Just whining.

[Jenny in Florida]

Sigh.

After a few months of feeling consistently flat but not outright depressed, I've felt myself slipping over the last few weeks. Our daughter is here spending about a month with us to escape the weather and the confines of a tiny, shared-with-too-many-roommates apartment in Brooklyn, and because I don't want to be "the one" responsible for ruining her break or bringing down everyone else in the house, I'm putting what energy I can muster into holding myself together and putting on a good face. 

But it's getting harder every day. 

I don't sleep well or a lot most of the time, anyway, but this week--even counting the day I took a late-afternoon nap and the one weekend night I slept for seven hours--I am averaging about 5.5 hours a night. 

I don't seem to actually be able to cry, haven't been able to in a few months, but I think about crying a lot.

I'm kind of counting down the days until our daughter goes home, so I can let down my emotional guard. (I love her, but we have a somewhat fraught relationship.)

And today, when I'm feeling slightly better than usual because for the first time in weeks my knees don't hurt constantly and the weather is nice and the work week is almost over, everyone in the house is either feeling under the weather or in a bad mood. 

It's all just so draining.

[mommyoffive]

Sending hugs and chocolate.  I am so drained by everyone too.  We have been home since March.  I need alone time, but I get 0.  I don't have any friends left from our before Covid life.   My mental health has never been this bad.  The nicer weather is helpful, but not really.  Then the neighbors will be out and bothersome.  I know dh will take the kids on bike rides, but then I will be left with the dog and the needy puppy.  I am thinking of planning an Airbnb vacation.  Maybe that will help?  

Can you escape?  Walk, backyard, locked room?  Can you go away for the day or weekend? 

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by mommyoffive

[Ditto]

@Jenny in Florida  and @mommyoffive  I am thinking of both of you.   I wish I had some wise words of wisdom, but sadly I don't.   Like you both I feel like I am hanging on by my fingernails.   Just know you guys aren't alone,  while I know that doesn't help you, it is sometimes nice to know.

[historically accurate]

((((Jenny))))

((((mommyoffive))))

I'm sorry that you both are struggling.  

Edit: And hugs to Ditto too. 

It's been a rough year, and I think with the spring around the corner it's sinking in here that it might still be quite a while before things change. 

Edited February 26, 2021 by historically accurate

[mommyoffive]

Just now, Ditto said:

@Jenny in Florida  and @mommyoffive  I am thinking of both of you.   I wish I had some wise words of wisdom, but sadly I don't.   Like you both I feel like I am hanging on by my fingernails.   Just know you guys aren't alone,  while I know that doesn't help you, it is sometimes nice to know.

Honestly this helps.  Everyone around me has lived a normal life since March.  No joke.  People on my street were just gathering and playing like normal during the lockdown.  Time has moved on for everyone.  I feel like we have stood still since last year.   Doing the right thing.  Or worried to not do things.  I feel so much regret on the effect this has on my kids.  It has been really hard for me.  

It helps to know that I am not alone.   

[regentrude]

Hugs. I feel you. The platitudes of the self help books don't help,  nor does toxic positivity. I won't offer those. Sometimes it all just sucks.

And I totally get putting on brave face for the kid.

[Jenny in Florida]

22 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

Can you escape?  Walk, backyard, locked room?  Can you go away for the day or weekend? 

I mean, I'm sure there might be some way I "could," but in terms of real-life, practical, without-making-a-huge-to-do-and-upsetting-everyone . . . no, not really.

I walk at least twice a day, but for a variety of reasons, that's not much of an escape. 

Our backyard isn't really a comfortable place to be.

With our daughter here camping out in the room that is usually my office/craft room/exercise space and our bonus young adult still occupying the other bedroom, I have no place to retreat. 

I wouldn't feel good about going away for a day and leaving my daughter behind. (Prior to this visit, we hadn't seen each other in person in 15 months, and I don't know when will be the next time we will have the chance.) And, since both my husband and my daughter struggle big-time with anxiety even when we aren't living the pandemic life, their heads would explode at the very thought of my "going away for the weekend." (Even having our daughter travel here to be with us required days of research and discussion and strategizing for isolating and testing on both ends of the journey.)

At least two of us are planning to get out of the house for a bit tomorrow. However--and let me stipulate that I do feel like a horrible mother for saying such a thing--any outing that encourages my daughter and me to communicate at any depth carries a 50/50 chance of disaster. So . . . At least it will be different?

[Melissa Louise]

Well, you're not alone. I find my family draining. Even though I love them and want to see them. They want me to be Good Happy Needs Meeting Mommy, and I just want to be me. Not good, definitely not always happy, and sick to death of not meeting my own needs.

I also don't cry, because it's so much effort. 

So, at least you know it's not just you. 

[Kassia]

I'm another one who is struggling and trying to keep it all together.  Big hugs to all of you who are going through the same.  @Jenny in Florida I'm glad you posted and wish I could do/say something to help.  

 

[KungFuPanda]

I'm coming up on my one year anniversary in lockdown.  My head is not in the best of places.  I keenly feel the frustration in the original post.  

[JustEm]

hugs!! you aren't alone. I find myself staying up later and later each night just to have time to myself. But then during the day I'm so exhausted that the other people in the house drain me even more. It is a vicious cycle

[Kassia]

4 hours ago, hjffkj said:

hugs!! you aren't alone. I find myself staying up later and later each night just to have time to myself. But then during the day I'm so exhausted that the other people in the house drain me even more. It is a vicious cycle

I'm at the opposite end but the same results - get up hours earlier than everyone else and am exhausted during the day.  

[Hannah]

14 hours ago, regentrude said:

Hugs. I feel you. The platitudes of the self help books don't help,  nor does toxic positivity. I won't offer those. Sometimes it all just sucks.

I did not know the term 'toxic positivity' and had to google.  Something to be mindful of and avoid definitely.  Yes, it sometimes does just suck.

You are not alone Jenny.  

[MrsMommy]

16 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Honestly this helps.  Everyone around me has lived a normal life since March.  No joke.  People on my street were just gathering and playing like normal during the lockdown.  Time has moved on for everyone.  I feel like we have stood still since last year.   Doing the right thing.  Or worried to not do things.  I feel so much regret on the effect this has on my kids.  It has been really hard for me.  

It helps to know that I am not alone.   

I really feel everything in this thread, but especially this. The time moving on for everyone else. I just don't even know how to relate to people who act as if nothing ever changed, and I'm so tired of feeling like I've been left behind.

[mommyoffive]

10 hours ago, hjffkj said:

hugs!! you aren't alone. I find myself staying up later and later each night just to have time to myself. But then during the day I'm so exhausted that the other people in the house drain me even more. It is a vicious cycle

I do that too.  And yes it is such a bad cycle. 

[mommyoffive]

2 hours ago, MrsMommy said:

I really feel everything in this thread, but especially this. The time moving on for everyone else. I just don't even know how to relate to people who act as if nothing ever changed, and I'm so tired of feeling like I've been left behind.

Sending you some hugs.  Ugh I go back in forth between jealousy and judging them, and then also regretting what we have done.  I turn on the tv last night and watch State basketball games going on.  My neighbors kids are all going to state swim meets this weekend.  The high school already did theirs.  A neighbor's dd went to the gymnastics meets all winter.  It is just so hard to watch and deal with.  My kids have lost all their friends.  They kept in touch until Fall and then people were sick of meeting on zoom and stuff.  I have lost mine too.  I worry about that for them.  Honestly I try not to think of everything so much because it just makes me so sad. I wonder if this was the right thing to do.  

[mommyoffive]

18 hours ago, Jenny in Florida said:

I mean, I'm sure there might be some way I "could," but in terms of real-life, practical, without-making-a-huge-to-do-and-upsetting-everyone . . . no, not really.

I walk at least twice a day, but for a variety of reasons, that's not much of an escape. 

Our backyard isn't really a comfortable place to be.

With our daughter here camping out in the room that is usually my office/craft room/exercise space and our bonus young adult still occupying the other bedroom, I have no place to retreat. 

I wouldn't feel good about going away for a day and leaving my daughter behind. (Prior to this visit, we hadn't seen each other in person in 15 months, and I don't know when will be the next time we will have the chance.) And, since both my husband and my daughter struggle big-time with anxiety even when we aren't living the pandemic life, their heads would explode at the very thought of my "going away for the weekend." (Even having our daughter travel here to be with us required days of research and discussion and strategizing for isolating and testing on both ends of the journey.)

At least two of us are planning to get out of the house for a bit tomorrow. However--and let me stipulate that I do feel like a horrible mother for saying such a thing--any outing that encourages my daughter and me to communicate at any depth carries a 50/50 chance of disaster. So . . . At least it will be different?

Gotcha.  We had been dealing with this too the whole time, that I didn't have a place to retreat to.  Dh is working from home.  All the kids are doing school from home with live classes so they need rooms to work in.  We already didn't have bedrooms for all of us so there was sharing going on.  Add in 2 big dogs that seem to be everywhere.  The puppy that wants to spend all of her time with me.   The dance studio that we built for the kids so they could continue took up the basement.  Our backyard isn't relaxing for me to hang out in because of neighbors.  We have a dumb open floor plan on our main floor.  And 4 of my kids want to be hugging, sitting on me. snuggling, sitting on my lap...   I am an introvert and was dying inside because of all of it.  

There isn't much I can do to solve these issues in our house.  I did just   move bedrooms and furniture around, but it really doesn't fix anything I just like to change things up.  

I hope today goes well.  Maybe they can get out more and give you some alone time?  Errands for them to run?  Grocery shopping?  Can they go on walks when you stay home and then you go on your own?  Maybe the nicer weather will make them want to get out there.  Just lots of hugs.  This is the hardest thing I have been through.

[Pam in CT]

When I saw COVID looming and appreciated that it was going to be BIG, I started a journal to witness and chronicle it.

The first entry was March 13, 2020. I'm on the sixth volume.

And the realization a few weeks ago that we're coming on a full year of this... has hit me hard.  I try to put it in the context of interminable civil wars (Liberia: 13 years; Guatemala: 30) that were immeasurably harder than the challenges my own family has endured; I try to put it in the context of the Israelites' 40 years of distress and hardship and uncertainty about how their story would end. It doesn't help much.

I can see, from my own words in my own volumes, that I did understand, a year ago, that this would be a very long time of very great hardship and loss. And I can appreciate my own good fortune, that there's been less loss and hardship among my own family than in many others -- it doesn't help much; and also that with several vaccines deployed or about to be deployed there is more light at the end of a shorter tunnel than I hoped for a year ago -- that doesn't help much either.

It's just a long damn time. And it's revealed aspects of my society I hadn't fully grappled with before. And it's HARD, in a macro, existential, exterior landscape kind of way.

 

And keeping up the game face for the sake of the others in the house: that is HARD too, in a micro, psychological, interior landscape kind of way.

Like living inside a pressure cooker.

[mommyoffive]

1 minute ago, Pam in CT said:

When I saw COVID looming and appreciated that it was going to be BIG, I started a journal to witness and chronicle it.

The first entry was March 13, 2020. I'm on the sixth volume.

And the realization a few weeks ago that we're coming on a full year of this... has hit me hard.  I try to put it in the context of interminable civil wars (Liberia: 13 years; Guatemala: 30) that were immeasurably harder than the challenges my own family has endured; I try to put it in the context of the Israelites' 40 years of distress and hardship and uncertainty about how their story would end. It doesn't help much.

I can see, from my own words in my own volumes, that I did understand, a year ago, that this would be a very long time of very great hardship and loss. And I can appreciate my own good fortune, that there's been less loss and hardship among my own family than in many others -- it doesn't help much; and also that with several vaccines deployed or about to be deployed there is more light at the end of a shorter tunnel than I hoped for a year ago -- that doesn't help much either.

It's just a long damn time. And it's revealed aspects of my society I hadn't fully grappled with before. And it's HARD, in a macro, existential, exterior landscape kind of way.

 

And keeping up the game face for the sake of the others in the house: that is HARD too, in a micro, psychological, interior landscape kind of way.

Like living inside a pressure cooker.

So neat that you did that.  

[Pam in CT]

re keeping a journal to chronicle COVID

4 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

So neat that you did that.  

I've nearly given it up several times because it is, in real time, so breathtakingly BORING. Because I do so little, and go nowhere, and meet nobody, and there is so little new input into my even my interior landscape. 

There are many days when all I write are the two sections I imposed at the outset as mandatory (a bullet list of at least three things for which I am grateful, and another list of what we had for dinner) and 2 or 3 very rudimentary sentences of what I "did," which is mostly just a list of zooms, walks, books and Netflix with a rare outside meeting with 1-2 other people.

But I'm glad to have it. Even now, already, before I know how the story "ends," I look back and can see, dimly, the shape of something.

Unlike others in my family, I have no artistic skills. But I'm starting to feel a vague desire to do some sort of visual chronicling as well.

[ktgrok]

2 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

Gotcha.  We had been dealing with this too the whole time, that I didn't have a place to retreat to.  Dh is working from home.  All the kids are doing school from home with live classes so they need rooms to work in.  We already didn't have bedrooms for all of us so there was sharing going on.  Add in 2 big dogs that seem to be everywhere. 

Oh, so much this. 

And when my mom said she was ready to see us (after her second shot) she suggested coming to me would be a good idea. Um, no. NO MORE PEOPLE IN THIS HOUSE!!!!!!  There are too many of us here already! 

So thanks, but no thanks. i'd rather pack up and go to your house, lol. 

[regentrude]

On 2/27/2021 at 10:59 AM, Pam in CT said:

When I saw COVID looming and appreciated that it was going to be BIG, I started a journal to witness and chronicle it.

Wow. I have given up journaling entirely. I used to fill volumes and volumes. Think morning pages on steroids, some days I'd write ten letter size pages. I know journaling is supposed to be therapeutic, but I found that all the introspection it invites is detrimental to my mental health.
I am a poet, but I have been barely writing since the beginning of the plague. What's there to say? I feel like all my work from before has become obsolete and nobody could possibly care about anything but the pandemic. OTOH, I don't want to write pandemic poems.  

[Pam in CT]

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

Wow. I have given up journaling entirely. I used to fill volumes and volumes. Think morning pages on steroids, some days I'd write ten letter size pages. I know journaling is supposed to be therapeutic, but I found that all the introspection it invites is detrimental to my mental health.
I am a poet, but I have been barely writing since the beginning of the plague. What's there to say? I feel like all my work from before has become obsolete and nobody could possibly care about anything but the pandemic. OTOH, I don't want to write pandemic poems.  

I am so sorry.

 

I'm not doing it as therapy (though I've begun "seeing" a virtual therapist since COVID began); and I'm not doing it because anyone but me could possibly care; and there is, indeed, little to say most days. Not much happens.

(Other than my society and nation and the world that I once thought of as my own transforming in not-that-slow degrees)

I'm not doing it because it is interesting.

I'm doing it as witness. To chronicle.  Because I have this inchoate sense that although I don't know what's on the other side, this plague will divide life -- mine, my kids', my nation's -- into the Before part and the After part. And I feel this compulsion to keep a record of it.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Pam in CT
typo

[regentrude]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:21 AM, Pam in CT said:

There are many days when all I write are the two sections I imposed at the outset as mandatory (a bullet list of at least three things for which I am grateful,

How does that work for you? I know a gratitude journal is one of the standard recommendations to feel happier. Am I the only one for whom this does not work?
I find that listing the things I am grateful for does not make me feel happier - on the contrary, it makes me feel worse because it makes me feel guilty for not being happy when I have so many blessings.

Edited March 1, 2021 by regentrude

[Melissa Louise]

I am allergic to journals, incl gratitude journals, but I do use an app called Presently to record gratitude, because I need help reorienting myself in that direction. It rewards you after 10, 25, 50 and 100 entries. It's aesthetically pleasing. I can't say it makes me feel better, but like vegies, I think it's good for me. Some entries just read 'grateful for bef' lol

[Melissa Louise]

Bed!

[Garga]

So, which came first: the depression or the lack of sleep? The less sleep I get, the more depressed I get. And the more depressed I get, the more likely I am to sit up late at night alone on the couch, brooding for hours, which leads to less sleep.

If you were losing sleep first and you don’t have any sleeping issues, then can you get more sleep? It might help lighten the depression.

Or were you depressed first and that’s what’s disrupting the sleep?

Either way, I’m sorry. I’ve lost years of my life in being depressed all day long and hiding it from everyone (hence the late night alone to brood without an audience.) Not fun at all.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Garga

[Jenny in Florida]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

How does that work for you? I know a gratitude journal is one of the standard recommendations to feel happier. Am I the only one for whom this does not work?
I find that listing the things I am grateful for does not make me feel happier - on the contrary, it makes me feel worse because it makes me feel guilty for not being happy when I have so many blessings.

It doesn't work for me, either.

I have a similar reaction to being told to cheer up or count my blessings because someone else has things worse. Usually, it just makes me angry.

Alternatively, it makes me feel even greater despair, wondering what is wrong with me that having things so good doesn't make me feel better.

I am not proud of it, but that's my honest feeling.

[Jenny in Florida]

43 minutes ago, Garga said:

So, which came first: the depression or the lack of sleep? The less sleep I get, the more depressed I get. And the more depressed I get, the more likely I am to sit up late at night alone on the couch, brooding for hours, which leads to less sleep.

If you were losing sleep first and you don’t have any sleeping issues, then can you get more sleep? It might help lighten the depression.

Or were you depressed first and that’s what’s disrupting the sleep?

Either way, I’m sorry. I’ve lost years of my life in being depressed all day long and hiding it from everyone (hence the late night alone to brood without an audience.) Not fun at all.

Good question. I have never been a person who needs a lot of sleep, and I have dealt with occasional bouts of more serious insomnia ever since my teens.

This time, I feel like both the depression and the sleep stuff crept up on me before I really noticed.

One of my doctors suggested melatonin, which I tried for a while. Then the psychiatrist I saw tried me on a couple of different meds, but none of those things seemed to make much difference. At the same time, they left me feeling groggy and blah for half the next day.

[Garga]

6 minutes ago, Jenny in Florida said:

Good question. I have never been a person who needs a lot of sleep, and I have dealt with occasional bouts of more serious insomnia ever since my teens.

This time, I feel like both the depression and the sleep stuff crept up on me before I really noticed.

One of my doctors suggested melatonin, which I tried for a while. Then the psychiatrist I saw tried me on a couple of different meds, but none of those things seemed to make much difference. At the same time, they left me feeling groggy and blah for half the next day.

I’m sorry to hear that about the lack of sleep and insomnia. It can be such a cycle that depression can kick off insomnia (or vice versa) and then they feed on each other. 

Depression is not fun at all. 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Garga

[Melissa Louise]

https://presently-app.firebaseapp.com/

For anyone interested in the gratitude app. It's really pretty. 

Re sleep, there are sleep oriented CBT programs out there with some evidence base. 

Just 'cos sleep was mentioned.

 

[Pam in CT]

re gratitude journaling when you don't feel so grateful

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

How does that work for you? I know a gratitude journal is one of the standard recommendations to feel happier. Am I the only one for whom this does not work?
I find that listing the things I am grateful for does not make me feel happier - on the contrary, it makes me feel worse because it makes me feel guilty for not being happy when I have so many blessings.

 

22 minutes ago, Jenny in Florida said:

It doesn't work for me, either.

I have a similar reaction to being told to cheer up or count my blessings because someone else has things worse. Usually, it just makes me angry.

Alternatively, it makes me feel even greater despair, wondering what is wrong with me that having things so good doesn't make me feel better.

I am not proud of it, but that's my honest feeling.

Yeah, it's never been my thing either.

It felt reaaaaaalllllllly strained and artificial when I started.

And there are lots of days when I'm sort of... scraping the bottom of the barrel... to come up with 3 things. That's my "rule," at least three things. On particularly grim days it could look like"

Quote

• coffee
• my dog
• Greek yogurt

and, well, all that is true enough, though rather thin gruel; and we get back to breathtakingly boring.

Sometimes it's time-bound and specific to the circumstances of the plague, back to the witnessing and chronicling:

Quote

• Greek yogurt is back in stock!
• my son's university is permitting students back on campus
• my mother got a vaccine appointment for next Thursday

Sometimes they chronicle the household ups and downs in the time of COVID:

Quote

• Son permitted me to cut his hair!
• Eldest got her acceptance into rabbinical school!
• Youngest completed a COVID still life of shelf-stable foods and packing materials

And, sometimes but only when I'm in a relatively better-side-of-COVID mood, the entries are longer and more thoughtful than mere bullet points.

Neither the writing, nor the insights, are "interesting" -- any more than the list of what we had for dinner. Both were just an effort to put some structure to the chronicling, a way to catch the opening and closing to the days in a way that's consistent over time.

I do it first thing in the morning, with coffee, and my only rule for it is at least three.  If all I can summon is coffee + dog + yogurt that "counts."  It's a practice, and like any other practice, the effects don't kick in immediately. A year in, despite my wobbly start, I can see why it's a standard recommendation; I can feel a slight shift in how I'm framing my days. 

 

(The decision to chronicle is itself a frame-shift, I suppose. It's a kind of declaration that I am not merely an unwilling participant in this drama -- though I am. I am also, simultaneously, an anthropologist/journalist/historian observing it and recording as I go... which provides a bit of distance? A way to ricochet back and forth between an inside view and a View from Nowhere. 

Or at least... a view from somewhere in between.)

[Melissa Louise]

It is interesting to look back. Right now my gratitude is 'coffee dude asked me how my day was'. But then I look back at a random day last month and it says 'really happy with a tough poem' or 'fun laughing with sis' and it reminds me that even within the struggle there are ups and downs, and I can probably anticipate something better than the coffee dude at some point. 

 

[regentrude]

28 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

It is interesting to look back. Right now my gratitude is 'coffee dude asked me how my day was'. But then I look back at a random day last month and it says 'really happy with a tough poem' or 'fun laughing with sis' and it reminds me that even within the struggle there are ups and downs, and I can probably anticipate something better than the coffee dude at some point. 

Glad that works for you. I can have a really good day and the next day feel like life is pointless, and remembering the awesome day does not help at all- I'll be convinced that I can never feel like that again, and nothing will ever be good. 

I hate, hate, hate being a middle aged woman - perimenopause  plus pandemic is the devil's (the stress about family situation back home isn't helping either. ) 

I burned all my journals. Part of me regretted it almost immediately, part of me knows that rereading wouldn't be healthy. 

ETA: I would love an interaction with a coffee dude. I would love to talk to pretty much anybody. Heck, I was glad that the cops rang the doorbell a few weeks ago.

Edited March 1, 2021 by regentrude

[Melissa Louise]

16 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Glad that works for you. I can have a really good day and the next day feel like life is pointless, and remembering the awesome day does not help at all- I'll be convinced that I can never feel like that again, and nothing will ever be good. 

I hate, hate, hate being a middle aged woman - perimenopause  plus pandemic is the devil's (the stress about family situation back home isn't helping either. ) 

I burned all my journals. Part of me regretted it almost immediately, part of me knows that rereading wouldn't be healthy. 

ETA: I would love an interaction with a coffee dude. I would love to talk to pretty much anybody. Heck, I was glad that the cops rang the doorbell a few weeks ago.

It is really, super tough for you guys, and has been for a year. I'm so sorry. 

I got home from.24 hours in ED and have spent the last 4 days binge eating chocolate and feeling that I might just give up because there is no point, so definitely, not coming at this from a position of knowing what works. Just stumbling through. 

I hope one day soon you too will be able to wring out hope from coffee dude. It will be a good day. 

I don't think you should have to keep a journal, or a gratitude journal. I was more just sharing my thoughts since it came up, and also I thought some others might be interested in the app. 

Hugs to you, regentrude. 

 

[Harriet Vane]

Jenny, you're awesome. This is such a tough road, and I really respect how focused you are on connecting with your daughter.

[mommyoffive]

11 hours ago, regentrude said:

Glad that works for you. I can have a really good day and the next day feel like life is pointless, and remembering the awesome day does not help at all- I'll be convinced that I can never feel like that again, and nothing will ever be good. 

I hate, hate, hate being a middle aged woman - perimenopause  plus pandemic is the devil's (the stress about family situation back home isn't helping either. ) 

I burned all my journals. Part of me regretted it almost immediately, part of me knows that rereading wouldn't be healthy. 

ETA: I would love an interaction with a coffee dude. I would love to talk to pretty much anybody. Heck, I was glad that the cops rang the doorbell a few weeks ago.

Yep, this is me too.  It is too much to deal with at once.  

[KungFuPanda]

On 2/27/2021 at 1:43 PM, ktgrok said:

Oh, so much this. 

And when my mom said she was ready to see us (after her second shot) she suggested coming to me would be a good idea. Um, no. NO MORE PEOPLE IN THIS HOUSE!!!!!!  There are too many of us here already! 

So thanks, but no thanks. i'd rather pack up and go to your house, lol. 

Just last night I plotted an imaginary road trip for me and my mother.  It's a 15 day excursion from Baltimore to Colorado City with stops to visit 3 different family members going out and Dodge City and the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum on the way back.  It's ridiculous.  It's too much driving for too long and it would be cheaper and easier to just fly out to my brother in CO.  I swear I would gladly pack up and go in the morning if it were a real possibility.  I MISS my mom.