This is my brain lately. Nothing there. Just a kind of ‘Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god’. Cannot decide what to do when I get up. Should I take a shower first, brush my teeth, scoop the cat box, make the coffee? I don’t know. Was meant to go out with my friend Tess on Monday. She called as usual just as I was about to get in the shower. Will call you when I’m ready, says me. Take shower, sit in chair to recover and just sit there for almost an hour. Call Tess finally. Do you want to go out? she asks. I don’t know, I say. Do your want me to get takeout and bring it over? I don’t know, I say. Shall I, do you, what, what, what. I cannot think at all. So she decides. This is what good friends do. She recognized that my executive function was on hiatus, and stepped in. She brought fries and we ate and had a nice visit and watched a movie. Once a decision had been made, even if not by me, I was able to get a bit of control and brushed my teeth and got dressed before she came. I think I got dressed. I may have stayed in my robe. This was Monday. Today is Friday. I can’t remember if I got dressed or not four days ago on the only eventful day of this week.

The week did not get better. Out to lunch most of the time, felt worse than usual on Wednesday, chilled and tired. Turned into a major pain episode which meant a night of not much fun or sleep. A bit better yesterday, okay so far today. Okay being hobbling around, trouble deciding what to do next, but was able to decide by my little self. The joys of chronic painful illness.

It’s been hard. The other day I discovered that there is an orange disaster support shop up the street from me. Just opened and is only there for a month, but is doing a great business, it seems. No. This is wrong. ‘Those’ people are out there somewhere, not here in my town. Not my neighbors, not the people in the store who wait on me. Not anybody I could possibly know in any way. It is disturbing how upset I am by this. Worse is the realtor who rented the shop is someone I have met and who was very, very kind to me for no other reason that he is a good person, He says he didn’t really understand what was going on, but I find that hard to believe. On the other hand, I find it very hard to reconcile the extremely kind, going way out of his way to help me person with someone who would support the orange disgrace in any way.

My phone service was suspended without warning or reason, by text. When I was finally able to get in to see what the heck, I find that T-Mobile merging with Sprint means that my roll-over, buy new minutes plan is no longer in existence, and there is no notice when you are about to run out of minutes. Okay, I have used T-Mobile my entire cell phone experience and been very happy with it. Over.

Medicine. You can’t get an appointment. No one calls you back. No one cares if you live or die, it seems. Doctors job used to be to make you better. Now it seems their job is to make money for the HMO they belong to. This is not the doctor’s fault. But it still means the quality of care is so low now.

It is December 17th, in New England. It is 57 degrees. Absolutely clear sunny sky. There has been one brief snow last week that coated the cars and then promptly melted. This is not winter in New England. Not even.

Nobody I know is doing well. Life problems, health problems, isolation problems. Nothing seems to be going right for anyone. One thing this plague has shown us is how broken our system is. Everything seems to be falling apart all around us, while three or so people are amassing all the wealth there is, leaving the rest of us to just struggle through. People are realizing that working yourself to death for less than a living wage while the people who sit back and do nothing but rake in profit are becoming gazillionaires at the worker’s expense is not a good way to live. More people are leaving those jobs, hopefully for better ones, and thus businesses are understaffed, you can’t always get things you need when you need them, It’s too depressing to continue this line of thought It just all seems overwhelmingly bad, and this is a person who can almost always see a bright side to anything. People are stealing packages in my building. The only time I ever had a package ‘stolen’ before now, that I remember anyway, it wasn’t actually stolen, turns out the mailman just wasn’t bothering to deliver them but saying he did.

I kind of don’t get the ‘accumulating wealth just for the sake of accumulating wealth’ model. Scrooge lives and his name is Bezos, and Musk and Suckerburg, and DD1 calls him. So much could be done with that money. Health care, infrastructure, education, which if you’ve seen the news teachers are grabbing for cash in what is meant to help teachers but is completely degrading and humiliating. Teachers needing to use their own money to buy school supplies for their students should not be used for entertainment, and really explains the ability of so many people to be convinced of really harmful ideas, because education is not a priority. Teaching people to think for themselves and to question everything they are told is at the bottom of the list. And if you think teaching is an easy job that only lasts during school hours, you have no idea at all. NO IDEA. And teachers are very underpaid and it is a shameful stain on our country that they have to use their own money to buy supplies for their students. Use their own money to buy supplies for their students. Obviously, very little of our tax money is being used for our children.

I need to figure out a way to get myself in hand and not be dragged into the black hole again. Been there, never ever ever want to go there again. But you can see why I might be circling around the event horizon.

Okay, I have showered, scooped the litter box, and had coffee. It is nearly 1pm and I woke up at ten. It’s a slow day. Normal for me. Need to eat, but what? My breakfast bar things got stolen from the package they came in, so I have to…..oh, cereal. Don’t normally eat cereal for breakfast, but it’s not too hard. Maybe I scramble some eggs. Or get dressed. Or something.

I hope any readers I may have out there are doing better with all this shit than I am right now, but I am trying, I am fighting, and I am reminding myself of my mantra, ‘Never give up. Never surrender.’ Have put on my Caramelldansen Pandora station and there is a lot of bass (I love bass), and Timmy Trumpet. I also love Timmy Trumpet. ( ‘Party Til We Die’, anyone?) So I guess there is a sort of bright side. Maybe.

This is an actual song, apparently.