My wife bought our house years before she met me. Her first roommate still lives with us. He's a black man in his late 50's now. He works in one of the cafes in one of Amazon's buildings downtown. He also suffers from a disease called CIPD that affects his immune system, and requires monthly blood infusions to keep it from getting worse. (It doesn't ever get better.)

For two months now, he has been home, and our little quaranteam of 3 work very hard to keep us safe. We do it for him, and for my parents who are in their 70's and 80's... and are people I would really like to hug again some day.

Despite the Amazon building he is in being almost entirely unoccupied, his company has asked him to return to work 2 days a week.

His CIPD keeps him from driving, so he has to take the bus - well, THREE buses - to get to work, and then the same thing coming back.

To keep him safe(r), my wife and I are driving him in to work.

...

Now, the Seattle Police Department is rioting, and doing so every single night. We have curfews from 9:PM to 5:AM every day, through the weekend.

Because a black man, like my housemate, was murdered by a cop. While three other cops watched it happen over 9 minutes.

Yesterday I had to rush INTO the downtown area, to pick him up, because Amazon Security decided to close the buildings ahead of the impending nightly police riot, and kicked everyone out of the building. So I had to drive INTO the riot zone, to pick up my immunocompromised, black, male, housemate, and get him home safely.

He has to keep this job. The CIPD has destroyed his fine motor function, so he isn't capable of performing a lot of jobs. And the health insurance from this job pays for his monthly infusions, which are something like $5k a piece.

...

I've gotten good at painting my nails.

I was chewing my nails down to bloody nubs, from the stress of every-fucking-thing. So I started painting my nails, so I wouldn't chew them. It worked.

People ask me why I'm stressing. They laugh and smile at my blue fingernails. I smile back.

...

But I can't spend all this time on Hubski; I gotta get back to work.

I've got 4 government contract bids I am working on right now for work (oh yeah... still working full time, from home) that are all due next week, and would normally take me a week EACH to get done "right".

Man. This timeline. It's stressing me out.

But my new office chair arrives sometime today. So there's that.

And the new washer/dryer arrive tomorrow.

And my new bass amp will be here this weekend.

(... can you tell that I have replaced biting my nails with some 'retail therapy'...?)

I don't even know what's going on any more.