Fine, Thanks...

I got a text message this morning: "How's your mental health?"

I didn't recognize the number, it wasn't a contact but I almost answered it anyway. I do have friends who would text that out of the blue. But before I could ask who it was I got the follow up: "Oh Sorry! I meant to send that to someone else. But, since I asked, how is your mental health?"

And I realized it was a phishing message.

It was a good one. Like I said, I almost answered. Much like the first time I got a message about Jenny being late for gymnastics and my mom instinct kicked in to let them know I wasn't their coach. In my defense that was years ago when the random opening line messages were just starting. The scams are always most effective at the beginning right?

As a funny aside, yesterday I got a scam message about my refund at Amazon being processed and I just needed to click the link to verify. Before I could block and delete someone else answered: "You'd think you'd at least be smart enough to not send this as a group text." followed by "Does your mother know what you do for a living? How do you sleep at night?" And I have to admit I had laughed when I saw it was a group text as well. Here is your very personal Amazon refund that we are sending to 25 other people at the same time.

I don't answer the random texts. As many of you know I did used to answer the random scammers on Facebook posts. I don't want my number out there on a "replies" list so I don't do it here but on Facebook they were already contacting me on the public posts so no harm no foul to amuse myself at their expense.

My friend Kevin used to reply to all of the texts. And to engage in conversation with telemarketers when they called. He liked to see how long he could keep them on the line, or conversely how long until they cussed at him. I laughed until I cried at times reading the screen shots of the exchanges. It is just one more thing I miss about him.

But I don't answer the random texts. But what if they hadn't messaged back so quickly tipping their hand that it was a scammer? What if I had thought it was someone I knew and I answered them?

How's my mental health? Well, it's May and May kind of sucks. But it been five years since the worst May ever so it's a lot better this year. But it is always better than that lousy May where we lost two friends and Brent's mother. That May when the world was tilted and locked down and we had no idea how bad Covid 19 (I think we were still even still calling it the novel coronavirus at that point) would get. Though Brent and I figured it out when his mom died. Not just losing her but the challenge of dealing with the death of a relative during a complete lockdown. But five years on it's a sweeter sadness as I mark the anniversaries of when we lost each person instead of a crippling grief, so that's progress.

It's been 7 months since the United States looked at the two candidates for president and made the choice to send us to our destruction. It's been four months since he was sworn in and it has been just as bad as I feared in some areas and worse than I ever imagined in others. Just this past week the list of what the fucks would be 10 to 15 items long.

It's been everyday this week that the mainstream media has decided not to focus on that list of what the fucks and instead remind us that Biden is old. And that somehow the constant drumbeat last summer of Biden is old that lead to removing him as the candidate and replacing him with Harris was actually keeping it from the American public. Lousy way to keep a secret. And now that he has announced his devastating cancer diagnosis I am supposed to be insulted that I didn't know sooner because that had to have been kept from us as well. To what end, I don't know. But let me see another 43 articles on how old Biden is while they ignore the old man in the Oval Office currently who is clearly also, did I mention, old!

It's been around a month since we found out that there will be another round of layoffs at Intel and we still don't know what's going to happen there. It's been a month of eating myself alive knowing that I can't make a good decision about where to live so I have to make the least bad one but not sure that it's the least bad so I'm eating myself alive a little more over that. Because if it weren't for overthinking I might not think at all.

It's been two weeks since I sat down with my fun little Quiet Brain workbook that I was a kickstarter on, from the guy who does the Heart and Brain comics that I adore, and when faced with the first two pages (write something that you need for yourself, write something that you want for yourself and write down some ideas for a personal mantra) I couldn't think of a single thing to write. I took his advice from the intro of the book and put it down to think about it and come back and well...I'm sure sometime I'll come back. The FIRST TWO PAGES stumped me.

So yeah, all things considered, my mental health is about where I would expect it to be.

Or you know...

Fine, thanks, and you?