June 18th, 2020

Pandemic Diary: June 1 to June 12

The previous diary somehow covered only half of June 1, so here is the rest of it…oops…

Day 81 (2): A chunk of my job is assigning work. Even in situations where I’m not “in charge,” I still often have to tell people what needs to come next–it’s just part of working in an assembly-line sort of structure. Every now and again, someone will simply not do part of what I’ve asked and/or do some other random thing instead. Sometimes it is because they are confused or sloppy or ran out of time, and sometimes it is because I’ve made an error, not given them some piece of information they needed to do the task or explained it wrong, and they were too scared to ask me about it (people being scared of me is rare, but it does happen). Over the years, I’ve learned I shouldn’t assume anything…but I’ve never learned how to ask, “So, why did you do it wrong?” gracefully. Thoughts?

(3) I’m going to be putting my remaining seedlings out as a giveaway later this week, probably on Thursday (taking a page from the clever and generous Jess Taylor). I still have many many tomatoes, both Italian and cherry, and a few arugula. Of course you’re welcome to just come grab some when I do that, but if you had a particular interest in anything, I’m willing to come meet you somewhere before Thursday if that’s easier for you and I can walk there carrying seedlings–I’d just put them down on the ground and walk away so no contact. A few people mentioned interest or were possibly humouring me, I don’t know–no worries if the latter, but if you did want some, please speak now! They are enormous and friendly, they definitely want to come live with you and make delicious salads! (Oh my god, pandemic loneliness!)

Day 82: Day 82: In honour of #BlackOutTuesday I will not be posting my usual nonsense. It has been hard to watch the events of the past few days in the US and here as well. I don’t have anything insightful to say, but I’m trying to pay attention, read and watch as much as I can, not look away from the things that are burning and broken, and to think about ways to do better, myself.

Day 83: I have been struggling to understand some of the US news stories so I called my mother to ask her the difference between the National Guard and the Army–there was such horror when Trump threatened to deploy the Army to put down the anti-racist rebellion in US cities, but the NG has already been called in in many places (23 was the last number I heard). Aren’t they the military? My mom explained it to me and I filled in the gaps with google, per below, and then I added a couple more definitions also below in case they can help anyone. I realize a lot of folks know this stuff already–feel free to ignore–but also some don’t and don’t have my mom’s number. Also please correct me if I’m off on something (likely) or add anything that seems useful if you care to!

National Guard: NG is technically part of the US military but it is state-based–people serve in the states where they are from and governors have power over the Guard (so does the president). Also, NG can maintain civilian jobs and a large part of their commitment is not active duty but reserve time. So possibly they are seen as less menacing than the actual army, but they go through basic training and many (not all) carry weapons. If the National Guard is sent in against against protesters, don’t let the rhetoric fool you–it is definitely trained soldiers against people with strong beliefs holding placards.

Tear Gas: is obviously a gas contained in a little bomb that gets thrown or shot into crowds. The gas irritates the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. It makes it hard to see, which everyone knows, but also hard to breathe if you breathe enough of it, and if you have a pre-existing condition like asthma you could have serious trouble. If it gets in your eyes you need to wash it out, although water doesn’t help. I was taught to wash it out with a solution of half water, half milk of magnesia, which you pour into a held-open eye (held with perfectly clean hands or gloves), which I’m told (I have not done this) is even harder than it sounds because the person you are doing it to will be in pain and perhaps unable to hold still. This is obviously hard to achieve in a panicky, crowded protest situation. You could see clouds of tear gas in the video from Montreal Sunday night, among other places. Again, it is important to remember that the people who are gassed with this agent that can cause severe pain and in rare cases death are civilians, often whose only crime is trespassing. Also a common cause of death-by-tear gas (says Wikipedia) is when a canister of it is shot indiscriminately into a crowd and hits someone in the face or skull.

Kettling: kettling is a police maneuver where they box a group of people who are not under arrest (possibly yet, possible not) into a small space, either with a ring of police or police plus a structure like a bridge or a fence and do not let people move in or out for food, medical aid, bathrooms, etc. It’s an attempt to intimidate and very effective (and often very unsafe). This is what happened on Swann Street in DC a couple nights ago, although it didn’t really work because they tried to do it in a residential neighbourhood and residents opened their homes to the protesters, breaking open the kettle (once people were in the houses, they could get food, rest, and help for their injuries–if they had had to spend the night on the street monitored by the cops, they would have had none of those things and been incredibly vulnerable–as would we all).

This is some of the stuff I’ve been thinking about that I wanted to share–just the disproportionate tactics being applied to protests. It’s also important to keep in mind that these protests sprang because a Black man was murdered, and the protesters haven’t hurt anyone (that I’ve seen), and yet the tactics to suppress them are so violent. I think sometimes watching the news can feel like it is all very complicated or there’s a lot of sides to every story, especially when the news really emphasizes a few broken windows but…if you’ve ever been to a protest in comfy footwear and maybe a hat and seen a cop coming at you in riot gear, you know there’s something really wrong here…

Day 84: 12 weeks, friends. If the lockdown were a pregnancy, we would be ready to announce the news! Despite being incredibly sad and worried about so many things this week, I have a natural personality pre-set of being fairly focused on minutiae (did you notice?) and the weather has been so pretty this week, so although I remain worried, this morning seems…nice. Here is the minute news of the week at my house:
–Mark went to WORK yesterday, and will probably be working from his office one day a week from now on. It was wild to spend a day alone in the apartment, and to wait until he got home to tell him stuff. I think the cats were a lot calmer without their celebrity heartthrob to follow around.
–the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night for 45 minutes on Tuesday night and also the building across from Mark’s work had an explosion (??) so I’m feeling a little targeted by mysterious forces
–we have managed to get a range of masks now, so we are ready for more workdays or whatever may come. I am ranking the masks from hardest to breathe in to easiest, and a new wrinkle came up yesterday when someone tried to talk to me in my mask for an extended period (normally I mainly wear them at at the grocery or drug store, the only indoor places I go, and no one chats) and I sucked quite a wad of fabric into my mouth trying to speak, so now I need to reorganize my ranking by ease of speech.
–I’ve finished day 9 of 30 days of yoga and am really enjoying it. I’m trying to do some other yoga every day and also some breathing exercises and generally just CALM DOWN. The only thing that sucks is realizing that when I finish the 30 days, if I skip none (unlikely that I won’t wind up skipping eventually), it will be day 115 of the lockdown. I mean, could that happen? Really?
–when people say “decimate,” do they mean lost one tenth of or do they mean lost most of? I try to be really chill about evolving language but I feel that one actually evolved into meaninglessness and now we just can’t use it anymore because no one knows what it means.
–could my good mood be coming from the fact I walked to a park last night and saw Scott A Watson et sa famille to give them a seedling? Quite possibly. It’s good to see friends!

Day 85:

A word about wellness checks–I just wanted to follow on from sue balint ‘s really wise and thoughtful post about Chantel Moore’s death at the hands of police who were supposed to perform a wellness check. Those words sound so happy and healthy, like they’d be above the food pyramid or something, but wellness checks are a known risk in communities where they most often happen and I think that information isn’t as widely known as it should be.

When I worked on crisis lines, including ones where people regularly called to talk about suicidal ideation, there were firm rules about sending emergency services only when there was a known, active, immediate physical risk. Even then, the caller had to know if the risk stayed present, we would call someone to intervene.

I think the temptation with wellness checks for the general public is it’s a way to “help” without “getting involved.” People feel concerned but don’t feel close enough to the situation to intervene or even ask a question. And that’s so so hard in our culture where everyone is supposed to be an island and not “bother” anyone, and often the help we offer is the wrong help and no one will thank you for it, but wellness checks are also the wrong help most of the time.

Why? Because because many vulnerable people have had bad or traumatic interactions with the police and having them show up at their door during an already difficult time without their invitation or consent or even a warning can cause them to be retraumatized. Also, when you are trained to be a hammer, everything looks like a nail–police are trained to confront criminals mainly, not vulnerable people who are hurting and maybe behaving a bit erratically, and so those people wind up getting treated like criminals. Not to mention the terrible cost of the racial bias–and hatred, in many cases–that plays out in too many of these cases.

If you are worried about someone, it’s almost never the first step–or even the last–to involve the police. What can you do? Well, you can offer to visit and hang out with the person for support, if you are close enough and feel you can. Or if that isn’t possible or is unwelcome, you can call, you can text, you can message whatever way you can. You can listen. Or if you can’t or it isn’t enough, you can suggest some other possible listeners…(I made this list a while ago, for a volunteer thing, but I think it’s relevant here; it’s not even close to exhaustive; feel free to add more)

• GoodToTalk offers a free, confidential helpline with professional counselling, information and referrals for mental health, addictions and well-being to post-secondary students. 1-866-925-5454 https://good2talk.ca/
• The LifeLine App is the National free Suicide Prevention and Awareness App that offers access and guidance to support for those suffering in crisis and those who have suffered the devastating loss of a loved one from suicide. The LifeLine App also provides awareness education and prevention strategies to guide people in crisis all across the Globe. https://thelifelinecanada.ca/lifeline-canada-…/lifeline-app/
• The Hope for Wellness Help Line offers immediate mental health counselling and crisis intervention to all Indigenous peoples across Canada in English and French, and in Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut by request, 24/7. Call 1-855-242-3310 toll-free at any time, or go to hopeforwellness.ca to chat online.
• Trans Lifeline is a national trans-led organization dedicated to improving the quality of trans lives by responding to the critical needs of our community with direct service, material support, advocacy and education to people of all ages. The Lifeline is run 24/7 by trans people for trans and questioning callers. Call 1-877-330-6366.
• Distress Centres of Toronto: 408-HELP (4357) is a 24/7/365 support line where volunteers will talk to any caller about any type emotional distress, up to and including suicidal ideation. The same service can be accessed via text if that is more comfortable for the person at 45645 https://www.torontodistresscentre.com/408-help-line

(2)

I rode the subway today for the third time in these long 85 days, for the third and hopefully final instalment of my tax odyssey this year and…I loved it. The subway is SO soothing, and much easier to read on than a non-moving object. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’ve never gone more than a week or two without riding the subway since 2002.

Also, at the tax office, the accountant was explaining how they’ve stayed open throughout the pandemic, and instead of saying “Oh, that must have been challenging,” or something normal and kind, I said, “Oh, that must have been really taxing,” and then laughed by saying the words, “Hahaha” very loudly and grinning, which he couldn’t see because I was wearing a mask. He wisely chose to ignore all of this. So my social skills are slipping.

Day 87: Evan has taken to sneaking into the closet and crawling into his kitty carrier, where he remains until forcibly removed. I don’t think any of us want to be here anymore.

Day 88: Some fun facts about me are that I will always make my bed in the morning and that, due to early readings of children’s books from the 1800s that featured beds being “aired” and some viewings of blown-up photos of dust mites, I’ll get up and leave the bed to “air” (whatever that means), go to the gym, come back, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and make the bed the very last thing before running off to work. (please please don’t take this as an implied criticism of other lifestyles and write me notes about how you’ve done things differently and never been eaten by a dust mite; I’m a compulsive person and feel fine that other people aren’t; we can just never be roommates).

Now, of course, in pandemic times, all is chaos and sometimes the bed-making gets pushed a bit later, into kitten-sleep-time. Alice likes to sleep on the bed, and it doesn’t matter to her whether it is made up or not. However, she has noticed with her very tiny mind that does not notice most things (she still doesn’t know what rain is and has been known to try to eat it) that if she sleeps on the bed when it is unmade, sometime later she’ll get woken up so that someone can make it. And so this morning, when I went into the bedroom to get something, instead of sleeping on the unmade bed, Alice was running around beside it, crying at it and then at me. Alice nagged me to make the bed so she could sleep in peace! This is by far the longest logical sequence she has ever been able to put together and execute. I made the bed, very proudly.

(2)

What is with dudes announcing to strangers they see in passing that “you shouldn’t bother with a mask.” I saw this twice in three days (once directed at me, once at someone else). I get it that the odds are low that I would both be an asymptomatic carrier and interact with someone in such a way as to infect them, but it’s very definitely possible. And if ONE person ever got sick because of me, I would be devastated. The research on masks is shifting and if the official science changes and it’s decided they don’t really help, I’m fine to stop wearing them, but otherwise, it’s such a low ask (to be clear, I find even the nicest masks pretty uncomfortable, but manageable) and it sets people at ease when they are stuck near me in the grocery store, so why not?

What is a good answer when someone whizzes by me and says, basically, “try less hard to be considerate of others”??

Day 89: I joined Facebook in 2006, and it was very different then–I had only a few very close friends on here, and we spoke far more in rl than online. Gradually I connected to more people but always people I knew and liked or at least had met and wanted to know better. I always thought of FB as a place to forge personal connections, yes, friendships. I know, I know–but it has actually worked out pretty well for me.

It was during the 2010 Winter Olympics that I realized that some people were using the platform differently than me, in ways I didn’t fully understand. Someone posted that they were “wishing good luck to the Canadian luge team” right before that event, and I honestly thought, “do they know them? are they friends? wait, the lugists are on the top of a mountain, they can’t read Facebook.” (if a decade later, someone identifies themselves as this person, please know I don’t remember whose post this was and I’m not making fun!) I realized this was a form of bankshot communication that I hadn’t seen before–while the athletes would never know or experience this person’s support, *I* would know that my friend cared about luge. They were making a statement about themself while feinting at communicating with someone else, and thus actually communicating in another way with a different group of people. So interesting, right?

If you think you know where I’m going with this, you’re probably right. When I read the corporate statements on Black Lives Matter from various places that have my email address, I wonder about how much of the intent is to genuinely stand with and support the Black community and how much is bankshot communication to their general customer base of whatever colour that we can feel ok about continuing to patronize their business because they are not racist. I’m honestly starting to wonder if Galen Weston is running for office in the near future (if he does, you heard it here first!) And I wonder too about individual “statements” on social media–do we all need to be putting forth a position like stores that need to reassure shoppers? But if I say nothing, does that imply I don’t know what side I’m on?

I am on the side of those who want to end police violence and other forms of oppression towards racialized communities–I hope there’s an “of course” in there somewhere. But in terms of speaking up or out–on this subject, I honestly can’t think of a voice the world needs less. I do genuinely try to share information when I have it and my own point of view if I think it’s distinct. And I often stay silent when I feel I can offer neither of those…because I’m listening, learning, the same way I would at a party when a topic came up that I wanted to learn more about. But of course, on social media, you can’t see me nodding thoughtfully.

So that’s my question–how much should we be clarifying, “yes, I too am not racist” on social media the way that stores and business do? What sort of communication–direct or bankshot–is that with our friends and connections? I know saying something isn’t doing something and a hashtag isn’t activism, but is a statement a good way to clarify intent? Or just a baby kiss on Galen Weston’s bizarre grocery-filled pathway to power?

It is possible that I’m spending too much time online these days. But if you have insights on this, I’d be happy to hear them.

Day 91, 13 weeks complete. If 91 does not sound like it should be divisible by anything, it’s because they did not teach 13 as a multiplier in grade school–we are beyond the times tables, baby!

This week was a minor nightmare for me–it was very hot in my apartment, there was constant jackhammering during the day and often loud music and/or shouting at night, and I couldn’t muster focus for almost anything. Because of the heat, even cooking, which is a reliable pleasure usually, was largely unpleasant. Plus all the changes and sadness at work, plus the dawning realization that no matter how flexible we are with our timing or how we plan it, we really are probably not going to be able to go see Mark’s family this summer…

Plus I am mainly just out of resiliency. A mildly snippy text sends me into a tailspin for hours, the fact that when Mark is unavailable the cats hang out under the dining room table rather than with me hurts my feelings (they are cats!), and I have become so alarmed by all the warnings in my InstantPot manual I still haven’t used it in almost three weeks (I have helpfully scattered all the pieces all over my living room though).

I get that the paragraph above is not a list of problems so much as symptoms of a problem, which is a dearth of coping mechanisms. My usual coping mechanisms are just so…interactive, though. I suppose I will eventually develop some new ones, but honestly, I would have hoped to have done so at least a little in 91 days.

Unlike yesterday’s video of the jackhammers, this is not a pity post–I’m just keeping everyone abreast with my fairly dull situation, but also maybe explaining a bit why these posts are getting less entertaining. I’m on day 16 of 30 days of yoga and that’s going ok, which is something, and then today I started (why not?) 30 days of meditation. Coping skills ahoy!

(2) I ordered some books from Ben McNally Books and they offered me the option of either sending an etransfer or calling in my credit card number, and of course I was going to etransfer. But then I remembered what it’s like to actually be in that big gorgeous store and have whoever’s working that day say hi and ask me how I am. It’s like being at Cheers, but for books. And so I called and oh my gosh it was nice to talk to Ben for a sec.

(3) I think it’s fair that many people are confused by what by what #DefundThePolice means–when you say “declaw a cat,” some people mean remove its front claws and some people mean remove all its claws (you should never remove ANY claws from a cat). When you say “depilate your legs” some people mean to the knee and some to the hip. And lets not even get into “defenestrate.” This is just a confusing prefix.

Glibness aside, “reallocate funding involving the police” is a better but less catchy slogan, and anyway it’s going to look different in every jurisdiction and also it hasn’t really happened yet. If someone can predict how things are likely to come down, certainly not me, who learned a lot from this little explainer–it’s helpful and straightforward. I do think there are people in the world who are genuinely advocating for police abolition, but they are unlikely to prevail. What’s below seems more likely to the person who went straight for the cat analogy, so, you know, take it for what it’s worth. h/t Rachelle Boisjoli (I’ve got to start doing those more!)

Day 92: I got another email from Galen Weston this morning–is he becoming too important a person in my life? Stockholm Syndrome? Why do I keep reading the emails? Well, these are some good questions to consider, but anyway, I read it right to the end and in the last bullet he announced that the pay bump people in the PC Optimum family of stores received at the beginning of the pandemic is going away now. On the one hand, it’s still far far more dangerous to have that job than it was when most of those people signed up, which isn’t fair, and yet they keep showing up and largely being excellent. On the other hand, things are ostensibly improving and getting safer for us all (but are they?) Actually, I probably do have an opinion here, that they should have gotten to keep the raise, as grocery store jobs were never overpaid to start with and now they are much more onerous and scary. So that’s what I think. Anyway, I thought I should share this, since perhaps not everyone reads every word of these emails with devotion the way I do.