Month: May 2020

Mind & Body, Raw, Thoughts

Quarantine -Wait, It’s Over?

FanTC

Week #11

Wisconsin is starting to open up slowly, but civilians are rushing to their regular establishments. Masks are left flapping in the wind, hand sanitizer is disregard, and there is waaaaaaaay less than 6 feet between them. Should we continue to be angry at them for breaking social distancing? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Eventually, the fear must end. Concerned individuals are still welcome to remain in the safety of their homes, but for the rest of the healthy, immune-stable folks, Corona season is over. And truly, how different was this from flu/influenza season, pneumonia season, pox, measles, mumps, cold season? (I guess colds don’t kill, but to someone with a compromised immune system, a cold could be deadly.) You know, peanuts are deadly to some people. You don’t lock yourself up for that, do you? No. You take precautions and ask people not to eat or have peanuts in your direct vicinity.

All I’m saying right now is it’s time, people. It’s time to crawl out from our caves. It’s time to toss off the fear blanket. If you’re not ready, then stay in and take care of yourself. That’s a good lesson learned from all of this. It’s up to us to take care of ourselves – despite the criticism of others and their political agenda. Even if hogging toilet paper is your self-care, I guess… We shouldn’t judge. But I will laugh at you.

Stay safe, dear readers. Get some sunshine.

This has been,

FanTC

Raw

I Miss You

FanTC

We sat around the kitchen table for hours. It wasn’t that comfortable, not like the living room with the big stuffed furniture. But it was as if every one of us knew in the back of our mind moving to a different room would bring certain death upon the uproarious conversation at hand. We created SO MANY memories around that kitchen table. I remember nights laughing until I couldn’t breath. We created, inspired, solved the world’s problems, and developed deep and rich bonds.

Well, bonds that held until we grew into adulthood at least.

I think most children realize the tragedy of growing up. I knew I was definitely a Neverland child. There was this deathly, preeminent fear of growing up, even though I desperately wanted to be a different age than I was. Think about this for a moment with me – what an incredibly big worry for someone so very small.

I wonder if part of me knew deep down everything would change when we became adults. I think we realized the things which transpired in adulthood would surely tear is apart. But as kids, nobody cared enough to make it a big deal.

I was the bossy one. Over time, they grew weary of my constant opinion, and even though I’ve improved a lot, events have occurred which simply cannot bind together what was broken.

You know I speak the truth. Not all relationships can be reconciled.

I miss the late nights. I miss the creativity. I miss the laughter. Adults just don’t connect like that. We’re far too busy, much too tired, and simply too hurt to be that transparent again.

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin

Raw, Thoughts

Quarantine Week #10

FanTC

This is normal.

I don’t know why conspiracies bother trying to stay hidden. They inevitably crawl out of the woodwork and blow their cover. I’m friends with hard rightists and hard leftists, and it’s been whiplash watching them battle it out on social media. I’m not sure I prescribe to the political religion, but I do think there’s always something going on behind the curtain which certain persons don’t want the general public to see. This I believe all day long. But there are other people more gifted in this field of study than I, so we won’t get into it here.

I had a strange encounter with political religion the other day. I made a light-hearted comment about modern plumbing on a friend’s meme they reposted, and one of their acquaintances made due purpose to comment on my comment. Again, I was talking about plumbing. They made it about capitalism shaming. I’m not sure the point they were trying to achieve, because I was in no humor to humor them.

If we were in a cafe – I and my friend – and one of her friends happened to show up, overhear our conversation, and decided in that moment rather than introduce himself politely, talk of the weather, the coffee, any number of other pleasantries, he decides to immediately conversation shame someone he has never met before and turn a half-heard subject into his political platform, it would be like that. It would be exactly like that.

We comment on other people’s comments all the time, sometimes positively, but sometimes negatively. Social media has put all of us into one big room together and provided permission for us to talk to anyone we want without proper introduction or pleasantries.

I suppose it would be odd if everyone went about introducing themselves and providing small talk on Twitter…

“Good day! My name is Robert. How do you know Anne?”

“Hello! I’m Clara. Oh, Anne and I met at the library. We shared a love of dragon fiction!”

“Jolly good! I love dragons myself. The meme she just posted on which we are both commenting rather makes me envision Capitalism as the great evil dragon of our time!”

“Oh… You’re in the camp of depicting dragons as evil villains? That’s really disappointing. I don’t like you. Good bye.”

“Well, if you didn’t want to get hurt, you really should have private messaged Anne rather than comment on her meme!”

 

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin

Raw

Quarantine Week #8

FanTC

These are getting a little droll, aren’t they? Someday our kids might stumble upon these accounts, and it might help them to understand what we’re all going through.

 

After 8 weeks of the stay-at-home orders, the governors seem to be going back and forth about opening up shops and stores. The economy has taken quite a hit. There are so many Americans on unemployment, some may never regain their jobs, and small businesses are going bankrupt. My husband and I are so blessed and fortunate to be able to keep our jobs – for the time being.

That’s been 2020’s motto, hasn’t it? FOR THE TIME BEING. We are truly in the black hole of the unknown. We simply can’t predict anything for the future. I just received an alert of the airlines that they changed up our flight itinerary to Ireland (which totally screws with our work schedules,) and our only option is to cancel or…wait. Wait 10 days or 30 days prior to the flight to change anything. They’re so overwhelmed by flights cancelled, changed, rearranged, and passengers calling in to get resolution, they simply won’t accept a call/respond to an email until its your turn.

The flight isn’t for another 3 months. That’s how bad this unknown is. The government keeps extending this stay-at-home order by 30 days at a time. The frustrations are rising. The death toll is real.

I pulled some images from the John Hopkins University website. You can see the full reports here.

Covid-19

With so many different opinions firing off at once, it’s difficult to form your own opinion about all this. But the facts are something is happening. We can’t deny this. No one has experienced a pandemic like this before. We’re all just doing the best we can with the information available to us.

I’m sure reports will come out and documentaries made years from now explaining how our leaders could have performed better. But when those reports come out, their makers will have privilege to data we’re lacking right now. We are responding to each bit of information as we receive it and praying it was the right choice.

Stay safe, dear readers. Use your best judgement. And maybe send up a little prayer.

This has been,

Fanny T. Crispin