More strawberries

I was hoping that by newsletter day, the coup would have faded into background noise, the mucky sludge that underlies every attempt to live a normal day. But of course, it's not there yet. (My hoping rested largely on having lost track of the days of the week, past and future.) 

I have absolutely nothing useful or insightful to add to the discourse around the coup. "The coup"! What a phrase, as casual as but maybe (??) less cringe-inducing than "pandemmy." Remember when "rona" was the worst of it? And indeed, part of the discourse, the entirety of which I will continue to let flow by me like a river while I stand here in the mud, is about whether this is best thought of as a "coup" or "mob" or "insurrection." I don't know what's right, I just know that there's something perversely reassuring about the single brief, clipped syllable: Coup. Also known as "Wednesday." At least I think it was.

"I committed to this journal and I will not give up just cause there was a little government takeover"

I don't like making this casual. I don't want to, dare I say it, normalize the last three days or the last ten months or four years. I'm just looking for a way to get through it, y'know?

Because absurd as it is, we do have to keep working. I mean, bosses, give your employees leeway. We all cancelled and postponed our Wendesday meetings, right? But I still needed my CMS training, so I spent half an hour Thursday doing that. It felt productive in a nice way, honestly, to focus on the screenshare and instructions instead of news that I can do nothing about. I edited some essays. I kept researching my book. (Oh god when will I ever feel like I've sufficiently researched my book??) I really thought, a year ago, that it would be such an achievement to write this book while raising a baby. I thought that would be the big challenge.

Instead, he's the only grace. He's starting to put together two-word sentences, mainly "more strawberries" and "bye mama" when he decides to leave the room that we're in. He points at lamps and demands "purple" whether the lamps have color-changing smart bulbs or not. He sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" with the same spirited approximation of Miles Morales singing "Sunflower" at the start of Into the Spider-Verse. ("Gingkle ginkle eetle ahh.")

And still, of course, I don't appreciate it. I don't lose myself in his presence of focus, seeing the world through his eyes (which are often laid down at ground level, cheek-to-floor, to see through the window of a Matchbox truck). I am antsy. I am anxious. I'm impatient and bored and always wishing I were somewhere else, except for when I'm scrolling instagram on the couch after dinner, at which point I mostly forget where I am at all, that I have a body or a book to write or another day to get through in a pandemic/insurrection. 

"How could I have made today even better?" "Probably no coup I guess."

But I'm trying. I've started taking baths again, even though the tub in this still-sort-of-new-to-me house has little nonstick circles of gritty plastic splayed across it. Those do not feel good to sit on! But if you don't move too much, you can forget about them. I bought bubble bath and two kinds (flavors???) of epsom salts. I make sure to notice the weight of the baby's definitely-a-toddler-now body when I carry him to his crib from the rocking chair where we've read our books and sung a song (he's finally no longer demanding EIEIO! for a lullaby). I'll probably someday look back with nostalgia on the very annoying weeks where he demanded EIEIO! for every lullaby. I'll probably look back with nostalgia on some parts—some very few, very select parts—of this year, but that doesn't help me appreciate them any better right now.