Ask not

Well hello there. How are you? Well, I hope. Me? Oh fine, just fine. Just absolutely totally fucking fine. Couldn’t be better. 

And now that we have that out of the way, let’s address the fat-ass elephant in the room, shall we? Welcome back, COVID. Nobody fucking missed you, and nobody invited you back, but here you are, so I guess we have to offer you a drink or something. Tell you what. There’s a big bottle of bleach in the laundry room. Help yourself. 

My inbox is full. Just today, I received notices about the Rockville High School boys’ basketball game (cancelled) and the girls’ basketball game (cancelled) and morning pre-season baseball workouts (cancelled). RHS sends letters to let us know when someone has tested positive, and then they contact the affected person’s close contacts separately regarding quarantine requirements. New cases have averaged one per week since the beginning of the school year. Today, there were 11 new cases. Parents are understandably freaking out, and rumors are spreading faster than the fucking omicron variant, may it rot in Hell. 

Other than that? Nothing new. Nice to see you. Have a great holiday!

*****

Now it's Tuesday. December 21. Winter Solstice. I'm in a very long line at the Leisure World Giant pharmacy counter, waiting for my COVID booster. A lady in line behind me declared the whole thing "crazy" after a five-minute wait, and abandoned the line. If everyone does that, I'll be out of here in no time. 

It looks and feels like winter; damp and chilly, heavily overcast and still, with a faint smell of snow. I feel like I should be listening to Trans Siberian Orchestra's ominous and vaguely threatening "Carol of the Bells" medley. TSO makes Christmas bells sound like the bells that we should not ask for whom they toll because they toll for us. Apocalyptic. Appropriate, really. 

I'm about third in line now. The crowd behind me is getting restless. "This is ridiculous! This is crazy! I can't believe this!" These sweet summer children have lived through the last 21 months, and yet they remain shocked at the ridiculousness of a 15-minute wait at a supermarket pharmacy. It’s adorable, really. I think it’s lovely that they’ve managed to maintain their wide-eyed innocence amid the shit storms formally known as the years 2020 and 2021. But they might want to toughen the hell up. 2022 hasn’t even started yet. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now. I got my booster shot, just 10 minutes later than my scheduled appointment time, and I came home to wait for my immune system to start flexing its muscles. Last evening was fine. I was a bit tired and my arm was a little sore, but I felt fine otherwise. Today is a whole other story. I dragged myself up, and after a shower and coffee and an orange and two Tylenols and two Advils, I felt human enough to commence with my workday. I attended meetings. I wrote emails. I organized and planned and managed stuff. The truck didn’t really hit me until about 1 PM, at which point I considered simply lying down on the floor and pulling the carpet over myself. I kept working for a bit, but then I gave in to the fatigue and the muscle aches and the low-grade fever; and I dragged myself to this here couch, where I intend to remain for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow is December 23, also known as Christmas Eve Eve, also known as Christmas Adam. It’s going to be a busy day for me. For the rest of today, I’m going to rest. 

Ghost of cookies past

I’m multi-tasking right now. My company is having a virtual holiday party and I’m sitting in front of my camera wearing my Nordic reindeer sweater with my Christmas tree in the background. I’m smiling and looking for all the world as though I’m fully engaged in the virtual festivities, but I’m writing my daily writing instead. 

A week ago, I thought it was completely ridiculous that this “party,” which is really a year-end all-hands meeting with Christmas sweaters, was going to be virtual. We have to sit through a year-in-review PowerPoint and we don’t even get a snack or a glass of wine? 

Now, of course, Omicron is spreading like I don’t even know what. I can’t say “like the plague,” because it’s an actual plague. Like mold? Like gossip? Like wildfire? Pick your stupid simile. They’re all terrible. Anyway, it’s probably better to avoid a big gathering. But I don’t want to avoid gatherings. I don’t necessarily want to attend a big gathering (because I don’t really ever want to attend big gatherings because that’s just me) but I don’t want to avoid them because of the COVID. I don’t want to quarantine. I don’t want the world to shut down again. 

*****

Wait a minute. Are we actually sitting through a report on company demographics? Are we really talking about ISO 27000 at 4:30 on a late December Friday afternoon? Clearly there are worse things than Omicron. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now, one week before Christmas. The virtual “party” picked up the pace a bit. I won the trivia contest, easily beating over 50 other employees who filled the meeting chat with good-natured (I think) complaints about how badly I was beating them. First prize? $200. I’ll take it. It’s December and I’ve been spending money like a mad woman. 

A week out is when it really starts to feel like Christmas. I am finished with my Christmas shopping. I usually shopped for Nana last but she’s gone and I don’t need to shop for her anymore and so I still don’t feel as Christmassy as I normally would on December 18, but at this time of year it’s hard not to catch a little bit of the spirit. It’s the light, I guess. It’s the light and the sense that things are winding down. 

Maybe the cookies will do it. I have to make cookies this weekend. Maybe you don’t know this about me but I really hate making cookies. Last year, though, I discovered that it’s better to make the dough on one day, and then bake the cookies the next. I’ll make dough today, and I’ll bake cookies tomorrow. If a houseful of cookies doesn’t get me Christmased up, then nothing will. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning. I spent the rest of Saturday morning doing minor household chores and personal tasks, doing whatever I could to avoid making cookie dough. Then I finally stopped stalling and made the stupid cookie dough, cleaned up the resulting mess (how does the faucet end up crusted with cookie dough? And the flour! Everywhere!), and basked in the glow of having completed one of my least-favorite tasks of the holiday season. 

Then my son’s swim meet was cancelled. Half of the opposing team tested positive for COVID. Everyone is panicking again. It feels like March 2020. The news is changing so fast every day. Case numbers are doubling and doubling again. We’re all going to have COVID by January. I’m just waiting for the next wave of restrictions. Schools close on Wednesday for Christmas break, but I fully expect that they’ll start the holiday break early. We all felt a little gloomy last night. We sat on the couch and watched Christmas movies but our hearts were not in it. 

The cookies are only half-finished. I made the dough yesterday, but I have to actually bake the cookies today. My 8yo nephew and 5yo niece will be spending the afternoon with us. Crazy small children and cookies are nothing if not a guaranteed recipe for holiday spirit, COVID notwithstanding. Let the cookie baking commence. 

One Year

This is the week, isn’t it? This is the week when everyone in the United States is looking at their calendars and remembering the last restaurant meal that they ate, the last public event that they attended, the last party or gathering, the last haircut, the last whatever until the country ground to a halt. Everything is reminding me of last year at this time. The sun is in the same position in the sky and the same distance from the earth and the days and nights are the same length, and the birds are singing the same songs and the grass is just starting to turn green and the forsythia are just starting to bloom the tiniest bit. 

And 2021 has also been an eventful year: an insurrection, a new President inaugurated, an old President on trial, a mass vaccination campaign, and a momentous anniversary, all in just two-plus months. It’s a lot to take in. Is there such a thing as TSD? Just Traumatic Stress Disorder, without the “Post-” part? Because that’s what this feels like sometimes. 

*****

Today is Friday March 12. I always think of March 13, 2020 as Day 1, which means that today is Day 365.

March 13, 2020 was also a Friday. We all went about our normal business, knowing that it was the last day of our usual, normal life, but not knowing what that really meant. The announcement that schools would close for two weeks had been made the previous day, but students were permitted to come to school on Friday to pick up their belongings and check in with their teachers. I went to work not knowing for sure how or even if we would be working the following Monday. I'm a contractor, and it seemed possible and even likely that our government agency would suspend contract performance until the shutdown ended. Thankfully, they didn't, and we were all told to begin working remotely on Monday. We’ve been doing that ever since. 

My older son is a student at our local community college and a lifeguard at an indoor pool. He worked that Friday night because he always worked on Friday nights, and when he went to work at 4 o’clock or so that day, no decision had been made regarding pools and parks and recreational facilities. But by the end of the day, the county had decided that all of those things had to close, too. The pool remained open until 10 that evening, and then the lifeguards went home for what they thought would be the next two weeks and what turned out to be the next three months. 

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. The doctor’s office is next door to the restaurant where my younger son and I picked up takeout that night. He and I always had dinner together, usually at a restaurant, but sometimes takeout eaten in front of a movie or a Capitals game, on Friday nights because my husband and older son were always at work until late on Friday. I thought about those Fridays as I drove past the restaurant to my appointment. My younger son is popular, and he’s never short of social opportunities, but he chose to spend almost every Friday evening of his freshman year in high school hanging out with his mother. Even as I lived those Friday nights, I knew that they were a gift to treasure. I’m glad I knew that then. Everyone’s schedule has changed. Everything has changed, period. We might not have another Friday night like that, ever again. 

*****

Now it's Saturday, March 13, 2021, meaning that we are officially entering year 2. It’s a sunny, bright March day, just like last March 13, 2020. The sun and the birds and the grass and the flowers--blah blah blah, all just like last year, like every other early spring. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, March 14: Year 2, Day 2. Yesterday was a typical pandemic Saturday; pleasant enough, but slightly sad. I ran errands, I did household stuff, I did this and that; nothing memorable. At 4:30 or so, the sunlight shifted and turned golden as it does toward the end of the day, forming geometric shapes, intersected with shadows, on the rug and the wall and the furniture. I wanted to go for a walk, but I didn’t want to leave my family room because I didn’t want to miss that light. It only comes once a day, and only on the right days. 

People were out and about yesterday. It felt like the world was opening up again, returning to normal. And it is. And that’s good. How could it be anything other than good? Why would anyone dread the thing that she’s looked forward to for a year? Who would do that? 

This is what happens. A person spends months thinking that she can’t live this way anymore, and then she gradually comes to realize that she doesn’t know how to live the old way anymore. I forget what it’s like to get out of the house at a set time every morning. I forget what it’s like to drive in traffic. I forget what it’s like to see people without their faces covered. I forget what it’s like not to think about what’s normal or not, and what it’s like not to think about life as a series of events before and after a huge cataclysmic change. I’m afraid that I’ve gotten far too good at living in this smaller and more circumscribed way, and that I won’t be any good at the old way. 

Normally, I’d chalk this up to me just being me. Low-level dread is my default state. But I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. I think that we all have some kind of re-entry fear. I think that we’re all a little anxious. It’s been a long time. It’s been one year. 

Super Bowl Snow Day

Another snowy Sunday morning. A very light gray sky and very large white feathery flakes of snow, the kind that comes down heavily and piles up quickly and shovels easily, light and fluffy. The trees look pretty. It’s going to snow for a few more hours, I think. Then it’ll warm up enough tomorrow and Tuesday to melt some of it, before the real winter weather hits again, just in time for the holiday weekend. 

The Super Bowl is later today. I don’t care at all about any wintertime professional sporting event that doesn’t involve pucks and skates and ice. I do like the parties, though. We almost always go to a Super Bowl party, but well, you know. It’s the ‘rona. It’s always the ‘rona. We’ll watch the game and eat snacks and rank the commercials, and we’ll wait for next year. Just like everything else in 2020 and now early 2021, nearly 365 days in. There’s always next year.

Books and Pictures: 2020 Bibliography

I made a rash commitment to finish my book list over the three-day MLK weekend. And then all of a sudden the MLK weekend was here and gone, and as the next three-day weekend approached, I still was not finished. I always forget how much work this is. I write about some books right after I read them, and then I have to search my blog and my Google Docs folder to find what I wrote. That’s easy enough. What’s not easy is to remember what I thought about the books that I read but didn’t write about during the year. Thank God this isn’t my actual paid job. 

I wrote that paragraph well over a week ago. Now two people in my house have COVID, and the other two of us can’t go anywhere--I mean even more than we couldn’t go anywhere before. Being nearly totally housebound drove me to get this done so I can waste your time with my inane observations about things other than books. I spent a few days updating the blog with posts about specific books and authors, which I am linking to here, so that this list won’t be quite so God-awful long and meandering. I do try to be helpful.

Anyway, in very approximate chronological order according to my now very messy handwritten list, here are the books I read in 2020. 

*****

The Little Friend (Donna Tartt). This was my 2020 - 2021 overlap book. I wrote about it here. 

*****

Working (Studs Terkel). Working, which made Studs Terkel famous when it was published in 1974, is a series of stories narrated in the first person by a huge collection of people spanning a pretty big variety of professions, social classes, and education levels. Its full title is Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. That title is exactly right. Terkel adds short introductions of each subject, and occasionally adds his own comments and observations; but most of the book is people talking about their work and how they feel about it. Their voices come through very clearly. 

Here’s a question: What makes a job a good job? Pay, hours, working conditions, title, commute, benefits--all of those things are important. But Working makes clear that the work itself is the most important thing. If the work isn’t interesting or if the person doing the job doesn’t see its value to the world, then it almost doesn’t matter how much it pays, or how prestigious it is, or how pleasant the working conditions are. We have an innate need for meaning in our work. As one of Terkel’s subjects says, "That's the difference between being alive and being dead." 

*****

How to Ruin Everything (George Watsky). Certain smarmy younger people, including one to whom I actually gave birth, have expressed surprise that I read this book. I see no reason why this should be surprising. I hope Mr. Watsky writes more books. And I hope some millennial or Gen Z-er stumbles across this blog post and finds it hilarious that I refer to him as Mr. Watsky. 

The Best of Marlys (Lynda Barry). This is an anthology of Ernie Pook’s Comeek, one of the best comic strips ever. Last year, I bought Making Comics, and it made me remember how much I loved Lynda Barry, so I bought this best-of directly from the publisher, Drawn and Quarterly. I didn’t read it all the way through in 2020, so maybe it shouldn’t be on my list, but I’m counting it anyway because I’m pretty sure that I read most of these strips when they were originally published. When I was in my early 20s, my friend and I used to cut these out of the Philadelphia City Paper and mail them to each other, even though we lived in the same town and saw each other at least once a week. I found a few of them among my old letters when I was cleaning out cabinets. It was a different time, but Ernie Pook’s Comeek holds up. 

Does this picture make you hungry
 for a fried-baloney sandwich?

*****

The Princess Diarist (Carrie Fisher). I loved Carrie as an actress, but I love her even more as a writer. This is the book in which she famously revealed the long-suspected affair with Harrison Ford, who appears to have been a bit of a jerk. She shares long entries from her 1976 journal (she was 19 at the time), and they are astonishingly good. I write every day, but when I read writing that’s so effortlessly beautiful and incisive, I wonder why I bother. But then I go back and read some of my own work, and I know why. It’s because I’m good at this. So was Carrie Fisher. God rest her soul. 

*****

Sally Rooney:

• Conversations with Friends
• Normal People

For some reason, it is now fashionable on the Internet to talk about how overrated Sally Rooney is, and how ordinary and dull her two novels are. Disregard all of this talk when you come across it because Sally Rooney is a wonderful writer, and Normal People and Conversations with Friends are both beautiful books. I wrote about Conversations with Friends early last year, but I never got around to writing about Normal People. It’s not very long; or maybe it is but it didn’t seem long because of two things: I read it just after I finished Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, also wonderful, but VERY long. And because it’s so good that I didn’t want it to end, but it did end despite my best efforts to ration the last few pages so that I wouldn’t finish it too quickly. 

Normal People gets so many things right, but if I had to pick just one thing, it would be the beauty and pain and loneliness of a young person’s first time away from home; especially a certain kind of introspective young person, and really especially the kind of young person who doesn’t always understand the social signals in a new environment. I was nowhere near as bright or as sensitive as Normal People's Marianne or Connell; and I grew up in a place and time quite different from Ireland in 2011, but I was very much like Connell in one way. I was the child of an unsophisticated working-class family who encountered worldly, cultured, well-educated people for the first time when I went to college. Like Connell, I didn’t know how to fit in with them; and then later, I didn’t know if I even wanted to. Like both Marianne and Connell, I experienced real loneliness and depression for the first time as a young adult. And like both of them, I learned that “life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.” It still does. 

*****

Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me (Alexandra Kuykendall). I know that I read this because it’s on my list. If I’d especially loved or especially hated it, I’d have written something about it. Anyway, the message is right there in the title, and it’s a good one. 

Happens Every Day (Isabel Gillies). Early pandemic reading. I wrote about this one right here. I might read it again. It’s very good. 

The Reading Life (C.S. Lewis)

The Hope of the Gospel (George MacDonald). George MacDonald had been on my to-read list for a long time, so I’m glad I finally got around to reading him. Now I don’t have to feel guilty every time I read C.S. Lewis, who urged everyone to read George MacDonald. He was right.  

Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl (Jeannie Vanasco)

Goodbye to Berlin (Christopher Isherwood)

*****

Hilary Mantel: 

• Wolf Hall
• Bring Up the Bodies
• The Mirror and the Light
• Giving Up the Ghost
• Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
• Mantel Pieces

Hilary Mantel was my author of the year for 2020. 

*****

Not That Kind of Girl (Lena Dunham). I wrote this down, so I suppose I read it. IDK why. I guess I wanted to catch up with what young women were thinking about five years ago. 

*****

Helene Hanff:

• 84, Charing Cross Road
• The Duchess of Bloomsbury
• Underfoot in Show Business 

Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins as Helene Hanff and Frank Doel in the
1987 movie version of 84, Charing Cross Road. It almost doesn't matter if you
see the movie first and then read the book or vice versa. 

*****

Your Blue Flame (Jennifer Fulwiler). I like Jennifer Fulwiler, and it’s hard not to admire a woman who decides that she needs to go on tour as a stand-up comedian, and then just does it, successfully, on her own, with no backing or support from the entertainment establishment. I don’t remember much about this book other than the general premise, which is that you should find the thing that you’re meant to do--your blue flame--and then just do it and don’t let anyone stand in your way. To which I say, absolutely. Sure. Why not. You go, girl. Get it. Get after it. Crush it. Kill it. Slay.  

*****

Meg Wolitzer:

• This is My Life
• The Wife
• The Interestings 

*****

The Rent Collector (Camron Wright). A friend recommended this to me, and I read it, and then I felt bad about myself because I did not find the story as moving and inspiring as I was supposed to. What the hell is wrong with me? 

*****

The Life of Elizabeth I (Alison Weir) and Mary Tudor, England’s First Queen (Anna Whitelock). It was a year full of Tudors.  

Always a bad relationship choice. He only killed two of his six wives, but that's 33 percent.
Are are those odds that you want to mess with? 

*****

Hamilton (Ron Chernow). I can’t be the only person who saw the musical first and then read the book. Among many things for which I will remember 2020, some good, and most bad, Hamilton is among the very good. 

The Man Without a Face (Masha Gessen). I didn’t need any more proof that Vladimir Putin is a bad, bad man, but thanks to this book, I know that he’s even worse than I thought he was.  

Look Alive Out There (Sloane Crosley). What did I think about this book? I read it many months ago and I only remember two essays. One is about the author’s housesitting stay in an isolated mountain home in California; so isolated that when the homeowner is delayed by a few days, Crosley has to befriend the neighbors in the hope that they’ll invite her to dinner, because there’s no more food in the house and the nearest store is 20 miles away. And of course, she doesn’t have a car. Fortunately, the neighbors are friendly and they invite her to dinner. In fact, they’re too friendly, and it gets weird. The other one was about Crosley’s unsuccessful attempt to climb Cotopaxi. Well, she did climb it, but didn’t make the summit. She gets credit for trying. I wouldn’t have made it to base camp, whatever that is. But I don’t know that she gets credit for this book. I came away from it with no real idea of who Sloane Crosley is. And that’s her prerogative, of course, but I feel that a book of personal essays should reveal a little bit more about the person who wrote them. That’s just me. 

*****

P.D. James

• Time to Be in Earnest 
• The Children of Men 

P.D. James was one of my four favorite author discoveries of 2020. I wrote about Time to Be in Earnest here (and I’m still cracking up about my dolla dolla bills joke). Then I read The Children of Men. Time to Be in Earnest was my first P.D. James, but it's probably not the best exemplar of her work because it's a memoir, and she was actually a novelist. I think I need to read some of her detective novels, which is what she is best known for. The Children of Men, though technically called a novel, is really a morality tale disguised as a novel. And it’s a very good morality tale, with a relevant and urgent message; and it’s full of beautiful writing. But it’s not really a novel. That’s what I think, anyway. What do I know? 

OK, here’s what I know--it’s very rare for me to prefer a movie to the book that inspired it, and this is one of those rare cases. "Children of Men," the 2006 movie version, is great, and very different from the novel, though I read that P.D. James liked the movie version very much. Anyway, a book about the impending end of the world was either entirely appropriate 2020 reading, or very inappropriate, depending on your mood. I will be seeking out additional P.D. James, but probably not until 2022 or so. 

*****

Things I Want to Punch in the Face (Jennifer Worick). This book was among the many, many things I wanted to punch in the face in 2020. But whose fault is that? I'm the one who chose to pick up a book titled Things I Want to Punch in the Face; and then having picked it up, chose to actually read it. Maybe I should punch myself in the face. 

Crazy Salad and Scribble Scrabble (Nora Ephron)

How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)

*****

Allie Brosh:

• Hyperbole and a Half 
• Solutions and Other Problems

*****

I just re-read the introductory paragraphs for this very long hot mess of a post (but seriously--can you imagine how much longer it'd have been had I not broken it into smaller posts?) and I see that I mentioned that this list was in "approximate" chronological order. Approximate indeed. I read the first Allie Brosh book in May or so, and then the second one in November (I think that's when it came out). I read How to Be an Antiracist in June or July. I read the face-punching book sometime during the early days of the 'rona, when I thought that we'd be out of lockdown in a matter of weeks and I didn't have a care in the world. Really, this list is in no real order whatsoever, much like the inside of my brain. I'm reading and writing again in 2021 and the one thing that I can promise is that next year's list will probably be just as crazy as this one. As always, don't say you weren't warned. 

Goodbye, January 2021. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

Thursday, January 28. A week ago, we thought we were “on lockdown.” We thought we were “quarantining.” We were staying at home most of the time. We were going only where we really needed to go, when we needed to go; and we always wore our masks. Two people in our household (my husband and older son) work outside the house, but my younger son and I attend school and work (respectively) 100 percent from home. The outside-the-house people went to work and came right home and showered and changed; and the inside-the-house people didn’t make many unnecessary excursions. We thought we were pretty restricted. 

And then my husband and older son both got sick, and both of them tested positive for COVID, and so we learned what “lockdown” and “quarantine” really mean. I haven’t left my house for four days, not even to get groceries or take my daily walk.

*****

Friday, January 29. We’re on day 5 now. They are both starting to feel a bit better, though they’re both very tired. We’re all very tired. It’s Friday afternoon, and just about to get dark. We have about 15 minutes of rosy golden fading daylight on the coldest day of the season so far, and we’re all in various states of undress. I showered this morning, as I always do, and I put on a wool sweater with the flannel pajama pants that I wore to sleep last night. It’s cold enough today that I had to put a pair of leggings on under the pajama pants. So I’m right now wearing a wool sweater and long-sleeved t-shirt, pajama pants with leggings, and two pairs of socks with slippers; and I’m warm enough. I’m even comfortable. But I feel sloppy. I worked today, and I did just about as much work as I usually do, but I don’t feel the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that normally accompanies the end of the workday. I feel like a person who sat around the house in her pajamas until all of a sudden, daylight faded and night fell and I was still in the clothes that I slept in the night before.

*****

Saturday, January 30. And now it’s Saturday morning. Guess what I’m wearing. Yeah. 

I will get dressed today; all the way dressed, and not half clothes and half pajamas. I know that this is the work-from-home look of 2020 and now 2021, but there are mental health downsides to sitting around in your pajamas all day. 

It’s freezing cold again; like legitimately 32-degree freezing cold, not the average winter chill that I tend to describe as freezing cold. We’re expecting snow. The other members of the household are even looking forward to it. And I guess I am too. It’ll be a change of scenery. It’ll look pretty and sparkly. Anyway, it’s cold enough today that many of the usual neighborhood walkers and runners will stay indoors and since I myself don’t have the ‘rona, I might venture out, masked and distant, for some fresh air and exercise. Maybe I’ll finally, finally, FINALLY finish that book list. I have time. I have plenty of time. I have all the time in the world. 

*****

Sunday, January 31. It did snow, and I did go out, crossing the street every time I saw someone coming. The snow continues to fall, and it’s pretty, but not sparkly. The sky is pale, almost-white gray, and there’s no sunlight to reflect off the snow and give it that magical sparkle that only lasts until the shoveling and the plowing and the snow-playing and sledding commence. I’m looking out my family room window and I see nothing but brown and white. Snow covers every branch and limb, forming a complex spidery pattern of white on brown against white again. There’s very little wind. 

I could, I suppose, have finished that book list yesterday. But I didn’t. I did work on it, so that’s something; something that I accomplished other than disinfecting surfaces and washing bedding and responding to text messages from concerned friends and family. COVID is a stern taskmaster, I tell you what. Maybe I’ll shovel today, or maybe I’ll venture out for a walk in the snow. Or maybe I’ll finally finish that list. I don’t know why I keep putting it off. 

*****

Monday, February 1. You were a long month, January. That was no way to start a year. It’s a new month now, 2021. Do better, OK? You're on notice. 

It’s Monday now and we’re still in the tunnel, but now there’s a light at the end of it. My husband had a follow-up COVID test this morning, which was negative. My son is still experiencing symptoms, but he’s getting better, so he’ll be able to have his follow-up test in a day or so, which means that our quarantine will come to an end in a few days. And you know what I did yesterday? I cleaned, and I cooked, and I disinfected stuff, but I also finally finished the book list. I also finished another book, and I’m going to have quite a bit to say about it. I wrote some things down, so I wouldn’t forget. I learn the hard way, but I do learn. 

Another Auld Lang Syne

It’s the last day of 2020. IT’S THE LAST DAY OF 2020!

Who knows what 2021 will bring? Really, that’s a straight-ahead question, so if you know, call me. In all seriousness, no one knows what’s coming next, and 2021 could be a bigger shit show than 2020, which was terrible but by no means the worst year in history. But I’m an optimistic person, and I am hopeful. I’m always hopeful. 

*****

2020 wasn’t 100 percent bad. I read more books than usual, and I will as always publish a full list with brief comments. I’d hoped to finish the one I’m reading now before the end of the year but I’m only halfway through and it’s unlikely that I’ll get through it today. It will be my overlap book. 

Yesterday, my son and I spent the afternoon in Annapolis, the charming, historic, waterfront capital of Maryland. It was a sunny, though cold day, and Main Street and the waterfront were crowded with holiday strollers, families and friends in winter coats and scarves and--of course--face masks. Anne Arundel County is a little more open than Montgomery County and the many restaurants and pubs were open for sit-down dining, mostly outdoors, and my son and I ate lunch on the porch of an over 200-year-old tavern, shivering in the wind, but warmed by the nearby propane heater. It was a short but lovely moment of freedom, a lockdown jailbreak. 

*****

Friday, January 1, 2021. It's 2021! Whatever it is, it’s no longer 2020, and that’s good enough for me right now. It’s been a rather nice half-vacation and thanks to the holiday falling on a Friday, we have a weekend between New Year’s Day and the post-holiday re-entry. 2020 taketh away, but it also giveth a little. 

For example, my kitchen cabinets and drawers are cleaner and more organized than they have been in years. This is not a project I would normally have undertaken during Christmas vacation, but with museums and movie theaters closed and hockey on hold until January, I had time to deal with the messy cabinets. I’m a very neat person and the mess in the cabinets, though hidden from view, had been bothering me for some time. And now they’re clean and neat and the tiny space in my head that had been occupied by worry about the state of the cabinets is now free for other obsessive-compulsive ridiculousness. See? There’s always a bright side. 

*****

Saturday, January 2. Christmas vacation is almost over, which means that I’ll be returning to work, commuting from the bedroom to my corner window office in the living room. Or maybe the commute is from the kitchen? I can’t do any more of the home-as-everything metaphors. That shit is so 2020. 

You know, I didn’t even take a whole week off. I worked a bit on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And I did my timesheet on Thursday, which is really the worst part of my job. But I did have a four-day weekend last week and another almost four-day weekend this week, and I feel as though I’ve been away for weeks. I haven’t looked at the news all week. I know that the House voted to override Trump’s DCAA veto and I know that another judge threw out yet another attempt to overturn the election result and I know that a bunch of suckers paid a lot of money to party with the President at Mar a Lago and they had to settle for Giuliani and Trump Jr. instead (ha ha ha ha ha!) but I really have no idea what else is going on in the world. I’ll find out soon enough. Ignorance is bliss, for now. Happy New Year!

Christmas vacation

Did you know that there's such a thing as a wine sippy cup? Well, there is, and I got a set of them for Christmas. I opened the box, and thought "is that what I think it is?" and it was, and it seemed like the silliest manufactured item ever offered for sale. And then I poured a glass of wine and I ended up ordering two more wine sippy cups, with pretty enameled designs. Welcome to 2020. Call me Karen. 

It's 6:45 pm on Christmas night. We have dinner very early on holidays, so the kitchen is clean now, and we're settling into a lazy evening in a very cozy room. It is quite cold outside but the fire is crackling away and it's almost too warm in our family room. Luckily, my sippy cup keeps the wine cold. 

It was a nice Christmas. I got to see two small children enjoy cookies and presents, and I received a brand new Capitals jersey in the new reverse retro screaming eagle design. I'm wearing it now. We went to Mass last night, and it was joyful, though a little sad to hear the cantor sing alone. 

*****

It’s December 26 now. Boxing Day if you're in the UK. They have the right idea, because the day after Christmas should be an official holiday. We usually do a family thing on December 26--a museum visit, and a walk around downtown DC to see the Capitol and White House Christmas trees, and then a late lunch at an Irish pub around the corner from the Capital One Center. We could still walk around outside, of course, but the museums and restaurants are all closed, and it’s very cold today, anyway. It’s too bad. I like seeing the inauguration stands under construction at the Capitol. But maybe they’re not even building them this time. Maybe they’re doing the whole damn thing on Zoom. 

Anyway, my younger son is busy today, and it wouldn’t have been the same without the whole family. Coronavirus or no coronavirus, the City of Rockville is holding lifeguard certification classes, the first that have been available since March. So not everything is cancelled. 

*****

December 27, Sunday. It’s 9:30 and I’ve been up for hours. My son had lifeguarding class this morning and so I woke up early to make breakfast and lunch for him. He’s 16 and could easily do both of those things for himself; but you find, paradoxically, that as soon as your children are old enough to do things for themselves, you want to do those things for them, because you won’t have the chance for much longer. It’s true what they say. They do grow up fast. 

Normally, I take off for the holiday week. This year, I thought I’d just save the PTO and work through most of the week, because so many things are closed or cancelled and because I’d be home anyway, so what’s the difference. But there is a difference. There’s a big difference between working at home and being at home, just because you like to be at home, and I do like to be at home. So aside from a few hours tomorrow and a few random calls and emails, I am going to take the week off. I have books to read and a fireplace to sit in front of and movies to watch and walks to take. Not to mention one last week of eating all of the things that I normally don’t eat. I made the cookies and now I get to eat them, with some nice pinot grigio in an enameled sippy cup. 

Planning ahead

It's Thursday night and I’ve been on Teams, WebEx, and Zoom calls all day long. ALL DAY LONG. And so now, I’m on another call, hosted on a no-name crap service that no one has ever heard of, which will not allow me to join from a browser, but the application download is stuck at 90 percent. So I’m predisposed to be hostile to the presenter.

This last call of the day is a demonstration for pool membership management software, because I’m now a neighborhood association board member, which means that I have three volunteer jobs, again. And this is because I am an idiot. I'm not so much of an idiot, though, that I’d use a shady cut-rate meetings platform to demonstrate a technical product. If you’re a tech company, you need to get the tech part right.

But there’s always a bright side, and the bright side is that I’m almost finished with work for the year, and that means no more Zoom, Teams, WebEx, GoToMeeting, or NoNameCrapVideoCall meetings until 2021. And the other bright side is 2021, because whatever it will be, it will not be 2021.

*****

I never take a day off just to take a day off, but I did today. Well, half a day, but it still feels like a day off because I started a bit late and knocked off early and now it’s 2:45 and I’m going walking on a ridiculously cold day. Cold enough, in fact, that I thought quite seriously about not leaving the house at all. But then I looked out my kitchen window and saw Running Lady, who is about 75 years old, running down my street, and I was ashamed of having even considered slacking off exercise because of a little chill.

The thing is that Running Lady runs very slowly. I can probably walk faster than she runs. And even though she runs slowly, it always appears to be a tremendous effort for her. That makes it even more impressive. She does it despite how hard it obviously is. She maybe does it because it’s hard; because, like Jimmy Dugan, she knows that it’s the hard that makes it great. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway, as I pile on the layers and zip up my puffy jacket and wrap myself up with a scarf and steel myself to the cold and ice.

*****

So I did go walking and it wasn't even that cold. It was lovely, in fact. Running Lady still has my everlasting respect, because she would have been out there no matter what, because that's what she does.

And now it's less than a week until Christmas. We are breaking all the rules by traveling across a state line to see family in Philadelphia. It will be a small and socially distant gathering and we're staying for only one night. The Maryland travel advisory excludes Pennsylvania and other bordering states and I've heard, though I haven't verified, that the reverse is true. We're on 95 North now, about to pass through Baltimore, and traffic is lighter than normal for the Saturday before Christmas, but the roads are not deserted by any means. The blacktop is still chalky gray with salt residue and the median grass is still frosted with the remnants of Wednesday's snow. It's cold again. The stop the spread and stay home for the holidays messages flashing on the electronic signs are making me feel a little bit guilty, but not that much.

*****

And just that fast, the weekend is over and we're on our way back home. It's 4:30 Sunday afternoon and we just drove through the snow covered battlefields of Valley Forge National Park, dotted with pre Christmas sledders and cross-country skiers rather than bedraggled Revolutionary soldiers suffering through the winter in miserable log huts. It was pretty. We're driving through the waning minutes of daylight on one of the shortest days of the year. The sky is pale gray tinged with pink and gold. We just drove past a farm house bedecked in wreaths and Christmas lights, its snowy field hosting a huge gaggle of geese. It will be dark in 15 minutes.

We had a fire pit in my sister's front yard last night. She wanted a snow fire, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. We bundled up in our puffy jackets and boots and held cold beer bottles with gloved hands, and then we came inside and ate like there was no tomorrow. This morning, I woke up early and went back out in the cold to walk off yesterday's cookies and hot roast beef sandwiches, accompanied by the world's gassiest dog. It was a long walk, in more ways than one.

*****

It’s Monday now, December 21, and I’m back to work, but not for long. I wasn’t going to take much time off next week because blah blah blah COVID blah blah, but I’m going to take most of the week off, the last week of this stinky stinky year that ends in just ten days. 

It's the same one I had in 2015.
And in 2013 and 2012. It's a good planner. 

In fact, I’m considering this year over already. My new day planner starts today, and since I’m using a 2021 day planner, it’s officially 2021. I set up my 2021 book list gages, and marked my calendar with important dates and events, and transferred necessary information from my 2020 planner, all the while enjoying the clean new unmarked pages and the gilt edging and the uncreased silky ribbon marker. It feels fresh, like a new start. There’s always a bright side and sometimes the bright side is a fuchsia leather notebook that will document the events of 2021; which whatever it will be, will not be 2020.

Twilight

I didn’t sleep much last night. This isn’t unusual. What is unusual is that I slept, long and hard, on both of the previous two nights. The year is winding down and the days are almost as short as they can be, and we have many hours of darkness every day and I slept through most of those hours on two consecutive nights. Last night, I returned to my normal non-sleeping self. But the sleeping was nice while it lasted. 

My son just asked what that sound was. It’s your mother’s lightning fast fingers flying across the keyboard, that’s what that sound is. 

I’ve been dreaming, too. Three mornings in a row, I’ve awakened to remembered dreams. I don’t remember now what the first two nights’ dreams were about, but last night’s was about bad driving. That one is probably premonitory. 

Fifteen days until Christmas. It doesn’t seem right. I haven’t stood on the deck at a high school swim meet yet. I haven’t been to a school band concert or a holiday party. At least we have a Christmas tree and lights. We’re going to watch “Elf” on Friday, and I’m going to start making cookies this weekend. I hate making cookies, as you probably know, but it’s a Christmas-y thing to do, and I’ll take it. 

*****

It’s the next day now, the next day being Thursday, the fourth day of what feels like an unusually long work week. That word doesn’t look right. “Unusually.” But it’s right. I can spell, even if I can’t sleep. 

It’s 4:37 PM. This is in some ways my favorite time of a December day, especially a clear and sunny December day, especially when I get to sit on the couch in my family room watching the almost-winter daylight fade, and feeling the darkness collect. I don’t like how early in the day it happens, but I do like seeing the transition from daylight to twilight. The sky outside my window is pale gray now; almost white. And the bare trees are dark, dark brown, almost black. It will soon be completely dark, and this screen and the Christmas tree will be the only light. 

I could sit here for some time, but I have a virtual committee meeting tonight at 7, so I have to make dinner a bit earlier than usual. Five more minutes of quiet Christmas tree-lit twilight, and then it’s back to work. 

*****

Sometimes I see someone out walking and I wish I was out walking, too; but I’m on my way to or from some errand or I’m on my way home from work (back when I worked somewhere other than in my house) and I’m just too busy to be outside. But then sometimes when I’m outside walking, especially on an unseasonably nice day, and people drive past me, I wonder if they envy me for being free and out in the world. 

I didn’t have time to walk on Wednesday or Thursday, but I finished work at 4:15 today, just early enough to take a quick walk before dark. People are wearing masks outside now, even when they’re by themselves. But not me. I breathed the fresh air and I smelled candles as I walked past a neighbor’s house. It made me want to light candles at my house. 

So I did. I lit some Christmas-y scented candles, and I poured a glass of wine because it’s Friday night and I can, and now I’m writing this. It’s two weeks until Christmas. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now. I'm in my pajamas, streaming a British police drama. I’ve watched more television in the last nine months than in the previous five years. I like to watch scenes of regular workaday pre-corona life, when people just lived and worked and went about their days without thought of social distance; when you could just look at people and see their faces. I’m nostalgic for the ordinary. 

Someday, there will be a spate of books and movies and TV shows about this very peculiar and God willing temporary episode of isolated, limited, curtailed life. And maybe with enough time gone by, when we’re all back to our pre-corona routine of rushing to and fro from morning to night, without time to think or reflect or breathe, then we’ll all be ready to visit this time again. Maybe we’ll even be nostalgic. We’ll talk about how we were once so tired of quarantines, and now we’d pay money for just a one-week lockdown. 

But not today, or for a long time. I miss life, even the long and exhausting days of too much to do and too many places to go. Especially those days. 

It’s 13 days until Christmas. I’m going to make some cookies. 

For sale

Have you ever been to an estate sale? Not a fancy-schmancy Sotheby’s type of estate sale, but an estate sale at a regular, middle-class house filled with well-worn furniture and everyday dishes and decorative items both lovely and hideous and all of the evidence and remnants of a particular life lived in a particular place. 

Well, the first thing to know about that kind of estate sale is that everything is for sale. The furniture and the artwork and collectibles and the dishes and silver, of course; but also the towels and the stained plastic containers and the half-used spray bottles of cleaning fluid and even still-wrapped rolls of toilet paper. Everything is for sale. 

*****

Not long ago, I went to just such an estate sale. I hadn’t been to one in a long time, but it was in my neighborhood and I didn’t have much else to do that Saturday morning, and you never know--you might find something amazing. Or you might not. But there’s only one way to find out. 

We passed the house earlyish in the morning; around 9, just when the sale opened, and thanks to the damn ‘rona, there was a line maybe 30 people long waiting to get in. So we decided to come back later. By 1 PM, the line was gone, and we were able to walk right in. 

My guess, from the furnishings and carpet, was that the owners were people in their late 70s or early 80s who had last redecorated in the late 1980s. The living room furniture was upholstered in the pale peach and dark green color combination that was particular to that time and no other. Although the sale had obviously been very well attended, the house was still full of items for sale--furniture, books and the bookshelves that housed them, framed art, collectibles, area rugs. 

Unless you’re shopping for furniture, though (and I wasn’t), then that’s not the interesting part of an estate sale. The interesting part is in the kitchen and the family room and the bedrooms and even the bathrooms. This is where the “everything is for sale” rule is proven, and this is where you get to see how other people lived, and maybe understand a little bit about who they were. 

We didn’t know who the homeowners were, of course. As I mentioned, I guessed that they were a couple in their late 70s or early 80s. But I didn’t know the circumstances surrounding the estate sale. Had the home’s residents died? Was there maybe just one surviving member of the couple who now required care and was moving into assisted living? Or maybe they were a hale and hearty pair of retirees who were just moving to Florida and selling all of their stuff so they didn’t have to carry it with them.

Most of the downstairs, except the kitchen, was covered with thick, surprisingly clean carpet. People had tracked in some dirt and bits and shreds of dead leaves, and I could imagine the person who once lived there just itching for everyone to leave so that she could get out the vacuum cleaner and restore her home to its customary cleanliness and order. The wooden staircase was not carpeted, and I felt like an intruder as I clomp-clomp-clomped up the stairs in my hard-soled shoes to the private part of the house, the part where even people who knew the residents well enough to visit their home might not have set foot. 

The second floor had four bedrooms arranged around a small carpeted hallway, with the bathroom right in the middle at the top of the stairs. One of the bedrooms was filled with craft supplies, gift wrap, and Christmas decorations. I don’t craft, and I have plenty of wrapping paper, but I like to get one or two new Christmas ornaments every year; and I was delighted to find a tiny Peanuts Christmas snow globe still in its original packaging, for the very reasonable price of four dollars. Sold. Finding nothing else of interest in that room, I went into the master bedroom, which still had a bed and a dresser and nightstands (for sale, of course) and racks of clothing, including a few vintage designer pieces. I suppose I could have bought the Halston dress and the Oscar de la Renta jacket and then resold them on Ebay, but I didn’t feel like it. Maybe someone who genuinely loves 1970s fashion bought the pieces and will wear them and care for them. Or maybe some more enterprising person bought them to resell on Ebay. 

In the last of the four bedrooms, there was a dresser and a single bed, and then boxes of vinyl records and piles of board games. The vinyl records were mostly classical and jazz recordings, and I don’t know enough about either type of music to know if they were good recordings or not. And if a board game isn’t Scrabble, it’s dead to me.

When I say that everything is for sale, I mean everything, and that includes the contents of the bathroom. And when I say the contents of the bathroom, I mean everything except the tile and the attached fixtures, including toilet paper rolls, wrapped bars of soap and half-empty bottles of shampoo, toothbrushes in their unopened blister packets, towels, bath rugs, and a vintage hair dryer and set of hot rollers. I hadn’t seen hot rollers in years. My mother used to use hot rollers. I always loved the way they could make a whole room smell like warm, freshly washed hair. I can’t imagine taking 30 minutes or more every day to patiently roll and pin sections of my hair and then wait for the whole thing to set, but more power to anyone who does. Do what you want. It’s your hair. 

*****

So that was it. A nostalgic house tour and a Peanuts snow globe, for the low, low price of $4. Not a bad day’s work. I wasn’t sure why, but I liked the people who lived in that house, whoever they were. I felt sorry that perhaps they had died, but I didn’t feel sad about death in general, or about my own eventual demise. In fact, I told my sons later that when I die, they should promptly contact an estate sale broker to liquidate the contents of our house. And I imagined the day (decades from now, one hopes) when strangers would troop through my house, looking at our books and pictures and art and Washington Capitals memorabilia, and picking up a treasure for a few dollars. Maybe they’ll imagine who we were. And maybe they’ll like us. But if they’re looking for hairstyling equipment, they’re out of luck..

Until December

It’s Friday, 11:15 AM, which is not my customary writing time at all. I’m a creature of habit. I work first, and I write later. But I’m very distracted today and I can’t keep my mind focused on any of my work tasks, so I thought it might be wise to take a break and do this early in the day. I’ll make up the time on the back end. 

Why am I so distracted? It would be easy to blame the state of the world and the impending election and likely post-election crisis and unrest; and of course, the damn ‘rona. It’s always the damn ‘rona. But really, I’m just unfocused and mentally lazy today. I gave myself a stern talking-to a little while ago. It didn’t take, so here I am. 

Speaking of being here, “here” being my daily writing habit, this is going to change a bit on Sunday. Sunday is November 1, the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I don’t see myself being able to do that and this at the same time. So if it gets to November 15 or so, and you’re wondering where I am, then that’s where I am. And thanks for wondering where I am, by the way. 

*****

It’s not just any Friday. It’s the last Friday before the election. As I mentioned before, I do not expect this election to shake out like most normal elections, but I will still be glad when it’s over. Tomorrow is also Halloween and we are handing out candy to any trick-or-treaters who defy the county’s “guidance” regarding Halloween. No, I’m not a COVID-denier. But I’m also not a life-denier. Infectious diseases are part of life. So are holidays. So is actual real-life in-person interaction with other humans. We’re not going to eradicate this or any other infectious disease by forbidding people to live life. So I’m going to live life. And in October, that includes Halloween candy, but not pumpkin spice latte, because we’re not animals. We’re not animals.

*****

It’s Saturday morning, Halloween. I looked out my kitchen window earlier this morning, the first sunny morning in a week, and the light had completely changed. The trees are almost bare and the ground is covered with crunchy dead leaves and the sunlight is pale. It looked like Thanksgiving morning. The morning hours of Thanksgiving day are among my favorite of the year. I could live with winter if it was all early morning Thanksgiving day. But it doesn’t work that way, does it? 

I’m on the couch in my pajamas. It’s 9:45 and I don’t know what I’ll do today other than hand out candy and do my other usual Saturday quasi-quarantine semi-lockdown stuff--walk around the neighborhood with my friend and her dog, run errands, avoid politics, drink a glass of wine. I keep wanting to buy stuff. I don’t need any stuff, but I do like to buy stuff. The holidays are approaching, so I’ll just buy stuff for other people. I have a plan for tomorrow: Start writing a novel. I need to make a plan for today, but first I have to get off the couch. See you in a month, give or take. 

Decision 2020

I voted on Monday, which was the first day of the one-week early voting period in Maryland. I knew that I wanted to vote early but I didn’t have a plan, other than to go sometime during the week. I’ve always loved voting on Election Day, but I expect two- to three-hour waits that day, and it’s a workday for me. But the early voting location was very crowded and busy at 5:30 PM; and it felt almost festive, despite the floor signs, placed as six-foot-intervals, reminding us to maintain six feet of distance between ourselves and the voter in front of us; hashtagged #StoptheSpread. It seems silly to print a hashtag on a sign, but if it makes them happy then I won’t complain. 

I parked my car at the far end of the lot and walked into the building, wondering why every community center in Maryland smells like chlorine. This one doesn’t even have a swimming pool but maybe they’re bleaching everything to kill the ‘rona. Anyway, the Queensguard Community Center is a very nice building: airy and light and clean and modern; with skylight windows near the ceiling and terra cotta-like tiles on the floors and bright, well-appointed meeting rooms and exercise rooms separated from the corridor by walls of aluminum-framed windows. The line moved very quickly but I wouldn’t have minded a longer wait in such a nice space. 

I took notes using my phone, blithely ignoring the signs forbidding their use. The signs were in Spanish, so I could always pretend not to understand them. And although I am generally a rule follower, I do need rules to make sense and it doesn't make any sense to tell grown people that they can't use their phones in a taxpayer-funded public building. I know my rights. That's why I'm here. 

As the line moved down the long corridor toward the gym where the actual voting was happening, an officious election judge was loudly reminding a young volunteer how to count the voters as they entered the building. I heard her say 940, and then she turned toward the line of people and bellowed "Attention everyone. We have checked in 940 voters so far on this first day of early voting, and it's not even 6 o'clock!" She was rewarded by a quick but enthusiastic round of applause. I'd have waited until 1,000 to make that announcement. But of course, I probably wouldn't have made an announcement at all. I don’t like to attract attention. I’m an under-the-radar and behind-the-scenes kind of girl.

I checked in, and a friendly volunteer handed me a large manila folder with my ballot card; and then I waited in one last line for my turn to actually vote. A tiny woman, a bit older than me but not much, was in line directly in front of me. She was very casually well-dressed, in dark jeans and boots and a very nice wine-colored wool jacket. Her short-cropped spiky hair was stylishly colored, and she was carrying a beautiful black shoulder bag. She too was ignoring the no-phones signs, scrolling through her news feed as she waited her turn. I saw her heavy-framed statement glasses when she glanced backward for a moment, and then the volunteer who was managing the line called her forward, leaving me first in line. I waited another minute, and then it was my turn. 

It didn’t take long for me to finish voting. I had to read one of the ballot questions a second time to make sure that I understood what a yes or no vote on that question would actually mean, but I was firmly decided on the other questions and candidates, so I was finished in two minutes. I thanked the volunteer and went on my way. As I walked out of the building through the same long corridor, I saw that the line to vote stretched out the door and a few yards down the sidewalk. There were easily 60 people in that line, likely including the day’s 1,000th voter. The lady who had voted ahead of me was in the parking lot, taking a selfie in front of a huge Biden-Harris sign attached to a high fence just past the no-electioneering perimeter, so I guess I know whom she voted for, if I couldn’t have guessed it by looking at her. 

It’s Wednesday now, just five more days before this is all over--the voting part, at least. I hope that we’ll have a result next week, but I’m resigned to the very real likelihood that we won’t. But I did my part, and that’s all a person can do. Decision 2020 is a wrap. 

Suburban campsite

Not long ago, I changed the route for my near-daily neighborhood walk. I walk for exercise and to think, not for scenery; and so the monotony of the same route every day seldom bothers me. But every so often, a change is in order. So now I’m walking past different houses on different, but still-familiar streets, and noticing details that I don’t pick up when I’m driving through on an errand. 

Our neighborhood is a Levitt neighborhood, built in the late 1960s. It has about 600 houses or so, all of them built in one of five or six styles that were popular at that time--ranch, colonial, Dutch colonial, Cape Cod--you get the idea. Our house is a ranch style, which the Levitt Company called the Judson model. All of the house styles have names. I know only the Judson (mine) and the Endicott (the colonial). 

On one of the main streets through our neighborhood, there’s a house in a style that I call the Hollywood house, because its front courtyard reminds me of a movie actor’s Beverly Hills starter house circa 1950. I don’t know the style name, but it’s a u-shaped house, and the front courtyard is enclosed with a low brick wall and a gate. It’s nicer than it sounds. There are only a few of these houses in the neighborhood, and I like them. The particular example that I’m thinking about is one that I have actually seen from the inside. A friend is a real estate agent, and I visit her open houses. It was probably ten years ago when I visited this house, and it was at its for-sale open house best, inside and out. 

A decade later, and the house is less pristine, less show house perfect, but it still looks very nice. The shrubs and trees have matured, offering more privacy and shade for the courtyard; and the brick wall and walkway and the wrought iron gate look sturdy and well cared for. 

So I walked past the house, and I saw a homemade political sign on the strip of grass that borders the sidewalk in front of the house. The sign has a red elephant and a blue donkey and the legend “I'm not undecided. I'm unimpressed.” As someone who hates both major parties, I agreed in general principle with the sign, though I’m not undecided. I’m voting for the candidate who isn’t Trump. But that is the extent of my partisan commitment. I walked past the house another day, and I noticed a cartoon taped to the brick wall. Literally taped, with Scotch tape. I don’t know how it stayed put, but maybe it’s extra heavy-duty Scotch tape. I stopped to look at the cartoon, which was an old, non-political Far Side. I must not have found it very funny, because I don’t remember it. 

A day or so later, I found that in addition to the elephant and the donkey and the Far Side, the owner had also posted another lawn sign, for his own handyman business. He also parked an old truck on the street in front of the house, with For Sale signs in its front and rear windows. I didn’t think anything of this; the truck, or the additional sign, or the cartoon, until I walked past the house again the next day. The truck and the signs and the cartoon were still there, along with a cooler, a very large, mountain-climbing-style backpack, and two old but serviceable folding beach chairs. The whole thing had begun to take on the look of a campsite; or maybe “encampment” is a better word. I wondered what was next. A tent? A picnic table? Lanterns and a bucket-style shower? An outdoor stove powered by Sterno cans?

*****

I avoided the area for a bit, to give the site a little time to expand. It was like waiting for a package. I looked forward to seeing the next surprise. Then I walked past the house again a few days later. The folding chairs and the truck and the cooler and backpack were gone, replaced with  wooden spindle-back Colonial-style chairs and a bookcase, lending the scene an air of living-room permanence. The Far Side cartoon was gone. Maybe he was having it framed as part of the redecorating effort. He had also added another lawn sign proclaiming his independent political affiliation, though he hadn’t put down a carpet yet. It seemed possible that he was just discarding the bookcase and the chairs; but the arrangement (chairs slightly tilted inward toward each other to encourage conversation, and facing the bookcase) suggested that they were there for a purpose. 

I kept thinking about the homeowner as “he.” I never saw anyone enter or exit the house when I was walking past, and I don’t know iif a whole family lives there or if it’s just a man or perhaps an older couple; but I felt certain that the person who was arranging and re-arranging the furniture and decor was a man, at least in his 60s or possibly 70s. 

*****

Our little Levitt-built community has a governing association and a neighborhood pool and a very active listserv and even a newsletter--an old-fashioned on-paper newsletter printed on yellow paper, stapled in the upper-left corner, and hand-delivered in hard copy to every home in the neighborhood, four to five times a year. Most of the houses are more than 50 years old, but we still have quite a robust contingent of original owners. I also know of at least three houses owned by people who grew up in the neighborhood (two of those people own their actual childhood homes). We have block parties. We have a neighborhood swim team. We have walking groups and an annual 5K. It’s a mid-century suburban enclave that feels like a small town. 

There are advantages and disadvantages to this neighborly spirit. People here look after one another. We know our neighbors and we know our neighbors’ children. It’s nice to feel like part of a community, and to see your friends’ children grow up, and even to mourn with your neighbors when a family member dies. 

On the other hand, people do like to be up in each other’s business, as they say; especially when it comes to property maintenance and appearance. We have rules (they’re called covenants), which most people don’t pay much attention to, but which are very very important to a certain contingent of people who are particular about the way the neighborhood looks. These are the people who complain about unsanctioned fences and sheds. They make pointed comments on the listserv when a neighbor’s lawn is overgrown or if their leaves are not raked. Anonymous calls to the county code enforcement office are not unheard of. Shit gets real. 

So even as I followed the expansion of my neighbor’s little campsite, I wondered what the other neighbors were thinking. Something about the arrangement of the furniture and signs and clippings made me think that maybe the man was trying to provoke a reaction, or that he wanted to display his iconoclastic lack of concern for rules and suburban aesthetic standards. Maybe he wanted to bring the indoors out. I don’t know if he follows the listserv or if he reads the newsletter. Maybe he does, but he thinks that people wouldn’t notice the gradual accumulation of stuff; or he hoped that they would and that he could use his little display as an opportunity to fight for his right to do whatever he wanted on his own property. Anyway, I continued to follow these developments with considerable interest. 

*****

After another few days, I walked past again. The Far Side cartoon was back, taped to the brick wall with thick strips of shipping tape; and a new cartoon was taped right next to it. The new cartoon depicted a bunch of Bozos in the House chamber. The caption read “In the halls of Clowngress.” This man’s design sensibility is interesting, but his taste in political humor is suspect at best. 

The chairs and bookcase were still where I’d last seen them. There was also a barn jacket hanging from a hanger on a tree, with a stack of folded clothes on a chair just beneath it. A lantern was placed on top of the bookcase, right in the middle. This was getting interesting. I wondered if maybe the man’s wife was threatening to throw him out of the house, and maybe he was planning to camp out on the front lawn and sidewalk. I resolved to walk past the next day, to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. 

The next day, almost everything was gone, except for the jacket. A disassembled bookcase--I wasn’t sure if it was the same one or not--was piled neatly in the driveway. And there he was! A man in his 60s was dragging his recycling bin down the driveway to the curb. He smiled and waved at me, and I smiled and waved back, and I kept walking. 

*****

The homeowner was a white man in his 60s, just as I had predicted. But still he wasn’t exactly what I had expected. He was friendly and smiling and quite normal-looking--not wild-eyed, not even unkempt. I’d avoided taking pictures of the site because I thought that maybe a madman was watching from the window and that he’d run out to confront me if he saw me photographing his property. I’d walk past, nonchalant and carefree, minding my own business; and then I’d stop to take a few cursory notes so that I wouldn’t forget details. But I suppose I needn’t have bothered with the precautions, because I don’t think that this man would have cared. He might even have posed for the picture. 

It was warm for a few days, but now it’s cold again, and the campsite is gone for now. I never did figure out what was behind it, and why it disappeared almost as suddenly as it appeared. I watched the listserv closely, waiting for complaints about the situation; but surprisingly, no one said a word. Maybe any neighbors who objected spoke directly with the man and politely asked him to dismantle the encampment, and he obligingly did so. Because it’s still possible for neighbors to be nice to each other, and to be reasonable, and to cooperate and compromise. It’s still possible for people to care about others’ feelings. I’d like to think that this is what happened. 

I wish that I had taken a few pictures, but this hot mess is well over a thousand words now and so I have the equivalent of at least one and three-quarter pictures.  The ever-changing campsite was a highlight of my daily walk for a few days, and I’ll miss it. But maybe it will be back in the spring. Maybe a lot of things will be back in the spring. 

In earnest

Monday, October 19. It’s Monday, late afternoon, and I’m finished work for the day; or rather, I’m all but finished. I’m waiting for the answer to a question. That answer might or might not come today, but there’s no point in wasting time, so I’ll kill this bird and then pick up the same stone again if I need to kill another one. 

Forgive the poor choice of figurative language. I’m not in the habit of killing birds, with stones or anything else. I am in the habit of doing two (or more) things at one time, an approach that yields mixed results. Multi-tasking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Anyway, it was a fine day, except that I couldn’t do several of the tasks on my to-do list because I could not read my own appalling handwriting, which grows worse by the day. It’s what I call a problem, because it is a problem. Though I swore that I would never sit for another exam ever again, I’m studying for a certification exam, taking copious notes, and I don’t know how much use these notes will be when it comes time to review them. But the act of writing things down helps me to remember. Except, apparently, when it comes to my to-do list. I still can’t read three of the items that I wrote down on Friday, and I don’t remember what they might be. 

*****

Tuesday, October 20 (two weeks away from the biggest shit-show of an election in American history). It’s Tuesday now. I’m in the middle of at least half a dozen drafts, and I’ll finish them soon. But in addition to writing, I’m also reading P.D. James’ Time to Be in Earnest, a one-year diary of her life from 1997 to 1998, and this inspired me to return for a bit to the daily diary form of writing. Of course, a day in P.D. James’ life generally consisted of having lunch with former Prime Ministers, or delivering an endowed lecture, or meeting with her publisher to plan an international book tour; and mine right now consists of sitting around the house in sweatpants editing IT service catalog pages and creating PowerPoint presentations and wondering what to cook for dinner; but each life has its place, you know?

Oddly enough, I have never read any other of P.D. James’ books. I don’t know what attracted me to this one, but it’s very good. P.D. James happened to have been born at the right time (1920) and the right place (England) with the right talents and gifts to become the perfect first-hand witness to history and social change. The book is supposed to be a daily diary of just that one year, but she also writes quite a bit about her entire life; enough that this is almost an autobiography or memoir. Because the book covers a year that overlaps 1997 and 1998, James records her immediate reaction to the death and funeral of Princess Diana. I’ve watched “The Queen” about half a dozen times, and it’s very interesting to read an Englishwoman’s real-time impressions of the events depicted in the movie. I’m going to watch “The Queen” at least one more time; and I’m also going to read more P.D. James. It turns out that she also wrote The Children of Men, the movie version of which I have also seen about half a dozen times. 

Sweatpants and PowerPoint and half-finished essays and re-watching old-ish movies--I can’t imagine why Prime Ministers, former or present, aren’t lining up to get me on their luncheon calendars. But enough about lunch. I still need to figure out dinner. 

*****

Wednesday, October 21. A neighborhood friend has been posting daily updates on Instagram, with captions that always begin “Social Distancing: Day (number).” He passed Day 200 a few days ago. I didn’t look at a calendar to count and see if he started with March 14 as Day 1, as I would have. It’s enough to know that 200 days is too many days. 

Since March, we’ve had little pockets of normal life here and there, for which I’m grateful. But the abnormal has far outweighed the normal. I’m losing my social skills, and they weren't that great to begin with. I never know what to wear. I spend several minutes every morning puzzling out this question, accounting for weather and video calls and if I’m likely to leave the house and for what reason. And then I put on leggings and a sweater, or shorts and a t-shirt, and that’s what I wear for the rest of the day. 

I keep thinking that I want life to return to normal; that I want to be out in the world, busy from morning to night, and that I want to wear real clothes every day, and to take a bit more care with my appearance. But do I? Do I really? Every day, all 200-plus since March, seems to rob me of a tiny bit more of my energy and initiative. I walk every day, weather permitting; and I still have work. I still keep the house clean. I write every day, and I keep in touch with people. But if I’m honest, and I’m always honest, then I must admit that of all the things that call my name, my family room couch has the loudest and most compelling voice. If I did only what I wanted to do today, then I’d have spent the entire day on that couch, finishing P.D. James and re-watching “Miranda” and “Mary Tyler Moore” on Hulu. And sleeping, because I can’t sleep at night. It’s Day 200-whatever. 

*****

Thursday, October 22. Today is a better day. After a thick morning fog that hung on until nearly 10, the sun came out, and everything looked much cleaner and brighter than it did amid yesterday’s gloom. And yesterday got even worse after I wrote that entry, with pestilence on top of the plague; pestilence in the form of SNAKES. THREE OF THEM. 

I live in Maryland, in the Washington DC suburbs, not in Florida or Australia or the fucking Mekong delta and so I do not expect to have to dodge serpents when I take my daily walk. Yes, they were garter snakes (and one of them was definitely dead) but THREE snakes in one little 2.5 mile suburban stroll is at least two more than I would expect to see and absolutely three more than I ever want to see, because I never want to see any snakes, not even little ones, not even deceased ones. 

You and me both, Samuel L. Jackson. You and me both. 

Today is the the day of the last of the three presidential debates; and I can’t wait to not watch it. It’s also ten days until the start of NaNoWriMo, and I’m going to try that again this year, because what could go wrong. I have a character and (kind of) a plot and everything. It’s very tempting to start writing now, but other than writing down a few ideas (because I don’t want to forget), I am going to follow the rules. I’m going to begin writing on November 1 and I’m going to stop on November 30; and hopefully, I will end up with a 50,000-word novel. That’s 1667 words a day. I can write 1667 words a day on my head. I can’t vouch for the quality or coherence of the words, but I can write them; and if I’m following the rules (and I’m always following the rules) then that’s all I have to do. The editing comes later. P.D. James died in 2014, so she probably knew about NaNoWriMo. I don’t know what she might have thought about it. I suspect she would have disapproved, but I could very well be wrong. And she's not the boss of me anyway. 

*****

Friday, October 23. I am not a TGIF person, not as a rule. It’s not that I don’t love weekends and time off, because I do. But I also like work; and counting the days until Friday has always seemed tantamount to wishing away days of one’s life (one P.D. James book, and I’m already throwing around the impersonal pronoun like it’s dolla dolla bills in a hip-hop video), and that seems unwise. 

But this week? I think I hit the wall with the COVID-enforced WFH this week, and Friday couldn’t come a day too soon. Two days away from my computer and I’m sure that I’ll return to next week’s onslaught of virtual meetings and teleconferences with my customary good cheer, but I spent today teetering on the edge, and one more call would have pushed me right the hell over. 

I was going to continue writing this post for two more days, but I haven’t published anything since October 8 and I don’t want you all to forget about me, so I’m going to wrap up this little dear diary week today. I have a few more pages of P.D. James left; a few more days of 1998, when Microsoft Teams didn’t exist and Donald Trump was just a loud-mouthed real estate developer. A person should live in the present rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, but it’s hard sometimes, I tell you. It’s hard sometimes. 

Cloak of Invisibility

I just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost, a memoir that covers her whole life from childhood to 2003, when the book was published. I didn’t discover Hilary Mantel until this year, when I read the Wolf Hall trilogy, the first volume of which was published in 2009. I was disappointed that the third volume didn’t win the Booker Prize as the first two did, but this isn’t the year for novels about Tudor England to win big literary prizes. I don’t know if Giving Up the Ghost won any prizes, but it’s pretty extraordinary. 

Hilary Mantel’s parents split when she was very young, and her beautiful mother “took up,” as the expression goes, with another man. The man, who became Hilary’s stepfather, was hard-edged, masculine in the most old-fashioned sense of the word, and impatient with “little Miss Neverwell,” an unkind doctor’s description of Hilary, who was frail as a child. Her health didn’t improve as she got older, but more on that in a minute. 

My parents also divorced when I was very young, and I also had a stepfather who had little patience with my weakness, my fears, my dreamy forgetfulness. It was what it was, and it couldn’t have been easy for him, either. What I remember most about that time, the time between my father and stepfather, was change and upheaval that no one bothered to explain to us children, because it wasn’t our business. We didn’t go to my grandparents’ house on holidays anymore; we went to my stepfather’s house and spent the day with his brothers and sisters. All of a sudden, people who were once my neighbors were now my aunts and uncles. I had to check in with them when I got home from school. I had to do what they said. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was not a defiant or rebellious child, but I did need things to make sense. 

Hilary Mantel experienced a similar slight estrangement from her grandparents when the family moved to a nearby village to escape the censure of neighbors (her mother and stepfather were not married). Her family was different from mine and working-class poverty in the early 1960 in the north of England was much harsher than working-class poverty in 1970s Philadelphia (we had heat and indoor plumbing). But she suffered the same confusion and disorientation at the sudden change in routine, the sudden end of the easy back and forth between her house and her grandparents’ house, the shift from daily contact with her mother’s family to occasional visits, planned and formal. Like all children in these situations, the young  Hilary Mantel could not understand why these relationships are not permanent, why things change that shouldn't change. But like all children in these situations, she understood perfectly that she had no say. A child has no say. 

*****

When she was seven, Hilary wandered into a corner of her back garden, and saw a demon. Her account of this event is vivid, terrifying, and entirely believable. I believe it. She was convinced for some time after that she had committed a terrible sin by failing to avert her eyes in time, by seeing what “no human person was meant to see.” And she seems to accept that punishment for this sin would be entirely deserved and justified. 

For a few pages, I thought that the rest of the book might be about the aftermath of the demonic encounter. But then, Hilary’s body was taken over by a different type of demon, agonizing pain that was finally diagnosed as endometriosis, but not until she suffered years of medical indifference, misdiagnosis, over-medication, weight gain, hair loss, and finally the loss of her ovaries and uterus. And that still wasn’t enough, because endometriosis can return even when the responsible organ is gone. 

I’m very lucky that I have never suffered ill health. I mean, I have been sick here and there, and injured here and there, but ill health of the chronic, relentless, no-one-understands and no-one-believes-it-anyway variety is a form of misery that I have been lucky enough to escape. Depression and anxiety are both forms of chronic illness, of course, but I know that that’s what I have. I always have known. And sometimes I seek help and most of the time I don’t. But I never have to wonder what is wrong with me. 

Hilary Mantel is in her late 60s, so she was a young woman in the late 1960s through early 1980s. At that time, young women were easily and carelessly dismissed as hysterical, flighty, attention-seeking, unstable, self-dramatizing...and I guess that still happens. But young women today are far less likely to put up with what Hilary Mantel endured. They’re much less likely to allow a doctor to tell them that their real pain is not real, that it’s imagined, that it’s caused by hysteria or an overactive imagination. 

*****

Eventually, Hilary recovered and was restored to health, but only partially. She had been naturally and enviably thin for her whole life until the endometriosis and medications and hormonal disruption brought on by the hysterectomy and oophorectomy caused her to gain a great deal of weight very quickly. 

I gain and lose the same 15 pounds over and over again. Thanks to the damn ‘rona, the 15 lost pounds have found me again, and they brought five friends. 20 pounds is not a small amount of weight. If you put 20 pounds worth of stuff in a tote bag and carry it around all day, you’ll be tired. I have personal experience with this, so trust me. But 20 pounds is also not enough weight that I look drastically different than I did six months ago. Some of my clothes are too tight now. I see the difference when I catch a side glimpse of myself in the mirror. But even though it’s not that much, I can feel it. My arms make contact with my midsection differently than when I’m thinner. My stomach is in the way when I lie on my side. It’s awkward. 

It’s really more than just a few pounds, though. Getting older is very hard. In addition to the weight gain, my hair is not right, and I can’t make it right, and I can’t decide what, if anything, to do about it. I had an appointment to get it cut today, and the stylist just had to cancel. This is really just as well, because it’s never a good idea to schedule a haircut when no part of you feels right or comfortable, because the haircut will make things worse and not better. And what does my hair have to do with this anyway? Wasn’t this a book review? 

*****

I never did figure out what ghost Hilary was giving up--maybe it was the demon, or her stepfather, or her once-healthy body. Maybe all three. But I’m giving up a few of my own, however reluctantly. I feel invisible. I feel alienated from myself, like my body is something I need to escape from, but it might be time to adjust and accept that this is what I look like now, and this is how I feel, and a person in her 50s can’t ever be a person in her 40s again. Invisible is not the worst thing to be, anyway. It can even be a superpower. 

Unprofitable servant

I keep thinking that this year can’t get any crazier, any weirder, any more goshforsaken terrible, but it keeps surprising me. Now the President has the damn ‘rona. And no, of course I’m not happy about it. I can’t understand how anyone celebrates another person’s sickness. 

*****

It was a very busy work day for me. I had to develop a slide presentation for a high-level meeting next week; high enough level that I myself will probably not attend. I took notes and scribbles and vague suggestions from a whole kitchen full of cooks, and I ended up with something that nearly everyone was happy with. They were happy, so i was happy. 

*****

Screwtape reminds us that the devil is happiest when we are satisfied with ourselves. In The Hope of the Gospel, George McDonald reminds us that we should never seek the admiration or approval of others. When we do what we should do, we should regard ourselves as the unprofitable servant, having done only what was expected and required. 

*****

I thought about this as I tried to separate satisfaction at a job well done from enjoying others’ praise for a job well done, and as I tried to avoid congratulating myself for not being a person who revels in the sufferings of others. An unprofitable servant, I did what was expected and required. Most days, that’s all I can do.