If You're Going Through Hell

[Gwenivere]

Glad you got your groceries, Kay.  I’m out to grab a couple things, dinner and back to prison.  

I’ve given up caring how this mess got started.  That’s history now.  What gets to me are all the commercials here of 'we will get thru this together', yet we can’t be together by the new definition of being apart.  I get the gist of it, but it’s rather ironic.  

[kayc]

I hear ya on that!

[Margm]

Okay, we are stuck inside.  I have read all the books, have watched a bunch of movies, now I am involved in a series I never thought I would like.  Ricky Gervais in "AfterLife"  He has lost his wife.  And yes, he is just as hard to like as he is on stage as a comedian but, having lost a mate, you see the hurt he is going through and bless his pea sized brain, he does a good job of grieving (if you can call grieving a good job.), but even in his meanness, you know he's hurting.  I'm just on episode 5, and they are short, but I feel for this character.  

No, if I was not stuck in this house, I would have never watched it.  Actually, he is the only person that uses such terrible language that I don't even notice.  

Okay, I'm going to become a critique for books and TV.  

[KarenK]

Marg, I would make a good proofreader if that occupation still exists. I'm sure it's been replaced by a computer program as I find so many typographical errors and words used out of context in every book I read. I also tend to tear apart movies with the little mistakes which is something Ron and I would do. Was watching a crazy alien movie tonight. The hero was hurt and had a bandage on his head. He whipped off the bandage and there was no cut, but two scenes later a big gash appeared on his forehead. How do they miss this stuff?

 

[kevin]

Karen, there was a clip on movie goofs and it was amazing the screwups.......different shirts in same scene, different jewelry ,hair messy/hair good....when this is caught at the time, the scene is re shot at great expense.......But quite common....

[Margm]

10 hours ago, KarenK said:

Marg, I would make a good proofreader if that occupation still exists

It exists.  In hospitals they hire "editors" (I think they now are called), but the pay is half what I made as a transcriptionist.  I kept a notebook of the stupid things the voice recognition heard and was going to put it in a book.  I could not keep up with writing down the mistakes and make any money, so I gave up on it.  I don't miss that job at all.  I did have the luck to have a job I enjoyed for 43 years, officially retiring twice from two different hospitals and working for the biggest hospital in New Mexico (while I typed at home), before being an "editor" became ridiculous.  Our charts that are now most all kept on computers (which systems go down often), but you cannot substitute computers sometimes for people.  But, there are still positions open (probably) in big companies that bought out the transcription/editor positions.  

Have reached a plateau to being imprisoned at home.  Getting depression, and I hate that.  I'm the only one that can correct it though.  Cannot take their mood blunting medications anymore, messes with my "innards" disability.  

[Gwenivere]

Movies and TV have continuity people for scenes.  It’s always interesting when something slips past them.  With the ability now of watching at home we can spot them more.  Could never backup and replay a scene at the theater.  Some scenes of conversations are shot without both characters there!  Animated films are odd too for the actors.  They never see each other at all.  I guess they get to watch the footage they are voicing.  

[Gwenivere]

2 hours ago, Marg M said:

Have reached a plateau to being imprisoned at home.  Getting depression, and I hate that.  I'm the only one that can correct it though.  Cannot take their mood blunting medications anymore, messes with my "innards" disability.  

I'd sure like hints or outright answers of how to correct it.  My depression has soared beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.  I don’t want to take more antidepressants either.  The side effects drag me down.  I already feel blunt.  My insurance is setting up video links for help with the mental side of this quarantine.  Also for people that have drug and alcohol addictions which is cool.  I watched snow episode of Dr. Phil on survival and he and experts talked about addicts unable to get their fixes.  Something I never thought about and there are people at home, like young ones with their parents, who don’t know they are adducts but as withdrawl sets in, what do you do?  

i watch Fallon and Kimell doing their shows from home and interviewing celebrities in their homes and everyone seems to be doing great.  Don’t know if that is just for the shows reflection or if being rich makes a difference.  I certainly don’t have the resources or to have someone do my laundry or set up video links that work thru my studio.  Just walls and windows here.  Maybe it’s bcause they are younger, have their families and aren’t fighting being old and all that brings.  If I could bounce around this place like I was 40 even, it would make a huge difference.  Not this hunched over, shuffling old lady.  Always having to wonder what I can do and stay mobile for the dogs and general moving around.  I love naps, but they add to depression waking up to this again and they hurt from laying on my hips. I often get lightheaded being out and don’t know if it’s physical or mental.  Yesterday getting some staples the store had gone to one way aisles.  Good idea unless you are disabled like me.  It mentally drove home too this is so very real.  

Since I do go out I wonder if I get exposed.  The screenings I’ve had are for just up to that day.  I really wish I could find a way to stay home but it’s an obsession to escape.  But all it does is kill a little time and drive home how bad things are with all the closed places.  Little things I never thought about like buying more minutes for my phone.  T Mobile is closed.  No going in anywhere and get to chat a bit with people.  People veering around each other to be safe, but it feels so antisocial.  

I don’t know if anyone has times it gets to them more.  Mind are 3-6 as I was never home at those times.  I’ve tried doing things but they are stuff I’d do later.  Then later comes and there is nothing.  Don’t like TV during the day and other chores hurt.  I guess I never thought I’d see a time I was so totally challenged about filling time.  I guess because I didn’t have to.  There was always stuff to do and often not enough time.  

[Margm]

Gwen, I get to where I despise myself.  I added Kelli to my phone plan which now has five people.  I spent a total of 13 hours being passed back and forth between people who had no idea what they were talking about.  Brianna was due for an upgrade, so I did that.  She is terribly frightened of her Apple phone, which she has never used, only getting texts from her mom.  I have my sister and me with the flip phones.  The first 10 hours I made them promise my payments would not go over a certain amount and finally, one phone in, waiting for the other that was only upgraded.  I have been with them 14 years and after this dies down some, I will face them again, and I will stay on the line until they let me talk to someone in Georgia or even West Virginia.  I did talk to both those states and the West Virginia fellow I woke up, in the middle of the day, and he clearly wanted to go back to sleep and I wanted terribly to put him back to sleep.  I don't have to go through the whole rigmarole, I know y'all are familiar with it, especially only essential people go into work.  I guarantee you, none of the ones I talked to were essential, although I did get one shipped and the other was cancelled, by me, because it was being shipped to somewhere I have never lived.  Fourteen years with this company.  When I get the  other phone in, pay the exorbitant first and second months payments, then I will call them again and demand to speak to someone that has an American accent, can guarantee me that he/she  has worked for AT&T for more than a week, then I will wrestle with my "loyalty" payments and get $100 a month knocked off.  I've done this before with them.  

Hey, it fills up a gal's quarantined day.  I do not take Xanax with this, but I do take my 2nd blood pressure pill and a baby aspirin.  

[Gwenivere]

3 hours ago, Marg M said:

Gwen, I get to where I despise myself. 

Hey, it fills up a gal's quarantined day.  I do not take Xanax with this, but I do take my 2nd blood pressure pill and a baby aspirin.  

I read your phone dilemma, but I don’t understand why you despise yourself.  Sounds like you should be despising the phone carrier that caused you so much grief.  I know how places can make one insane with all their misinformation, transfers, changes in policies or whatever that makes you want to reach thru the phone and strangle them.  

I’m all for trying to fill long quarantine days, but this stuff isn’t pleasant and with nerves stretched tight as it is, it just makes it worse.  I’m sure your blood pressure went up.  Totally your choice on the Xanax.  I have to take it for my schedule.  It’s not an optional med for me.  What is an option is freedom to take a little more, but I don’t so I can’t whine when I let the stress get the better of me.  I have very low blood pressure so if it goes to normal or a little above that means I’m really mad, stressed or freaked out.  

You'll get this straightened out but I have to ask......what does an American accent sound like to y'all down your way?  😁

[Margm]

Now that is what I tell them "Look, you are talking to a great-grandmother from Louisiana with a terrible southern drawl."  The girl who spoke very good English but talked so fast I could not understand a complete sentence wanted to know what a "drawl" was.  (She was from somewhere in the Caribbean.) I explain that to all of them.  The girl from Alabama I understood completely.  She didn't even have to slow down.  Scott teases me that by  the time I quit  talking to them I know all their family and their life history, where they live and where they were  born.  He is about right.  

[kayc]

15 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I’ve tried doing things but they are stuff I’d do later.

Yesterday I checked on a friend in IL.  She said she sleeps all the time (I can't do that, in fact I had a hard time dropping off last night and woke up three times during the night and never got back to sleep).  She said she has a lot she could be doing but she doesn't.  She's obviously depressed.  I could clean out some stuff, but where would I put it?  St. Vinny's is closed so no donating and I can't see hauling truckloads of perfectly good stuff to the dump.  I did eBaying when I was out of work years ago and got burned out on it.  Half the seller's money goes towards shipping and fees, they even charge their fees on the shipping and of course there's Paypal fees too.  Most of the stuff is too big or heavy to be worth the price of shipping.  So I don't do it.  It'll wait until this is over.  Some of it I need help with.

15 hours ago, Marg M said:

I will call them again and demand to speak to someone that has an American accent, can guarantee me that he/she  has worked for AT&T for more than a week, then I will wrestle with my "loyalty" payments and get $100 a month knocked off.

I hate doing stuff like this, you have more patience than I do!  I had AT&T with four people on it, they never gave me any breaks.  Canceled just before I retired.  I'm on my son's plan, Verizon coverage, under $15/month, he researches everything.  It has limits but being as it doesn't work here in the mountains, it's way more than enough for my needs.  When I had AT&T I was commuting to the city every day where it actually worked.

9 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

what does an American accent sound like to y'all down your way?  😁

Haha, good one, Gwen!  Cute.

8 hours ago, Marg M said:

Scott teases me that by  the time I quit  talking to them I know all their family and their life history, where they live and where they were  born.

My son says his friend Chad and I are like that.  He says he gets gas, pays, and leaves.  He said Chad gets gas, strikes up with a conversation with someone there, they exchange numbers, join a 4-wheeling club together and are friends for life!  He says, "How does he do that!"  I don't know, I'm still close friends from a buyer on eBay from when I was selling back in 2007.  Haha!

 

[Margm]

I have not fished in going on five years.  I used to break a date on Saturday night to go fishing.  At one time in my life, just passing a mud puddle made me drag out my closed face reel and rod.  Mama said I could bait my hook at two-years-old. (she exaggerated a lot).  I got my drivers license just to take my grandmother and her best friend fishing, driving the best friend's car.  Billy had just bought me a new rod and reel.  I have no idea where it went.  I can still see his "fishing box."  I don't know who got it.  No one in the family.  My head was not with me a few years ago.  

Below is Caney Lake, a few miles from my apartment.  Maybe five miles.  We were on the wharf.  Kelli had brought me a chair for the old woman to sit in.  Kelli took videos and I saw what looked like a quarantined walrus in a blue shirt, which was me.  Just being outside, on that lake, it took all my sadness and a fishing rod in my hand and I felt the magic again. 

I have not read things in awhile.  

This quarantine is about to get to us all and the newly grieved, the grief in all of us, it does not leave.  The familiarity brought a bitter sweet feeling.  I thought I could never do it again.  I know some people won't understand, but I'm a country girl and fishing has always been a part of my life (minus five years).  

Now, I will read the forum.  I saw a lot of new people and my heart goes out to them.   

[KarenK]

Beautiful spot, Marg! My heart is with you on the fishing. We frequently fished the mountain lakes in northern Az. I mostly sat and wished for a bite while he reeled them in, but it was peaceful. Sold a lot of his stuff, but kept about a dozen rods and feels and the huge fold out tackle box. Hope to be able to go again someday now that I'm old enough for a free license. First time without him will be strange and sad, I'm sure.

[widow'15]

8 hours ago, Marg M said:

The familiarity brought a bitter sweet feeling.  I thought I could never do it again.  I know some people won't understand, but I'm a country girl and fishing has always been a part of my life (minus five years).  

Marg:  So happy to read you experienced a "bitter sweet feeling" doing what you love.  We need to find those moments of happiness whenever we can.  I totally understand even though I don't fish.  This beautiful lake is so close, hope you get to return soon.  Hugs,  Dee

[kayc]

Seniors don't get to fish for free in Oregon.  I always loved fishing, discovered it when I was 16.  Becoming allergic to fish (discovered when 32) kind of dampened that, but I sometimes did wearing protective gloves, but it's hard to clean them with gloves on and I can't even have them inside the house, let alone eat them.  Breathing them is enough to make me react.  When my husband cooked them he'd have to do it on the barbecue, eat them out on the patio and clean the grill off afterwards.    I do miss camping with George.  We had the same interests...

Beautiful photo, Marg!

[Margm]

Kelli is a photographer, but she did that with her phone.  It was getting so late.  I really was not "feeling it" when I learned last year two Minden High School seniors died at that spot, one trying to save the other.  There was a cross, a shirt, and a light a family member had put.  Also, if I catch fish I will have to clean it.  (Actually, Kelli would do it), but Billy was the bass fillet-er.  I do have all his knives, but do not know how to even begin. 

Of course, there are many things I cannot eat.  Someone put a "no lettuce" recipe for a salad and the only "green" was broccoli.   There once was a salad called broccoli Madaline I loved.  This salad had olives, broccoli and lots more.  Nothing I could eat.  But, I can eat fish, just not fried the old southern way with cornmeal all over it.  I can have shrimp in tempura and I suppose fish also.  Not allergic to any of it, just cannot digest it.  

I think the older we get, the less interested the doctor's seem to be in us.  My cousin is 79, had seven polyps last colonoscopy, all members of her father's side of the family died of colon cancer and they informed her last year it would be her last  colonoscopy.  Why try to save us, if the cancer does not get us, the heart or something else will.  That is why  they tell men that the prostate cancer is slow growing, they will die of something else before the cancer.  I always thought that quite cruel, but truly the truth.  I won't go to doc, but for my cataracts later after this virus, and hopefully nothing broken to take care of before then.  The pain killer meds themselves would do me in.   

“Life is tough, then you die.” ― George Carlin  (I'm sure lots of other people said that before him.  It is true.  

I prefer to stay away from doc's, if I can.  Hopefully I can.  Do have to keep the blood pressure regulated though, oh..........and the Xanax.  

[Gwenivere]

I’m guessing George Carlin couldn’t say the phrase correctly because of old censorship.  I have a coffee mug that says....life’s a bitch, then you die. Actually life was pretty darned good til Steve got sick and died. Sure wish he had that slow growth prostate cancer as I, too, heard many men die of something else before that.  

[kayc]

20 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

life’s a bitch, then you die.

Haha, kind of like my age old saying, "Life sucks and then you die!"  Facetious, yes, but a grain of truth to it.  Oh yeah, grain is prohibited (to me)!

[Margm]

21 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I, too, heard many men die of something else before that.  

We were told that with my dad's, but my dad was a young man of 61 when first diagnosed.  Still, if he had paid attention to his doc he would have lived longer (maybe).  My pastor told my mom to expect a very hard death.  She disliked him for telling her that.  I think sometimes we do say the wrong thing but my dad died one of the hardest deaths I have "never" seen, other than Billy's dad's.  Both were in hospital beds, morphine gave them both the agonal breathing where you hoped and prayed each long time between breaths would be the last.  We treat our fur babies with more comfort care than we treat our humans.  Man's inhumanity to man. 

[Gwenivere]

At 61 there should have been treatment.  I was referring to when prostate cancer is discovered in the late 70’s or 80’s she IS found to be slow growing.  Radical cancer like Steve’s and your dad’s isn’t the same thing.  I don’t even want to go back to what I saw that last week.  It will haunt me forever.

[Margm]

I did not realize Steve had this.  My dad had symptoms but actually his lifetime fear was cancer.  Billy, I guess, had symptoms for colon cancer, none that I knew about, and the back trouble was from his 30's.  No, the last couple of weeks for my dad were spent in the hospital.  He was not conscious.  Mama swears she saw an Angel as he passed.  Mama saw them more than once though and I still cannot explain the hallucination I had of the two young girls that rode in the ambulance all the way to the hospital, but no one else saw them, and I can even remember what they wore, they were twins.  This is getting into the supernatural, except I believe in Angels.  I also believe in fever hallucinations.  No, it is best not to remember the last minutes of our mate.

[kevin]

Good picture Marg....still got lots of fishing gear but this catch and release took away my motivation......I support it when you see how the fish counts have diminished...Supported neighborhood pub today...four people total, this will take a while before things pick up...take care

[Margm]

1 hour ago, kevin said:

but this catch and release took away my motivation

Sorry Kevin.  I am not being a conservationist.  Billy knew how to fillet bass, I don't.  Actually, our catch and release was mostly being lazy.  We liked to catch for sport and we released because we were too lazy to take them home and clean them.  They were not killed, just terrorized.  I think I should be ashamed to say this, but sometimes after a day of fishing, we would go to the catfish restaurant to eat.  I know, I know, we are terrible people.  

[Gwenivere]

I know we have to get much of our food from animals unless we are vegans, but I’m such an animal rights activist that I don’t understand Catch and release for sport.  It has to hurt the fish.  Why would someone want to do that?  I don’t mean to offend as I do eat fish.  All the people I knew that fished did it for eating.  They only threw back ones that were too little.