Love with a Hint of Despair

A recent email I sent for a possible Zoom meeting:

In keeping with our low brow intellectual goals for this event some of the topics to include:

• Final Four Marriage Bracket – who is breaking up, hooking up and who is zooming who?
• Coffee Cup Happy Hour – how many of our coworkers are drinking alcohol during zoom meetings and why isn’t everyone?
• Pandemic Briefing Urge to Break Something – Why doesn’t Fauci just rip off his shirt and run around screaming during the briefings?  I am doing it at home when KT turns it on the TV. How does 43% of the country support this madness?
• Physical Distancing – some of our neighbors have more people visiting their houses than before the Pandemic.  WT actual F????

Feel free to answer and choose the next person to respond.  If the next person doesn’t flip you off than one of you will be canceled from the zoom call.  Pity. Think of it for survivor for zoom. Or the Hunger Games. At the end, there can be only one…

Link to follow later.  

Love, Sue

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The BBC has been a gift for me.  Every day I have a mission and the most important part of it is interacting with people in our community.  Due to the mostly shut glass garage door, we have the safest food service operation in the county. Between the mask and the garage door, it feels almost like a confessional to those of us with a Catholic background.  

In the process, I am learning that most of us want to put on a brave face now including me.  It is human nature to want to be perceived as having your shit together during the world’s biggest shitstorm.  I break the ice by telling new guests that our bagels are made with love and just a hint of despair. At that moment they laugh and I find that the facade will crack as everyone acknowledges there is nothing f*&%ing normal about what we are experiencing.  

Our county isn’t that big and we have over 95 cases of Covid-19 including a top law professor/federal judge nominee that coincidentally is the Mayor’s wife in the hospital for treatment of said pandemic.  Our schools have told our seniors in high school that they are basically done and can’t fail regardless of what they do going forward. And if you are sick, our state health system has acknowledged that tests are limited or unavailable.  The new normal is abnormal.

I caught myself this week telling guests to have a great day.  I try to remember that everyone is feeling anything but great. I am finding a heartfelt stay safe and well means more to all of us especially if I am open to acknowledging the bad days.  And I have had a handful of people tell me when those days are happening. All I can do is give them love, recognize the despair and listen to their pain.

In the end, the brief band-aids I can provide include carbs and caffeine which makes even hope possible.

Stay safe and well.  No easy way.