Month: May 2020

Girl Gone Viral

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Life and work are both busy, but I wanted to share a book I devoured recently. As you can tell from the title, Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai is about a woman who goes viral in the worst way. The heroine is the victim of a viral story that upends her life, unlike the woman who has gone viral in the past two days. You may have seen the video yourself.

A white woman playing with her dog in Central Park is asked by a black man to obey the leash law. This woman shouts at him, gets in the man’s face, and calls 911, claiming a black man was threatening her. You can watch her anger and vehemence at the bird watcher turn into hysterical sobbing when on the phone with the NYPD. She wasn’t the least bit afraid. She was lying and acting in order to have him punished for speaking to her. For speaking to her.

Remember, 65 years ago Emmett Till was tortured and brutally murdered because a white woman lied. This white woman was lying too, and this black man out on a walk might have died because of her lies. He also might have been arrested, held at a bond too high for his friends and family to post, for days or weeks or even years, losing his job, his freedom, and his family. Her behavior was racist. Her excuses are racist. Therefore she is racist.

Back to the book.

Girl Gone Viral (GGV from here on) centers around a moment when a stranger in a crowded cafe asks Katrina to share her table. They make polite conversation, the man asks her out, and she declines. They both leave the cafe. But according to the people at the next table, this is a romance meet-cute in the making. They tweet their fictionalized version of the interactions between Katrina and the stranger, along with a photo. When the story goes viral, the posters are offered TV interviews and book deals, the stranger comes forward and also seeks to profit monetarily, pretending the story is true and that he and “Kat” as she called herself in that moment are really together. However, Katrina has to leave her home and friends to maintain her safety and privacy. The only person who comes with her is her long-time bodyguard Jas, with whom she falls in love at his family’s farm.

GGV takes place in the same world as The Right Swipe (TRS), but can be read on its own. I enjoyed TRS, but I didn’t particularly enjoy some aspects of how the two main characters came together or communicated. I wasn’t certain if I’d read the second book in the series, but Katrina is my favorite secondary character from TRS, and the book is both a forced proximity romance (yay!) and a bodyguard romance, which I’m a sucker for (I blame the movie “First Daughter”). 

Alisha Rai deals with heavy topics meaningfully and respectfully, and I personally related to GGV more than TRS. It was familiar yet soothing to read about these characters who, because of other people’s selfishness, needed to retreat from the world. Their withdrawal and isolation is more difficult and more necessary because of their past traumas, anxiety, and fears. Every stranger is viewed with suspicion, as is everyone who gets to close to me at the grocery store. The main characters have a strong community of friends (for Katrina) and family (for Jas), but they can’t be fully present with their communities during this crisis. They want to feed people and care for others’ needs, and struggle with feelings of guilt when they can’t do what their community wants of them.

I think I read the book in two sittings, and was calmed and healed and entertained in the same way Evvie Drake calmed and healed and entertained me. Katrina and Jas fall in love, find ways to reassert themselves in their own lives, are brave enough to say the most difficult truths aloud, and hold out hope for people to behave better while working together to better protect themselves in the future. That feels ever-relevant.

If you’re looking for a story that gives you hope without making you deal with a situation too similar to what you’re already dealing with, give Girl Gone Viral a try. And, more broadly, we learn empathy for people who don’t look or live like us by reading books and watching TV shows starring such people. Today’s a great day to buy a book by a black author.

My Favorite Masks

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My favorite masks are, of course, the ones that fit me best. That are most snug on my face without squishing my nose. They are soft and comfortable. And they also need to be thick. 

Tyler and I have two surgical masks and about a dozen homemade masks, but as I don’t own a sewing machine they were not made by me. Our mothers each made one. My mother sent a couple that were given to my dad and ordered a few for us, and I ordered six for us from Etsy. Of all these, the one that fits me the best and seems to be the best quality is this the woman/teenager size from ZhenLinen on Etsy.

I wear masks at work whenever I’m not in my office, when in drive-thrus, and when I have to go to the grocery store. Basically, any time I’ll be anywhere near another person, I wear a mask to protect myself and others. Below is a simplified, but effective info graphic about how masks protect you and others: 

I’d planned to talk more about masks, but yesterday, a good friend and her husband, who is a front line healthcare provider, were accosted while grocery shopping for wearing masks. I’m still an incandescent pillar of fire over the disrespect of this horrid woman, who butted herself into their lives and their day and their physical space because she didn’t like that they were wearing masks. My friends are both white. Imagine how much worse this entitled, selfish white woman would have been if they hadn’t been white also.

They weren’t hurting her or affecting her at all by wearing masks, but this woman felt like she had the authority to lecture them about wearing their masks in public. She proclaimed both the CDC and the WHO to be spreading misinformation (which I’ve also seen on my Facebook timeline and judged you sharers harshly for). This woman declared that they didn’t need to wear the masks, as if she is more trustworthy than those organizations and more knowledgeable than my friend, who has personally cared for COVID-19 patients. And when this healthcare worker patiently explained his job and expressed that the masks were primarily for her protection, she declared he should just stay home, as if he doesn’t need to run errands and buy food, just like she does. As if he isn’t human. 

You can’t share videos of crying nurses, order takeout because that restaurant donated meals to hospitals, and get a warm feeling at every commercial applauding healthcare workers then accost people in the grocery store, demanding they remove their protective masks. Even if my friend hadn’t been a healthcare worker, those masks don’t hurt other people. They are a personal choice, like a rain jacket during a hurricane. Even if it isn’t raining right where you are personally standing at that moment doesn’t mean you know more about the weather than the person in the jacket. And their rain jacket isn’t bothering anyone else anyway.

While we’re on the subject, the global pandemic isn’t over just because you’re bored. And it isn’t over simply because you’re ready for it to be. 

And if all of that isn’t good enough for you, just mind your own damn business.

If you think masks trample on your person liberties (I can only assume you don’t wear a seatbelt either), don’t trample the liberties of the people who choose to wear them. Those people are human, like you. They might be providing an essential service, like scanning your groceries or delivering your meals. They might be the very ones who intubate you when you have bilateral pneumonia from COVID-19. They might even be the last human beings you see if you die in the hospital from this disease. 

Stay home. Wear masks when you must to go out. And, at the very least, mind your own business.

Books Recs for the Bored-At-Home

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Over the past two months, several bored-at-home friends have asked me for book recommendations. I’ve had such fun hearing what books they’ve liked recently and getting to suggest others. 

So, as we move toward summer and it’s still best for everyone to only go out if absolutely necessary (and only while wearing a mask and staying at least 6 feet from each other), here are some books I’ve recommended to others that you might like too.

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Romance

Mystery

And here’s what’s next on my TBR:

*These books are currently being adapted, along with their entire series, by Netflix, and I couldn’t be more excited. I mean, Julie Andrews is in “Bridgerton“. And the worldbuilding for “Shadow and Bone” was always leaping off the page. Season 1 of both has finished filming, thank goodness, so we may well get them both before the year is out.

A Good Few Weeks

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I had to return to working in the office full-time on Friday, the day after Georgia’s shelter-in-place order expired. 

For Tyler and I, those weeks where we both worked from home were dear and kind. Talking with my grandmother on the phone one night, she warned me that this kind of experience, especially being stuck in the house together for such an extended period, would be a trial on our marriage. But for us, it hasn’t been. Or for me it hasn’t been. I’ve had bad days. So has did he. But mostly we’ve had closeness, and cat gifs, and cat cuddles, and conversation. Sharing. 

We got used to watching Good Eats and Friends together during lunch, laughing and not wanting to turn it off and go back to our desks. We were spoiled by our ability to get up, brush our teeth, and walk to “work” in a few seconds. We’ve cuddled in the mornings more. We’ve fallen asleep together on the couch in the evenings more. We encourage each others’ hobbies with a presence and attention we usually don’t offer. He’d open the blinds in the morning in every room of the house and I’d shut them at the end of the day. Around 11:30, one of us would ask the other what we want for lunch, and we’d fix it together and work on the dishes afterward.

A good, good few weeks. 

And all of this against the background of anxiety, stress, and the horrors of a society and healthcare system increasingly strained, friends increasingly isolated, friends and friends of friends learning they’d tested positive. People are losing their jobs, their hope. People are losing their family members and not even being able to hug their loved ones for comfort.

Tyler and I are well aware that we’re in an ideal situation. We’ve recently moved into our first home, one in good shape, and we have a cat but no children yet. We could still have a work-life balance because life didn’t need to cross over into work and our work didn’t meaningfully disrupt our lives. I don’t know how people are coping without pets. I can’t imagine being without ours, for comfort and cuddles and warmth and liveliness and cuteness and the sparks of laughter throughout the day.

I had sunlight and sweatpants and didn’t wear a bra or shoes for a week or more at a time. I miss all of that dearly now. Now, I’m in a windowless box. My own office, decorated with a few paintings and some Funko Pop figures. Arranged for ease of flow. But there is no window. The florescent lights overhead are grating and flicker when I turn them on, so I’m making do with lamps instead. 

My first day back in the office, I left with a massive headache I couldn’t shake until Saturday evening. I was utterly miserable, and felt like my work life had stolen something from my home life. I had bad headaches a few times while quarantined, but could take naps during the day and work later so that I didn’t have to take sick time and slow production during one of our busiest times of the year. This is no longer an option.

For all the brightness and warmth I had while working from home—when my job was very busy but my satisfaction was so high—I feel the void now. And, because Bibb County is expecting a surge, and because so many of my coworkers are at high risk or live with someone who is, I wear a mask when I leave my office. And when I’m in my office, I close the door so I can take the mask off while maintaining control of this space, its air, who enters. 

Now Tyler and I are isolated from each other as well as other people during the day, so we’re trying to connect in the same ways we we are with those outside our home, with gifs and texts and emails. And I’m still only available to my coworkers by email or phone, just as I was when working from home.

When I get home after work, I wash my hands thoroughly, clean my phone with Lysol wipes, and set aside my mask to dry out for three days or, if it’s cloth, throw it in the wash to start on hot water, then wash my hands again. 

Forty more minutes of my day spent driving, Fifteen minutes more preparing my appearance. Fifteen minutes more preparing my food and drink for the day. Countless minutes considering where and how to move so that I don’t infect a coworker, don’t infect myself. Every day is so full of anxieties I didn’t have to worry about when I worked from home. I often focus on those inconveniences, small but needless, or the litany of injustices evident in this entire pandemic so I can pretend I’m not terrified I’ll kill my husband by a thoughtless touch of my hand to my nose during the day or an insufficiently cleaned surface upon returning home. 

I’m the one leaving the safety of our isolation every single workday. If one of us gets sick, it’s almost certainly going to be through me. I try to avoid saying “because of me,” since I know I wouldn’t be in this building if there was any alternative that let me keep my job.

I’ve mostly managed to stop planning our hospital go-bags, trying to decide what the last straw would be before taking Tyler to the ER, how I’d need to sell the house after losing him, what it would be like to have to endure the rest of the pandemic alone without him or a single hug. These thoughts spark an anxiety spiral. I mostly manage to avoid it.

I mostly manage. I’m mostly managing. 

Which is all any of us are doing.

We’re managing as well as we can.