Silver linings

It's easy to see all the heartbreak that has come from the pandemic. Instead, I decided it was time to start finding my silver linings.

1. I now have a proper workspace! Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. While I hadn't needed to move from the couch during the first month, degradation in hygiene conditions around the apartment that were beyond my control required a retreat to the bedroom starting in week 5 of the lock-down. And so, lock-down be damned, I managed to acquire a new console to convert my antique school desk into an L-shaped work surface that enabled me to migrate to a less fragrant corner of the apartment, with better posture to boot!

My gorgeous new workspace, complete with the world's most helpful colleague

2. Our cats have learned a new game. New routines have been introduced under quarantine, including a chase/fetch the treat game, through which the cats have been learning all sorts of new rules of physics and spatial awareness such as, when a treat disappears under a door, you can run around the door to find it. And they've also become much more attuned to how to swat treats mid-trajectory to beat their arch-rival. Mars is getting to be unusually dextrous with his food. (I'm wondering if I won't regret those new skills I've been training in him.) Chat has also learned to hesitantly trust my calling her and tapping my foot on the ground, even if she can't see the treat that I'm flagging.

3. Desserts! Now that Nicolas and I are finally eating meals together for the first time since, oh, 2017 (because under normal times, my job feeds me all my meals 5 days a week), well, I can't pretend that I am of any use in the kitchen, BUT I have gotten us into the habit of finishing each meal with a scoop of ice cream topped with freshly sliced strawberries, sliced by yours truly! (Seriously I'm so useless in the kitchen, anything is an accomplishment.) This is one trend I'm hoping we'll take with us out of lock-down.

4. Chat is finally dealing with her over-grooming, despite her best wishes. Now that I'm around to supervise, I have been able to safely dress her and guard her tummy against that enthusiastic, scratchy tongue.

And I really should note that I don't deserve to be "looking for silver linings": Our families are so far all safe and healthy. Nicolas and I are both fortunate enough to still have jobs and salaries, which is making our government stimulus check one sweet bonus, a bonus that we've been preemptively spending to support a handful of our favorite local bars and restaurants. It's frustrating to be spending sums that feel completely exorbitant only to realize what a drop in the bucket they are for our local businesses. The sensation of powerlessness, well, that's certainly not a silver lining. But I'd hate to try to turn the tables on this and list my ability to stock up on fancy booze thanks to the stimulus check as a silver lining-- it leaves me with the icky feeling that I'm somehow complicit with the sleazy politicians and the 1% who are getting rich off of all this economic hardship.

I was supposed to...

I was supposed to blog in March.

Accurate.

I was supposed to tell you how our months of efforts all paid off and California Berned. And did it!

I was supposed to tell you how California Berned, from LA to the Bay ✊🔥💙

I was also supposed to tell you how my chest tightened as the evening's results rolled in on my phone while I did the final Get Out The Vote laps around my Bay Area precinct. I was supposed to tell you how heartbroken I was to see so much of the country go another way. I couldn't believe it was just a week and a half since Bernie's third sequential popular vote victory (a historic first to kick off any party's primaries), a resounding win with nearly 50% of the vote, and in the first diverse state to vote. I could have told you it's Ne-VAH-duh, by the way, as the locals prepped me before the day I'd spent in late February canvassing across Reno. I'd have waxed about how the Oakland campaign headquarters, which hosted its closing party on my birthday, had become a second home and family. But by the time I was ready to write, the world had other ideas about what was relevant. Though reality was screaming for a progressive agenda, it no longer seemed like something I was supposed to write about.

This is how my 2020 looked up until mid-March. Smiles and hope and fighting for someone we didn't know.

And now, welcome to late March 2020 aka The End Times

Instead, I can tell you how it's now a day shy of four weeks since I went to the office. I'm quite fortunate that the office is still waiting for me when all this is over. Even Nicolas's managed to hold on to his job while his store let go the vast majority of its workforce. We're looking for ways to stretch our limited Bay Area incomes to support those more in need—Kiva loans to American businesses, a mail order of tea from a small Seattle-based tea shop, web orders from our two favorite local bars that could only be called exorbitant under other circumstances. But it all feels like a drop in the bucket, and I just wish there were better ways to help.

Who'd have thought our civic duty would involve stocking up on looseleaf and microbrews?

Like everyone these days, we've been reconnecting to friend networks while social distancing. If you can't leave your home, how very different is it whether the friend on the other end of the Google hangout is two Bart stops or nine time zones away? And since conversations can only go so far when we've all been up to pretty much the same thing for nearly a month, I've even made a Steam (online gaming) account, a step into digital nerding that Nicolas never expected from me.

Chat is experiencing her own version of social distancing, from her abdomen.

One upside of this whole crisis is that I've finally had the chance to take care of my cat and her psychogenic alopecia. After trying various creams and diet changes to stop her excessive licking, the vet left us with one last option: dressing our cat. On top of the uncontrolled feline rage, we were concerned that her attempts at escape might have led to her strangling herself while we were off at work. Now that the cat is no longer unsupervised, it seemed as good a time as any to break out the kitty wardrobe. For the past two weeks, poor Chat has been socially distancing from her own tummy, and is miserable as the rest of us. (But after nearly 3 years, her tummy fur is starting to return!)

The couch and my butt have been getting friendly.

Parking my butt on the couch with my laptop for days on end of coding can only go so far. After really seriously committing to this stay-the-fuck-at-home patriotism for a week or two, my legs needed to find a healthier balance. For the past week or so I've been getting some sun and fresh air on daily walks around Lake Merritt, where I've been trying to remind myself that, unlike everything else, spring was not canceled.

Somehow spring still hasn't been canceled.

I hope you too have moments that remind you that spring has not been canceled.