If they were me, if they were me. And I was you and I was you - If they were me and I was you, would you have liked a present too?

 I am thinking of canceling my birthday for the foreseeable birthdays. I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but hear me out.

I love birthdays. I always try and think of a thoughtful or weird present for the person whose birthday it is. For those, I do not get presents for I will send a text or call. And even the more outlier friends I will post a greeting via the social media platforms.

Last year my birthday was (obviously) during the pandemic and it was a big one. I was going to go big and couldn't...The hus and kid were great eating vegan food they didn't want to eat and my faraway friends zoomed with me. One faraway bestie sent me a wonderful package of presents (and a pinata) from all over friends, which I loved and another made a beautiful book.  Two close-by friends stopped by (socially distanced of course) and said hi with flowers and birthday socks. Considering the circumstances it was pretty nice.

So now we are to this year. Things are opening up some. No big party or faraway travels yet. Local travel is VERY popular and things are expensive. Because of the circumstances, I didn't want to plan anything too far out because of the pandemic. So when I started looking a couple of weeks ago everything I was interested in was booked. I got super sad and wanted to throw in the towel with the whole thing. After an after 10pm talk with the husband (which we try not to have, we go to bed early) it was decided that we would look together and find something that worked. Something was found and my birthday will be celebrated a couple hours away. 

Before Bookface, Tweeter, and Instapicture (and all the other social medias) one had to remember it was someone's birthday (I have a book with birthdays in it) and it was a phone call or a card. I kind of miss those days. It was more of an effort and let's face it a post on FB is not as thoughtful as sending a card. Not sure what that had to do with my point...wait...nope it is gone.

ANYWAY I remembered something that my friend did when we were roommates- it was roughly 4am and he came into my room and in his angry voice said, "Erica, Erica, Erica wake up." I was out of sorts (probably still a little drunk)  and turned on a light. He smiled and said "Happy Birthday!" and went back into his room. It meant a lot to me. I miss those types of birthday moments.

So why am I thinking of canceling? Because I love it so much maybe I should set it free. 

I dunno. I probably won't, I mean I did already book a place and I already found a cafe to get a good Oatmilk iced latte and vegan sugary treats just a few miles away from it.

Caressing the marble and stone. Love that was special for one. The waste in the fever and heat. How I wish you were here with me now.

The lockdown anniversary is coming up in a few weeks.

The damage that has been done so far makes me despondent. 

It seems like we are in the finger-pointing-vaccine envy-zoom fatigue-circle decisions phase, which leads to failure feelings.

Currently I am failing at being a parent, spouse and friend.

Anyone else?

Sometimes I just catch myself getting lost looking out at one of my many bird feeders. I almost feel normal and then...it passes. I cherish those few moments. 

I am not sure if listening to Joy Divison, Jeff Buckley, and Nick Drake are the best choices either. 

My hope that this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic. I want to hug friends and wear lipstick again.  

On a hopeful note we are gearing up for a soft opening of the library I work at for summer semester. I will be writing about it on my library blog- https://runkpocklibrarian.blogspot.com/

I haven't contributed to it much because y'know, pandemic. 

Meanwhile here is a puppet video I made with my kid. Ego Sensation did the music. I post them on Instagram too. @ericaannawesome

Stay safe everyone.

Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky...

 So I was sobbing uncontrollably in my car the other day thinking about loss. 

In the past couple of years, I have lost so many people I have loved, and my friends and family have lost people they have loved. 

The pandemic has given us the loss of life, jobs, housing, safety, and loss of personal relationships because of differing views.

Loss. Loss. Loss. Loss.

As a card-carrying optimistic I am usually the one to find the silver lining rimmed half-full glass of hope. Boyohboy, some days are harder than others. 

If you are sad to not be with people because of the pandemic or because they are gone from this earth or something else I found words of some poets and even some more religiously type stuff that really helped, but give it up for Bob Mould to help me out the most in my moment's of darkness.

Stay safe out there...

Bob Mould "Siberian Butterfly"

There's no place like home for the holidays

 Except that I have been home for 9 months.

I just assume everyone I come in contact with has COVID-19 and that I might have it. I don't mean for that sentence to sound alarming or anything, it just works for me when going about my day-to-day. 

I don't like wearing a mask. Who does? I will wear one however, until medical professionals tell me otherwise. 

I miss hanging out with my friends and family. I don't like working from home (though it is only part-time, I am on campus working part-time), not going to restaurants, going and seeing live music/performances, and traveling. We see people masked/outside/etc occasionally and even though a few weeks ago dining went indoors (with the surge now, California is almost all purple tier) we are still not eating out. I could write an entire blog post about live music. For now, I will just use this- ☹️ .

It is heartbreaking to see the numbers of people hospitalized and who are dying because, y'know pandemic. There is some hope with the vaccines that will be coming available and though there are worries about long term side effects and the actual effectiveness things are going in the right direction. 

There have been people calling out elected officials and such for breaking COVID restriction rules. I have to say I get it. Pandemic fatigue is a real thing. I would love to go for a run without a mask or hug my mom. So as long as they own it (unlike our current president and co) and promote best practices then let's move on. Also, I think people should be cooler about the comfort level of everyone.  

Some people don't feel comfortable shopping in person, I am fine with it.

Eating at a restaurant outdoors. Nope, not yet.

Taking public transportation. I will do it if I have to and have done it once since March 14th.

You get the picture. 

The surge is among us and I understand that there is a good chance that Gav will shelter us in place again. My worry is that people will be like "nah, bro" and there will be a lot of defiance to the order. I also get it. Being isolated like this for many fucking sucks. Yes, I don't ususally curse in my blog post, but this whole thing fucking sucks. 

In the past I have had a complicated relationship with Christmas and this holiday season marks the one year anniversary of the death of my platonic soulmate. Throw in a pandemic and see how that fruit cake tastes, I guess.

There will be efforts made to enjoy stuff that can still happen, cozy Christmas movie watching with my kid, driving around looking at lights, and tuna snowman (family tradition, not as weird as it sounds). 

Unlike Thanksgiving, or Friendsgiving which went from "the crew" plus ++ whoever has nowhere to go hanging out gorging ourselves with food and (many) drinks to our bubble calling it quits at 7:30pm. Christmas is not as big.

The yuletide for us has less of the wasailing vibe than the November holiday. Since my parents moved closer to us, we go to their place, spend the night, dinner, presents and come back to our place. There are no big X-mas get togethers to cancel this year and I hope that we can manuever just the 5 of us. 

And then there is New Year's. Never cared for the holiday, but it will be nice to have 2020 in the rearview mirror. 

The holidays can be lonely without a pandemic, so remember to reach out, check in with folks. The past couple of years I have curbed my holiday card distro, but this year I will be sending out more cards than I have in the past couple of years. At least I intend to...

I hope everyone remains safe, healthy and sane.

Move out, don't mess around. Move out, you bring me down. Move out, how you get about -don't make a sound just move out...

We have been in lockdown for months and months now. 

Personally, I have gone through all the stages of grief:

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression 

Acceptance

I know I am lucky, I have a job, secure housing, and enough money to eat.  

COVID still f#&$ing sucks tho.

My kid HATES online learning. My husband is stuck at work/home (I go to campus a couple of times a week). Halloween is essentially canceled. All the other holidays are right around the corner. I want to see people!

With all that being said, I am in the acceptance part of my COVID grief.

This is the new reality and will do the best I can to remain positive, creative, and hopeful.

Last month I gave up my practice space, currently, I am not playing with anyone and it would be weird to try and get something going with folks I don't know and the space has A LOT of folks in it- and y'know safety. So, I decided to do some art in the house. The husband and I have done some recordings (Garage Band folks, I even sang into the computer without a microphone) and we are going to do some podcasting. We did one run through episode, which I liked and we will put together another one in a few weeks. 

I really miss playing all together with people and even though the husband doesn't love playing music with me, I think he is having a good time.

My kid is an art machine. Currently, she is drawing a portrait of Dwight from The Office. She named my home project Frozen Bones. And she is making me a logo after she is done with the portrait.

Here is the link to the Bandcamp site. My goal is to add something every other week. 

https://frozenbones.bandcamp.com/

I have been listening to a lot of 80s (see the previous post), but the reason I recorded a cover of Mr. Blue by Yaz was that the day of my friend's service I had the song stuck in my head all day.  I did cry a little when I was singing it since I am feeling COVID grief and grief of losing one of my best friends.

Man oh man, 2020 has been quite a year.

I don't want to be a downer. I think part of the acceptance is that I have to acknowledge that I will feel down. 

This is my favorite time a year (October-January) and decorating the house, making art, talking to my pals (maybe even seeing them at a distance), and hugging my husband and kid will be my tools in not repeating the grief stages. 

Acceptance. 

Looking out a dirty old window...

Sirius radio. 

We got a new car this summer and it came with Sirius (and a whole bunch of other stuff- a lot of technology has happened in the last 10 years in cars) radio.

It has been really fun exploring the channels. Something I like about it- the genres. Something I don't like about it- the genres.

Much like regular ol' radio stations, Sirius has rock, alternative, hip-hop, classic R&B, and a bunch of talk radio from Christian to sports and probably a Christian sports channel. I don't care for either kind of channels, so I can only guess. There are channels that play only a particular artist (and adjacent artists sometimes), which is kind of cool. I got sucked into a Beastie Boys channel for a little bit and the Prince one was pretty good too. I guess some of them are not forever channels because I can't find the Prince one anymore and now I hear a lot of commercials trying to convince me to listen to the U2 channel (hard pass). 

I had difficulty finding channels that played classical music. They are with the jazz channels, why? Because there are often no vocals? 

They don't go together. My musicologicalness did not appreciate it. I mean I know meta-genres, genres, and sub-genres are annoying- example- Country/Bluegrass/Reactionary Bluegrass- if you really want to go down a rabbit hole look up music genres. I mean some bigs ones (like Hip Hop, Rock, Classical, Country, Dance, just to name a few) have so many sub-genres and sub-sub genres (dance music probably winning with the most sub-sub genres) that you come back around and just called it one of the big genres. Often the sub or sub-sub genres have so many elements of different genres and sub-genres that it can fit in different genres. I have written the word genre too many times.

There are two channels on the Sirius that have struck a nostalgic chord with me the Grateful Dead channel and First Wave. 

First Wave has a 6 hour show that Richard Blade hosts. I grew up listening to KROQ and watching Richard Blade on MV3, Video One, and Video Beat. MV3 being my favorite. 

Below is a clip when the Psychedelic Furs played on MV3. LOVE IT!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoJltgK_Nrg&list=PLCF0096E26CF1B1F3&index=6

Anywho- Listening to First Wave many of these songs/bands hold up. I have rediscovered my love of Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode. 

Kelley Stoltz did the entire "Crocodiles" record by Echo and the Bunnymen. It is amazing. I love every second of it. 

First Wave plays Kim Wilde, New Order, Duran Duran (sing blue silver!), Aztec Camera, Siouxsie (who I never stopped loving), Heaven 17 (who I was supposed to see in May), Smiths, Soft Cell, Tears for Fears, Devo, INXS, Yaz, Bauhaus, Falco and really I could write a whole gang of other bands. My kid is into it too- just this afternoon she was humming, "This Town," by the Go-Gos. 

The other channel is the Grateful Dead channel. For a spell, I went to Dead shows. I liked the music enough but enjoyed the parking lot culture, the road trips to and from the shows, and the um, uh, accompanying elixirs and remedies that were in abundance. I don't have many of their records because the live shows were always much more interesting. Why I get that nostalgic feeling listening to the channel is they play pieces of live shows. For those who don't know much about the Grateful Dead, there was a huge live show taping subculture within the subculture. On more than one occasion I have heard parts of a show I was actually in attendance. 

Sirius XM has been a distraction for me for sure. With all the gosh darn craziness of pandemic, Zoom calls, police violence against people of color, Handmaid's Tale lady being nominated to the Supreme Court, the election, wildfires, and missing giving people I care about hugs I am glad to have music to lose myself in.

My kid doesn't care for the Grateful Dead Channel she prefers First Wave or the 50s channel. She is into do-wop. 

All my dreams came true last night. All my hopes and fears. All my dreams came true once more. In tears, in tears...

No one is going to help us.

I am mad as hew-haw heck about it.
How did the US become the Florida of the world?

School starts Monday for the kid. No agreement reached with the union and the district. 

Annoyed with the district and the teacher's union. With their distrust of each other, everyone will end up losing. The teachers, district, parents, staff, and most importantly the students. 

I want everyone to feel safe and protected. But really? You start negotiations a week before school is supposed to start. We are all dealing with hardships of some kind during this pandemic and it would be great if all could be on the same team.  

So what to do? 

Outschool courses have an 80% approval rate with my kid. They are not too expensive, so some of those to supplement.

If there are in-person camps, she can go to one of them. The summer camps that were offered I felt safe sending her to and she loved them.

I have a couple of weeks until I go back to work full time, so we can go on adventures to look for birds, go roller skating, and beach trips. Once I go back though, she will have to be on her own with hopefully some kind of school to engage her.

As far as the school I work at- we will have in-person appointments available for students to use our scanner for course reserves, material pick up times, and a bunch of virtual services. Our district has been extremely silent over the past 3 months. Not sure what they are doing besides not communicating with their employees.

Creating this new reality has been difficult and is often met with a lot of resistance. Probably it is fueled by denial, I dunno. Maybe I am the one in denial thinking that society should use this as an opportunity to do good for all peoples. Invest in education for all, show through changes in policy that black lives matter, provide protections for people who live check to check, or who now have no checks, make all efforts in dealing with the pandemic free- testing, medications, hospital stays. Make not wearing a mask in public a hefty fine. 

People aren't going out to bars and spending their money at the movies, so why can't we as a society take a moment in between Zoom calls to be a positive contribution toward this new reality?

Total side note- I think me and the husband are going to do 10-minute mini-casts about music.