I can't with this

It’s Friday, May 29 and I’m as angry about politics as I have ever been in my life, if by “politics” I mean the simple ability of politicians and their enablers to tell the difference between right and wrong. The worst thing is that it's entirely possible, even likely, that Donald J. Trump will win another term in November. By "win another term," of course, I mean "do whatever he needs to do up to and including theft, fraud, and murder to hang onto power." Hopefully, the Democrats (who are only marginally better) will take the House and Senate and remove him from office. If using social media to incite gun violence in American cities does not make him unfit for office, then I guess I don't really understand the Constitution.

The Minneapolis police finally arrested the cop who murdered poor George Floyd, who begged for help and cried for his mother, while a merciless thug masquerading as a law enforcement officer held him down, using his knee and the full weight of his body to choke the life out of a man accused of nothing more than passing a bad check. How much pain and terror must a grown man suffer to cry for his mother in front of his tormentors?

By the way, I am actually pro-life. Meaning against abortion, opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances,
opposed to assisted suicide, opposed to refusing refuge to desperate people whose lives are in danger
 and DEFINITELY opposed to mowing people down with machine guns for breaking fucking windows at Target. 

The President who earlier today demanded the death penalty for looters didn’t demand the death penalty for the man who murdered George Floyd. He didn’t call for the death penalty for the Charlottesville white supremacists who murdered Heather Heyer. He didn’t demand swift, deadly justice for the people who murdered Ahmaud Arbery, or Botham Jean, or Atatiana Jefferson, God rest their souls.

My husband is a police officer who had to leave the house in uniform this morning, so not only am I seething with fury at the outrageous oppression that the Black community continues to suffer; I’m also sick with anxiety and fear.

God help us all.

Pilgrimage of Mice

It’s 12:35 PM, Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. In a normal year today would be one of my favorite days of the year but this is not a normal year and today is a little sad.

On a normal Memorial Day weekend Saturday,  my kids would already be at the pool, there to remain until 9 PM. My older son would be working his first lifeguard shift of the summer. And now that I remember, my younger son would maybe be working his first lifeguard shift ever. He was supposed to get his certification in March, but his class was cancelled just like everything else. I’d be doing some swim team work, then a little bit of housework, and then I too would be packing my swim bag and heading to the pool to see my friends and celebrate summer, my all-too-short favorite season.

But it’s still summer. I’m still wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The windows are open and the breeze is blowing, and the sun is streaming in and it’s a three-day weekend. Maybe I’ll have a drink later. Maybe I’ll have a drink now. There’s nothing stopping me.

*****
It’s Sunday morning now, late Sunday morning heading toward Sunday afternoon. It seems less summery today. There’s no sun. Well, there’s obviously a sun because the earth is not pitch-dark and frozen over, but it's not blazing overhead.

I didn’t do very much yesterday other than reading and walking and hanging around. We all hung around, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a day. A holiday weekend always feels like a pause in regular life and so it doesn’t really bother me that nothing is normal now. Talk to me on Tuesday. I won’t be so sanguine.

*****
It's Monday now, Memorial Day. When I wrote this yesterday, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but my company’s proposal manager solved the problem for me, and I spent most of Sunday afternoon and part of the early evening rewriting past performance content. The section that I had to rewrite wasn’t badly written, it was just all wrong from a just-the-facts standpoint. So I fixed it. When I finally finished, I was cross-eyed and tired, and missing Thomas Cromwell and the Tudors; so I poured a glass of wine and rejoined Henry VIII and his courtiers as they discussed how to handle Robert Aske and the rest of the Pilgrims. Right now, Henry is promising safe conduct to Aske if he’ll just come to Windsor to negotiate. And I don’t have a direct line to Aske but if I did, I’d advise him not to fall into that trap because it’s not going to end well for him.

But 16th century gentlemen didn’t take advice from women, especially women of common origins, so he’s on his own. He can take his chances with Henry and the Lord Privy Seal. Maybe if he’s lucky, the execution will be a quick beheading with a sharp axe.

*****
Do you want to know who doesn’t get safe-conduct; not from York to London and not from Antwerp to Calais and DEFINITELY NOT from my house to my backyard or anywhere else? Mice, that’s who. Yes, the little fuckers are back and I do not grant them diplomatic immunity and I will not offer a pardon, not even if they pledge loyalty and recant their grievous heresies.

It’s probably just one mouse, actually. We saw evidence of its presence on Saturday, and then my son saw the actual creature, IN MY HOUSE, on Saturday night. It was very small, he said, so it might even be a vole. Did I not give them fair warning? Did I not state expressly and without qualification that this warning would be their only warning? They probably failed to read my blog that day, but as in Henry’s time, ignorance of the law is not an excuse. The mouse or mice or vole or voles are condemned as surely as Robert Aske and all of the rest of the rebels and eventually Thomas Cromwell himself. I might lure them to engage in peace talks, dangling false promises of clemency, but once they’re on my territory, their fate is in my hands.

*****
So yes, Memorial Day has come and gone, and it’s officially summer, and we’re still on lockdown, and someone has to pay. I’m going to post notices around the house, to give them one last warning. It’s them against me, and I don’t like their chances.

And the people with too much time on their hands wrote bullshit poetry...

So you know this poem, I assume.

"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."

I first saw it during the week of March 16, the first week of the stay-at-home order in Maryland. At that time, the person who shared it attributed it to an anonymous poet, writing during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. I was skeptical even without reading past the first line (because there was no way that I was going to read more than one line of a poem that opens with the words “And the people.”) But people kept sharing it, kept commenting on the uncanny relevance of this poem from over a century ago, and my curiosity got the better of me.

And so I finally read it. And I called bullshit. And then I consulted Snopes and it turns out that I was right.

What gave it away? Well, “made art” was the first hint. People didn’t say that 100 years ago. “New ways of being” was another hint, as was the reference to exercise. But the earth-healing was the biggest giveaway. I think that people in 1918 valued human life a little bit more than we do now, and they wouldn’t have celebrated a deadly disease outbreak because carbon emissions are down a bit.

I don’t blame the author for the 1918 story. I blame her only for writing this drivel. Many of us have been lucky enough to have a comparatively pleasant time at home for most of this, though we’d much prefer to have our normal lives back. Many more people, though, have suffered terribly--are still suffering terribly. I’m not mad at anyone who is enjoying the quarantine. I just think that they should have the kindness and the common sense to keep that to themselves. That way, when the danger passes and we all join together again, no one will have to smack them.

Time for me to go meet my shadow. I'm not fit company for anyone else right now.

Home office

This morning, I received an email from a recruiter. She wasn’t recruiting me; it was just a marketing email to her mailing list. She sends them every week or so and I usually ignore them, but today she linked to an article about improving your WFH experience, so I clicked the link and read the article.

The article was full of what is now the standard advice about setting up a dedicated workspace, getting up and moving around, establishing a schedule, blah blah blah. But it was fine. It was well-written and cheerful, and didn’t take more than a minute or so to read.

After I read the article, I looked out my window for a few minutes, doing nothing as I waited for my first call of the day. Before all this (meaning the COVID-19 lockdown, which began two months ago today) started, I only worked from home once a week or so, and I was usually home by myself, so I never really needed a dedicated home office; and I never really wanted one. We have a small house. A real home office, I thought, would take up space that I require for other purposes.

But a full-time WFH schedule during a stay-at-home order that keeps everyone in my household at home most of the time made a dedicated workspace a necessity. My husband and older son both work at the dining room table, and I just can’t look at their piles of paper. I don’t even know why they have piles of paper. It’s 2020. We have technology.

Anyway, at the end of March, I got my husband to bring in an old student desk that we had stored in the garage. We cleaned it up, and I set it up in the most sunlit corner of my living room, and that’s where I’m sitting right now.

It's small, but it has a nice view. 

There are two windows in this corner; one that looks out on my backyard, and one that looks into the (non-crazy) neighbor’s yard. For the sake of privacy (theirs and mine), I would have preferred to set my desk up in front of my own backyard, but the desk didn’t look right there. It looks fine under the other window, and I only see a small corner of their yard (and my side yard), so it’s fine. In fact, the view is my favorite part of my WFH day.

*****
My neighbor’s yard is very English-looking. From the window in front of my desk, I can see a tangle of shrubs, flowering and not; all greener than I might expect given the absurd cold in April and early May. I also see garden implements, pots, spades, watering cans,  and randomly placed flower and vegetable beds, bordered by 18-inch-tall wire fencing, the kind with repeating concentric arches. There’s a wrought iron table and chairs, and a few planters growing I don’t know what. I feel a little guilty about staring out the window at their yard but they’re never out there on weekdays when I sit at this window. And I guess there’s no law against looking out my own window.

Right in the middle of their side yard, my neighbors have a little bird feeder, hanging from a stand designed just for that purpose. There are frequent bird visitors, some familiar and some not. I never see the birds at the feeder; in fact, I don’t know if there’s anything in there for them. It’s a decorative bird feeder and maybe it’s just there for show. But the birds do like the garden, and I don’t blame them. It’s pretty and peaceful and not so well-tended as to be forbidding, but not neglected, either. If I was a bird, I’d be out there, too.

*****
I keep trying to get pictures of the birds, but they do not like the paparazzi. Yesterday, I was listening to a speaker during a demonstration, and a bird of an unfamiliar but interesting type landed in a tree that’s about eight feet away from the window. He sat on a branch for a few minutes, happily picking at something, and he seemed completely unaware of my presence. I reached for my phone, slowly and stealthily, almost still as I carefully moved the phone into photo-taking position. But as soon as I had my finger near the shutter button, the bird noticed me, and he took off like he was fired out of a howitzer, a little feathered mortar blasting itself away from pesky photographers. I was so close.

As I mentioned, the bird was not one that I could identify. This is not unusual. I don’t recognize most bird species other than easy-to-spot common varieties like robins and cardinals and pigeons and bluejays. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen a number of new and different bird species during my recent weeks at the window. I don’t know if this is a function of the “heal the earth” nonsense that crazy people who are enjoying the pandemic lockdown a little too much like to spout on Facebook; or if it’s just a matter of me sitting still and looking out the window long enough to notice what has probably been right in front of me all along.

*****
One morning last week, I turned on the light, turned on my computer, and opened the blinds on the window in front of my desk, just in time to see a fox dart through my side yard. It was 7:15 in the morning, broad daylight. I always think of foxes as nocturnal but apparently they are sometimes active during the day, too. And this was first thing in the morning, so maybe he was wrapping up his day’s work and heading toward wherever he nests so he could go to sleep.

According to my cursory internet research, foxes are also shy and retiring and avoid humans as much as possible. I avoid them as much as possible too, so we shouldn’t have any conflicts. There’s room enough for two in this town and as long as a fox doesn’t bare its teeth at me in a rabid-seeming manner, then I’ll consider the more-than-occasional fox-sighting as just one neighbor running into another. We’ll nod a quick acknowledgement and then go on about our business.

*****
As often happens, I had to go back and read this from the beginning to see how it all started. It’s about a week after I started writing this; Monday afternoon and I’m just finishing work for the day, and still sitting at my desk in front of the window. My only animal visitor today was domestic, not wild; the neighbor’s dog was roaming his property, king of all he surveyed.

People are beginning to emerge from isolation, with or without official permission. We went to our neighbor’s front yard happy hour on Saturday night; everyone bringing their own drinks and glasses, and sitting in chairs placed six feet apart. We chatted and drank wine for a while, exchanged socially distant air hugs and walked home in the finally summery evening air. It’s chilly again today, but we’re definitely turning a corner toward consistently warm weather. The next day, my son met some friends at the pool parking lot. They played a made-up ball game that involved no physical contact, and my son showered and changed his clothes as soon as he came home. Mental health is as important as physical health, and teenagers need their friends.

One of the friends I saw on Saturday is a veterinarian. She told funny animal stories, and I dreamed funny animal dreams in which birds sat still and posed for pictures and foxes reminded each other to social distance and dogs complained about yet another fucking Zoom call. That last one was probably me. But I’m done for today.

Boat cuisine

Last week or so, my husband made a Costco run. I can get a lot of material out of my husband’s Costco runs. His shopping habits in general, in fact, yield tons of funny stories. Did I tell you about the night-vision deer camera? Did I tell you about the Stanley Cup swag (maybe I had a hand in that one, too)? Did I tell you about the decades-old Mercedes convertible? Sit down. Pull up a chair.

So back to the Costco run. He actually got a lot of useful stuff, including a three-bottle carton of Clorox bleach (I gave some away) and enough toilet paper that we were able to supply ourselves, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and two elderly neighbors. He got some chips and salsa, which are always useful; and a case of my beloved Diet Coke. But he also picked up some less-necessary items, including a very large bag of frozen fish sticks.

Full disclosure: I actually like fish sticks. Always have, always will. As far as I’m concerned, there are few better lunches than a plate of fish sticks and some Campbell’s tomato soup. But not everyone shares my love of fish sticks.

Still, food is food; and times being what they are, I decided that we need to incorporate those fish sticks into a dinner menu. Waste not, want not, know what I mean? So I made a delicious and elegant dinner of mixed vegetables, bowtie pasta with garlic and olive oil, and fish sticks.

I know. We live like royalty.

My sons, 18 and 15, hadn’t seen fish sticks since they were toddlers. When they were little, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get them to love fish sticks as much as I do; but I finally gave up. Presented with his meal, my older son looked at the plate and said “I don’t know about the fish sticks. I mean, I don’t really eat seafood.”

His brother scoffed. “Seafood? That’s not seafood. That’s Ocean McNuggets.”

*****
That was a week ago, more or less, give or take. It all runs together now. It’s the day before Mother’s Day and in keeping with my normal policy, I won’t be cooking this weekend; not even fish sticks. I did make eggs this morning, but eggs don’t count as cooking,

It’s 12:25 PM. I’m not really dressed yet, and I’m watching “The Third Man” on AMC. I love black-and-white Cold War cloak and dagger movie dramas. Postwar Europe, especially Germany and Austria, was a dark maze of conspiratorial Soviet vs. West intrigue; or at least that’s how it was in the movies.

The postwar United States of movies and literature was completely different; optimistic, and full of blithe can-do and will-do energy. I’m reading Helene Hanff’s Underfoot in Show Business, all about her early years in New York, writing plays and working in any job in the theater that she could get her hands on. I love this book, filled with stories about sharing kitchen and bathroom space with neighbors and eating at Sardi’s and cheap coffee shops, and sneaking into theaters, and budgeting for nylons and cigarettes and carfare, and making friends and being young in New York in the 1940s and early 1950s.

It’s almost 1 PM on a Saturday and I’m on my couch, still in pajama pants and a sweater and fuzzy socks, watching and reading about cities full of people going places and doing things amid crowds of other people. Has it been so long since this was just normal everyday life?

*****
Now it's Mother's Day, and I hate Mother's Day. I hate everything right now. Today is the first day that I've felt that I really can't do this anymore. I can't muster the energy to do anything and I couldn't do anything even if I wanted to, which I don't. What do I do if this drags on for six months longer? And what do I do if it doesn't? I forget how to have a normal day. I forget how to manage a life that involves leaving the house and seeing people and doing things. I don't know if I can do it anymore.

I'm so tired and sad. I don't want to be in the house anymore. I don't want to know what anyone is watching on Netflix. I don't want to laugh at any more corona memes. I don't want to hear the police radio all day long.

*****
What the hell was that? I was going to just delete those last two paragraphs, but that’s what came out of me yesterday and there’s no point denying the truth. I’m all about keeping it real.

Yes, it’s Monday now and Mother’s Day 2020 is in the rear view mirror. I don’t know why I said that I hate Mother’s Day because I don’t. It’s fine. It’s neither here nor there. My temporary hostility toward Mother’s Day was just a symptom of yesterday’s mental health crisis. I’m better today. Not great, but better.

As promised, I didn’t cook on Saturday or Sunday because it was Mother’s Day weekend. I don’t know who decided that it’s a weekend now but this seems to be prevailing practice and I don’t like to rock the boat. But the weekend is over now and the kitchen awaits. I shopped on Friday night and I know what I'm going to make. I even cut some vegetables yesterday to make today’s prep easier. With the hard part of cooking (figuring out what to cook) done for today, I can approach the early evening with calm equanimity. No one will starve, and no one will have to eat fish sticks unless they want to. I can’t promise anything more than that.

*****
It’s Tuesday now, and dinner last night was fine, but I’m right back to where I started, which is figuring out what to have for dinner again. Ocean McNuggets doesn’t sound bad to me. I’d eat them still-frozen, right out of the box, if I didn’t have to expend another drop of my already-limited mental energy on what to cook for dinner. That’s the thing about dinner. It’s a job that’s never done. People expect to eat, every damn day.

I had an idea last night and just as quickly as I thought about writing it down so I wouldn’t forget it, I started thinking about something else, and then I forgot. With any luck, it will come back to me. Maybe it was an idea about what to make for dinner tonight, which would make it actually useful. But if not, then another harebrained idea will come along to replace it. Meanwhile, I don't think anyone wants to eat Ocean McNuggets today, but I’ll figure something out. And I don’t hate everything today, so it’s all good. It’s all good.

The moss is always greener

I’ve always loved moss. When I was very very young (five or six), we lived with my grandparents for a while--maybe a year? Maybe a few months? I don’t really remember very clearly.

My grandparents lived in a row house in Philadelphia. My grandmother, now in her 90s, still lives there. The house is tiny, and it has a correspondingly tiny patch of backyard, which my grandfather (who died in 1994) maintained very carefully. He had two little raised beds bordered with brick--one for flowers, and one for tomatoes; and his grass was green, free of weeds, and never more than two inches long.

The yard has a retaining wall, with a little hill that sloped up to another tiny patch of grass, so it’s almost like a two-story yard. It’s hard to describe. My grandfather planted shade trees in the upper yard. (We didn’t call it the upper yard; we called it “up the hill.”) He would cut the tiny bit of remaining grass on that level with a weed trimmer, because it was nearly impossible to get the mower up there. Eventually, with the shade, moss replaced the grass as ground cover up the hill.

That little patch of moss-covered outdoors was one of my favorite places. It was quiet and secluded and very shady and cool in the summer. To get to it, you had to climb the retaining wall (about three feet high) and then scale the ivy-covered hill, so adults almost never went up there, making it an ideal place to hang out. And it was mossy, making it even better.

My grandfather complained about the moss. He would have preferred a single-level backyard, with a wide expanse of golf course-quality grass. But I loved it. It was velvety soft and plush, and so much more green than the boring grass.

*****
Crazy Neighbor’s house is to our left if you’re looking at our house from the street. On HIS other side live the nice older couple who celebrated virtual Passover via Zoom.

This couple have lived next door to Crazy Neighbor for almost 50 years (he grew up in his house) and I think they’ve had enough. I’ve heard stories from other neighbors about long-standing tension between the families. We’re friendly with both households, making us something of an intermediary.

A few weeks ago, the lady of the non-crazy house (I will call her Mrs. NC) asked me why Crazy Neighbor never cuts his grass. It’s not true to say that he never cuts the grass but he doesn’t cut it as often as he should and he doesn’t cut it nearly as often as the non-crazy neighbors (whose property is immaculate) would prefer. I demurred, of course, and tried to divert her attention but Mrs. NC was fixed on the subject. She complained for a minute or so, and then she leaned across the six-foot social distance divide and said “Why don’t you talk to him? You can do that, right? He likes you. He doesn’t like us so much.”

Well, both of those two statements are true, but do I want to get further mixed up in the affairs of crazy neighbors? Is this some of my business? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding no. I smiled and laughed and said something noncommittal. Mrs. CN walked away convinced that I had the matter in hand, and I walked away having resolved to do absolutely nothing about Crazy Neighbor’s grass.

And do you know what happened? Crazy Neighbor cut his grass! THE VERY NEXT DAY he mowed down a field of grass as high as corn in August, grass that he hadn’t touched since last autumn. I haven’t seen Mrs. CN since we had this conversation, and I’m not sure how to play our next encounter. If I take credit for managing the Crazy Neighbor overgrowth situation then Mrs. CN will certainly expect me to continue to do so. In fact, she will assign me additional tasks. Crazy Neighbor has had a series of broken-down, semi-operational cars that remain on the street for weeks at a stretch before he gets rid of one and replaces it with another. I don’t want to be in charge of getting those ugly cars off the street. I don’t want to be the pest control point of contact. I don’t want to be the hole-in-the-wall monitor. Live and let live, right?

*****
So it’s cold and rainy again in the middle of what should be May, but that’s neither here nor there. It was beautiful last weekend, warm and sunny. On Sunday, I walked around my own backyard. I hadn’t done that in a long time. I mean, I sit out there (when it’s warmer than 50 degrees, that is; and when it’s not raining, that is) sometimes, but I seldom just walk around surveying the landscape and examining things. I’m not a gardener. I'm not in charge of maintenance. That’s why I got married.

Anyway, I walked around, looking at the grass and the flowers. We have a six-foot high wooden privacy fence that I don’t particularly like but that came with the house; and the neighbor’s azaleas are growing right through it, making it look like we have a wall of azaleas. It’s lovely, and we didn’t have to do anything--the azaleas just appeared. The azalea neighbors are the neighbors on the other side of my house, the right side as you face our house from the street; and the left as you face the back of our house from the backyard. I don’t know them very well. It’s just as well. I have all that I can do managing the neighbors whom I do know.

In addition to the azalea wall, we also have a few vole holes. As long as the voles remain in their holes and stay out of my house, they won’t have any trouble from me. As I mentioned earlier, live and let live is my policy, even for rodents. Unless, that is, the little motherfuckers cross my threshold. I hope they read my blog, because this is their only warning.

*****

But  I saved the best part for last. That's right, we have some moss now! We planted a redbud tree in 2006, and it’s a lovely tallish shade tree now. We (by which I mean they, meaning my husband and sons) built a little brick-bordered circular bed around its base, where my husband will sometimes plant some annuals and then complain when the rabbits get to them; and the shady strip between the back fence and the circular bed is now covered with a nice even carpet of soft green moss. Maybe I’ll set up a chair back there. Maybe I’ll move my desk there. Maybe I’ll get my husband to build me a hill with a retaining wall at the bottom and a flat, shady patch of quiet at the top. The voles can probably make their way up a hill, but none of the neighbors will ever find me up there.

Here she comes back

“You’re not STUCK at home, you’re SAFE at home.” Yeah, thanks Facebook. Now do me a favor and shut the fuck up.

*****
That was my reaction to yesterday’s daily social media onslaught of reminders, exhortations, and scoldings. I KNOW that it could be a lot worse and I KNOW that it’s important to stay at home and maintain social distance. I KNOW. I just don’t want to know right now.

It’s April 30, or March 61, however you’re observing the calendar. Today, I decided that I have to get serious about getting rid of the eight or so pounds that I’ve gained since we entered lockdown on March 13. So of course, I’m starving, and all I can think about is food. It’s dreary and gray and cold because it’s almost always dreary and gray and cold. My workday is finished and this is normally time for my walk but it’s pouring rain and just no. Maybe it will stop before it gets dark. If I’m walking, then I’m not eating.

*****
It’s Friday now, May 1. I can’t even believe that it’s May. It’s almost summer and we lost an entire season.

I’m having a hard time communicating with someone, and I’m trying to figure out where my own responsibility lies. I started with thinking that it was all the fault of the other person, that this person is choosing to be difficult, choosing to be obtuse, choosing to deliberately misunderstand or misconstrue everything I say. Maybe that’s what’s happening, or maybe not. Every relationship--not even relationship, really, but every interaction--has more than one participant and in other than extreme cases, both or all participants usually share the blame when things go wrong. So it’s probably my fault, at least in part. I just can’t figure out how right now. I’m having a hard time getting out of my own head, but maybe all I really need to do is get out of the house. I’ll do that a bit later. I’m going to try to work this out.

*****
It’s Saturday and all of a sudden it’s legitimately May. The first weekend of May is when, in normal years, my internal clock begins to tick down the weeks, days, and hours until Memorial Day and the beginning of my beloved summer. I don’t know what summer will look like this year but I’ll love it even if it’s not its usual self. Even if there’s no vacation trip, no beach visits, no graduation parties, no swim meets. Even if (I hesitate to even think it) there’s no pool.

Meanwhile, I don’t know or care whose fault it was or is but I’m no longer at odds with the person I disagreed with yesterday. I think it was me, and I think the person knew it was me and chose to be gracious, and now we’re fine. I think. The sun is out today and I can always think better and see things more clearly when the sun is out. It’s four weeks until summer.

Still, I don’t want to hear a word out of Facebook. Not one fucking word.