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.