It's My Birthday!

     Well, it's a birthday post again! I'm 54 today, what fun. The exact circumstances of my birthday this year downright seethe with disconnect: I need to maintain a few separate mindsets at once to bridge this one. First of all, though, it's being a nice enough one after all. I splurged as I do a couple of times a year and got myself a book, "Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mendel, and read it over the first few hours of the day. It is exceptional! I very, very much enjoyed it and over the years, as I can, will collect the rest of her works.
     For the rest, though... Weird City.

     First of all, I need to express that I am both furious at and forgiving of a lot of performers. Yes, performers. This is important. MOST of them haven't been exposed to a large enough dose of truth about the pandemic, and way too much obfuscating Public Health messaging and media speculation, so they think Public Health is correct and it's totally fine to hold mass events. This is terrible. So OK, not technically their fault; they're busy, they're on the road, their livelihood depends on Public Health being right. They might not even have HEARD the facts, like that there is no lasting immunity from an infection, like that each infection causes further cumulative damage to every organ in the body because this is a VASCULAR disease, that even vaccinated people get and transmit covid and are vulnerable to long covid, that the chances of a vascular event like a stroke, heart attack, or DVT increase EIGHTFOLD after even a very mild infection. That it erodes the immune system's T and B cells. That it erodes mood regulation, decision-making, energy levels. That the newest variants evade all our immunity attempts and all the treatments we have so far scrabbled together. People who do know these things and keep warning about them are increasingly labeled as kooks. I know because I am one of them.

     So, OK, to the point: it infuriates me that through misinformation and mismanagement and modern insularity and pushback against information that cramps even one iota of one's style, mass events are still happening. Everywhere. But MOST of the performers aren't aware of what they're doing, how many they're harming downstream by gathering people into one place and pushing them together. I reserve a very special place of rage for those who HAVE been told, and dismiss it out of hand, oh no no no can't have that, sounds scary so it's obviously just alarmist, anyway I've got bills to pay, away with you and your silly epidemiology words! One in particular is someone I really respected... but I've asked repeatedly if he'd "be willing to set a good example" by just recommending masks at his events, just saying out loud how it's an important way to show solidarity and protect us all, just saying it would be "appreciated" if people would "consider" wearing a mask to the show... crickets. Can't even do THAT. Even that is too far. Never message your heroes, I guess.

     So I am enraged but also understanding that The Residents are performing tonight. And I am not going. My husband is, he's heading out the door right now... He got me tickets well over a year ago as a birthday present for this year, you see. Because the performance is on my birthday. Today. We were naïve.

     Now, under the circumstances, I don't think it should even be happening for anyone to go to. Nothing should, without a re-vamp of the way we regulate air quality at venues and without mask mandates, and I have to take care of all three of us and can't afford to get sick with anything myself, and our daughter has reduced lung capacity and a disabling neurological disorder such that even a cold could be devastating, so this is obviously not a universe in which I can go to a fucking concert (which should not even be happening). But... He is going. And I guess I have to be OK with that too even though it means extra work and pain for me. I really do.

     See, I love The Residents. I really wish I could go; this hurts. But he has loved them more than a decade longer than I have, he introduced me to their music, music is deeply integral to his ability to survive the world, and this is a concert of a lifetime. He's tested and tested over the past days anyway, as he also would have under "normal" circumstances, because of traveling recently to his best friend's funeral, so we know he will not be taking the virus to the concert with him. Personal responsibility on that end:  resolved.

     Self-responsibility... Well, he says this is absolutely worth dying for or experiencing a lifetime of bedridden aches and fatigue for or developing early dementia or a vascular problem for. So I can't say that isn't so. That... isn't my call, what someone else finds "worth it". I can't say no darling, please don't go, because if it is worth that to him, it's out of my jurisdiction, and fighting it would result in profound misery for us both. And as for the third responsibility, not bringing it home tonight after the concert, well, he might. So we're doing The Protocols. Same as we have been already since the funeral. Picture (yes I fixed that one corner):

     Danny sleeps in our bedroom. Outside it is a three-layered-wall of plastic and duct tape with a magnetic closure, connecting the bedroom to his office and separating both from the hall. In there is a HEPA purifier, always on. Danny masks when outside that room, and eats in there while I eat downstairs. I follow him around using the UVC bactericidal lamp after he showers and so on. Ruby's room has its own HEPA machine, and its own wall of plastic across the door, and they (Ruby uses they/them pronouns at the moment) also mask in the hallway up there.

     I am on the air mattress on the living room floor, HEPA's here too, and I also mask when in the hallways. I run up and down the stairs bringing them things and taking things away, meals and whatever, and the air mattress is starting to eat my spine. My old knee injury is playing up. My surgery site is playing up. My shoulder is playing up. So is my hip. Oh well, it is what it is. Only two more weeks before we're in the clear... unless he gets sick. If he does I will care for him from outside the room, as it must be... There's really only about a 30 - 40% chance of that though. Yay.

      I made this OK for myself gift-wise by giving the concert back to Danny as a Christmas present (but I am sad, don't get me wrong), and he got me books instead (if you haven't read Paolo Bacigalupi's "Ship Breaker" trilogy you are in for a treat). I am sad, I am angry, I am understanding, I am... a very patient person, full of conflict and ire and disconsolation. This is a turbulent time. But also for my dinner I have something waiting for me, something I can never afford and crave most of the time and said fuck it and got myself: a lovely rotisserie chicken.

     So yeah, a whole load of conflated angers and stressors and miseries and outright fury and for the coming two weeks, also heightened anxiety... and joy for my husband that he gets to do this terrible thing of which I so disapprove, because his happiness is integral to mine. And I've got my happiness in my book, my chicken, my anticipated gift from Ruby (see below), a day to do nothing in particular.

     SO messed up.

     In other news, in brief flash-by format, Ruby is in love and it's mutual and long distance and it delights my soul to hear them laughing and being happy again. After a saga of months, we were told yesterday that they've been approved for a disability pension; when they turned 18 the insurance stopped being free, and with the help of a crowdfund we have barely been able to make it through this time, as our only income is MY (part-time-based) disability pension, for the three of us (with an additional boost from my amazing Patreon patrons, which is good for like half the utilities bill, but that is supposed to go to art... and at least some of it will again soon). In a couple of weeks, the electric wheelchair the municipality is giving Ruby will be delivered and I can stop pushing the clunker of a loaner job around, sometimes three hours round trip on uneven, narrow, tilted sidewalks. This has also been eating my spine, hip, knee, shoulder, and etc. We will be able to enjoy our "walks" again. And further, there are positive signs that the city will also approve and provide a stairs lift. This is the most good news at one time in... in... ever. Hard to process.

     So anyway that's my birthday this year. It's 17:00 now and I've read the whole novel and am the richer for it, and I think Ruby's going to play video games with me later... And then I have my lovely rotisserie chicken but no idea what to watch while I eat it. A friend has sent me a wonderful looking book about Neanderthal society, but I can't read that and eat a chicken with my hands at the same time... And from Ruby, I am awaiting shipment of a piece of fan merch that makes me very happy: a magnetic plush of Flapjack, the cardinal Palisman from The Owl House, a character so true to what I like in characters that I painted him onto the Magic Jacket - before I'd even seen his beautiful full arc! Can't WAIT for that to arrive!

     And with that, I am off to... sit around comfortably but grumpily but optimistically but angrily but mostly tiredly, deciding what to do with myself.

     Have a grand weekend, folks!

Updating later to add that the chicken was delicious and I have enough left for lunch tomorrow, I introduced Ruby to Russian Doll and it met with every bit as much approval as I thought it would and we watched the first three, and I'm going to play Fall Guys now. Be well.