Slept somewhat better today. As a result, I am not currently blogging at you through a harsh and bitter fog of toxic brain fumes.
I am instead blogging at you through a nice soft, grey, soothing fog of healthy sleepiness. And that’s much much better.
Got two more antibiotic pills left to go. That means I will be taking the last one with tonight’s midnight snack.
Can’t say they did me any good. Any progress on the boil, which is what they were meant to be treating, came from my own expiation efforts.
Then again, probably didn’t do me any harm, either. I certainly didn’t notice any side effects and for all I know, it helped me fight something I didn’t even know was there.
One more day till cheque day. I can hardly wait. Tomorrow I will probably end up taking a cab to the bank to cash my cheque, put most of my spendable money ($600) on the card, then walk to Pricemart to do some shopping before taking another cab home.
Hope the weather is nice or at least tolerable.
Once I got the money on the card, I can do stuff like order groceries or delivery online, and maybe buy myself a game or two.
Tonight I will be hanging out with Le Gang, after a fashion. We are going to be in the same parking lot, in separate vehicles, six feet apart, vehicles parked in opposite directions so the driver’s sides line up, yelling to one another.
When Joe first brought up this idea Sunday afternoon, my initial reaction was that this was just way too sad a thing to do. And it never occurred to me that we’d actually do it.
Then, Sunday night, when Joe said they planned on actually doing it, I was shocked, and did not go. It was too sudden for me.
I don’t do sudden.
But tonight, well, I guess I am willing to give it a try. It still seems pretty tragic to me, but I do miss Felicity, and this is the era we live in.
These are the times future children will learn about in history class. By any standard, the era where the whole world shut down in order to keep a virus from spreading is pretty freaking unusual and noteworthy.
I suppose people of the future will be asking us what it was like.
I get the feeling we don’t even know yet. This crisis is still pretty new and we don’t know even half of the economic effects of these drastic measures yet.
\Let alone the psychological effects of people being far more idle and confined than usual. I mean sure, lots of jobs can be done from home, but most can’t, and that means there’s a lot of people with nothing to do until this thing is over.
It’s like the whole world has a high unemployment rate now, and take it from someone who grew up in a high unemployment region, it can get pretty ugly.
At least everyone is still going to get paid. Either by their jobs or the government.
The scary part is that nobody really knows what they are doing because nothing like this has ever happened before. It’s an unprecedented global crisis and I get the feeling that we will learn some harsh but valuable lessons on what not to do before it’s all done.
And who knows when it will be done? It could take years. And quite frankly, I don’t think the world can last that long like this.
We might have to go back to normal prematurely just to save ourselves from the total collapse of life as we know it.
Won’t that be fun.
More after the break.
My friend the hamster
My friend Lenny is a hamster who loves to run on his fancy hamster wheel. It’s so fancy, in fact, that it had an odometer on top.
“You do know that you’re not getting anywhere, right? ” I asked one day.
I was getting worried about how much he ran on his wheel, and this was the only way I could think of to express it.
“What? ” he said, little furry feet pumping away.
I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me over the squeaking of the wheel. So I repeated what I said but a little louder, and with emphasis.
“I said, ‘You do know that you’re not getting anywhere, right? ‘.
He stopped abruptly, but the wheel kept going for two or three rotations, causing him to get flipped over several times in a way which was comically humiliating.
He got himself sorted out, stepped out of the wheel, and looked up at me through the fringe of fur that so adorably hung over his eyes. “What do you mean, I’m not getting anywhere? I’ve come a very long way, in fact. ”
“But you’re still right here, in this cage. ” I said.
“No, ” he said impatiently. “I’m 1000 away from where I was before!”
“A thousand what?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Look. ” He came all the way out of his wheel then pointed to the odometer with his nose.
“See that? It says seven thousand. It used to say six thousand. Therefore, I am now one thousand closer to where I am going. ” he said.
“And where are you going?” I said. I was beginning to feel lost. This had all seemed to simple when I started out.
“It doesn’t matter!” he said again, this time with that particular hauteur that you only get when you try to make an impatient person think. “What matters is that I am closer than I have ever been before to getting there?”
“And what will you do when you get there?” I asked. I now had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach that I usually only get when I am about to do something I will regret.
Of course, that feeling doesn’t actually tell me what that thing is.
“Oh, I don’t know. ” he said offhandedly. “Probably get out and have a good look around. See the sights, take in the air, that sort of thing. ”
“And by get out, you mean open that little door there and leave?” I said while pointing to the door of his cage.
“Well of course. How else would I get out and see the sights? I will open that door and leave. It’s a perfectly normal thing to do. After all, ” he said ” it’s not like I’m a prisoner. ”
And that was it, that was the moment my stomach was warning me about. This was my chance to save myself a lot of guilt and shame.
Part of me really wanted to ask, “Have you ever opened that door before?” Or even, “have you even tried to open that door before?”.
But I didn’t. Because why would I? Why would I crush this little guy’s delusions just because I knew that’s what they were? What possible good could come of my showing my little friend the reality of his situation?
Maybe he needs his delusions. Maybe we all do. Maybe delusions are the only thing keeping a lot of people from falling into a deep dark pit of despair over the general rottenness and evil of the world.
Maybe delusions are the most important things some people have. Maybe they can survive damned near anything as long as they still have their delusions.
Maybe I should just shut up and let Lenny be Lenny.
So that’s what I did. I shoved all those questions and doubts out of my mind, and wished me good friend, whom I love dearly and would never ever hurt, the best of luck on his journey, and told him I was sure he would get where he was going soon.
And left it at that.
Because really…. why try to make Lenny think my way?
Better to just let Lenny be the best Lenny he can be. Something, I am sure, he knows a lot more about than I ever will.
That’s the day I learned it’s better to be wrong and happy than right and miserable.
And those are words I try to live by to this very day.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.