I'm Baaacccckkkk (Update)

 

I don't know if there's anyone still out there. I like to think that there's at least one person breathlessly checking the blog daily and waiting for any sign of an update, but that's probably just me.

So, how crazy has this last year been? COVID pretty much knocked me and millions of other people on our collective asses. I went from making jokes about Captain Trips that no one understood to realizing that this was pretty damn serious. As much as I wish I could blame the pandemic for my lack of posting, it's been more of a combination of things.

1 – My boyfriend went from a factory job with a good paycheck to landing on unemployment that took months to pay. At some point, they decided that he made too much and dropped his payments to $54/week. You try living on that!

2 – I became the breadwinner of the house just in time for my clients to start dropping like flies. It turns out that when there's a global pandemic, you don't really want to pay someone to write content for your websites.

3 – We lost several loved ones. One of my cousins and absolute favorite people in the world passed away from COVID last year. His mother, my great aunt, just passed away last week. This woman was amazing. She took my mom in when she was a toddler and my grandma needed help and then took her in again as a teenager. My mom even lived with her when she dated my dad back in the 60s!

4 – My state started the PUA program to pay people (like me) who usually don't qualify for unemployment. It took over two months to get a single payment. Despite the extension from December and my drastic loss of income, it will be sometime next month before I get another payment.

5 – We lost a few of our cats. Someone who will remain nameless brought fleas into our home that would up killing several of our babies. We went through at least seven different types of flea products, none of which worked, along with pills, daily baths, flea dips, vacuuming, etc. I never knew fleas could be bad until last summer. The only thing that saved the rest of our four-legged crew was Revolution from the vet.

6 – I got COVID in November, probably. It started with symptoms that made me think that I was allergic to everything in the world. I went from having a cough and some congestion to waking up in the middle of the night unable to breathe and eye pain that made me cry. A trip to the ER led to a diagnosis of allergies and eye pain. Real helpful, right? After another week of worrying that I was going to die in the middle of the night because I couldn't breathe, my boyfriend made me go to another ER. That's where they tested me for COVID and sent my results a few days later. Even now, I still have lots of congestion and problems breathing.

How has everyone else been? Are you ready for a break from the horrors outside as you read bad recaps of even worse books? I'm hoping to post at least once a week, even if no one reads them :)