And so it goes

Last day of spring break. Boy, am I going to miss this break from school work! Next week is when shit gets real - the workbook packet B came home with on March 13th is done; now it’s all new material, and all on the computer. Thankfully he’s excited about this. He may not be when he sees how much more work he’s actually going to have to do, and how much longer it’s going to take. There’s going to be real accountability now - things that have to be turned in. And as for Theo - his work going forward is a hot mess. Last thing that happened is I reached out to his teacher for a phone conference a week ago. We can’t do much until I hear from her. Still no word from LAUSD about extending school closures, but I expect that announcement Monday. As much as I’m trying to prepare myself, I know that when it’s real it’s going to be a punch in the gut. Some people are saying they’re not going back in the fall, either.

This last sentence fills me with terror, because that means my event will be canceled too. Event cancellations have crept closer and closer to mine, and now finally the one on my same weekend has announced they’re canceling. This is the first time I’m starting to believe that I will have to cancel my event. There are horrible, dire conversations about the future of social dancing and events - that until there are vaccines that our world is over. And we all know vaccines aren’t going to be around for a year and a half. I don’t want to believe this - I can’t believe schools, businesses, restaurants, even Disneyland for fuck’s sake - will be closed for eighteen months. How, exactly, are people supposed to live? 

All of the government help has been downgraded, delayed, and made impossible to get. I’ve given up hoping I’ll get anything from the SBA. 

In one good piece of news, after a month of waiting I’ve finally got my refinance guy to submit an application for me. He has all my paperwork; he says it should take about a month and a half total for the refinance and new HELOC. However, there are no guarantees. The banks may freeze everything. My home equity may plummet. We may not be able to get an appraiser out here. My HELOC may not go through, or if it does, be too low, or even if I get some money available, they may not allow me to access it. So in other words I am not going to count on it. But right now it’s the only hope I have, since all other avenues have dried up and it looks like I really may be stuck with zero income for a year. Or more.

I’ve gone to some very dark places lately. Like, if a world of endless superbugs is what our future is, then there’s no point in living. Yes. I’ve had these thoughts. The future looks very, very dark to me. I am very hopeless. Nobody’s excited about our democratic candidate, and people can’t even vote in primaries because of this virus bullshit. I think realistically we’re looking at a future of no school, no restaurants, no public gatherings, no events, no concerts until at least 2022. Or a maddening push-pull of slowly releasing constrictions - opening restaurants to a few couples at a time, etc - only to clamp back down as cases rise again. I see this going on for years. Which will make it virtually impossible to do just about anything or have any kind of life at all. 

I can’t believe I was on track to have one of my best years yet and literally overnight I’m going to be plunged into abject poverty. I just can’t believe it. It fills me with rage. 

Our lives right now consist of the kids watching inane gamer videos twelve hours a day while I sit in another room and watch tv or nap. It’s not good and it’s not healthy but this is what we’re doing. Good news? The kids think it’s the best thing ever. They laugh and play and enjoy each other’s company and have a blast. I bought them a small trampoline and they bounce on it all day in front of the tv. They love all this. And you know what? I’m glad for them. It’s really best that only one person in this house is experiencing periodic suicidal ideation. And I would never, ever leave them, not in a million years. Would I ponder it from time to time, out of sheer grief and rage and hopelessness? Yes, yes I would. 

I’m still getting up and showering and brushing my teeth and cooking and doing laundry and making the bed and cleaning and making sure the kids get dressed and brush teeth and eat three meals a day and get to bed on time. I’m keeping up my diet and hit one of my goal weights today; five more pounds and I’ll be the lightest I’ve been in several years. I’m still paying my non-working cleaning lady, and will pay my hairdresser this weekend when my appointment should have been. This weekend we’ll do an Easter egg hunt like always, and the boys will get Easter baskets and I may even make little Easter cupcakes. I’ll do all the things, because as a mother you must. I’ll scratch and scrounge for every penny because I know what it is to be poor, I can do poor, I know all about it. I just really thought that miserable life was behind me. Says me and a few million other people right about now. I am so not alone in these feelings. I do take small comfort in that.