fending off the monsters

Anxiety is a tricky bug..one moment you are fine..making dinner and blueberry cake and watching that weird show about the tiger guy  (it has to be seen to believe these people are even real.) The next, you've watched too many hours of Final Destination movies and are lying in bed afraid to turn on your ceiling fan because you haven't used it in a while and maybe it's come loose in the interim and will decapitate you.  Or more likely, something less bloody but just as terrible will happen down the road, like your college will shutter and the library close, and you'll have no income and get evicted and how will you even feed all these cats let alone yourself.  What kind of skills do you even have for a post apocalyptic world where libraries and art are obsolete?

*deep breath*

Chaos mode comes on suddenly, takes a lot out of you.  Today, it was unusually warm inside, which maybe means it's warming outside.  When I finally slept, I slept forever, and  woke up to clouds and  howling wind, but my mind was a little clearer.    I placed a grocery order before bed...Whole Foods b/c they had tortillas whereas Fresh apparently did not.   I still have a bit of meat, but was running out of cheese and tortillas, staples of my comfort foods these days.  I also needed some more bagels and my tomatoes are getting smooshy and my coffee creamer dangerously low for as much coffee as I've been drinking.  When working away from home, I'm not the sort of person who usually goes through groceries enough to have to keep tabs on them, usually just order a bunch of the same stuff every couple weeks (initially Peapod, now Amazon) , so all this cooking throughout the work week at home is foreign to me. It's also doing weird things with my relationship with food, how often I find myself thinking about it.  It's not a good time to have a latent binge eating problem.  I feel the monster under the bed sometimes and she just wants to eat everything in sight.

This week has a lot of zoom-meeting action, that should keep me occupied. Also, some new books are proofed and set to start printing this week.  While the writing is still touch and go, I did do some edits and cuts on extinction event and sent out some pieces.  As well as readied the eleanor and the tiny machines series for a zine project I thought I'd work a bit on tomorrow for #zinemadness endeavors. While we feel stopped, so much goes on in the virtual world, teaching and meetings and workshops.  Most of the time, I actually feel okay about things, even excited about the possibilities of doing things in new ways and formats. But then the doubt creeps in and it's hard to banish completely. Projections for Chicago seem more positive, though still deadly, than other major cities, who were either further along in infection rates (NYC, Seattle)  or had huge public gatherings as things were unfolding (like my beloved NOLA and the Mardi Gras factor).  It scares me that there are still places in the US who aren't taking things seriously and staying home.  Places that starting out, don't have the health care resources they will eventually need.  But don't see people dying in real life and so it's just this foreign concept. Until it's not.