the abject misery of the holiday season finally hit me full force tonight as i got to remembering family members that are no longer with us that i wish i'd had better relationships with when they were alive

and i miss my partner. and i get to drag my ass to an apartment viewing by myself tmw and im exhausted just thinking about it

and my yearly review is still bothering me and slowing me down as I now second-guess everything I'm doing at work

things are real cool tonite

you're wonderful and I hope life starts treating you better soon

ty friends idk man I'm just tired and sad

my manager said I could come in to work Sunday if I wanted bc they're doing an employee appreciation breakfast and I'm like. I probably should, I like food and I have so few hours that week that I could use the money, but I also just kind of want to vegetate and rest for the 4 days off I'd have otherwise

ough.

also my tummy is upset I think because dark lunch was my first proper meal of the day and my tummy wasn't ready for so much carbs and acid and some dairy

thankfully I'm mostly finished with my assigned shit but. OUGH

oh I need to remember to grab my freezer bag out of the cooler before I leave

god the depresso is terrible rn. grateful I have an okami date w my partner this morning bc, and I cannot emphasize enough, ough

thinking today about how much i regret not buying the goodsmile sayori plush pillow when it was being manufactured

even if i had a zillion dollars to drop on a secondhand collectible, i can't even find the pillow being sold secondhand anywhere LOL

a few of the actual small plush but most of the listings for that one are bootlegs...

also deeply regret not buying the sayori/natsuki omocat DDLC t-shirt (but i feel like the pink was ALWAYS sold out in my size), and the zoom call desk mat... sighs

instead of sleeping like I should have, I went insane and made myself draw something bc I am so rusty and it's been driving me crazy

now I am laying here sort of trying to sleep but failing

it's okay, i appreciate it i've felt a lot of antipathy and bitterness towards the winter holiday season for quite a while, but. a couple of years ago we had a death in the family on Christmas Day and that really just kind of sealed my holiday-related nastiness into the core of my being

and i know a LOT of people have lost loved ones over the holidays and it's just...ugh. it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so all-consuming and inescapable

it sucks. i wish there was more sensitivity surrounding the fact that so many people can't be with their loved ones on these holidays that are supposedly meant to be about being with loved ones

but. you know. it's not actually about the holidays it's about the money that can be made off of them LMFAO

sometimes i just want to exist at my baseline level of emotionally treading water without Christmas pushing its ass up against a whole quarter of the year 😭😭😭 i think everyone deserves that peace LMFAO

i am BEGGING

I finally managed a nap but I deffo didn't sleep for long enough

and yet my body is like that's enough, right?

snzzzzz I just want to take a shower but our landlord is fixing stuff in that bathroom rn

i got enough sleep but i've been so weirdly mentally disoriented and foggy since i woke up, presumably bc i slept and woke on a very diurnal schedule and my brain absolutely hates that shit

tried to lay down for a nap before this queer art club thing me and the roomie are going to bc I started to feel disoriented and foggy in the physical sense as well as the mental, but it has not been successful ough

art club meeting was fun, I got a lot of sketching done which was nice after my terrible art drought lately

but god I am so tired and I feel so ill. I feel like I've been motion sick all day somehow

don't want to go to work tonight... sighs tiredly

roomie is sick and i woke up after my nap with some Throat And Chest Weirdness

dumping emergen-c into my throat at lightspeed

roomie is now sick enough to want to go to urgent care tmw morning and is very concerned that it's covid so . cool cool cool cool cool

I'm feeling worse and worse the longer my shift goes on

just one more hour and then I can grab some soup from Wawa and go home and collapse

I'm trying not to be anxious about this bc I know anxiety symptoms will only make my physical condition even worse but. ough

roomie has COVID so I almost certainly do too. I am resting a bit bc I made about a million phone calls trying to figure out what to do and the spoon count is low. once I feel less drained I am going to drag myself to urgent care and then ??? idk. hopefully they'll give me the antiviral but I may not be high risk enough

I don't work tonight but if my test comes back positive I'll probably just preemptively call out tomorrow and for the rest of the weekend. I need to see if they offer paid leave for COVID too though I doubt it at this point

I am exhausted and sad and stressed and frustrated but 'tis the fucking season I guess

never ever

me: I don't want to work all weekend
a finger on the monkey's paw: curls

my dad very kindly said he'd help me pay for whatever visit and medication expenses I may incur bc unfortunately I am still uninsured, which helps a lot, but ugh

missing that much work... x_x

update: somehow my flu and COVID tests came back negative. I do not know how bc I literally shared utensils with the roommate who is sick not 2 days ago so I am wondering if the sample wasn't good or I was tested too early

regardless I have a doctor's note to isolate for the next few days just in case it's a false negative for whatever reason, so I will have to call into work and let them know

at-home test 1 says COVID 🙃 our tests are kind of old and obviously the lab test at urgent care conflicts so I will continue testing each day but. god

I rly think they did not take a good enough sample, my nose was barely running after the swab and that has not been my experience with literally any other COVID test LMFAO

yeah I'm pretty unhappy

I discovered I am not actually scheduled to work Sunday night so I will have sunday to hassle urgent care/go to a different testing location if my at-home test tomorrow is positive, but. I am pretty annoyed that I might have to do that LMFAO

and I think I'm gonna need to submit some of my PTO to cover the fact that I only worked a single day this week and will be missing at least Monday next week if this is covid

I am so so much sicker than yesterday

I spent the whole night so nauseous that I didn't take any meds bc I was worried they'd upset my stomach and I would just promptly eject them from my body

at-home test said COVID but more aggressively this time so I'm back at urgent care being charged again for the same shit. if it's negative this time I am just going to have to suffer through work on Monday night bc I can't miss more than 2 days without a doctor's note

I feel like hell

also had to cancel d&d which I was rly looking forward to bc I feel so awful... bluh

bro I have been waiting 40min just for a doctor to come back and tell me if this stupid test is positive or not

disintegrates

just realized I never updated in here so: yes it's COVID, I did not get a doctor's note excusing me from work despite what I was told on the phone so I get to just follow my employer's COVID policy, which is not posted anywhere easily accessible online so I get to call HR when they're actually in the store on Monday

but my TL knows what's going on and told me to just stay home Monday night if I'm still not feeling well

fever is only just hitting today so I do not anticipate making it in tomorrow night frankly. I ate a peanut butter sandwich and that made me tired

why.......... wouldn't they give you a doctor's note...............

wish all of this was clearer so you could just rest and recover without worry, cee

well, they did give me a signed note saying that I tested positive for COVID as of yesterday, but it doesn't specifically excuse me from work like the previous note I got did lol

which is so nonsense and that whole visit was a wildly demoralizing waste of time and money but c'est la vie

thankfully after Monday I'm not on the schedule again until Friday so that will hopefully be the last day I have to miss

smell is gone and taste is wonky... ough... one of my biggest post-vaccine COVID fears

(post-vaccine bc obviously before that the fear was. hospitalization. and death)

having to cancel d&d three days in a row... Pain

went back to work tonight and it was absolute fucking misery, and then I accidentally cut someone off at the roundabout and they fucking followed me home and now I'm freaking out thinking about how stupid it was of me to come straight home

i thought they might be following me bc they were really riding my ass but I was like... maybe they do actually live over here

but then I saw them use a parking space to turn around after I had parked in my space and then leave

I feel like I'm going to be sick

3 days of work was enough to wreck my ass so i have just been sleeping and rotting rather than checking in here sry ough

i am glad i had 2 days off... one of the TLs asked if i could work monday and i was very tempted bc i wanted to help and i want the money but. my physical condition is so poor rn that i knew it would not be good for me

i managed to do a few chores today that needed doing... and made some pasta so i don't have to worry about lunch for work for the next few days... pretty weary but i am trying so hard to start putting my life back together LMFAO

unfortunately i'm on a time limit bc my partner is coming over xmas eve and i want to make sure everything is clean and properly disinfected before then, but. c'est la vie

generally I am feeling a lot better but god I am getting winded so easily and it's killing me

thankfully it's a light night in my aisle (I'm almost done) but ough

I might need to start taking morning walks outside of work to try and build my stamina back up...

i had. such a bad day and night it is unreal

it improved very slightly when i got help for the other aisle i was assigned but we were so fucking busy tonight and some satanic upper management who i don't know and don't care about decided they need to visit the store tomorrow, mere days before christmas, so night shift had to condition EVERYTHING

even the messy-ass day shift and vendor horseshit

on top of (in my aisles at least) a very large load

bad night to be that busy after i spent absolutely all day exhausting myself on laundry bc i needed to deep clean it all and there was no better day this week for me to do it at this point

BAD NIGHT TO BE THAT BUSY AFTER EXHAUSTING MYSELF ON CHORES WHILE I'M STILL RECOVERING FROM COVID LOL

my least favorite part of night shift by far is the wildly unrealistic standards for what we can get done in such a short period of time

we're supposed to actually clean our entire aisles with disinfectant and stuff every two weeks. which would involve taking everything off the shelves and re-shelving it all in addition to the mountains of live stock we get in every night. who in upper management thought that should be a job for grocery and not its own devoted cleaning position

(we don't actually do this bc my manager also thinks that's insane)

(but it is a fun example of the kind of shit i DO have to do sometimes)

have not checked in here bc my days since the 23rd have been, in order:

- cleaning and disinfecting about half of the house, especially my room, so my partner could safely stay over without worrying about any lingering COVID nasties
- my partner coming over Xmas Eve and us spending most of the day prepping for Christmas proper. and also my fucking period started

- sleep debt and actually cooking swallowing up most of Christmas Day, and also my period still destroying me
- having to go into work Xmas night and having an unexpected delivery, which a literal total of only 4 of us had to do bc one of the 5 people scheduled that night called out, and feeling so sick I was worried I was having post-covid complications

- me being crushingly sad about my partner leaving the day after Xmas, and having to clean up all the chaos from our festivities (they helped before they had to leave but we couldn't get it all done)
- sleep. just sleep. I have slept for the better part of the last 2 days bc I had so much physical fatigue and weariness saved up

extremely glad I got to see my partner and do something nice with them for Christmas but god I still hate Christmas so much

it wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't still trying to dust myself off from having COVID (and my period starting at the literal worst goddamn time it could have this month) but why would even a good thing be easy and not stressful for me LMFAO

and I work the next two days and am gonna be helping partner move on the 30th so busy continues

had a breakdown earlier today bc i took on way too much of my partner's moving-related stresses and it strained my emotional reserves as well as hit me in my moving-related traumas. and then i had to get (not enough) sleep and go to work where the load was late, again, like it always is on fridays

and i was in one of the few aisles that's still very difficult on me bc i don't know it well enough to stay up to speed (and it's full of heavy bullshit like cases of cans)

we talked productively about it during my lunch break but i still feel pretty drained and bad. the move is today and i'm gonna be staying over and then we'll be coming back over here for NYE i believe

and then i get to go right back to work

i feel like i basically have not gotten to rest at all since i left covid containment