Finding the good....

[captainsblog]

You gotta. Otherwise there are way more rabbit holes than usual to go burrowing down.  Most of my depressed moments before this had been tied to anxiety- this court hearing, that deadline, the other awaited response- and those have been almost entirely removed.  I fully expect that by this time next week, if not sooner, work I'd already done and billed in March will be paid for, and everything we need to account for through mid-April will be taken care of.  And as I've seen least one law-biz analyst predict, bankruptcy lawyers are likely going to be among the few who can expect to get right back to work once this passes.

Here, it's just the moments of silence. The solitude. We're both almost always here, and Eleanor has been here and noplace else since Friday, so it's not complete, but it's new. I had my shiny distractions earlier in the week- Monday, the new phone came, which gave me a Job that day into Tuesday of turning it on and installing everything over to it, and then a good chunk of yesterday was spent "bricking" the old phone into its native factory state before shipping it back to the insurance company- but there's only so much one can do, so many hours one can binge movies and shows, that's out of the ordinary routine.

So I try to find encouraging words, and signs. It helps to have some things be as routine as ever. Having a dog helps with that, because she makes sure I get my ass outside every morning.  I saw two sweet things on walkies with her today:

*A house kittycorner from us on the closest corner had red signs at the ends of their driveway. Not dire warnings, but rather adverts for their daughter's sale of her remaining Girl Scout cookies. I'm getting some, just to celebrate the enteprenurial spirit #yeahthatstheticket

* And a bit further down the street, we passed a house with refrigerator-art paintings of houses and rainbows in their front picture window. What a beautiful way to put those objay-darts on display when the front of the Fridgidydare gets too cluttered.

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Humor also helps. I try to find pieces of it and put my own snarky gloss on them when possible.

Such as:



(Me: "Do it! Before we hit the ground like sacks of wet cement!")

Or this:



(Me: "Munch a bunch!")

Or how about....



(Me: "Van Goghne.")

And finally, one I can't add to, seeing how the Doctor's the one getting death threats:



I'm sure there'll be more. Humorous moments. Hopefully not death threats.

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You also have to go looking for the good sometime. Like Sunday morning- our usual hourlong extended walkies, only this time outside the dog park, and for the first time by ourselves. We found this during one of Pepper's patented sniffings:



We've also tried to keep our local economy going beyond buying toilet paper.  Our favorite Italian place continues to provide takeout, and I've been there each of the past two Fridays and will likely again tomorrow; and last night we supported the nearby famed purveyor of chicken wings, where one thing hasn't changed:

 

On the other hand, I can't think of a reason on the planet to order takeout from this place:



I smell a rat.

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Unlike other events I or we have lived through- extended power blackouts, ice storms (with extended power blackouts), near-blizzards, tragedies of 1963 and 1968 and 2001- this one's the most open-ended, and in its own way the most beautiful. This virus does not blot out the sun, or delay the arrival of spring.  We don't know when it will end- only that it will- and there's still so much good to see.

Okay, there's a little evil to go around, too:



Evil Cat Michelle, joining me for my occasional binge of Dexter. Grrl's gotta keep her skills up, yo.  Other entertainment of the week has included Rise of Skywalker, which arrived curbside at Best Buy on Tuesday;  the first Die Hard movie that Eleanor finally saw while I was Star-Warring, also part of a Best Buy drive-by four-pack (along with the four Picard Star Trek movies that I started watching over the weekend); a surprisingly sweet French film called My Life As a Zucchini, which I can only describe as the bastard love child of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and South Park; and, I suppose inevitably but not yet, Tiger King.

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The replacement phone came about after an ill-fated errand last weekend at Lowe's, where I dropped mine in the car park in a rainstorm while wrangling a metal garbage can for the back yard. This was Eleanor's stay-home project: replacing our plastic (but not rodent-proof) composter with a home-brewed metal one. I unwrangled the metal can for it and loaded it into the garage that same Saturday, but she only realized yesterday that I’d forgotten to bring home the lid for it, largely defeating the purpose of keeping Mrs. Rat out of it.

So I went back yesterday to find it. Of course there are 8 billion signs around them saying don’t forget your lid. And judging by the amount of dust on the one on top of the pile of them, I’m not the only one who did. But look! Captain Amherst is back in action!



(I couldn't lift the hammer she wanted me to bring home, though;)

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Probably should have said earlier: physically, we've both been fine.  Eleanor's shown no symptoms since that one day, and I never have.  Not that it didn't freak out at least one coworker when I made a late afternoon stop to pick up mail on my way to finding that mighty shield; he's offered to deliver it to the house for me.  (I know, you can have it and spread it without showing symptoms, a fact that one of our idiot Republican governors just caught onto.)

I guess there's something good about that....

Comments

[thanatos_kalos]

I'm quite enjoying this ongoing webseries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhTBp1DRfx4 . :)

(Also, once things get going in bankruptcy-ing, if you're looking to hire a remote proofreader or transcriptionist or someone to handle your work-based social media or anything else I do, I work cheap & am almost certainly going to be unemployed for the foreseeable future :P).

[platypus]

Glad you’re doing okay! When Eleanor said on Facebook that she was ill, it was worrying.

I've had a mild case myself — lab confirmed and all. Had a bit of a fever but no severe symptoms. I’m 90% better, and UCSD Health has stopped calling me daily to check in, but there are still some ups and downs, enough that I don’t want to get cocky about being completely over it. Luckily working from home is pretty low-key.