The Adventures of Sheila the Wonderbink

I read through my diaries and it was certainly interesting reading. Particularly the start of the year, before the pandemic arrived, when there were so many things I did and took for granted.

January: Go to Chattacon along with the Gentleman Caller. We play hooky from the convention to wander the streets of Chattanooga, including the footbridge. He buys a box of donuts at his favorite donut place; I buy a polished stone the color of lemonade.

February: See Mystery Science Theater Live at the Fox Theater. I had two tickets--one that I'd bought and one that my brother and sister-in-law got me for Christmas. The one they gave me is a better seat. The film is a slice of 80s cheese called No Retreat, No Surrender, in which Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a bad guy who is defeated by a teenage boy who was trained by the ghost of Bruce Lee. (When said ghost makes his first appearance, Joel groans "Oh, man, he's not even close!")

March: Georgia has its first COVID-19 fatality. The lines at The Big Green Grocery Store go frantic. Tensions get worse because the store starts rationing certain items so they're not cleaned out all at once. I get scheduled for nine-hour shifts. The Gentleman Caller comes for a visit and cooks dinner because he doesn't trust restaurants at that stage. After a lovely time together, he announces that he's going into lockdown until the situation clears. My parents cancel our Sunday routines, first morning Mass, then Sunday dinners.

April: Governor Kemp issues a shelter-in-place order, which doesn't affect me much, since my job is essential work. Job duties now include wiping down surfaces, handles, and carts. Start adjusting to Zoom meetings with family and the Gentleman Caller as well as livestreamed Masses. The Triduum is a little stranger done through screens, but the words are still powerful and I'm as much of a mess on Good Friday as I usually am. I successfully make Eggs Benedict on Easter morning.

May: One of the employees at the Big Green Grocery Store location where I work tests positive for coronavirus. I get in a message in my inbox, but no additional information beyond Don't Worry, We've Taken Care Of It. I take their word for it. See a play called Hate Mail online, which is hilarious and perfectly set up for Zoom-based theater, even though it was written well before the pandemic. Receive new iPhone as an early birthday present, because my existing iPhone is showing severe battery problems. It is shiny and red and I have to restrain myself from playing with it constantly.

June: Restructure my schedule at The Big Green Grocery Store so I don't come in any early than 1:30 in the afternoon. It takes three tries to get it to take, because people keep losing the paperwork. Mornings are now reserved for education and, eventually, freelance work. See a doctor about my leg, which has been giving me pain for months. Get scheduled for an MRI, which reveals tendinosis (not tendonitis) in my gluteal region, likely lingering damage from the car accident in 2019. Turn 50. I have my usual twelve-hour birthday party the Saturday before on Zoom, which is well-attended and quite fun. I have a proper birthday dinner at my parents' house, out on the screened-in porch with the fan going and everybody wearing masks except to eat.

July: Begin physical therapy for leg. Take the days I would have spent in Florida and spend them at home. Write a short (very short) story called "Sentiment" about a vampire who feeds on regret. My parents move to a small condominium in a retirement community and I visit them there, masked and distanced.

August: Write a longer story called "Incident at Red's Fuel Center" about an essential worker during the zombie apocalypse. Decide to stop job hunting on Saturday mornings so I can clean my place before I have to go to work.

September: Attend virtual DragonCon, which has me attending more panels than I think I've attended in the past several in-person DragonCons. Go to see a drive-in movie in the parking lot of the Plaza Theater--Nosferatu with an original score played live. Purchase new MacBook Pro with advance on inheritance, just in time for the existing one to choke up and die.

October: Early voting begins in Georgia. I try to get it over with on the first day, but the line is running around the building, so I wait until the next day and go vote at the High Museum. I make a day of it with my freshly renewed membership, though my leg gives me too much trouble to really enjoy myself. I start two online courses in proofreading, one of which offers an opportunity for paid work if I pass the final exam at 80% or better. A massive storm knocks out power for about 30 hours and sends a tree crashing down on my favorite labyrinth (the one by my local library that I've been walking and taking care of for years).

November: Skip NaNoWriMo. Make a project of hacking off the smaller branches of the tree that fell on the labyrinth, using a lopper that my parents loaned me. Sell the guitars and bass amp that have been gathering dust for over a year. Make 95 bucks. Cry a little. Take final exam for proofreading course and make 84%. Discuss my future with the proofreading company, but won't be able to start until the new year. Get my Thanksgiving dinner to go, lovingly cooked by my mom and packed into travel containers. Breathe a huge sigh of relief at the outcome of the presidential election.

December: Test positive for coronavirus. Isolate myself accordingly. The Gentleman Caller comes by to take my trash out to the dumpster and deliver some wine and cherry juice from Trader Joe's. I learn the ins and outs of grocery delivery service, such as having to rearrange my fridge because they were out of half gallons of the milk I ordered, so they got me a full gallon instead. Make the traditional Christmas Eve dinner of poached salmon with cucumber yogurt sauce. Make entirely too much sauce, but discover that it makes a great dip for baby carrots. Make the traditional Christmas Day breakfast of Eggs Benedict; the results are flawed, but still tasty. Am spared having to cook Christmas dinner by mom cooking another to-go feast--all I need to do is bake my own potato. Spend first New Year's Eve at home probably since I moved out of the house. I watch an online celebration that includes a five-minute rendition of The Nutcracker that is worth the price of admission.

So, yeah, this year was a total dumpster fire, but I managed to get a few things done. I wrote some short stories and got a promising new job. We'll see how well the next year goes, though I think that 2020 as malevolent entity doesn't truly end until January 20th at noon.

Today I took pleasure in: kissing 2020 goodbye.

Today I learned: that Korbel Brut isn't as good without orange juice involved.

This is a modified and expanded letter to my siblings regarding recent events in my existence that I don't feel like coming up with completely new words for.

Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I started having bizarre issues with my vision, first with vision “scrolling” like a bad cathode ray television set and later with double vision. The problems cleared up with a nap and a little time, but I wrote down the address for the nearest urgent care clinic with my insurance company for future reference in the event that they came up again.

Saturday they did. They also came with a lovely side order of balance problems. I called in sick and with the help of a neighbor (since my vision was so shaky I couldn’t read the screen of my phone) I summoned a Lyft and took it to the urgent care center, only to be dropped off near an industrial property several blocks from my destination. I told the driver it didn’t look quite right; he shrugged. I got out of the car (after having told him that I was having vision and balance problems) and he drove off.

My vision was now so bad I couldn’t even read the nice, big letters I’d written the urgent care center address with. I could kind of make it out, but I don't like venturing on things like that without certainty, so I saw someone walking in my direction on the sidewalk and asked if he could help me.

He walked right past me as if I hadn't said anything.

I asked a few more people with the same result--I was not there to them. In desperation, I even said "I'm not asking for money; I'm just asking for help." No effect. I was invisible and inaudible.

I passed by several closed restaurants and even a boarded-up hotel before I finally found a beauty salon where I explained my dilemma and the nice lady behind the counter pointed me in the right direction and assured me it wasn’t far.

It wasn’t far. The street number (which the nice lady confirmed with me) was out on a big sign that you could see from the street. I lurched my way towards it, my destination in sight.

The sidewalk was closed. While I suppose I could have ignored the signs and picked my way around it, as I saw other people doing, I didn’t trust my own balance around such things. Next to the sidewalk was a large tree that was enclosed in brick walls that served as a kind of planter for it.

So I hoisted my way up the wall, crawled past the tree on my hands and knees, and lowered myself back down on the other side. I made my way to the entrance and into the urgent care center. I explained my problem and the woman at the counter said “Sure, just fill out this form.” I explained that I could not, and they settled for having someone ask me all the questions on the forms and pointed to where to sign in the few places it was necessary. I signed from muscle memory.

They got me in an examination room. The doctor asked me to squeeze her fingers and to walk up and down the room. Then she told me that she was calling an ambulance.

One CT scan, one MRI scan (which was rather like being trapped in an avant-garde multi-media installation, to the point that I laughed out loud until the technician barked at me to hold still) and a few more tests and the answer was that it was NOT a stroke, but probably something to do with my recently updated medication regimen. We adjusted medicines accordingly and that took care of that problem.

This past Sunday gave us the new problem. I went to The Big Green Grocery Store to try and get some breakfast supplies and at least some hours for this week that they’d scheduled me for absolutely nothing. And on the way out, I made a left turn out of the complex onto the main road and I got T-boned by an SUV veering into the middle lane. No idea what happened to the other guy because I was too busy having my car pried open to extract me for delivery to an ambulance. I was X-rayed in various places to be sure nothing was broken (nothing was that they could see) and sent on my way with a brief prescription for pain meds and muscle relaxants and some good wishes. Mom and Dad took me in and have been looking after me ever since. Most of my body is relatively pain-free—it’s just this one area around the left buttock that constantly screams with agony. I’ve just started using a cane but still need parental assistance to get places. (My parents are in their eighties and I'll be forty-nine on Friday. This is supposed to be the other way around, isn't it?) My hope is that things will die down enough that I’ll be able to function with the cane alone. It’s only been a couple of days, so we’ll see how things progress.