Prepare yourself. This is a long one. It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been going through some stuff. It’s been almost a year I’ve been a homebody and I think I’ve officially “lost it”. My pandemic brain has reached its limit. It’s been on a steady decline over the past 6 months or so, albeit gradual, but just recently, I think I’ve accelerated to my all-time low.

I now totally get why my cats will just stare out the window. I’ll often find myself just standing at my front door looking out at the world, watching the clouds go by, the wind in the trees, cars driving by, and the occasional person running or walking their dog. I could stand there for 5 or 10 minutes or so, just staring, confined within my snow globe, wondering what’s going on outside the globe but not really caring. I’ll also find myself forgetting what I’m saying mid-sentence. A lot. Oftentimes when I have oven mits on both hands, they’ll have conversations with each other, like talking goldfish. And sometimes I’ll just sit and stare at the TV, but it’s off, just a dark screen, wondering what I’m gonna do in the day or rethinking my strategy for when the zombie apocalypse hits because you know, it’s gonna happen. Stock those seasoning blends! You’ll need them! I wonder if others are going through the same kookiness. This has got to be common, right? Or at least I tell myself that to make myself feel better. Every. Damn. Day.

The other day I spilled an open can of ginger ale in the fridge. In an effort to catch it, it continued to spill and go everywhere. It covered the shelves, seeped in the drawers, it went into every fricken crevice of the fridge. And I lost it. I screamed, I yelled with frustration, even though it was my own fricken fault. I was livid. My husband, bless his heart, showed up with paper towels in hand but I couldn’t accept that. I took one look at him and, I don’t remember the exact words I said, but it resembled “Get the eff out of here!!!” to put it politely. He very wisely retreated to a safe place far away from me.

I started pulling everything out of the fridge, saying (actually yelling) every fricken swear word I could think of as I did so. I threw stuff on the counters not caring what I was hitting or if I broke anything. The cheese drawer was filled with soda. In fact, soda seeped into an open package of American cheese slices. How it got in between each effing slice, I don’t effing know. But I wasn’t going to wipe down every fricken slice so I threw the package in the trash. With every item I removed from the fridge, my anger grew and grew. Our fridge dings if the door is not closed after a period of time. So it dinged. And dinged. And dinged. Every ding infuriated me more and more until all rational thought was gone.

I came across the apples I buy for the boys, at their request. But do they actually eat them? Nooooo! Despite the fact they have to be honeycrisp apples because they only like honeycrisp (when they’ll actually eat a fricken apple). But for the most part, they’ll sit in the fridge waiting to be eaten, slowing becoming dehydrated and resemble pickled people. (Or is it just pickle people? Remember them?) Anyway, I’ll then throw them out and buy some more. And then they’ll sit untouched for a month or so and the cycle repeats. So, when I took out one of the puckered neglected apples, with all of the frustration and loathing I was feeling at the moment, I chucked it at the garbage can (which was already open since I was throwing out stuff anyway). Did you know apples can shatter? Because the way it hit the edge of the trash can, it shattered into a million pieces, apple bits flying everywhere. And you know what? I picked up another effing neglected apple and chucked that one. And then another. And another. Apple bits exploding like fireworks on the Fourth of July and I didn’t care. I just didn’t effing care. Now looking back, it was almost poetic the way those apples exploded, especially when I play it back in my mind in slow-mo. Regardless, {{sigh}} it was a mess. A huge, ugly, sticky mess. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I had lost my mind. Eventually as I cleaned, reality and reasoning slowly seeped back in my brain and I orderly and efficiently cleaned up the mess in the fridge (and out of it). When done, I chugged some wine, took a toke of some pot (thank god it’s legal), and my mind settled into the calm realm of reason, albeit medicated, but calm. I promptly apologized to my husband and began to feel myself again.

That was my lowest of low. But not the end.

The next day was the first day our district’s kids returned to high school. Boy A chose to go back, Boy B decided to continue to stay at home. I worried about Boy A getting up and getting ready on time since he’s been home all this time. It turned out he was fine. But apparently, I wasn’t. Because when I left to drop him off at school, I didn’t realize he wasn’t even in the car. And when he called me to tell me so, I thought, why in the heck is he calling me when he’s sitting right behind me? Why doesn’t he just say something? So at a stop sign, I looked behind me to ask him WTF? Sure enough, he wasn’t in the car. But his backpack was. Oy. When I got home from dropping him off for real, I surrendered. I had officially lost it.

But hey, this story does have a happy ending. A few hours later, I received official word from work on my return. It’s going to be very soon. What a fricken relief. No more seeing the “light at the end of the tunnel”. Instead, I made it to the end of the tunnel. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. I thank my lucky stars and my work for some excellent timing. I think between now and when I start, I can get my sh*t together. Hopefully. And I guarantee I won’t be buying any more apples until after I’m back into the swing of things at work. ✌🏼Peace out y’all. Stay strong!