It’s been a full couple of days.  On the way to A’s yesterday I stopped at the tropical pet store and picked up E’s ember tetras, plants, and food for his aquarium (and part of his pay for tilling).  E and Y and I spent some time just mesmerized by fish.  They have names: Barry, Garry, Harry, and Larry (though at least some of them are females)!  For me it’s way more fascinating and relaxing to watch the aquarium than streaming stuff.

Y told me they were glad I was back “home”; they miss me when I’m gone.  That really says it all.

The kids had worked on dumping piles of leaves on the veg garden, to be tilled in later.  Better late than never.  Out in the front yard, yellow and purple crocuses were blooming.  It was springlike, and getting warmer.

A and S and I went to the science museum (my first time).  It’s an excellent museum, with an Imax, constantly changing displays, a makerspace, and lots of educational fun activities for kids.  The Dinosaur moves and roars.  The Tardis is an actual one that was used on a Doctor Who set.  They had all the sonic screwdrivers from the beginning.  A large room is devoted to agriculture, soils of each state (notice what NJ’s is called!), and hydroponics.  There’s an outdoor area with chickens and large interactive agricultural machinery.  We had a lot of fun.

I stayed overnight while Avdi got to go out, by way of urgent care to get a deep knife wound stitched up.  Never a dull moment (except for the knife)!  I didn’t sleep much.  K and I eventually made it to the table, where we talked about electronic “doohickies” like garden instruments he can assemble for testing soil, water, etc.  He really is skillful at tech stuff and robotics.

Today E tilled the veg garden, which is now nice and leaf composty.  I’ll let it sit and settle, then start to direct-sow.  Meanwhile, I planted the lavender vera seeds I had been stratifying in the frig., which started the third flat.  Avdi worked on writing his latest book outside, where it was warm and sunny.  I hung around, playing with S and so on, until dinner, a gorgeous charcuterie board by E, then got a ride home.

I’m so relieved it’s spring as far as I’m concerned.  I’m back in my natural habitat.

Finally!  Our first real Shabbat together since the plague was like a reunion with my gkids!  I baked challah, made dinner, cleaned up, met S at the bus, hung out with Y for a long time, talked to E and K, and stayed for a very happy erev meal with everyone there.  Jess joined us.

Poor Avdi was still feeling sickly and sapped, but pushing through  Everyone helped with cleanup, and then I spent time with S until Avdi was able to take me home.  I think the forced quarantine brought us all closer together, and the reunion was restorative.

E liked the idea of tilling the veg garden (and being paid well!), so that may be happening this weekend.  The temps are back to springlike, and the high winds are drying the mud.  I started the job of throwing leaves into the garden to be tilled under along with the winter greens.  I feel optimistic about the soil quality this year.

Even the kids are stressed about the current political fiasco, and worried about how it will affect them.  Kids are the ones who will suffer most if the criminals-in-chief have their way.  It’s a topic that keeps coming up, even though we all want to avoid the anxiety, on top of all the other stressors in their lives.  This is a time when kids need their extended family to be there and united to face the coming threats to their survival and wellbeing.

It seems ironic that POC have been enduring this nightmare for hundreds of years, so it’s no surprise, while some white descendants of colonialist racists are just now waking up to the consequences of their toxic systemic ravaging of our society.  The black writers I follow are like, Y’all white degenerates brought this on your ignorant selves, but we all have to pay the price.  Like typical narcissistic psychopaths, whites try to twist reality around to blame Blacks and informed people, when they’re the ones decimating democracy, and turning our world allies against us.  You know when easygoing Canada censures us, it’s getting real.

Maybe when it gets to the point where all our ex-allies declare war on Nazi America (déjà vu all over again!), it will dawn on them, too late.  By then, most of us may have been deported or escaped to elsewhere, where we’ll find ourselves fighting on the anti-US side.  That would be ironic and sad.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.  The mutiny is already rising.  I wish I could stick around for the finale!

This is it, folks!  The first crocuses have bloomed.  It’s official.  Next up: hellebores.

But wait, there’s more!  Avdi officially tested negative today!  Who says there’s no good news?

I did my rounds, including prepping the veg garden to be tilled, hopefully by E.  The seedlings down under are doing well.

I even got around to lining up a new vision care provider and a new dentist, covered by my new insurance plan.  All things new.

I busted out of my cell yesterday, walked to and from, and did my rounds.  I finished seeding the second flat with assorted peppers.  Lots of seedlings starting to come up!  Did some laundry and house straightening, and then it was so warm out I did some more veg garden cleanup in essentially a t-shirt.  It’s almost time to till the garden and plant peas and some cold-weather greens!  It won’t be long until the masses of spring bulb flowers are blooming.  This is more like it.  I felt much better just getting fresh air and exercise.

So of course today and tomorrow’s forecast is reverting back to winter conditions–extreme wind, rain, and snow.  I won’t be able to walk there and back, but that’s to be expected around here.  In a couple of days it’s going to be warm again!  It’s March, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s spring.  Plus, Avdi is still testing positive, though feeling better, so it’s just as well we quarantine.  I’m just glad he’s recovering and back to work.  Soon they won’t be able to get rid of me.

Just to review for the record: so far I’ve started eggplants, globe artichoke, Roman and German chamomile, more asparagus, celery, evening primrose, St. John’s wort, CalWon red bells, ancho/poblano, jalapeño, orange/yellow bells, and cayenne, and soon vera lavender (stratified).  My prop experiments are strawberries, lettuce, carrots, celery, scallions, garlic, assorted basils, lemon/lime, avocado, Asian ginger, and other tropicals.  At my home prop station I’m growing assorted basils, arugula, lettuce mix, English lavender, parsley, mint, and an assorted tropical jungle.  Most of this will rotate over to A’s yard when it’s time.

See, not a word about the catastrophic political crisis.  I can compartmentalize.  I am the Propagatrix.

Has it been weeks in here?  I’m so out of touch.

My son’s covid has hung on for at least a week.  He doesn’t advise exposing myself by coming over, so I can’t even help him much.  I did “sneak” in and out those few days, avoiding contact with anyone.  I haven’t seen my gkids in weeks.  I missed the whole fake spring, what with being sick myself, and having nowhere nice to walk to even if I could.

Some days I never make it outside at all, which for me is like being confined in a cage.  It’s just the nature of things, how it has to be for now, and won’t last forever.  Spring will come, and we’ll live to make up for lost time.

Still, it’s a little surreal, just me and my bizarre dreams (I remember them all), and trying to find constructive things to do besides sleep.  And still, I feel very fortunate, compared to most of the world right now.  I have a place to hole up, and family safe nearby.  I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it probably will, such as losing my small SSA income.  It’s just a matter of which form it will take.  But for now, I never take my good fortune for granted.

Yesterday, just by chance, I found a way to obtain fresh produce and other basics after all.  It seems Instacart was offering a huge discount on first-time memberships for one year, which applies to me because last year’s was a gift.  Plus they had one of their reduced minimum purchase deals going on, so I was actually able to afford fresh fruit, veggies, and a few other necessities I can’t get from the food pantry deliveries.  For me that was a big deal.  It means not merely surviving but feeling better.  I felt very clever as I gobbled down produce!

Segue alert!  Here’s why we need a community-based social system, like more civilized countries, in which there’s a basic social safety net for everyone, and people live more communally, not just struggling solitarily.  Humans are not meant to live as self-sufficient singletons.  We’re more like wolves, who thrive in an organized pack where everyone has a place and role, and look out for each other.

Whereas our system has somehow devolved to the point where we’ve allowed vicious predators to take power and try to destroy anything civilized about us, and alienate our longtime civilized world allies.  No one can thrive or survive in a state like that.  No person or nation can exist in a vacuum unto itself.  Individuals and nations, just like nature itself, can only work in an interconnected network; take one integral component out, and a downward cascade of consequences affect all of us.  It’s happening right before our eyes.

Sorry about the tangent.  I may not be too smart or educated, but even I can see that this story is not just about me and my own minor setbacks.  It’s about living through a time in our history where things have once again, predictably, gone very wrong, and trying to navigate the regression, which can’t be done alone.  It can only succeed with allies in community, all of us in this together, like organized wolves protecting the pack and resisting extinction.

And…home again for the second (?) erev in a row, or is it third?  I’m losing track.  Maybe it’s sympathetic sickness with Avdi, who’s still down.  This is def getting old, so I intend to snap out of it soon.  I have to, I’m missing all the false spring.

One of the hazards of being home with my thoughts is letting myself read the terrifying news.  I like to be prepared and forewarned, but this is beyond tolerable–it’s sickening.  There’s not a strong enough word for the derangement and depravity being foisted on us.  Does it take literally millions of people being ruined and destroyed worldwide to wake us up to fight this abomination?

I feel in my gut that there will come a point beyond which nature itself will take matters into its own “hands” (thorns, spikes, talons, claws…) because it’s too much to tolerate or wait for broken humans to fix.  If we can’t manage our own species properly, there will be consequences, sooner rather than later.  If we can’t maintain checks and balances on ourselves and execute justice, heaven and earth will have to take over.  The balance of nature demands retribution and restoration, whatever it takes.

There is a tipping point.  It will come.  I’m not going to let a little cancer or covid or despair or whatnot keep me from witnessing signs of the turning point, and trying somehow to be a part of the solution, even minutely.  So there.

My head just isn’t right at the moment, thus the rant.  I promise I’ll return to boring mundane stuff soon!   Even my plants know to survive and rise up, despite me.

Now my son is really sick.  I know because I observed him actually in bed today when I walked over.  It takes a lot to persuade him he’s too sick to work or stay vertical.

Yet he had still made an effort to prep and start dinner in the robo-thingie for the kids.  Hopefully each of them will heed my friendly texts about finding alternate ways home today if at all possible.  Sometimes (IMHO) I think he indulges and enables their demands and whims to the point it literally wears him down and compromises his immune system.  They can be so needy and unempathetic.  I.e. kids.

So of course our evil rulers want to make sure the country doesn’t get the latest vaccines it will need in a time-sensitive manner to keep deadly viruses under control.  I suppose mass euthanasia will be next.

I’m still feeling not great, so I’m continuing to take precautions and keep over-exertion to a minimum.  Somebody’s got to stay functional!

(Photo–diagram of a feverish brain.)

They let me out on parole!  The kids were able to go back to school today, so I walked over in the springlike air and made abbreviated rounds (with COVID precautions), mostly doing plant first aid.  I cleaned things up a little, did some laundry, and left a care package for A, who has some symptoms himself.  Then I walked back home.  I’m still not feeling all there myself, but it was a relief to just get out and check in.  This quarantining gets old.  I’m just not right in the head.

My new food pantry deliverer of basic essentials isn’t big on fresh produce or fresh anything really; however, they did bring me a whole apple pie!  (“Let them eat pie!”)  So I was able to share some with Avdi.  Such luxury.

Remember that whole ordeal trying to qualify for Medicaid and SNAP, etc in MO, where they disqualified me for a dumb technicality?  At that time I had a feeling Medicaid might be in for further defunding or slashing down the road, considering the way things were going in MO and elsewhere, and then I’d be screwed.  Fast forward to now, and lo and behold, I dodged that bullet.  Of course Medicare and Social Security are being threatened as well, so none of us are safe or immune.  It just seems ironic somehow.

Call me Aquarian, but I also have a premonition that “frump and tusk” and friends (my own private epithet, as in, “Days with Frump and Tusk”) are already in the process of self-destructing and imploding.  The signs are right there, as it slowly dawns on obtuse, cowardly Repubs that this is actually happening.  Frump thinks he can rewrite the Constitution itself to allow him a third reign as dictator (!), and just sidestep or eliminate the other branches of government if they don’t comply.  He’s delusional and insane.  “Trump Gaza”, for real ?!  Mentally deranged.  Damage is already being done to Repub constituents, imagine the shock and dismay.  More fed agencies and depts. are refusing to just go along and knuckle under, not to mention former world allies.  The very definition of a US democracy and world leader is disintegrating.  Something has to give way.

Just thinking out loud…I try to avoid it mostly, but some of it is hard to contain!  I just want to say to Canada, Mexico, Europe, any sane civilizations left out there, please don’t judge us regular US people by our lunatics-in-chief and their braindead drones.  We’re as disgusted as you are, probably more.  In case of WWIII, could we just slip on over, try again to be allies on the right side of history?  We have minimal experience, but are quick learners, eh?

Here are my green babies, surviving their quarantine.

I spoke too soon.  Now most of the gkids have Covid.  Avdi thinks it’s better for me not to risk being there tomorrow.  I’ve taken two tests (old so possibly not accurate) a day apart which read negative, so still not conclusive.  So I guess I’ll continue to quarantine anyway, and hope everyone comes out of this alright.  Here’s a cheery photo I borrowed.

Not to let a little sick spell stop me, I thought I’d just check in on the real world.  I don’t appear to have covid, though at least one gkid does.  It’s such a routine, ubiquitous virus now, you don’t really think about it much until it makes its rounds.

Under our new tyrants, who are decimating all agencies and services that help keep us alive and well, it’s already starting to look medieval across the country.  But I know (or have to believe) that many more people will fight back, once it hits home how personal and dangerous this is for all of us.

It can’t have been a whole week since I was at The Avdi’s, though it feels like it, what with all the being sick and isolated.  I feel like such a truant.  I have to depend on others to keep my green babies alive!  Not to mention Avdi has been stuck at home with all the kids and few to no “grownups” or respite, due to the “holiday” extended by more weather closings.  (They’ll probably have to change “Presidents Day” to “Dictators Day”.)

The frigid sub-zero temps have conceded to warmer ones for now, no doubt just a teaser, but I can feel it calling unto me!  I’m going to attempt a brief breakout maybe tomorrow (to check on the seedlings and get some rare fresh air).  I’m quite good at seclusion, but I can see how it gets sad and surreal after a while.  Isolation can take many forms, such as being alone surrounded by self-centered juveniles, or relegated to a facility to die among strangers.  I feel so fortunate to have a retreat, but with access to family and friends (and plants and wildlife, in my case).  Humans need both for sanity.

I’m starting to ramble, so bye for now.