March 2020 archive

25
Mar
2020

My activism is Barret Wallace and Katniss Everdeen.

categories: personal; word count: 465 words

As of Monday, my county had six more confirmed, positive cases of coronavirus (COVID-19). And it seemed that almost as a direct result of that, if not a direct result of that, the decision was finally made to issue a shelter-in-place (“stay home”, as some people like to call them so as not to incite unnecessary panic) order until April 3rd. I am still not sure what the local school district is going to do in regard to whether or not they are going to attempt to fling the doors back open on the sixth, as April 3rd is a Friday, but it would not surprise me in the least if they at least made the attempt since this district has never been known for making good decisions. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, they are one of the last if not the last to “call” bad weather days… and sometimes they didn’t, even when every other district had, and even when the local two-year college (and four-year university) had. You can’t tell me that this district is not about the “dolla dolla bill” until they prove otherwise. And blocking dissidents, or people who don’t kiss their ass, on social media is not proving otherwise. Especially because the “manager” of the Facebook page admitted that they “were a nineties kid who attended the district (themselves)”, so yeah, I’m at least partway sure that you might know my name. Sing it loud and say it proud, I grew up to become the disabled Katniss Everdeen now, did I not?

Bub and Monster’s occupational therapist has cancelled in-person therapy sessions until further notice, so they may wind up seeing a new occupational therapist “to fill the gap”. Monster will begin seeing a new speech therapist at the start of the month assuming that things do not absolutely go sideways since the speech therapist that he has had since he was extremely young is moving to another clinic, and I did not want to uproot the kids from the clinic that they have gone to since they were extremely young unless I absolutely had to because there was no other choice in the matter… sniff. Their clinic is a really good place.

Soon, I want to get Bub back into speech therapy since he has been on break from that for a little while.

Catholics on Twitter are raging that all dioceses have shuttered church doors until further notice, holding no public masses. Must you insist on public masses in the midst of a global pandemic on the backs of your at-risk brethren for something not necessary to live? Are us at-risk folks really wor— wait, don’t finish that one.

I know that us at-risk individuals aren’t worth anything to you or else you’d peacefully quarantine at home…

24
Mar
2020

On choosing not to forgive people who have died.

categories: personal; word count: 584 words

I may very well be the only person who has actually written about something like this from… this point of view in all of Google (as I actually took the time to look it up there), or one of very few bloggers or writers. But now that I go back and attempt to Google it again, I do honestly think that I am the only person writing from this vantage point — making the decision not to forgive someone for something not only while they are still alive, but after they have died (although, in my case, it would be a bit ironic if not preposterous since I do not believe in the existence of anything supernatural, so to me, there is no way to forgive someone or something that, to me… does not exist, or no longer exists). I have mentioned this in varying ways on other social networking sites that I use, as have I asked for advice about it, and not only have I been met with a generally positive response regarding my decision, but I’ve also been given a lot of great advice that I have for the most part put to good use which I hope to be able to put to good use writing blog posts about this.

The person in question is my mother, and the incidents (or… cascade of them) began six months before her death from what would be metastatic lung cancer. Some might remark that, in a peculiar way, it’s “funny” — what I am actually refusing to forgive her for is her… treatment of one of my children, starting at that six-month mark and leading (I suppose, for lack of a better way to word it) all the way up to her actual death. Of those who seem to care about whether or not I have “forgiven” her, which I have not and never intend to do, it always seems to be about them, or the people who were close to her while she was still alive. Ironically, it has never been about me, or even my child. Realizing that there was nothing “wrong with me” for making the decision not to forgive her at any point (especially since she made it abundantly clear that she was unwilling to apologize, and was unrepentant for this treatment of said child), and that I would never again actually have positive feelings for her, brought me a lot of peace because that was when I realized that I could move on from her death in that way. I did not have to expect forgiveness, or the desire to forgive, to appear, and I did not have to expect positive feelings for her to return when they were clearly not going to.

A lot of people that say that you should “forgive people for (whatever they did)” before they die, or “forgive people for (whatever they did)” after their death are saying that for themselves or the other person, not for you (or whoever the incident, or incidents, might have happened to). And maybe I might actually be the first to say that it is okay, and that it is healthy, if this does not happen. You do not “have something wrong with you” if you can not, or do not, forgive this person, even if you never forgive this person for the rest of your life.

For me, it is a passive thing. The incidents are just things that I can not forgive, and so obviously do not.

23
Mar
2020

Several things mentioned in one post.

categories: personal, RPGs; word count: 398 words

As of Sunday evening, we hit double digits in terms of confirmed cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus) in my county, and confirmed community spread. Given the size of my county, this does not surprise me. To be completely honest, I want to see public schools shut down for the remainder of the school year in an attempt to contain this before it gets completely out of hand, but I do not have faith in this local school district, and my faith in this state wavers. But this school district is making it abundantly clear that they want to open doors back up as soon as possible, even if… like I’ve mentioned before, it is literally on the backs of the at-risk population. They are literally blocking people on social media that do not agree with them who are not willing to shower them in praise and it would be hilarious to mention if it were not depressing because of the whole “we are in the midst of a global pandemic and this district has a history of making poor decisions”.

I’ve gone to the mat over this and I will keep going to the mat over this. If anyone does not want to follow the CDC’s recommendations during a global pandemic, I will work to call them out on it… like GameStop, who had the nerve to attempt to call themselves “essential employees” and “an essential retailer” in a desperate bid to try and keep their doors open because they did not want to lose money. That went swimmingly well for them, because in at least two states they were forced to close their doors, and I anticipate it being more as time passes assuming that they do not take the hint and close their doors in the rest of them until this pandemic eases. Although I haven’t shopped in GameStop for awhile, for a number of reasons (one of which being the fact that I am actually friends with “GameStop girl”, and she is a positively wonderful human being), this absolutely takes the cake and I am going to make it a conscious point never to shop there again.

In gaming news: Bub and I have been playing the new Animal Crossing together and have gone to some friends’ islands! I am slowly but surely learning how to play this actual game for him, and it’s adorable, too!

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