Surge Capacity

 If you haven't already read Tara Haelle's article on how COVID has sapped our physical and emotional reserves, go read it here.   

I hit a wall shortly before Christmas.  By this I mean I just got absolutely cranky and fed up with things. The pandemic had totally depleted my surge capacity and left me totally drained.  After sewing a bunch of masks for gifts and making a bunch of holiday cookies I just got absolutely fed up with doing anything for anyone other than myself. I know that sounds horribly selfish, but at both work and home I had been putting my own needs and self-care at the bottom of the priority list. After a week of being a slug, I had returned to normal, more or less, but some recent collaboration drama has taken a toll and it will be good to have a different set of responsibilities for a while.

I’m super privileged and recognize it, but I’ve hit a wall/just gotten completely fed up with things a few times already.  I haven’t said much about it because I know I have it so good compared to most people. The first time was shortly before lockdown ended, because I was burnt out from doing virtually everything around the house.  It started out randomly enough, with our dishwasher dying shortly before lockdown, but then we were stuck without one. Add to that me working from home and Joe still going in, but doing a lot of the duties of his furloughed colleagues as well as his own.  He fell into a funk, and when this happens he usually becomes lazy AF.  I fell into the trap of doing almost everything, either because I was home during the day or because he was really tired after work and I thought that letting him chill would help him snap out of it. That strategy works for me, but rarely works for Joe. The endless dishes pushed me over the edge and I blew up at him a few times before the new dishwasher was installed in early June.

I hit another wall in the late summer.  I was back in lab full time and was trying to do my own work and at the same time most of the extra COVID hassle/logistics was still around.  Things were very much up in the air with all the undergrads coming back to town, and the grad students/postdocs were a lot more needy than in pre-COVID times.  Some of it was just coincidental (e.g. new postdoc working on my project) but some of it was a result of there being fewer people around – my boss was mostly working from home, as was our admin, a bunch of people graduated, and we were social distancing so there were just fewer people around at any given time, so most of it ended up coming to me. I could feel it coming in slow motion, and mostly just let myself ride the wave of crankiness until things settled into a new equilibrium.

The latest wall was not a surprise at all, although the way that it hit was unexpected.  I had known I’d be tired in early/mid December since I had a proposal due on my birthday. Joe was falling into a funk at the same time and starting to slip into slug mode; fortunately I recognized that early on and offloaded a lot of the cooking to him.  This helped a lot and I suspect that if I hadn’t done this I would’ve gotten fed up much sooner.  

Flying in the time of COVID

I am on a plane as I write this, although I will post it after I’ve landed. I’m headed to CA to visit my parents for three and a half weeks and let my brother get a break.  I’ll be working remotely for part of that time and mostly just trying to take care of my parents and not give them COVID and not catch it myself. It’s been almost a year since Jim was able to get any time away, and even that was less than optimal due to my mom going rogue and the fact that he was still recovering from a very bad flu he had, which may have been COVID or maybe not. He had a shorter break scheduled in the fall but that was derailed by a health issue with one of our parents.  There are so many I can’t even remember the specifics.  Fortunately, in 2020 they had a total of one night in a hospital, compared to 70 nights in a hospital or convalescent facility in 2019.

I’m sitting in first class and am masked up with a KN95 and wearing a face shield. The flights have been nice and empty and I was comfortable in my level of safety on the Ithaca flight.  It was very empty and the passengers appeared to be mostly Cornell folks, who typically get COVID tested once a week, sometimes more and are generally careful. The Detroit airport was a mixed bag, with a few maskless folks as well as those with their noses hanging out, wearing bandanas, or taking off their masks more than was absolutely necessary.  Unfortunately, the asshole behind me had his nose hanging out for a while until I complained to the flight attendant.  I am very nervous about that. He took his revenge by ripping some loud farts after I complained, which may or may not have been coincidental.

I wish I could’ve waited until we all got vaccinated, but that may be a long time. I am very conflicted and scared that I am travelling at all, but Jim really needs a break and I’ve delayed this visit three times already.  I won’t be able to fully quarantine but will stay masked at all times and keep a distance.

My mom’s cat, Yogi, is very old (>20?) and is at the tail end of his nine lives. Jim is spending as much or more time taking care of Yogi as he does with our parents. I may have to take him to get put to sleep while I’m in CA.  Jim and I are both worried that when Yogi dies it will be very hard on them.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with this situation. Two years ago my dad’s cat was really doing poorly and I had to push him to agree to put her to sleep. It was the right thing to do, as she was suffering a lot and tended to stand underfoot and was a huge tripping hazard for him.  His health took a downturn a few months later.

Random cranky thoughts part 1

 I'm not even going to try to write a standard full post, but here are a few thoughts that are rattling through my head

I'd like to yeet all those Trump fanatic Republican Congresswomen/spokeswomen/Instagram models/groupies into the sun, especially the ones who build their whole persona or campaign on how they like to carry guns around.  Since that is unfortunately not going to happen, I want them to have a nervous breakdown as they age and are no longer useful cute little thirst traps for Republican men. 

Bonus points if they have a miserable time during perimenopause.

Negative points if they actually shoot someone during perimenopause.

It goes without saying that I want to yeet all their male counterparts of all ages into the sun or prison. 

My husband has successfully predicted a lot of what would happen well before 2020. This is based on his experiences hanging out with bikers, many of whom are right wing, as well as his general tendency to stock up on pantry staples and toilet paper.  I am never again going to get away with being a toilet paper minimalist. If he dies before I do, I am planning on selling all my stuff and moving into a condo and living a lifestyle that would make Marie Kondo and minimalist hipster dudes proud.

On a more serious note, he's been worried about the right wingers getting violent for more than a year.  At first I thought he was overreacting, but he was right.

On a less serious note, for the last six months he has been egging me on to buy sewing stuff to keep me occupied. 

How to fix Facebook in a few easy steps

Dear Facebook, 

You scour my photos and posts to try to sell me medications/treatments for conditions I have and some I don't even have, so you damned well can do something about right wingers organizing attempted coups. You might even get more clicks this way.

Love, 

Old Biddy

1. Stop letting posts from groups take over people's feeds, and stop suggesting groups for people to join. Cut the group content to 10% of the total feed and let people use the groups tab to get caught up. If someone's friends don't post much, let them get bored and head over to the groups tab of their own volition.

2. Let people further minimize or customize the amount of content from groups and or people in their feeds.

3. Go back to showing a chronological list of people's friends posts in their feeds. Or at least let people opt in to the chronological feed without having to reset it multiple times in one session. Yes, I do like to see those infrequent posts from people I'm not really close friends with.

4. Figure out a way for people/groups posting time sensitive stuff to have it stop showing up.  No, I don't give a shit about the weather report from three days ago. If FB can use AI on my pictures to try to figures out which obscure medical conditions I have, they ought to be able to not show yesterday's weather report.

Seriously, the group thing shouldn't be that hard to fix.  Most of my friends aren't constant Facebook posters and I'm a sucker for topic-related groups, so I might be an outlier, but the minute I join a group which posts a lot, the damned thing takes over my feed, until I get fed up with it and hide it from my feed or leave the group. In my case, it's just benign stuff like cats, sewing, menopause info and inappropriate jokes, but I can totally see how people become caught up in fake news and right wing groups via Facebook. Heck, one reason I got into sewing is that I joined a FB group, then another and so on.  That's fine, but I would prefer it in one place and not taking over my feed.