I looked back through my Instagram

So the last time I went for a walk

Was March 23rd

I started my lockdown March 20th

And I have not gone for another walk since

And I didn't leave the house

Hardly at all

Until I started going to the studio

But then I'm still not mostly leaving the house except about three times a week

But looking back

It was like I was talking a lot

Multiple times a day just about every day

And I don't know

It seems like I'm not talking much now

Kind of used it all up or something

So today

Bleeding increased enough that I could wear a tampon for a little while

But it's still kind of not really that much

But I don't know it's kind of a mess

It's like it wants me to ask for it to be over

And in fact I'm thinking

I did enjoy not having periods

but I did not enjoy that thing that it did instead where I got dizzy and migraines and nauseated I did not enjoy that one bit

And this isn't that bad I guess

It's not great though I don't love it

And I would be worried since it's you know been a week now

But you know it's like it took a while to get going and when I was still having them when it had been a long time between it did seem to have some trouble getting it all out it would be more and I don't know if there's more but it's I don't know

I would be worried but one time my period corresponded with a beach vacation that we were taking and I managed to bleed for 10 days so that I couldn't go in the ocean at all

So I know for a fact

I wasn't pregnant I'm not having a miscarriage not any particular reason to think there's anything wrong with me it's just being capricious

Today

I was trying to research and really get a handle on search engine optimization for Etsy

And I've learned two things

I am not interested in search engine optimization

I find it super duper boring

And

I'm not sure that the people who think they understand what's going on with search engine optimization with Etsy really do because they seem to be saying several things that are not the same

And since I find it in mind numbingly boring

And I wasn't feeling really very good

I was having a lot of trouble focusing

So I don't know

I'm beginning to be a little concerned as well with how little I have to say

And I've had some very strange things

This is ad for a game that shows on my Instagram feed all the time That's got a bunch of dots that are two different colors and it shows people tracing the dots of one color You're supposed to trace it and put a line through all the dots without lifting your pencil and I can't say that I've paid a great deal of attention to it or actually tried to do it with my brain engaged but as I watch it drawing I'm like kind of generally yeah what kind of trick is this You can't really do that there's always going to be a loose one

It's like that thing at the cracker barrel I think I've gotten it down to two a lot of times but not every time and I've never gotten it down to one now I'm sure there's a way to do it but I just don't seem to be able to even though I feel like I've actually put some brain power into that

Well the other day I'm not sure which day exactly yesterday the day before yesterday no was my day after my birthday I think

I woke up I was looking at my phone it did that thing and I'm like oh come on you got to be joking me just do this

and suddenly it was very clear to me exactly how to do it so that you didn't miss any of the dots and didn't pick up your pencil and I'm not saying that I'm some kind of super genius for being able to do that but it kind of startled me

Because previously I've been like now you can't do it they're just lying

And then suddenly it was just so blatantly apparent that it offended me that they would think that I might not see that you just do a diagonal line You don't go straight and then make a tee square where you have to cross back over your line You just go up and then zig over and then go straight across but I had never seen that before I don't know why it doesn't seem that complicated it's just I was watching what the other person was doing and they couldn't do it and I wasn't really I don't know

so I'm like what is 54 the magic age you turn 54 you wake up the next day suddenly you have magical skills of problem solving

But then I was like how could I seriously not have seen that but I mean it's obvious that I was just thinking along the lines of what the person who was doing the thing was doing rather than thinking outside the box as it were

So now I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that suddenly I saw that like was I stupid before am I smarter now did I get some kind of download is it really just cuz I turned 54 I don't know it's disturbing me

And I've been having a bunch of dreams

I feel like I'm working out s*** in my head in my dreams but I don't remember any of them

But I don't remember them in a different way than I usually don't remember them like I feel like my dreams are playing out these films or scenarios or something and the people who are in them they're like walking around in the back of my head and I can kind of see them all shadowy I just don't really remember what they're doing

I find that slightly disconcerting

And I still have that feeling like that part of my brain is somewhere else like that I'm focused on something else somewhere else that's you know important that I need to be working on but I don't I guess need to know what I'm doing

And I find that kind of disconcerting as well

I don't feel much like the same person that I was before and I'm not sure exactly how to explain the difference

I'm about to start a new well I guess I usually do some kind of a detox in January so I guess that's not really that different but it's been I think about at least two weeks and maybe three weeks now that I'm not drinking sugar in my coffee

I've been doing I don't know how consistent it is I've been doing it for I think a couple of months but I haven't been doing it every single day I have been taking milk thistle and NAC at night before I go to bed and sometimes I also take it in the morning although not mostly and those are for liver detoxing I've started taking chlorella again I'm working my way up and I'm just doing that once a day

That's got all kind of good benefits for you it is detoxifying it binds to heavy metals

But it's also supposed to give you energy and various other things

I don't really have any sense of how you're actually doing

I think you're doing okay

But I feel like I'm not giving you support you need

and I'm kind of freaked out about this whole insurrection thing got to be honest

I didn't listen to the impeachment because I was trying to work

I feel like I haven't gotten a handle on this search engine optimization thing and I feel as though I'm supposed to fix this Etsy situation

And I realize that you know some of it is that we don't havewe don't have an appropriate niche we don't have an appropriate market we don't have an appropriate price point in a lot of ways but since she won't listen to me I don't necessarily have a way to fix that but I feel like the search engine optimization is important because there's a bajillion people on there and nobody sees you

I just want to feel like I've got a handle on something related to this whole thing

And sometimes I think that really she doesn't care about any of that that what she wants is to spend time with me and then sometimes I feel like that she thinks that I'm not working hard enough

So I have kind of torn ideas about

What's actually happening in a way

And I don't know I don't know

I feel like there's a way that I want to distance myself from the news so that I'm not just you know doom scrolling or whatever

But then I feel like you know I wish I had watched it because you know

How am I going to write my novel DEEP FAKE

If I don't know everything that's going on

And you know probably I'm not going to

So anyway back to the detox

not tomorrow cuz tomorrow I'm having spaghetti but the day after that

I'm starting on brown rice with seaweed and then also a vegetable for dinner

I've got broccoli and butternut squash and acorn squash cuz squash just sounds really really good to me and

I got some seaweed normally with brown rice I really like hijiki

But that's from Japan and I figure that's probably not safe

And Korea is probably not far enough away to really be safe either but

I found the seaweed that seems really good and they have this really kind of interesting tradition that I didn't know anything about but researching the Korean seaweed I came across it

In Korea for your birthday you have seaweed soup everybody does it's traditional so probably not everybody but you know

and the reason why you have seaweed soup on your birthday is because traditionally Korean women after they give birth their first meal that they have is seaweed soup because the seaweed has a lot of iron and minerals and it's good for building up your blood and they've just you know possibly lost blood and been through kind of an ordeal that they have to recuperate from right so they give them the seaweed soup which has beef and seaweed and I think it might have a little bit of garlic or something in it too but doesn't have a lot of ingredients it's pretty simple

And the soup actually kind of sounds good but anyway so after you give birth first meal you eat is the seaweed soup and so because Korea is based on Confucianism and confusionism is very much about honoring your elders and your ancestors and stuff like that because that was what your mother ate after she gave birth to you on your birthday then you eat seaweed soup for your birthday in kind of like commemoration of that which I thought was interesting

And very conceptually different than America

but it's not like they don't like the seaweed soup you know because it's a special thing that they eat on their birthday pretty much everybody loves seaweed soup for their birthday so much so that kids try to get their mothers to make it for them at times that aren't their birthday and then they are like hahaha whose birthday is it You know because that's like I guess the extent to which they can be cheeky but I mean seems like it's pretty simple to make and it's pretty healthy so I don't imagine that it's all that hard to get your mom to make the special soup

I think it's cool that most cultures have some kind of special soup

I don't think it's like startling that that that's the case because after all if you don't have a lot of food you can take what you've got and put it in water and boil it up and make soup so every culture's got something but I do think it's very interesting that soup is often medicinal

And at the same time

Is something that your mother makes for you as a loving thing

And I thought that the kind of juxtaposition of you know you eat the soup to honor your mother and she makes the soup because she loves you was kind of I don't know poetic or something

Anyway that sold me on that kind of seaweed

It's called something like sea mustard or something and it's a pretty good size bag it's almost 4 oz

I was going to get something from I was going to get sea lettuce actually from vitaminsea in Maine but but this Korean seaweed is like less than half the price of that for the same 4 oz bag and it sounded really good so I got the bag and I got some little baggy things because it's supposed to be 10 servings so I was going to dose it up into 10 bags that were of roughly equal size so that I would have some idea how much you weed was supposed to be a serving but I got the bags filled with the amount of seaweed that I think seems like I might not want more than in a dose of rice and I still I'm almost half the bag it's not half it's somewhere between a third and half but it's quite a bit enough that I cannot possibly put the rest of it into those 10 servings now I could make them a little bit bigger

But it's a pretty strong tasting seaweed and if I get too much then I will not probably enjoy the rice because I still want to be able to taste the rice too

To inside to just leave it the way I had it and after I have the first batch if it's you know such that I feel like I could have a lot more seaweed then I'll redistribute it but in the meantime

And I took a little piece of it and you know kind of rinsed it off got it a little bit wet so it wasn't quite so crunchy but I didn't soak it and make it soft and I put it in my mouth and chewed it up and it just tasted really good to me so I don't know I wonder if there is any disadvantage to just eating it kind of crunchy like chips

I have that combo and I could absolutely use that but I think that's a little better for broth it's not really very tasty to just eat a big old mouthful of it

I also have those dolls flakes that I want to add in so I don't want to get too much of the of the one kind

I may add in Irish moss at some point later but I'm not going to start with that if I get too much seaweed I won't be able to leave the bathroom and I'm not really interested in that kind of intense experience

Although the chlorella tends to have the opposite effect which I think is because of all the iron so perhaps the seaweed is high enough on iron that it will have that effect as well I don't know I want to kind of layer into it I don't want to like just you know douse my head with a bucket of cold water I want to like stick my toe in You know what I'm saying

I don't want to do fruit smoothies in the morning particularly I do have some of that morning Jing which is really good cuz it tastes like black sesame which is really tasty so I could see putting some of that and some nut milk or something and Irish moss I don't know that doesn't sound that good actually seems like it would probably be better with fruit but I don't want to start with a bunch of fruit it's too much sugar if my body is telling me that I don't want sugar then I think I don't want sugar

I don't know whether it's telling me that I don't want sugar because it's worried about diabetes or whether it's telling me I don't want sugar because it's worried about cancer or if it wants me to lose weight I don't know why my body doesn't want sugar but I'm going to assume that it's bad for me if I don't want  birthday cake

That was like a sign of the apocalypse

but I'm glad I didn't get a birthday cake because then I have to eat birthday cake until the whole birthday cake is gone Big chunks of birthday cake with that buttercream frosting

And I feel like I kind of want chocolate

Because chocolate is something that I crave when I'm having my period which I am and it's going on and on and on

And I had some chocolate malt balls

Then I bought so that I'd have some kind of snacking thing for the second wave of lockdown and I ate them all like the first day day and a half that I was having my period

And they were so sweet

they weren't even like bitter dark chocolate they were just like milk chocolate malt balls but they were like you know from the bulk bins so they were not they had a lot of malt and well I had a fair amount of chocolate too but it was a better quality chocolate than what you get from those old school ones but not dark chocolate it would have been better and I think what I thought when I bought them was that malt is healthy for you marginally right because ovaltine

Does anybody remember Ovaltine

Do they still have oval teen

Did you know that the millennials or maybe it's the zoomers or maybe it's both Don't believe that Helen Keller was real they think she's a fake news because they can't believe that you could be both blind and deaf and have interacted with the world the way she did

I can't remember where I read that now so that might not be true but it seemed like it was somebody or the source seemed like it was something to be believed but now I'm not sure and pretty much everything now I feel like well I mean I've always kind of felt like that you should you know kind of know where the information comes from before you decide whether or not you're going to take it as credible and you know if it's something important then you probably should find it from multiple credible sources but you know if it's something like that that's not really important that's just like you know chit chat

Anyway I should probably go to sleep and have stuff I need to do tomorrow as well although I do want to try to monitor the situation in the capital a little more closely tomorrow

I watched some news today but I mean after I stopped working I kind of gave up around 5:00 but I was having a hard time absorbing it I'm just having a hard time focusing today and it might just be the headache

I love you very much sweetheart

I hope you're doing really good and that you're getting good sleep and that you're not stressing extraordinarily about all this stuff that really is quite worthy of stressing over but

And I think I've already said this

But just on the off chance that I didn't say it clearly

When he was elected

I didn't want him to have been elected

But I didn't feel like it was appropriate to protest before he had done anything you know as president

he was a bad man and he done plenty of bad things although the access Hollywood thing I still think he was joking and I still think that we don't really want to live in a world where everything you say as a joke when you don't think you're speaking on the record becomes the most important issue at hand you know I mean

So I realize that we disagree on that although I don't think we really disagree on that I think that it's just that it was him and although he was joking he wasn't really joking and I get that but

My initial response was that all the whack job rightwing people protested and behaved really badly when Obama was elected and it didn't seem to me like that was appropriate in any way and it just felt too much like just the concomitant version of that to me

so I although I didn't expect him to behave well and I was reasonably certain he would give us things to be protesting about I didn't feel like starting off on the foot of protesting his election was something I felt comfortable with

And I realize that I'm you know alone in that

And then when that was that first neo-Nazi March in Virginia I didn't see it on TV and I wasn't really paying attention to the news yet at that point I was distracted by something that was going badly in my work life I think

And what you wanted from me in that moment I think was for me to class pans with you and say you know yes we have to fight the fascists or maybe you were just worried that I didn't see them as fascists

And I realize that you and a lot of other people were wanting to ban that sort of display and I wasn't willing to go along with that because I didn't feel comfortable constraining free speech because I feel like I've just my whole life watched as one after another after another of our treasured rights have been curtailed and I would rather that people say bad things then not be allowed to say things

And I realize that that was a disappointment to you

But

You were absolutely right

That he is absolutely

Well whether he's a fascist or not he is absolutely an authoritarian and he absolutely and I mean I knew this part then he was using racists and fascists disaffected working class whites who have this sense that nobody has ever stood up for them he swooped in and said you know I'm your man and made the hand gestures and whatever and whether he really believes in those things or not I don't know I suspect not I suspect he was just using them but he's not a good man

And I strangely am not certain whether I think I mean I still kind of think that he didn't ever really want to be president but I also think that it is entirely possible that his buddy Putin kind of wound him up on the whole authoritarian thing because you know whether he was an agent for Russia or not he was certainly a Russian asset and I mean what better if you were going to plan to destabilize America what could you possibly do that would have been more effective than what has happened

so I don't know that it was his intention from the beginning to become president for life it's possible that it was but I think it morphed into that after he realized that he could be elected I think it morphed into that and I don't know I really don't know whether he understands that I mean he's very narcissistic and I've seen just an amazing amount of not being able to see what's really true because you can't handle it that that can lead to so I think it is possible that he really thinks he couldn't have lost at least partially some of the time but I also think that he was obviously planning to steal it for a long time so maybe he totally knows that he didn't win and he's just you know I listen to that speech he gave to them again and I was struck again at the amazing way that he projects exactly what he's doing on to other people I mean he was standing there talking to them about the steel saving the steel and how you know the left wing did x y and z but the x y and z that he said they did was almost exactly what he did and it's just kind of mind-boggling to me

And it's weird I mean not bad but weird that he's not tweeting and that people aren't responding to his tweeting I mean I never read his Twitter feed I never followed him but there were always people quoting things that he said although I mean not that many of them just things they found incendiary but still I read quite a bit of his crap

And it's just weird to have it not be there

And I'm stressed

Even though the national guard is sleeping on the floor of the Capitol which just looked like piles of bodies to me it was kind of triggering until I realized that it wasn't like a whole bunch of dead bodies that it was just people sleeping all over the floor but I don't know

But did you really see this outcome

I don't mean like you know as we went along I meant at the very beginning when I wasn't stridently feeling like we had to worry about

Losing our democracy did you really see this outcome or did you just see patterns that were too traumatic and painful to ignore

Anyway

You were absolutely right

I saw lots of bad s*** happening but I didn't actually see did not have on my bingo card

Plague and insurrection

The near collapse of our democracy

Did not see all that stuff coming

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋