Rabbit Hole

Last month I signed up for Satsuma Street's Mystery Cross Stitch stitch-along, mainly because it was Alice in Wonderland-themed, and I love that story. The first week was stitching all the black and white borders, the 2nd week we added the flower corners. Last week, my first week of Corona Isolation, I stitched Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole - a perfect metaphor for how I feel right now.

Ironically, my vertigo has also decided to act up a bit in the last few days as well. My vertigo usually rears its head in the spring for some reason, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was somehow a stress response to everything going on right now. I've had a couple people tell me they've experienced chest pains or panic attacks. Am I just going to become literally dizzy with stress? I've  been able to ward off having a full-on attack so far by doing my PT inner ear exercise routine and being REALLY careful when getting out of bed, so fingers crossed it'll go away. Because NOW IS NOT THE TIME for this shit.

You know what is surprisingly helpful? Arnold Schwarzenegger sternly telling us to stay home while sharing carrots with his rescue donkey's Lulu and Whiskey. "That's all ve do now. Ve don't go out, ve don't go anyvhere, ve just stay home and eat vith Vhiskey and Lulu!"

Stay at home as much as possible. Listen to the experts, ignore the morons (foreheads). We will get through this together. pic.twitter.com/FRg41QehuB

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 16, 2020

Also helpful? Steve Martin playing a nice song to us on his banjo out in the woods somewhere. It made me cry AND want to play the banjo, both very surprising. It also made all those celebrities singing "Imagine" look like a bunch of idiots.

Banjo balm. pic.twitter.com/eQ6jUkHSHm

— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) March 21, 2020

Not helpful? Celebrities continuing to plug whatever products they're contracted to endorse. Nobody wants to buy your stupid expensive whisky right now (and as someone who buys stupid expensive whiskies, that's saying something) or your amazing skincare line. Quit with the selling, it's not a good look.

In case you can't tell, I'm spending an enormous amount of time online scrolling. For some reason, my attention span is struggling with settling down to read or even watch TV.  I'm planning on exercising a bit more self-discipline this coming week by curtailing my screen time and maybe going out for a walk and eating a vegetable now and then. Steve Martin strumming his banjo can only take me so far, I get that.

Still Here

Whelp...the last couple weeks have been a wild ride, haven't they? I work in healthcare education, and after the initial exhausting frenzy of cancelling meetings and events and emotional conversations with colleagues about planning for an unknown future, now I'm home working in isolation for the foreseeable future. I'm in introvert, so this is pretty much paradise for me, but I'm quickly discovering there's a big difference between choosing to be alone, and being forced to be alone. The latter isn't nearly as satisfying.

We were told to halt all non-essential work so that resources can be freed up for those in direct patient care, and it's a bit frightening how once you quit working on non-essential tasks how little remains. My friend and I joked with each other yesterday about this, but it's not a great feeling to discover how very non-essential most of what we do is. Please don't tell my boss, I don't think she's realized this yet. Laugh. Gulp.

In sewing news, there's not much to share really. I did get my sewing corner set-up, and resurrected the design wall. My applique blocks were completed weeks ago, so now it's time to get them sewn onto the next border. I've cut out the pieces for the next part, a piano key border with sawtooth edges, but beyond that I'm just not terribly motivated to sit down and sew right now.

I keep seeing all kinds of inspirational posts about how we can use this time of forced seclusion to be creative and productive and finish projects and clean closets and write that amazing novel or paint a masterpiece or come up with the next big invention. That's feels like a lot of pressure to me! These days I'm all about reading smutty novels (now is not the time for Moby Dick people!), watching trashy TV and laughing hysterically at twitter threads titled "Tell me your most embarrassing sex stories" (there are over 7k responses and it's golden). 

I'm resisting the idea that I have to be productive, that there's a right or a wrong way to use my time. Some of us will create masterpieces, other will bury themselves in a bag of doritos, and it's all OK. Right now, I'm at the Doritos stage of dealing with Corona, but who knows - a masterpiece might also be around the corner.