The long catch up I promised, though I may be too tired to swear.

First, I bought some sharp new knives on sale on Zulilly, and they are awesome! I’ve cut myself twice, and am typing this with a bandage on my left index finger! So excuse the typos I don’t catch.

Sorry I didn’t update for a while, but it truly is Groundhog Day, and I’m depressed AF. I spend my days in my home office doing work I dislike, with snoring and farting dogs. I have no life outside work. I went to the eye doctor (finally) last week, and it felt weird to be doing something normal.

Florida is in freefall. I started jotting the daily new coronavirus count in my journal at the beginning of May, and it’s startling to look back at how on May 1, when I started the latest volume, and we hit 500 new cases a day! Wow! We hit over 11,000 new cases one day of the weekend, and today we were over 7400. Every Day. My county had a bare handful of cases in May, now we have thousands.

Our governor has been doing near daily press conferences which are truly bizarre. He’s disconnected from reality, in a truly scary way. Florida is doing GREAT!! Pay no attention to the soaring numbers of new cases, that’s just because we’re doing so much testing! [Narrator: No we’re not.]

It’s not a big deal, because the average age of new infections is falling, now it’s going wild among young people who barely know they have it! [Narrator: And often work in public contact jobs and are spreading it every fucking where.]

So, as I mentioned in my brief and not very sweary post last night, my daughter called me to rant, and we ranted for quite some time. The entirely unqualified Republican Commissioner of Education issued an edict yesterday: Schools MUST reopen on TIME in AUGUST! Counties WILL provide a plan to do this!! Oh, and he’s going to cut funding for online education – force those kids back into the classrooms! Nevermind the risk to the students and teachers, exactly how are schools going to stay open when teachers are out sick? And what about the teachers and aides who are my age, with health issues?

Shit, Bank of America closed 50- FIFTY! – local branches this week. I’m just guessing here, but I have to think that the people who still do their banking in person are more aware of the virus and also probably wash their hands more than the average 1st grader.

Local bars and restaurants reopened by order of the governor, and many had to close again because – I know this will really come as a shock- their staff promptly got sick, and spread it among customers.

The governor’s disconnect from reality is just breathtaking – cases are soaring, and we haven’t even felt the impact of the 4th of July insanity yet, when the beaches were open at his order, and crowded, because “If they’re open, it must be safe!” I’ve been saying for weeks that the virus will impose reality, but damn, it’s going to get really ugly.

via GIPHY

And I may dislike my job, but of course I’m grateful to have it, and to still have a paycheck. I’ve been saving money as much as I can, which is somewhat easier when I never fucking go anywhere. I’m tired, pissed, and getting increasingly depressed because I really cannot see how this is going to end, but I absolutely know this didn’t have to be this epic clusterfuck.

So, now that I’ve done my very restrained rant, what else is going on?

I got a haircut a few weeks ago, we wore masks, the sanitation in the salon was top notch, and I felt safer there than I do in Publix. My stylist was a hoot – when I told her I was thinking of going gray, she started lifting my layers to see what had grown in since my last cut/color. “OOOH, this is going to look really nice!!”

My hair is short, like Jamie Lee Curtis short, so I wasn’t concerned when she started enthusiastically whacking away at the overgrown mess it had become, trying to free the silver. But it became apparent that there was no way all the brown could be gone at once, not without an actual buzz cut. So what I have now is…kinda like a calico cat? The hair on the sides is mostly a nice bright silver, I like it a lot. The rest is a graying brown mix. We estimated two haircuts to get rid of the last of the brown.

And the brown is mostly old color, which had gone brassy from all my time in the sun in the last few months, so my stylist suggested I get some purple shampoo. I had never heard of purple shampoo, but Amazon provided. It comes in all price points, but since I had never tried it I decided not to do the pricey stuff I’d never tried. I went with the ol’ reliable L’Oreal. I’m impressed! It really did kill the orange tone of the brown, and I look less calico cat. But it’s not cooked yet, so no pictures yet.

I also got a long overdue eye exam. I’ve been dealing with near daily headaches and eyestrain, which is another reason I’ve been scarce around here. I saw a new doctor, who I’m pretty sure is a few years younger than my favorite boots. She had magenta streaks in her hair and a breezy attitude, but she knew her shit.

I’m now all about the young doctors!! She did a quick, efficient exam, informed me that I have baby cataracts, but they’re not a problem and just wear sunglasses and maybe a hat when I’m out in the sun.

When I asked her about computer glasses she looked at me like I’d asked for a butter churn. She said all she has to do is adjust the progressives (she explained how, but I can’t repeat it accurately) so no need for a separate pair of glasses! “Didn’t anyone tell you this was possible!?”

I said no, I’d never been offered that option, and she rolled her eyes and tossed her magenta hair, “Well, that’s ridiculous. I’ll fix that for you.” She reached into a drawer and pulled out lenses and told me to hold them over my existing glasses and read her computer screen, and holy crap! I could read her computer screen!

So, yeah, the last three eye doctors I saw with their 30+ years of experience can bite me. I’m now all in on the millennial doctors with magenta-streaked hair.

My new glasses and new prescription sunglasses should be done the week after next. My highly special prescription and expensive lenses take time.

So that was half rant and half positive things, right? It’s as good as I can do right now.

Sophie is finally acting like her old self! Really her old self – like playing with toys and bouncing around, begging for treats her old self. I had to yell at her when she was shit-talking ELLIE as I was getting on a call! She was dancing around the cat, trying to get a game going!

Fingers crossed this lasts a while. I swear I will change NOTHING in her environment, down to the same filtered water in the same water bowl and exactly the same diet.

Gidget is still enforcing social distancing like she’s Dr. Fauci’s secret pen pal, but she’s still super cute and the goodest of the good girls.

Ellie is always Ellie.

Oh! I forgot to confess my stupidity!! Remember how I thought I’d have to upgrade my Mac to get the setup I wanted? It was another case of my tunnel vision – I didn’t think it through. I spent $40 on an upgraded hub that is now connected to the borrowed monitor AND the teacup poodle MacBook, and it feeds power to the poodle!!

So to sum up: I’m happy with the going gray progress, new glasses are on the way, Sophie’s doing well, Gidget is keeping us all safe, Ellie is her lovely self, and I don’t have to upgrade my Mac! Even in this dark, insane time there are bright spots.