Ok, first off, do you have a song on repeat in your head right now? Which is super unfortunate because you can’t seem to escape your own mind while trapped in your house? Maybe the Doors, The End (good choice) or something else apt for the times? Yeah. Me too. And it’s not a song I like. In fact, I hated it when it came out. Cypress Hill: When the Shit Goes Down. I guess my brain searched around in the files looking for a theme song to play. No theme from Rocky here, though. The chorus? “When the shit goes down, you betta get readyyyy,” while a dude in the background yells “when the shit goes down!” (as if you didn’t just hear the singer, like he’s a deaf Grandpa reiterating from the back room over a newspaper) And I can see them dancing in baggy pants in my head as well, throwing their arms down and looking tough. So that’s where I’m at, listening to Cypress Hill on repeat. In my mind. It was funny for the first few weeks.
Do you find yourself wondering, why didn’t I buy that before everything closed up? I had made a date to go with a friend, when she was back from her Spring Break trip (Ha) to go to a store I found close by that seemed like it could solve some of my underwire related problems. Specifically, the main problem that I have refused to admit none of my bras fit. They haven’t for a long, long time. There is spillage and squeeze-age and the inability to accept the onslaught of gravity and a few new pounds. The store has a horrible name like Giant Cans or Rack Attack or some such thing, which is why I needed a friend. You can’t go into a store like that unprepared, people are going to touch you and measure you and you will be horrified by their new numbers so someone might (will) have to drink with you afterward even though it’s daytime. If you’re a man, you can’t understand–it’s a hellish long process to try to find bras that fit. So much so that I have rarely done it. For these reasons I usually say “close enough” and buy some cheap crap to get me through until when I decide to bite the bullet. I should have gone bra shopping. Even though I mostly only wear pajamas now, I still need a holster. And to think! There are bras out there that don’t hurt or pinch or pull or create neck strain. God, I’m stupid.
Did you try, and ultimately give up, on the idea that you would fix all the little niggling problems in your house that you’d put off for a rainy day, now thinking, here’s my rainy day or possibly three months, I should fix that shit? I did. I was super productive for about four days. I cleaned the garage. I organized the laundry room. I fixed up my tool bench and jewellery stuff and got everything back to working order. I got halfway through cleaning the grout on the bathroom floor before I realized “you are trying to avoid the scariness of the pandemic and are not used to not being in a frenetic pace of driving and schedules and meals and and and… something in my brain went PPfftt! And I’ve basically been staring at a wall ever since. I am overcome with fogginess. I try to write and can’t remember what words mean. I stopped sleeping because I’m not running myself into the ground every minute. That or I’m sleeping non-stop. I’m so amazingly unproductive I astound myself with my ability to get nothing done, not even move a lint ball from under the couch. Now I just watch it grow, and say, huh, will you look at that. I felt better about it when my husband came up from the basement (where he now slaves away like a troll) and showed me an app that rates you on drawing a perfect circle in one go. He tells the kids that’s what he does at work all day and we laugh. But it’s actually what I want to do all day.
To make yourself feel better, are you looking at silly memes and watching funny videos? Yeah, me too. You have to, to keep yourself sane. If that fails there’s always animal videos or my new favourite Facebook group, “Things with faces” which is people taking pictures of trees and pancakes and car grills that are anthropomorphic. For some reason I find this incredibly funny and I’m not even high! It’s much better than the feeds that tell you how everyone is doing the pandemic better than you are. They’re not trying to, but you can’t help feeling that way– because you somehow know your shortcomings are a failure of persona. If only you too, could stop staring at the lint. If only you too could create a wonderful pandemic school schedule that involved someone other than you cooking meals. If only. These people are baking scones, they’re playing games that are good for their children’s cognition. They’re learning to macramé with old clothing. You are staring at the lint or locking yourself in the garage or making circles on your phone. You have given up on all parenting skills and pile on the couch to watch “kitchen nightmares”. You let Gordon Ramsey teach your children new swear words in flowing and colorful arrangements that might alter their personalities forever. But you do it, because you want to swear loudly and at someone and want to get red in the face, but you can’t, this is nobody in your house’s fault, is it? And when I say you I mean me. I’m doing these things.
Are you also finding out what your algorithms are? What demographic our computer overlords have slotted you into? Yes, me too. Surprising, isn’t it. The feeds that tumble into my phone mostly involve albino animals or two headed sharks or exercise equipment that requires little or no effort on my part. Like muscle tensing ab panels that you can put on your gut–just sit on the couch and let them do the work for you! And lookee here- a picture of Christiano Ronaldo using them on his perfect body! And wow, you can get them for other parts of your body too- slap on these suckers and you can lay around twitching and clenching and suddenly have the body of your dreams. They know me well, I guess, sounds pretty good. Except the algorithms could not have predicted my intense dislike for Mr. Ronaldo, there mere mention of his name has me clenching and twitching, which means I will never, ever, use his gut clenching machine.
Basically… this is a hard time. And weird. And scary. And those things= stress. Stress makes me rash-y and panicky. My skin is like a bumpy and blotchy roadmap of anxiety. Because I’m pale I can’t hide it, but since no one is seeing me anyway it’s all good. I’ll just hang here like a bloated toadie and try to think about the small things in life. Which most people are doing, right? We’re looking at beauty. At the small things. But because of the lint that has infiltrated my brain I notice other small things, things I would never notice otherwise. Like, Head and Shoulders says right there on the label, #1 dandruff shampoo in Canada. And I think, well, huh! What about North America? They sell this stuff in the U.S. Does it say that on the U.S. bottle? Wouldn’t it be a better marketing strategy to combine the two? And who did the survey anyway? Most people won’t even admit they need it, much less take a survey, so is that all fake? How can I find out? And then I remember that I don’t care and that was a waste of a few minutes in the shower where I could have been looking out the window contemplating the small things, like squirrels.
Good luck everybody, stay safe, be well. And I can’t help but think the toilet paper hoarders all listen to Cypress Hill. Somehow that image makes me feel better, as they drive away in their huge trucks filled with ass-wipe, that they too, might be plagued by this song.