I had another fitful sleep again last night. Something about my muscles aching and waking up at 3 AM and 4 AM… it made for not a very restful night.
The dream I had before I woke up went like this:
I was in some sort of courtyard somewhere, and a delivery person came with a bunch of animal carrying cages. In one, there were two cats and a big pack of mince meat. The delivery person tried to convince me the mince meat was mine (in its rather torn and battered package) but, in actuality, our cat Phaedra (Fay for short) who died a very long time ago was in one of the cages. She was happy to see me. I told the delivery person that the mince was a mistake, and that Fay was actually our cat.
The delivery person didn’t seem to care or demand much proof; he merely let me have her and went on her way.
The house we were in was the pre-addition house I grew up in in Chicagoland. (No, we never had a courtyard.) I took Fay inside, into the hallway leading from the kitchen to the front door. For some reason, the front door “reception” area was longer than it is in real life, and a small pen area was there. Inside was our cat Celeste — also deceased, aged 17 in the late 2000s — and some representation of our two Chihuahuas, Levi and his sister Nyota. Levi lived the longest — he is the pet who passed the most recently — and Nyota passed away not long after Celeste (in the same year).
Their pen was absolutely filthy. I had completely forgotten about it. They hadn’t been fed, or cleaned out, or given fresh water in a very long time.
We had a female flatmate, or maybe she was a friend; I don’t know. I was happy Fay was back, and then I realized what a horrible person I had been letting our pets suffer in squalor like that. I cried. A lot. I was extremely upset.
Levi — God bless him, God always bless him — tried to cheer me up. Definitely an accurate representation of his soul, that’s for sure. I don’t know why, but he loved me so very much, and I loved him too. When he was dying, and we had to take him into the vet (this is in real life), he growled at everyone and would only snuggle into me. I die a little more every time I think of him dying in my arms. But he needed me then and there, and it was a final act of love I could give him, holding him as he passed away, knowing he was loved so very much. It’s all anyone can hope for.
Breakfast, pills, extra big cuddles with our cat Sissy. The dream really made my love for her very present and very real, especially as she is getting a lot older now.
I fixed up a few work things that weren’t working on our online platform, and also scanned some larger documents for my colleague to work on (applications for July courses). I tried to get our April Government return done, but, surprise, surprise, TEC hadn’t approved the fee increases in courses I put in on 4 February 2020. So their whole return revolves not around COVID-19 and the impact it’s having on our school; the whole return revolves around their inability to get things done.
I seem to be always waiting for people lately.
So I played Final Fantasy XV for a while during the afternoon. I enjoyed it. Really seem to be having a lot more fun playing it lately.
We had 15 new cases (6 confirmed) of COVID-19 today. The Government ramped up testing in the last few days again, today randomly testing people at a supermarket in one of the worst affect areas. It heartened me to hear many people volunteered, and also called friends and family to volunteer as well.
The current positivity rate — the number of people testing positive versus the number of people being tested overall — at well under 1%. Good news to hear.
The Prime Minister and Government talked about what life would look like for us all shifting from Alert Level 4 — the highest level — to Alert Level 3. Despite education being able to operate freely at Alert Level 3 before we shifted to Alert Level 4, it seems this is no longer the case. I understand, but it causes a lot of problems for tertiary education establishments (like The Place Where I Work) where a lot of the on-campus time is face-to-face practical classes.
We can manage to have students do these classes off-campus, with a bit of creative thinking and some relaxing of our strict standards. But the worry is around whether Alert Level 3 allows some of our teachers to go in for a few days and record practical lessons on video to upload to our online learning platform. (We can easily gauge progress by individual Skype meetings.)
I told my husband — also my boss — that I refused to do all the work. I did a massive amount of work shifting us to online before Level 3, and during Level 4 in the early stages, and I refuse to be an absolute pack horse again for The Place Where I Work. It’s not fair, especially since some people seem to be treating this like some massive holiday. Fucking step up and do the work, people.
I did this during the quakes. I’m not willing to do it again.
That caused a bunch of silence and unhappy huffing, but that’s not my problem. I’m not going on like a broken record any more.
We watched LegoMasters USA — I really need to haul a set out of storage and build one or three — and then we watched a movie about mutants in a fictional alternate timeline in a fictional city called Lincoln City (which I highly suspect was supposed to be an alternate-reality version of Chicago), and a few YouTube videos.
So… here’s hoping that our COVID-19 tough response is working, and we shift down to level 2 safely and without any issues sooner rather than later. I’m hoping New Zealand (at least) can get back to some semblance of normality soon.
Beam Me Up, Scotty 