Thursday morning and I still don’t feel great. I do not feel as awful as I did yesterday, but I am not at 100% yet. I am going to go in today, primarily because I need to get my computer because tomorrow is my at-home day, and if I start feeling bad, I am going to leave early. I have to leave early anyway because Muses is tonight, and traffic has been horrible this entire Carnival season. The slalom course on St. Charles–and the complete closure of St. Charles around Harmony Circle–has resulted in nightmare traffic. Getting home tonight and Monday before Orpheus will be a nightmare, too. It took me an hour to get home from work on Tuesday, which was horrible, and oh my God, the roundabout way I had to go! I had no idea that Harmony Circle was closed, so I had to turn back into the CBD on Carondelet, and then every street heading uptown was backed all the way up. I finally managed to get to Peters and take the split up Annunciation, but by the time I got to Race I could see Camp was backed up all the way from the highway, so I just parked between Camp and Magazine and walked the rest of the way. By the time I got home I was rattled and exhausted and not feeling well.
Tonight is Babylon, Chaos, and Muses for those of you keeping track. I may go out there tonight; it depends on how I feel and how tired I am. My throat is still scratchy and I cough still, but I will definitely mask up so as not to get anyone else sick–and at least I am not client-facing today.
But I somehow made it to Thursday in this topsy-turvy week. My brain has been in a bit of medicine fog since yesterday and I keep hoping that I’ll finally wake up and it all will be over. I need to get back to writing work and be able to focus on it for a change. I am going to take Monday off so I don’t have to deal with trying to get home before Orpheus (parade traffic just gets worse until Tuesday, when driving anywhere until the late evening is nigh impossible from my neighborhood. Huzzah! And I have plenty of things to do for my remote day tomorrow, too! Huzzah even more!
And look at that, I never finished nor posted this yesterday morning. Yesterday kind of turned into a day, you know? I wound up being client-facing yesterday after all (I wore a mask) and wound up being super busy at work instead of having an easy down day where I caught up on my Admin work. I was pretty tired when I came home, and spent the rest of the day picking up around here and trying to get chores finished. I also started feeling not as great in the afternoon after I got home as well, so just kind of crashed out. I fell asleep in my easy chair shortly after Paul went out to see Muses last night, and I woke up before midnight and schlepped upstairs to the bed. I don’t know if Paul got a shoe this year or not–but even last night we were saying “the streak has to end sometime; sixteen years in a row is pretty good for anyone, really”–although if there isn’t one, it will be kind of sad. I’m not feeling all that great this morning, either, to be honest; I felt worse getting up this morning than I did yesterday. I pretty much stayed in last night because I didn’t want to get sicker, which is very sad but nonetheless true. I have taken some cold medication, and have spent most of the time since getting up blowing lots of snot out of my damned nose. Yay. I fucking hate being sick.
But I am going to Iris tomorrow if it kills me, and Orpheus on Monday night.
The weather was beautiful yesterday, and it looks to be that way today and through the weekend. It might rain on Monday night, which is always a fun thing for Orpheus; lessens the crowds even earlier than usual. I also have to run an errand today–everything else can wait till Monday morning, really, and why not not spend money today? We’re supposed to be boycotting big business today and having an economic blackout (how does that work in New Orleans during parade season? My only windows for getting anything before Wednesday are today during the day or Monday during the day), but as I said in the parenthetical, that makes it rough for us who live inside the parade route. But I am only going to get two things I absolutely need, and nothing more; everything else can wait until Monday, and for a stopgap I can walk to Walgreens over the weekend if need be.
I just hate that I’ve not really been able to participate in Carnival almost this entire decade for one reason or another. I used to always be able to say “there’ll be another one next year” but now…now I am not so sure. There’s no telling how bad things will get in this country between now and then, and I don’t have a lot of confidence in either the current administration or its ability to listen to the people. It would also require MAGA to wake up and realize they’ve been fooled, lied to, conned, and flim-flammed; and they’ve pretty much made that their entire personalities. MAGA made them feel like they were smart and had common-sense, as opposed to those crybaby whiny “libtards.” Having to admit they not only were wrong about everything but conned? Yeah, good luck with that. 160 years later idiots still believe that “Confederacy/states’ rights/legacy/heritage” bullshit, too, despite getting their asses so thoroughly kicked in the Civil War.
I don’t have a lot of hope for the future. Whiny white people are sitting around waiting for someone else to do something, the way they always do: “someone will save us from ourselves!” Well, I don’t see Black women willing to do it this time, and we queers need to be focusing on our own battle for rights and survival to do much for our “name-only-so-you-can-do-all-the-work” straight white allies, right? They didn’t care about our rights when they voted against their own, and why would any of us non-straight people ever trust them when they’ll throw us under the bus again and again for their own gain?
We’ve done this dance before. How many decades has the queer community given the majority of its vote to the Democratic Party only to be told after the election, “this isn’t the right time?” Yeah, fight for your own rights for a change, straight people.
And for the record, it wasn’t queers who brought measles back, either.
I came up with a question I’d like to ask anti-vaxxer moms: “since you’re so against vaccinating children, are you willing to be exposed to a child with rubella when you’re pregnant?”
After all, your entire mantra is better dead than autistic, right?
Some serious parent of the year candidates there.
And on that note, I will bring this to a close so I can do my German lesson and start working. Have a lovely Friday before Fat Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back at some point.
Queer and Loathing in America 