Friday the 13th

Some stupid jerk on the stupid internet pointed out that the last time we had a Friday the 13th in March, the whole world went to shit for more than a year. I did not need to verify that March 13, 2020 was a Friday. I remember. And as it turns out, we have another Friday the 13th this week. I did not need to know this. I need to just stay off the stupid internet. Stupid jerks. 

*****

I wish I could just stay off the stupid internet altogether, but that’s not really practical or even possible. Instead, I’m doing little things like leaving my phone in a different room when I’m home, and setting time limits on social media. I also block trolls and chaos goblins on social media like it’s my job. If it was my job, I’d be good at it. I’d be highly paid. 

*****

Let’s talk about what’s good. My son is home for spring break, and even though I can’t really take any time off to hang around with him, it’s really nice to have him here. My husband went to a hockey game last night, and so I took both of my sons out to eat at a neighborhood restaurant and bar. It’s a low-key, easygoing place, part pub and part sports bar. My sons each ordered a beer with their dinner, and were subject to careful driver’s license vs. face scrutiny, which I found entertaining since I’m obviously their mother, and I’m not the kind of mother who’s going to aid and abet her underage child in an attempt to order beer in a restaurant. After the ID check, the waiter looked at me as if for confirmation, so I told him that I’m their mother and they are truly 24 and 21 years old, and he was satisfied, and the boys got their beers. It was a really nice evening. 

*****

In the movie “Hanging Up,” directed by Nora Ephron and based on her life, Meg Ryan plays Eve, a woman who is hanging on by the thinnest of threads - running a business, raising a child with very little help from her husband, managing a Martha Stewart-esque household, and caring for her cantankerous, early-Alzheimer’s father, played by Walter Matthau (his last role, I think). Diane Keaton plays Georgia, her famous and successful older sister (the Nora Ephron character) and Lisa Kudrow plays Maddie, the bohemian actress younger sister. It’s a good movie, despite a pretty tepid critical response when it was released. Critics can be stupid. I should know, because I write my own inept criticism and commentary all the time, and I can be stupid. 

Anyway, there is a scene in which Eve is rushing to work from the hospital where her father is a patient, and she backs into a Mercedes. The Mercedes driver, a doctor, admonishes Eve for her carelessness, but he’s not a jerk about it; and as a doctor, he can also see that she’s struggling. He hands Eve over to his mother, who is so kind that Eve breaks down crying about her father and everything else in her chaotic life. The mother tells her son that Eve has been through enough and that she shouldn’t have to pay for the damage. 

“He’s an uproar person.” That is the doctor’s mother, describing Eve’s father. A person who is never happy unless everyone around him is miserable, a whirling dervish of crazy who is always in the midst of an uproar, who creates uproar when none exists, and who thrives on the confusion and fury and misery that results from uproar. Does that sound familiar? 

Yes, this entire country - in fact, this entire world - is run by uproar people. Once again, Nora Ephron explains it all. 

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I wonder if God is in His heaven, looking down at us all and thinking “What the hell do I have to do to make you morons believe that climate change is real?” After work yesterday, I took off my sweater and put on my sunglasses to walk to my car, and drove home with music blasting and the moonroof open and summer in the air. The high temperature on Wednesday reached 82, and then an intense, high-wind August thunderstorm blew through, threatening trees and roof tiles and patio furniture. Today, Thursday, the windows were closed and the heat was turned back up and I sat at my desk working and watching the snow fall. We’ve cycled through all four seasons twice in the last two weeks. If I were to personify Maryland weather, I would call it an uproar person. 

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I started grocery shopping for an old lady in our neighborhood right at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’m still doing her weekly shopping, six years later. My younger son, who was 15 in March 2020, used to help me. The first time I went shopping for the old lady, she wrote the check for $20 more than the total I gave her. I told her not to do that, but she insisted. So I asked my son to come along and help, and I gave him the extra $20. 

School was closed during the first few months of the pandemic, and then summer came, and activities were drastically curtailed, so he always had time to help with the shopping. But even when school and activities resumed, my son made time to go shopping with me. We would laugh about the old lady’s crazy ass grocery requests, and talk about everything and anything. Those grocery trips are among my fondest memories. 

My son is home this week for spring break. He’s working and studying and training and seeing his friends, but he set aside the early part of Thursday evening to accompany me to Safeway. We talked in the car, about everything and anything, and we dunked on our poor old lady’s weird grocery requests. Literally the highlight of my week. And of course, I gave him $20, even though $20 isn’t what it was even as recently as 2020. 

*****

I’d never heard of Kharg Island until yesterday, which was finally Friday the 13th. I suppose I’m relieved that we didn’t drop a nuke on Tehran yesterday, but I think that the Kharg Island bombing is going to turn out to be a very big deal. I think that decades from now, people will talk about Kharg Island like we now talk about the Tonkin Gulf or Mosul or Kandahar, all places that most Americans had never thought of before we barged in with soldiers and tanks and bombs. 

Yesterday being Friday makes today Saturday, and we have plans. We’re going to an afternoon hockey game followed by a show at the National Theater. I kind of can’t believe that I’m doing two things in one day. My energy is limited right now, what with all worst-case-scenario forecasting and resulting panic. And it doesn’t feel right, flitting around to sporting events and theatricals. But it will be good to be out, and necessary since I’ll be on lockdown for the next week. My mom arrives tomorrow and that’s a whole thing in itself. I’m going from macro problems to micro ones. It’ll be chaos around here, but it’s the kind of chaos that I’m used to and can manage. My mom likes having me take care of her, and I kind of like taking care of her. It’s the least I can do.