Ok probably not just me. From the looks of my social media and the reports I hear from the outside world, I am not the only resident of mucusville. I am, however, the only resident of my own personal mucusville.

Which is good, because if anyone else was living in my mucus that would be weird.

I have a cold. Or flu. Or an RSV? Or something similar with another name but NOT the Thing-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, because I have taken TTSNBN-tests daily and they all say it is not that. Whatever it is, it is a) awful, and b) nothing to complain about really because, as we have all seen, it could be so much worse, and frequently is.

And yet, complain about it I have.
Been…
Doing? Not sure how that sentence should work. But I have been complaining and still I complain. Because context is everything, and it is the worst I, personally, have felt in bloody ages. My family are all bored of me complaining to at them, so I shall complain here instead…

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It has come to my attention that in one particular airport in Wisconsin, Mitchell airport apparently, was the first airport, may still be the only airport, to use in official signage the word “recombobulation”, and this is amazing, and I want everyone to know about it.

It’s after TSA, after security point, and it’s just a name for the benched area where you can put your shoes and belts back on and shove your larger electronic items back into your overpacked hand luggage. Because you have been discombobulated, you need to be recombobulated. This is where that happens. This word, which may have made it into an official dictionary by now, was named as the most creative new word of the year in 2009 by the American Dialect Society. Which, now I’ve discovered is a prize one can win, is destined to be the cornerstone of a new personal goal.

Anyway. They call it in their signage the “Recombobulation Area”, but I think we can all agree that is a typo, because they clearly meant to call it the “Recombobulation Station”, as that is obviously the better name. Because it rhymes.

I have no other information or point to make about this. I learned about it from a lecture series on word origins and the evolution of language I’m listening to, and it came up this morning because I was at therapy and realised that I should have booked in an extra session after a recent experience that left me discombobulated, because I had been in need of this room, this process, as my recombobulation station. Or one of my recombobulation stations.

We all need recombobulation stations. They look different for different people. But they exist for all of us.

It’s just nice to discovered there’s a name for them. I thought you should know.

I know. One cannot start a story “During the pandemic…” because one of us always has to raise a well-now finger and say “Well, now… the pandemic is STILL ongoing…” and we will know they will be right so we will say “Well, yes, of course, the pandemic IS still ongoing, but I meant during the lockdown, we…” and then we lose our thread while we get lost in thoughts about whether our lockdown was the same as their lockdown, and who was locked the downest, and how quietly, and for how long, and how that felt, and who got the most despondent, and who cried the most often and who wondered what they’d been doing with their life and whether it’s ok to ask if they’ve worked it out since…

…since…

…or still? During? Because well now, the pandemic is ongoing… And well yes, of course, it IS still ongoing but…

I am aware of how much things shifted, socially, personally, culturally, in the last few years.

Ironically, I know — I knew at the time — that it was perfect blogging fodder. It should have been. But the fact is, in the days and weeks and months and hours and nights and eons of 2020, it would have helped me to write all the feelings down, and out, and away… but doing so would have meant admitting a) that it was happening, but b) that I knew somehow that it was temporary and therefore worth writing about… and not just v) a new normal, the life that life was, is now. Indoors. With only these people.

And we didn’t know what of that was true.

We still don’t.

But I am just putting gentle pressure on this door because I know I want to tell the stories of how we changed, how I changed, during that time (this time? Gah!) and I needed to do that, at some point, without a whole bunch of throat-clearing in the posts themselves. So this is a post of throat clearing, instead.

I just want to be able to talk about it.

I did not mean the previous post to be 1500 words of finger-spew about all the terrible holiday movies I have seen so far in December. It turned out to be a lot. And we’re not even through the first week of December. Anyway, that’s not what I intended to write, but it was what I ended up writing, so in case this post comes to you in a feed and I’ve managed to help you avoid it, you’re welcome.