The Fluffbucket Diaries

Mood.

Called in sick. Dodged an emergency room visit despite abdominal pain that reminded me of my birthday ER trip six years ago, when I ended up with emergency gallbladder surgery.

I’ve never liked ERs – my father died in one – and they’re especially scary right now.

This time, I took some Advil and went to bed, and managed to get some sleep. Residual pain will keep me offline from the office today.

Après moi, le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation.

Karl Marx

And in other news …

Yet in the middle of this deadly pandemic that shows no obvious signs of abating, the president made clear that the paramount concern for Trump is Trump — his self-image, his media coverage, his supplicants and his opponents, both real and imagined.

Ashley Parker, “The Me President: Trump uses pandemic briefing to focus on himself, Washington Post

First stab at naan was so laughable, I didn’t even try to mark the occasion with a photo. It’s like thick, doughy slabs of South Asian hardtack. Will try again when I can afford to blow another few cups of flour on an iffy culinary experiment.

Been thinking about John Prine a lot since reports surfaced that he had contracted COVID-19. I saw him a couple of times when he opened for Bonnie Raitt back in the early ’90s, and only recently realized that we’ve probably been driving past his childhood home on 1st Avenue in Maywood all these years.

I was always fond of his work, but I’ve listened a lot more to his songs the past few weeks, and understand more deeply how much we’ve lost. This Rolling Stone piece captures the down-to-earth sweetness that clearly defined his music.

Time for a vodka and ginger ale. And maybe an ice cream cone.

Eastertide lunch: ham and egg salad with Japanese mayo, hot sandwich peppers, and brown mustard on day-old homemade bread. I should have reheated the bread. And yes, I’m bored during this brief lunch break.

Sad to see the namesake shop featured in the documentary California Typewriter has shut down.

And in other news, BTS has a favorite florist.

Outside of YouTube and a printout of the Liturgy of the Word, this is as close as I got to Mass today.

I’ve run out of parchment paper and suddenly the world feels like it’s about to end. #CoronaBaking

(Crossing my fingers that tomorrow’s Target drive-in pickup order for two rolls of the stuff comes through.)

It’s probably no coincidence that as I pulled out of the driveway for a therapeutic drive alone, “Sanctuary” by the J. Geils Band was on the car radio.

A self-care epiphany from this New York Times piece:

”Finding places where you can have space for yourself to reflect and think and feel” is crucial in this moment, said Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Lakshmin pointed out that all of the “in between transition times” we used to have to ourselves — like during our commutes, and after we dropped off our kids at school — are gone. So it’s important to create those spaces for yourself in new ways, she said.

As soon as the husband gets back from his second bike ride this weekend, I’m jumping in my car and just driving. Alone. No Pokemon hunting with the kid, no errands. Maybe hit a drive-thru for a soda.

I miss just driving. Just being somewhere besides the house or my home office. By myself.

If I can get through a day where I don’t melt down in tears or rage or consider killing someone or the yappy Chihuahua next door, I would be very happy.

I hate this fucking pandemic.

The tween and the big dog (and Chris) hit the backyard for a little egg hunting. Except for two slugs who planted themselves on an egg in the day lilies, it was a pleasant and scare-free time. Happy Easter!

A pandemic has a tendency to get you thinking about the things that are really important. Like human connections, particularly in this lock-down-and-stay-home moment. And my own mental health.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all the friends I’ve ducked or ignored over the past few years. They’ve deserved way better from me, these friends. One of them — someone I finally reconnected with after pestering them with an email, text, and Facebook message — asked me, “Were you just sick of everybody?”

On one level, maybe I was. On another level, maybe I was just sick of me.

Life gets overwhelming. Even when faith keeps me going, I still want to hide from people most of the time. A long, stressful day of dealing with colleagues and internal clients at work — and there are a lot of those kind of days — leaves me spent and really wanting to be left alone. The demands of the most intense relationships (family) and the demands of those obligations that feel less important by comparison (church, the few people left I haven’t yet alienated) take whatever energy is left. And when I’m stretched thin, anxiety kicks in. And I want to hide, even (or especially) from the people I love and who mean the most to me.

Now, I realize I’m fortunate, that calling this a “struggle” (which I generally avoid) may be laughable, given that a lot of people out there have genuine struggles with health, job security (or job loss), and other issues brought about by lockdowns and such. And when I think about that, the thoughts spiral downward even more.

This is a weird variation of the compulsion to compare one’s life to others — one of the worst hazards of social media. My life’s not so bad, right? I’m paralyzed with anxiety and exhaustion and physical pain, yeah. But hey, I still have a job that I can do from home, I have a family that loves me, and I’m otherwise in reasonably good health. And that all means I’ve no right to blow off loyal friends and turn inward, right? (Okay, blowing off loyal friends is wrong.)

There are articles and blog posts that address this sort of thing. Psychology Today, for instance:

You have the right to feel whatever you are feeling, regardless of what others have been through relative to your experience. Feeling your feelings doesn’t make you ungrateful for what you have; it makes you human.

Compounding these feelings is that we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. This can be reinforced by society: For example, people tell us about someone they feel has exeprienced more suffering than we have. A friend may mean well when they say, “At least you aren’t in ____________’s situation,” but that invalidates your experience. …

You have a right to feel what you feel, regardless of what others say or how you view your challenges in light of others' suffering. Everyone has challenges; just different ones. Your challenges are a challenge to you, and that makes them valid. Period.

Chad at the No Stigmas blog makes this point: “Nobody gets to decide who deserves who gets help. Nobody gets to decide who might have it worse.” He goes on (as does the Psychology Today article) to urge the reader to find someone to help you: “If the first person you go to doesn’t help, then go to another, and another until somebody helps you. Somebody will help you. They can’t fix you, but they can help you.” (Emphasis mine.)

Tim Challies, a blogger speaking from a faith perspective, speaks to me most clearly on this topic:

Our God is not some distant ruler exercising indifferent authority over the universe but a present helper in our times of trouble — our every time of trouble. He does not demand that we justify our pains before feeling them or rationalize our tears before shedding them. He is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). He does not insist our trouble rise to a certain degree or extent before he becomes that refuge and strength. He is at all times and in every situation “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3).

In your illness, in your pain, in your suffering, don’t immediately compare yourself to others, and don’t feel the need to justify your sorrow before God. Don’t wallow silently and stoically. Turn first to your Father, cry out to him, and receive his comfort.

(I could dive into the whole Catholic theology of redemptive suffering here, especially as it’s smack in the middle of the Triduum as I write this, but that’s for another time. It’s not that I disagree with the idea of redemptive suffering, and many times I take great comfort in it. But right now, advice to “offer it up” — however well-meaning it is — really doesn’t click with me. It will eventually. It usually does.)

So, yeah, I guess I was sick of everybody. And sick of myself.

Time to stop withdrawing and stop trying to suck it up. Time to reconnect, even if it might be risky or painful. Time to find some help.

Okay, we thought these were hideous plague eggs — until we caught the last instruction to rinse them off after 5 minutes. Frannie calls them our “galaxy eggs.” Happy Easter.

I imagine people are tired of bread-related posts everywhere. (Including and especially mine.) But as much as I hate this pandemic thing, I have to say I’m incredibly grateful for the new home baking thing that’s come of it. We may be done with supermarket “artisan” bread after all this.

Made myself a couple of Spam and egg sandwiches with leftover canned biscuits this morning. Grilled the biscuits first. #PantryEating

“The pandemic itself feels like one long Holy Saturday, where we live in the liminal space between death and the life we hope for on the other side.”

My first attempt at a crumpet using discarded starter tasted vaguely like a dense whole wheat English muffin made with beer. C says it was like something you’d eat at a bar slathered with cheese and green onions. I’ll keep trying.

The young epilepsy patient who helped inspire the use of CBD for health treatments has died. Her death has been linked to the coronavirus.

As someone who has used CBD with mixed results (somewhat good for anxiety, not so much for pain relief), I’m saddened by this.

Aw. RIP, Mad magazine caricaturist Mort Drucker.

Also apropos of Tom Lehrer’s birthday today – as well as this time in history – here’s “We Will All Go Together When We Go.”

(Yes, it’s referring to the threat of nuclear war, which feels rather quaint these days. But it reflects my mood today.)

It’s Tom Lehrer’s 92nd birthday today. Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal tweeted this clip of Lehrer’s oddly appropriate ditty, “I Got It From Agnes.”

During my time at my first newspaper job, in Fresno, I held a “Twin Peaks” party.

It’s been 30 years since “Twin Peaks” debuted. I’m going to go weep for my youth now.