It's a Lot

I haven't posted in ages. There's been too much. Way too much. I may have thought, at various times in my life, that it was too much. But I didn't know. Now...now, it's a lot. I don't even want to write about it all. Not now. Maybe someday, when I have some distance. For now, I guess, a brief recap.

For starters, the biggest thing. A global pandemic that started in China and has now spread around the world. We're all "sheltering in place" (i.e. quarantining ourselves in our houses, only going out for essentials).

It feels surreal to even write that. Like, is this real life? But it is. Rapidly approaching 2.5 million (known) cases of this virus and over 166,000 deaths so far and climbing every day. At least one friend is deathly ill, in an induced coma and on a ventilator.

And in the beginning of that, mom decided she couldn't take dialysis anymore and was ready to let go. So I traveled to see her. Didn't expect her to last the week, but she managed to last for nearly a month? I had to go back home after the week, as borders were shutting down. I made it back, but it was tense -- cancelled flights, re-routed flights, almost empty airports.

I am glad I got to see her again. Also glad that she's not in pain anymore.

So. Those are the two big things. The other things that have been burying me, in no particular order: the IRS still not having reviewed our documents and continuing to send us threatening bills for $5000, dealing with my sisters (mostly, to be fair, the older one, who never handles anything well and is not handling any of this at all), my laptop dying for no apparent reason (happily solved relatively quickly, as Apple already got it back to me, though with no explanation as to what made it die to begin with), all of us being/working at home on top of each other (and the hubby being his normal slightly asshole-ish self with no empathy or sympathy), writing on book 2 just creeping on (the book is half done and my original deadline is the end of May, so still kinda doable, but it is just so. damn. hard. to write funny kid fantasy right now), and another deadline for a short story about dinosaurs that I probably shouldn't have agreed to write but I didn't want to turn down work in the middle of a global pandemic.

Other things too. But that's enough, isn't it?

The only thing I've been good at lately is exercising. Thank heavens I bought myself the elliptical for my birthday. I've been using it every day lately. I'm up to 70 minutes a day. I've lost about 4 lbs. I'd gained a bunch after the car died and I couldn't go to the gym (and all the stuff with mom was going on). Got up past 146. Egad. Down now to 142. First goal is to get to under 140. But ultimately I'd like to get to 125. Even better would be 120.

Mostly, I want to slowly whittle myself away. A slow disappearance. A waning of my self.

Maybe I'll write some more about the craziness. There's a lot going on in my head.

But mostly I want to get back to writing about watching Korean dramas and anime with little dude. Pretend there's something normal.