my office and kinda just stared through space for half an hour. Then I went back to the kitchen and cooked dinner. I guess there really wasn't a reason for me to not cook at 4:30 except for habit, though.

Anyway, while I was waiting for dinner to bake, I read from 3 books including the new one. I also checked the mail and skimmed through the minutes for the last meeting of my temple's business meeting. It was pretty simple - they decided to hire Rabbi Larry. Then I wrote three world building prompts for something I think I'm going to write in November. That gave me another 600 words (exactly!). I also attacked the cats with heart worm medicine, and gave the dogs their medicine as well.

Kevin decided to take a nap while I was cooking so when it was ready I ate by myself and then went back to my office. It was like 10 minutes until time for the SCA meeting, so I just sat there and pet my cat for 10 minutes and then logged onto Zoom. There were like 22 of us there, and I learned that 20 is the limit to the number of faces Zoom will show on one page. We chatted for half an hour, mostly about how good it was to see each other's faces. Then we had the meeting. It was as boring as meetings usually are, but I was desperate to see my friends' faces so I attended the meeting. Besides it's not like Wulfstan was holding slow work practice, so I had nothing better to do.

Kevin woke up during the meeting but I made him wait until I was done before I fed him. He was really rude when I told him what was for dinner asking if there was anything else he could eat. I offered yesterday's leftovers, but then he wound up eating tonight's dinner instead anyway. I don't know. He looks a little under the weather. He says it's just a headache and not something to be concerned about. I fed him and then started writing here.

It's going to be nice tomorrow, but then it's going to get hot. I guess I'm cheering for the heat this year as there are at least some experts thinking coronavirus may go away for the summer and then come back in the fall. The sooner it gets hot, maybe, the fewer people will die, and the sooner we can all go back to our lives. At least temporarily? Maybe they'll invent a vaccine before fall. They've canceled schools until the end of the semester, which is 2 weeks into May. I'm kind of hoping that's the end of the crisis. But apparently our governor is finally announcing a Shelter In Place order on Friday. My county has already been on one, so I don't foresee any changes to my life. The only place I plan on going any time soon is my vet, and they are classified as critical services.

Tomorrow is Kevin's birthday. We're not doing anything to celebrate. He may get a gift from my parents if they want to drive over and drop it on our porch. But the gift is nothing exciting - it's just new shirts for work. Which honestly he needs, but it's sort of anticlimactic when he has just worn his one favorite shirt every day for the past two weeks (I have washed it though lol). Anyway, we're not even kissing, never mind anything more intimate, and I've been cooking every day for 2 weeks so that's not special, and I just don't know. Quarantine Birthdays Suck. Maybe his sister will call him and give him someone to talk to that isn't me or his coworkers. Maybe my parents will call him. My dad won't, but maybe my mom will. lol. My dad is kind of a little too introverted and talking to a person won't occur to him unless that person shows up in his house.

I have to take the doggos to the vet tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, it really is "morning" - bright and early, be there at 8:30. The vet is no longer having office hours where humans can join their pets in the exam room. Instead, all pets are being dropped off bright and early, and then picked up in the afternoon. Maybe I will stay up until 8:30 and then go to sleep until I have to pick them up around 5. That would be 8 hours of sleep. 8 sucky hours, though. I guess I'll try to sleep at my usual time. I can wake up long enough to take them and then go back to sleep for a few hours. I can get 5 hours of sleep before the vet and 4 hours after and that will be fine?

I finally got into it with someone on chat last night. She is such a drama queen. Every time she talks it's about how awful everything is and how "the isolation is worse than coronavirus" which makes me think she's a fucking Trumpster, or would be if she lived in the US. The first time, she was going to kill herself. The second time she dropped out of college because she didn't waaaaaaaaaana do distance learning. The third time no one is taking her mental health seriously, but suggestions that she try telemedicine with a counselor were met with scorn and "nobody is talking about suicide" when I suggested the suicide help line. Sorry, if you're not going to take your own mental health seriously, you can't expect me to. Then there was the "I have no future" discussion because her future had included graduating from college and getting a job and she (very stupidly) dropped out of college so now she has no future and apparently we're never going to go back to normal, and she can't go back to school when we do go back to normal. She's just such a fucking whiney bitch drama queen. She accused me of giving her tough love, and said she didn't appreciate it. I'm like no dear; there would actually have to be love for that. She's really managing to single handedly ruin what is otherwise an upbeat and positive chat room.

Some difficulty sleeping last night, but I was brain dead so I didn't do anything other than talk to Alex. At one point I tried to go to sleep and my phone went off and it was Victor, so I wound up talking to him for a while and getting up since I wasn't even really tired. I was more depressed than tired, and I figured talking to Victor would make me feel better than lying in bed would. So I got up. I wound up writing a writing exercise and photoshopping two images before bed. I went to sleep around 4 or 4:30.

I woke up again at 3ish, and decided to go to the vet before I talked myself out of it. There were.... more cars than I was expecting. I mean it was almost normal traffic. Why aren't these people staying at home? I got to the vet and got heart worm medicine and a new rabies tag for Jack. People were mostly respectful and staying 6 feet away from me, but the women who worked at the vet were like on top of each other with one of them leaning in from behind teaching the first how to use the computer system.

I came home in the 30 seconds of rain that actually happened today, and attached the tag to Jack's collar. Then I sat down and read dw and lj. Kevin wanted to eat Mexican instead of the corn chowder I was going to cook so he offered to pay for that, and we ordered dinner. I ate dinner alone.

Then I just started having a crisis of "cannots" There was too much to get done and not enough time to do it and I was just overwhelmed. sharpest_asp helped me by asking what the worst thing that would happen if I did nothing was. This helped me realize that the only two things that absolutely had to get done were cleaning the litter box and putting away the dishes. Everything else could reasonably be put off or just not done. A lot of what was left was sword fighting practice and reading, which isn't really necessary.

While I was cleaning the litter box, I realized it was absolutely beautiful outside - maybe overcast, but a perfect temperature, and the rain had stopped. I collected the dogs and we went for a walk. The neighbor kid is learning how to ride a bike, but she refuses to actually use the pedals and it's more like her mother is just pushing her around on a bike.

I came home and went through the types of tasks that really should get done every day like teeth brushing and physical therapy. Then I realized there were only 10 tasks left on habitica for the day (9 of them were reading different books though so I couldn't get through them all). Still, I have an "ignore task" reward available for 20 gold, so I hit that sucker 10 times and put everything off until tomorrow.

At 8, I went to play Cards Against Humanity with some SCA people I don't know at all. I did reasonably well, coming in second. I'm pretty sure I was the only sober one in the group, though. We played for a little over an hour. Nothing really memorable came up, though.

When I was finished with that I started writing here.

We're looking at a solid wall of 50% chances of rain all next week, and ugh. Quarantine is even worse when you can't go for a walk.

I have to take all 4 of my pets to the vet. Usually I take the cats in the morning and pick them up when I bring the dogs in the afternoon and all 5 of us go home together. Unfortunately, the vet is no longer allowing humans to accompany their pets into the exam rooms and all of their appointments are done by drop off. This means I have to drive to the vet two mornings: Thursday and Monday. I guess that at least I will get to listen to a little of my book while I do this. But it does mean two very early mornings in a relatively short time frame.

I had another all nighter last night. I spent some time talking to Laird who is trying to convince me to join him in a new jogging routine while we're on quarantine. I agreed with that and downloaded the Couch to 5k program on my phone and purchased an adapter to plug headphones into my phone (stupidest design ever, iPhone...). Then Kali convinced me to join her in "top of the hour exercises" and move my body in some way every hour. I decided on a few exercises to do that I thought would most help my fighting. They are mostly upper body strength training exercises - push ups, planks, dips. But also sit ups, which turned out I could only do an embarrassing 6 sit ups and even that I had to cheat a bit. The app I downloaded started with the assumption that I could do 15, so 6 was disappointing.

I asked on Ask the Chiv and ask the MODs what I could do to become a better fighter while in isolation and someone came back with a $500 course on how to train for sword fighting that is on sale for only $20. I signed up, and watched the first video which was more about how to use the course than how to do anything sword fighting. I'll try to watch a video a day and incorporate some of the training he is teaching us how to do into my day.

I read lj and dw and two of my books before Katrina got here. Kevin and I also ordered breakfast from the bagel store. Katrina and her daughter came and cleaned our house and I finally got some sleep, although it kept getting interrupted by the dog barking. Finally it was interrupted by Katrina needing to clean in my bedroom and I moved to the office. She finished, and I finally got some solid sleep. I woke up at 5:30. Our groceries were here, and there were a lot of them. We put that away.

Kevin started making noises about dinner and I told him he was on his own because I was still nauseous from sleeping wrong hours interrupted and not enough. He made a burrito. I went back to alternating exercising and reading, and finished off the other two books I read on Thursdays. Then I reheated my leftover Chinese from Monday night.

Rogue, Jack, and I took a walk up the street. We didn't jog at all because there was so much pollen in the air I could taste it and I was struggling to breathe just walking. Also, we only made it about 15 minutes instead of half an hour. My back hurt pretty badly, I think from overdoing it on the planks earlier in the morning. Maybe just because occasionally my back hurts.

Around 8 I made a push to finish off some dailies and get ready for bed. I took a shower and finally at 8:30 there was nothing left to do and I literally just sat and stared through space for half an hour. Kevin was talking to me about Star Trek, and I was kind of answering, but I dunno. I wasn't all there. It was a really busy day with the addition of the hourly movement, and tomorrow there's going to be a full reading day plus hourly movement, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do it all. I guess keeping busy is better than staring through the internet absorbing horror stories about covid-19 all day.

I want a nap, but I know that is a terrible idea. Maybe I'll push to stay up another 2.5 hours and then let myself go to sleep for the night at midnight.

Donna and Robert have been exposed to the Coronavirus. One of Robert's coworkers tested positive. They get tests because they are health care workers. Of course, being health care workers, they are required to continue going to work unless they actually get sick. Donna is keeping herself on lock down, which means no walkies with donna anymore because it's not worth the risk of getting exposed and exposing Kevin, who is high risk. Of course, Kevin also may have been exposed because the guy who came over over the weekend to see if he could fix Kevin's fan was possibly exposed to someone with all the symptoms but no test. He's not sick, yet, though, so hopefully he won't get sick.