Three Sets of Ten

I'm getting to this very late, so I'm not sure how long it will be. There is of course no local, state or federal law requiring me to post this on the same night every week, but the good news is even if there were, there's a chance we don't really do laws in this country any more, so probably I'd still be fine to skip it or wait until Friday if I wanted.

Part of me is tired because I got dragged into shooting things online with my kids, one of whom no longer lives here. I could blame the isolation, but I've been an poor quarantinee, allowing my oldest to make occasional guest appearances here to do laundry and eat my food. The circle is still pretty small as he's a college student learning online and an intern working from home, so his own exposure is basically zero. Actually if anything, he's the one putting himself at more risk by coming here than the other way around. I can comfort myself knowing he's not going out and exposing anyone else, but meanwhile it's him versus all the cooties I pick up from standing in line at the deli counter at the Ralphs.* But if he wants to make time for his dad to terrorize strangers and say bad words over Discord on non-visit days, I'm not going to say no, even if it's a writing night.

The other part of me is tired because I've decided that I don't want to go buy all new shirts. The way this manifests is in a) switching to a diet that is no longer exclusive carbohydrates, and b) trying to remember how to exercise. The first part is pretty new, just a couple of days in. I had been buying and making a lot of snacks because two of the boys were here all day, but I started noticing that the snacks were disappearing even on the days they weren't here. Curious, right? Then one day last week I noticed a blue tinge to my lips. I worried about COVID-19 but then I realized I was wearing one of the medium-sized T-shirts I used to wear without a second thought, which was now attempting to digest me like an open-ended boa constrictor. Like a boa constrictor but, you know, decorated with a japey message that references a cultural thing that I think makes me seem cool but actually nobody gets except the ones who know exactly how old wearing it makes me. So I've been walking up the endlessly up-sloping hills around my Southern California neighborhood some days and others, trying to turn some of the sadism I experienced by going to a gym with an instructor/trainer into masochism by recreating some of that high-intensity working-out at home myself. It's going OK so far, but don't ask my calves, you'll get a different answer.

The third part of me is tired because I don't go to bed properly. I mean, I know how to get into bed and everything, it's not like I try to throw myself in and miss. It's a California king size and my bedroom isn't all that big. In this space my bed is less a target than the default option. No, I mean with the schedule two months in still feeling more improvised than sane, I'm lingering past the sensible hours for rest, seeking small shots of dopamine in lieu of real psychological comfort in the form of the company of my kids, in YouTube, in news-obsessing, in endless rounds of freecell... Jesus, I even read sometimes again now, that's how desperate it's sometimes gotten. But the whittling away of the sleep hours into six, five, sometimes four... it's probably not sustainable. When you know the only thing to look forward to in terms of structure is the knotty miasma of your workhome familyroomoffice, where the boundaries are all mush, it's no wonder the contours of the day have for two months been primarily sculpted out of lemon-flavored Oreo Thins and Little Debbie Zebra Cakes.

And for the record, this is the 2,243rd time I've started a post "sorry this will be short" and then exceeded five full-throated paragraphs. Why do I write on Thursdays? Because I'm a compulsive weirdo. Zero evidence to the contrary.

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*No, there's no apostrophe in Ralphs, you fucking hillbilly.