Highlight

Do you know what I almost did yesterday? I almost shopped for a new handbag (online, of course, because the stores are all closed). I don’t need a new handbag under any circumstances at all; but the current circumstances in which I leave the house only for a daily 6-feet-minimum-distance-from-fellow-humans walk around the neighborhood, make any handbag, much less a new one, completely unnecessary.

I had to actually go somewhere on Saturday; I mean drive somewhere in the actual car, on the actual road. Traffic was lighter than usual, but the Capital Beltway is still the Capital Beltway, even in a pandemic lockdown. It was exciting to be legitimately out in the world again; and the most exciting part of that very exciting little trip was carrying a handbag. It wasn’t even my favorite handbag; it was just that carrying any handbag was a reminder that someday (soon, I hope, but someday) we’ll all be out in the world again running hither and yon with places to go and things to do and people to see; and when you’re out in the world, you need your stuff. You need your handbag.

*****

I was out for my daily walk one day, and I heard “Boys of Summer” blasting from a car stereo a half-block away as I turned the last corner toward home. It turned out to be a FedEx driver. I question his taste in music, but FedEx drivers and UPS drivers and mail carriers can do whatever they want right now, as far as I’m concerned.

*****
It’s been a little over ten days since the beginning of the quarantine, whatever that is. The guidelines keep changing and what seemed like a quarantine two weeks ago seems like an unbridled, reckless free-for-all now. It’s actually been semi-pleasant so far--a little claustrophobic and very uncertain, but not terrible. I’m hopeful that the Governor won’t impose harsher restrictions on movement, but I’m preparing for the possibility that my daily walk might become a memory and that even occasional handbag-carrying car-driving outings might have to be postponed for weeks.

And now? I’m going to go wash my hands again and maybe disinfect this computer keyboard.

*****
It’s Wednesday now. I’m waiting for my last work call of the day. Work has been busy, and good. My mind is occupied, and with the less-structured WFH daily routine, I think I’m doing better work. I figured out solutions to two different problems today. They weren’t huge problems, and I’d have figured out how to solve them one way or another, but I feel like the lack of structure is forcing me to be a little more agile, a little quicker on my feet.

I said that I wasn’t going to write about books again, but I keep finding corona connections in everything I read. In Wolf Hall, which I’m reading now, London has just been struck by an outbreak of sweating sickness. “The warm weather has brought sweating sickness to London, and the city is emptying. A few have gone down already and many more are imagining they have it, complaining of headaches and pains in their limbs. The gossip in the shops is all about pills and infusions, and friars in the streets are doing a lucrative trade in holy medals.”

Fun, right? So much for an escape into fiction.

*****
It’s Thursday now. I’m working on a proposal; or I was, until I took a break to write about working on a proposal. Quarantine life is meta if nothing else. It’s almost time for my walk, the highlight of my day. The sun is shining, and there’s a rainbow in my window. The little girls across the street were delighted that my teenage sons played along with their rainbow hunt, and we’re leaving it there for the duration.

I’m emailing back and forth with my neighbors. One of them just emailed me that she’s “busier than ever” despite the shutdown. Part of me wants to mock her for that, because she’s a competitively busy person even in normal times. Leave it to her, I thought, to turn a damned plague outbreak into round-of-16 I’m-the-busiest tournament game. I mean, really.

But you know what? I am actually really busy right now. I know. It’s ridiculous. Work is busy, I’m still writing, I’m checking on neighbors and family members and playing virtual drinking games with my sister; and of course, the house isn’t going to compulsively clean itself. I should call my neighbor, see if she wants to throw down. I can take her.

*****
It’s Friday now, an even nicer day than yesterday, and I wrote all day and now I’m writing some more. It’s been a long time since I worked on a proposal. It’s like riding a bike.

Apparently, we’re all going to get $1,200 checks from Uncle Sam now, which if nothing else will make it hard for Trump to make the socialism is bad case in November. I’m relieved that this thing passed just because it proves that the government can still actually do something, even if it’s mostly just handing piles of no-strings-attached money to corporations.

My workday is over and it’s time to go outside. There’s a fat-bellied robin hopping around my newly green backyard, pecking away at seeds or worms or whatever robins eat. The robin has no idea that this spring is different from any other spring.

Robins are pretty little birds. They’re neat and pleasantly rounded, and their orange-red breasts and yellow-orange beaks are just colorful enough to brighten the mixed light and dark gray of their compact little bodies. I’m glad the robin is here. He’s welcome anytime.

*****
I started walking at 5:30 or so. The sun was still bright and the sky was still blue and the birds were still chirping. It was quiet and very still. I kept looking up at the trees, and the leaves didn’t rustle at all, not even a little bit.

I was walking past a neighbor’s house. Her forsythia was casting a shadow on the side of her house, so I stopped to look at it. And I wondered if forsythia were named after someone named Forsyth, so I looked it up and it turns out that they were. William Forsyth was an 18th century Scottish horticulturist and a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society. My favorite spring flower is named after him.

Then I kept walking. A few houses later, I stopped again, to look at a tall magnolia tree, its pink buds contrasting nicely with the multi-colored roof tiles on a single-story house very much like my house. I wasn’t curious about the origin of the magnolia’s name. Maybe they’re named after another horticulturist, or maybe they’re named after someone’s grandmother. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look it up.

It’s Saturday now, and it’s raining. No shadows today.

Only a week

I was just looking through my Google Docs drafts folder. I have a draft about a book I just finished reading, and another one with poems (don’t even ask), and another one about notebooks and paper, and another one about my neighborhood wildlife. In other words, the kind of stuff that I always write about. Well, except the poems. Maybe me writing poems will be how you’ll know that the world is coming to an end. But Coronacrisis 2020 is the only thing I’m thinking about, and so that’s what I’m going to write about, today and for the foreseeable future. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Speaking of neighborhood wildlife:

 “There are turkey vultures fighting over a former raccoon in the woods behind us and it just feels so March 2020” --My neighbor

****
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to all kinds of unexpected developments and outcomes, but let’s not forget the important things. Like spelling. Among the newspapers and online news services, there does not seem to be agreement on COVID vs. Covid vs covid, and I feel that I should weigh in. I’m qualified. I write stuff all day long.

First of all, I’m eliminating Covid altogether. COVID is an acronym for COronaVIrus Disease, so nothing about Covid makes any sense whatsoever. This leaves us with a choice between COVID and covid. COVID looks better, doesn’t it? Acronyms make more sense in all caps. On the other hand, coronavirus and disease are both lower-case words. So I think I’m going to rule in favor of covid. That’s official.

But let’s just continue to call it “coronavirus,” shall we? It’s a horrible thing but at least it’s fun to say.

*****
I’m still waiting for the first great coronavirus meme. I’ve seen lots of funny memes and jokes, but nothing really memorable. Nothing that will stand out as THE definitive Coronacrisis joke.

Most of the memes that I’ve seen so far have been toilet paper-themed. Literal bathroom humor. I’ve also seen some funny dog- and cat-themed memes in which the dogs are all overjoyed that their humans are around all day and the cats are like “you assholes are still here?” Work from home jokes are also funny--my Facebook friends are all complaining about disruptive, lazy co-workers who contribute nothing and try to steal other people’s lunches. I’m glad I don’t have toddlers at home. Of course, there’s also at least one Chuck Norris fact:

“Chuck Norris tested positive for coronavirus. Coronavirus is now under quarantine.”

Here’s my idea: Buddy the Elf in a business suit, saying “Coronavirus--THAT’S fun to say!”

I know.

*****

I used to order groceries online a long time ago, when my children were little and my police officer husband was never home, and a trip to the grocery store with tiny children took three times as long as the same trip by myself but I could never go by myself because my husband was never home when I needed to go and I wasn’t going to get a babysitter just to buy milk and eggs. I didn’t really like ordering online grocery delivery. In 2008 or so, the search and predictive analytics were not very good, and creating an online grocery order was really tedious. Once my children were old enough to be actually helpful on a grocery shopping trip, and then to stay at home alone, I started brick-and-mortar shopping again.

Oh that all seems a long time ago. Doesn’t everything pre-corona seem a long time ago?

Anyway, I finally opened an Instacart account, for grocery shopping in the time of corona. I set up the account on Wednesday, and the first available delivery date was Saturday. Thankfully, I didn’t need anything immediately, but this is part of our (sorry, I hate this expression too) new normal. Plan for your grocery shopping at least four days in advance. Anyway, Instacart is very easy to use, and you can tip your shopper right through the app. I tipped $10, and now I think it’s not enough.

Me to the neighbor quoted above: “We’re only in real trouble when ‘former raccoon’ becomes an Instacart selection.”

That’s pretty funny, isn’t it? I crack myself up.

*****

A year ago today, how would you have reacted if you’d been handed a roll of toilet paper with your takeout order? Yeah, I know.

This post was supposed to be all corona, all the time, so I wasn’t going to write about books. But I’m reading Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, and it’s hard not to see unsettling parallels between 1930s Germany and March 2020 USA. Yes, I know; I’m always predicting the return of the 1930s. This is different, though. The coronavirus pandemic will resolve eventually. I hope it will happen sooner rather than later, but it will end at some point. But no matter when the quarantine ends, nothing is going back to normal.

Nor should it. If this crowned head of a virus has done one good thing, it’s been to force everyone to really see the gross inequities that make our economy unsustainable even in the best of times, and completely untenable during a crisis. It’s also made blindingly clear who’s really important in the world. I do valuable work, work that I’m proud of. But if I didn’t show up to work for a week--and if everyone like me didn’t show up to work for a week--things would be fine. There’d be a lot of badly written memos and instructions and a lot of poorly designed presentations, but no one would starve. But if the Instacart drivers and warehouse workers and food producers/preparers all stop showing up for even a day, then we’re all screwed.

*****
At the very end of Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood is preparing to leave Berlin forever, to return to his home in England. He writes about the last chaotic and uncertain days of the Weimar Republic; the unrest in the streets, the clashes between Nazis and Communists, and the not knowing what was coming next. After the Nazis take control of Germany with stunning speed, he writes “Only a week since I wrote the above.” Then from the perspective of many years later, he writes “Even now I can’t altogether believe that any of this has really happened.”

So what am I going to do? I’m going to do what’s in front of me, one minute at a time, one foot in front of the other. I’m going to work and read and write. I’m going to hang out with my family. I’m going to check on my friends. I’m going to help my neighbor organize a food and supply delivery service for our older neighbors. I’m going to try not to get fat. That last part will be the hardest, or at least it seems so for now. I’ll update you in a week.

Rising up to meet us

It’s Friday, March 13. Our forsythia are in near-full bloom. Today, I was looking out the kitchen window as I washed a few dishes, and I saw a bright red bird perched inside one of the forsythia bushes. He seemed happy in there. He sat on a branch for a few minutes, and then he hopped to a deeper-in branch, and then he moved to the end of another branch, right on the edge.

I took my phone off its charger and came back to the window. The bird had disappeared, or so I thought. I looked out the window for a few minutes, and then he emerged once again from deep inside the forsythia bush and perched happily on the end of another branch. So I stood and watched him, and I took a few pictures.

It was about 5:30 or so, and I’d just come home from work. I wasn’t thinking about my to-do list or my morning-to-night schedule of weekend activities. I wasn’t thinking about groceries or errands or housecleaning or work or volunteer tasks. I was just watching the bird. Just standing, doing nothing except watching the bird. After a few minutes, he flew away.

Hello. 

*****
That was last day before the lockdown, I suppose. It’s Saturday afternoon now. I slept until 9 o’clock this morning. I never do that. But everything is cancelled or postponed and I didn’t have to get up and go anywhere today. None of us did.

*****
It’s Monday now. The Governor of Maryland ordered bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms to close, effective 5 PM today. Shit continues to get realer by the day; and the festive, snow-storm-is-coming, quasi-holiday feel of last Friday night has given way to anxiety, and maybe a little bit of fear, even among people (like me) who a week ago thought that this would all blow over in no time.

My whole office is working remotely now. We’re lucky we get to keep working. I hope that this mess of a government can figure out a way to take care of people who can’t work and don’t have paid time off. We’ll see. It looks like we’re at least going to bail out the airline industry, proving once again that Republicans are all about socialism as long as it benefits rich people.

*****

A year ago, would you even have believed someone who predicted a national near-quarantine? No, neither would I.

Tuesday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. A year ago today, at this very time (5 PM), I was walking around Dublin. It was pearl-gray overcast and chilly, but not cold. Signs of spring were appearing everywhere. We had landed at Dublin airport at 5:15 that morning, though it felt like the middle of the night. We rode in a taxi from the airport to our hotel as the sky lightened from dark blue to light blue warmed by the rising sun. Even at 8 AM, the hotel lobby was filled with happy Irish families gathering to celebrate their national holiday. We had tea and scones in the hotel restaurant and after a short rest, we set out for the parade.

St. Patrick's Day parade, Dublin, 2019

My mother and my sister and her friend took a nap after the parade. We’d been up all night--no one really slept on the plane. But I’d gotten a second wind and decided to spend the afternoon walking and making myself at home in Dublin. I wandered around until I couldn’t walk anymore and then I took a taxi back to the hotel where my sister’s friend and I had a beer and shared a cheese platter in the cozy little bar while we waited for my mother and sister to dress for dinner. We had dinner at a pub a block away, and everyone laughed as I fell asleep, literally asleep, at the table. I fell into bed at 10 PM and slept until 8 the next morning, the sleep of the dead.

I remember how we all laughed at our taxi driver. “Be careful, ladies,” he said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and everyone in Ireland is an asshole today.” I didn’t meet a single asshole that day. In fact, in that whole week in that whole beautiful country, I met only one asshole; and even he was more a curmudgeon than a true asshole. I made two friends in Ireland: Dan, our tour guide; and Orla, a beautiful crazy woman who was too drunk to remember hanging out with me at the hotel bar before another patron complained about her and the Gardai came to take her away. I hope that Dan and Orla are well. I hope that next St. Patrick’s Day, they’ll be with friends, hoisting a Guinness at their neighborhood pub.

That's Orla on the right. Isn't she pretty?
I promise you that she does not
remember anything about this evening. 

Well, maybe Orla should stick to seltzer. I think she’s an alcoholic.

Last March seems like such a long time ago, like it belongs to another era altogether. But the forsythia look more beautiful every day, and daffodils are coming up all over the place and the cherry trees are just starting to bloom. It’s golden and green and pink and blue everywhere I look. It feels a little bleak, a little worrisome; but it looks hopeful. It feels hopeful. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Say crack again

It’s the first full day of Daylight Savings Time, and I’m the only person I know who didn’t complain about the loss of an hour of sleep. It’s not that I don’t miss the sleep, because I do. But I love DST, though it's on borrowed time (get it?) For some reason, there’s a groundswell of anti-DST sentiment. If coronavirus doesn’t get to it, then an act of Congress likely will. But I’ll enjoy the long days for as long as I can.

You know what I won’t enjoy? Spring. You’re a bitch, Spring. Yes, Spring is pretty and shiny and bright, but she is the nastiest skank bitch I’ve ever met. Spring is a fugly slut. I do not trust her.

*****
I have a shitpile of stuff to do, because it’s Spring (Bitch). So I just spent an hour tearing through my to-do list, getting shit done. I checked on my sign-ups, created a new sign-up, responded to emails, wrote some more emails, figured out transportation for this week’s baseball scrimmages, and wrote a job posting for a junior coach for the swim team. I didn’t hyperventilate even one time. Spring and I fight every year, but this time, I’m going to win. I might have to push her in front of a bus, but I’m going to win.

*****
It’s Tuesday now. I went shopping after work, thinking that I’d just get a few groceries. I refuse to yield to coronavirus hysteria, but I thought it might be prudent to stock up a bit. Just in case, you know what I mean?

There are four known cases in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live. And every day, there are more and more pressing calls for the local government to shut down the schools or limit public gatherings or some damn thing. I don’t know what anyone should do except wash their hands and stay home if they’re sick and clean everything in sight. I’m all stocked up on almost everything, just in case we have to self-quarantine, a term that I never used before last week and hope not to have to use again. Meanwhile, I’m planning to go to work tomorrow, because it’s Wednesday and I always go to work on Wednesday. I have to remember to wear pink, or those bitches won’t let me sit with them at lunch.

*****
It’s Wednesday and on Wednesday, we wear pink; and we freeze soup and we stock up on canned goods and frozen pizza. Swept up in the mounting anxiety, I stopped at Aldi for another round of corona-shopping, and I’m ready for a siege.

I did some corona research today, so now I know that the virus that causes COVID-19 is one of several coronaviruses that cause respiratory infections in humans. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Serious Acute Respiratory Syndrome) are other coronaviruses; so called because the spiky protrusions on the round surface of the virus look crown-like. An infinitesimally tiny microscopic particle is causing whole cities to shut down. According to NPR, an 11-year bull market ended today; not because of trade wars or political upheaval here or around the world; but because of a teeny tiny little sphere like a crowned head, like Caesar. Do you remember what Gretchen Wieners said about Caesar? Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant, while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? What's so great about Caesar? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Brutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar!

*****
Things I saw today:
A man wearing a t-shirt with the words “Everything is going to be fine” printed in white on black
Water fountains sealed with garbage bags and duct tape
Daffodils
Forsythia

Things I heard today:
All coronavirus, all the time

It’s Thursday, March 12, and you know what? She finally cracked. Gretchen Wieners finally cracked.

Say crack again.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

In just the last 24 hours, all of the major sports have either suspended or delayed their seasons, the NCAA cancelled its conference championships, and the Governor of Maryland ordered schools to close for the next two weeks. And Tom Hanks! Coronavirus got to Tom Hanks, so I guess it’s coming for all of us.

I was in Safeway again this afternoon, collecting the last few self-quarantine essentials. I walked past two women who were hugging and laughing; joking that onlookers would judge them for failing to socially distance. I finished shopping, and got everything I needed. Fortunately I didn’t need disinfectant or hand sanitizer or (why?) toilet paper because those things were all gone. And I feel like I need to write this all down because someday when I’m old, young people will ask me what I remember about March 2020; and I’ll remember those laughing women and golden forsythia and the man with the “Everything is going to be fine” t-shirt. It’s a little crazy right now. Spring is a bitch, and she ramped it up a notch this year. But the t-shirt guy was right.  Everything is going to be fine.

Familiar

I was driving home from work yesterday and I noticed that I was noticing things. Do you know what I mean? I was driving down a street that I drive down every single days, twice each day; once in one direction in the morning, and then back again at the end of the day. It’s a nice street; residential, lined with mid-century suburban houses not unlike my own. One side of the street backs up to wooded parkland along the banks of Rock Creek. I think sometimes that it would be nice to have one of the houses whose backyard slopes gently down into the woods. And then I think about waking up to a bear on my patio, and I decide that my current backyard is just fine, thank you very much.

But back to the noticing things. I’ve driven on this street many many times in the 20 years that I’ve lived in Silver Spring and Rockville; and for the last two years, I’ve driven it almost every day. So I’m pretty familiar with it. I know most of the houses, and I see the same people out running or walking their dog; and sometimes, I get to work in the morning or I get home at night and I realize that I don’t actually remember having driven either way. It’s that familiar.

Yesterday, though, I saw things that I never noticed before. An addition going up on one of the houses, and a meadow-like front yard filled with what looks like bulrush or cattails, and a house with a beautiful red front door, with flower boxes on either side. That house is right on a corner, and I can’t imagine why I never noticed it before. Then I started seeing color; pale magenta pink on some of the trees, grass turning slightly but noticeably green, and then yellow.


What is that, I thought. It looked like a forsythia, but they only come out in March. Could it be some freak of nature, some new forsythia strain that flowers all year, or that blooms months early? Because why didn’t I know about this? I love forsythia and I’d surround my house with them if I could get them to stay in bloom longer. And then I noticed the sun, still relatively high in the sky at 5 PM, and I realized that it IS March, and that I was looking at the first forsythia of the year. It’s always, always, always later than I think.

*****
And now it’s really spring because yesterday, I sat through the first cold spring day baseball game. There’s no cold like spring cold. Even the words together sound cold. There’s a research laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York; and I always think that the water there must be so much colder than anywhere else on the east coast. But I was dressed for the weather, and the sun was shining. Governor Thomas Johnson High School crushed Rockville. But it’s only a scrimmage. It’s still pre-season. I drove home from Frederick, from mountains to suburbs in just 30 minutes, the bright sun streaming onto I-270.

Last night, my son was invited to join his friends for a birthday dinner at a local sports bar. I joined two of the other boys’ mothers for dinner and a glass of wine at another table, and we all returned to the birthday boy’s house for another drink and cake for the teenagers. We divided the boys among us, 10 boys in three cars. Two of the ten have new learners’ permits. It won’t be long before they’re all driving themselves around. But for now, they can’t go anywhere far without us.
My son turned the radio to the local Spanish station, which was playing a Saturday night dance mix. “I love this station,” my son said.

“Me too,” said one of his friends. “They played ‘Esa Muchacha’ the other day.” “Esa Muchacha” was Juan Soto’s walk-up song last year. One of the boys in the car, a Yankees fan, scoffed, but quietly. The Nats fans have bragging rights this year.

“This is Silver Spring radio, for sure,” I said. We all nodded. This is where we live.

Later that night, we drove the three miles home, and as I drove up Bel Pre Road from Layhill toward Georgia, I realized that I’d been on autopilot almost the whole way; that I had almost passed my turn-off to continue and pass Georgia and continue down Bel Pre to Arctic, the street that I drive up and down every single day. And just then, I was in love with the familiarity, in love with knowing this place where I’ve raised my children like the back of my hand. It’s spring.

What, me worry?

Sunday morning, you sure look fine. I wish you were a little warmer and I wish I had slept last night and I wish I felt like doing anything other than sitting on the couch in sweatpants feeling sorry for myself. But it’s bright and sunny and it looks pretty, and that’s something.

I was writing something else, and I couldn’t figure out how to finish it and I also couldn’t find a single reason to care about it so I decided to just write about nothing. I’m depressed. Whatever.

You know what I should be doing? Well, I can think of a lot of things, but here’s one in particular. For some reason, I volunteered to run a bake sale on Maryland primary day, and I need to start getting that organized. I promise you that I won’t be actually baking anything for this bake sale (well, maybe one batch of cookies); but I guess I have to do something to get other people to bake or buy whatever we’re going to sell. Sign-Up Genius. Sigh. My children are almost grown and there’s so much about their childhood and teenage years that I will miss. Sign-Up Genius, I assure you, is not one of those things.

*****

It's Monday afternoon now. I snapped out of it right after I finished writing this whiny mess, made Sign-Up Genius my bitch, and crossed that particular chore off my long long list. Right now, I'm sitting in the parking lot at Rockville High School, waiting for my son to finish his first high school baseball practice. I get more work done in this parking lot than anywhere else. If only I could do dinner prep in the car. Better yet, if only someone else could cook for me. #GOALS

Because it's the first day of baseball practice, it's also the first day of spring sports season. It's almost 5 pm, but the parking lot is almost as busy as it would be at normal dismissal time. The annual spring onslaught commences and I'm not even worried; not yet, and not much.

What I am worried about is a really weird problem with my blog publishing settings; and by “weird problem,” I mean me; i.e., user error. I moved the blog in late 2018 because of some technical problem that I don’t remember well enough to describe. Now I find that the old site is getting tons of hits. I don’t know why and I don’t know how to fix it. So maybe you’ll read this or maybe you’ll never see it. Maybe no one ever will.

But am I panicking? No, uncharacteristically, I am not. I’m trying this new thing where I just calmly figure out what I need to do and how to do it and then just do it and get on with my life. Call it a resolution. I’ll let you know how that all works out.

Unworthy

It’s Wednesday night, and I’m sitting on my couch with warm socks on my feet and a very large smudge on my forehead. The socks are neither here nor there. I just wanted to write a neat symmetrical independent clause about one thing and then another thing. But I do need the socks. My feet were cold.

If you’re Catholic then you don’t need to ask why I have a big hot once-flaming mess on my forehead. If you’re not, then I’ll explain. It’s Ash Wednesday, the very first day of the long season of penance that we call Lent. Six weeks without chocolate, and unto dust I shall return. The ashes are a reminder of the unto-dust part. 

You don’t have to go to Mass or receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, but the whole point of Lent is making sacrifices that you don’t necessarily have to make. It's good for your soul, and mine needs all the help it can get. So I went to Mass even though I didn't have to, and now I have a dirty face. It’ll wash off. That’s why we have soap and water.

Speaking of soap and water? Today was not only Ash Wednesday, it was  critical mass day for coronavirus. Yesterday, I could have sneezed right in someone’s face and they would have said “God Bless You,” and gotten on with their day. Today, the whole world is obsessed with coronavirus and what we should do to ready ourselves for the inevitable spread of this newest viral plague. I’m going to do exactly nothing, except to wash my hands as often as possible. Soap and water can wash the Ash Wednesday memento mori right off my face, and it can wash away most of the germs, too. Soap and water solves a lot of problems.

*****
There are some things that soap and water can't fix, though. Sometimes, you need to see a professional. So I'm sitting in a chair at Nail Club at Plaza del Mercado, as a very kind woman scrubs my scaly winter feet.

It's Thursday night, a busy night for manicures and pedicures, but I was lucky enough to walk in just as they had an opening, so I didn't have to wait. I'm only getting the pedicure. I don't have the kind of life that allows me to maintain a manicure for more than a day, but pedicures last forever.

I don't spend a lot of time getting spa treatments but on the rare occasions when I do, I am never not conscious that another person, a person whom I don't know particularly well, is taking care of me in a very personal way. At work, at my white collar job in a Federal government office, I'm surrounded by hothouse flowers who are afraid that an errant sneeze from three cubicles over will land them in a quarantine ward. Meanwhile, this lady is uncomplainingly touching a near-stranger's feet. Jesus washed the Apostles' feet, too. They weren't worthy, and neither am I. No one is.

*****
My face and my feet are clean now, and I'm ready to do penance.. It's only six weeks. It'll be over in no time.

All quiet on the Portrait Gallery steps

It’s cold but sunny, and getting warmer as afternoon approaches on this late Sunday morning; and I'm on my way to Chinatown to watch my beloved Capitals play the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most evil franchise in the history of organized sports.

Is that an exaggeration? A slight overstatement? Maybe. Maybe.

*****

The Capitals are in a slump. This is almost routine in February so I'm not worried. Not much. All the same, though, I'm taking some steps to turn this situation around.

I have an old red cordura nylon handbag that's not very stylish, and I don't like it very much. But I carried this ugly bag for the entire duration of the 2018 playoff run, and look how that turned out. So I'm carrying the bag today. And I'm wearing my least favorite of my two jerseys, because they always win when I wear it. This is all I can do.

I've never actually never seen a Penguins game live. I've never seen the fan showdown on the Portland Gallery steps. I've never gotten to yell "Mur-ray!! at Brian Murray. I'm looking forward to it.

*****
So that turned out exactly as I’d hoped; meaning the Capitals won and the Penguins lost and it was very very quiet on the Portrait Gallery steps. It was almost 60 degrees, sunny, and still broad daylight as we (meaning 40,000 or so happy Capitals fans and a handful of gloomy Pens fans) streamed out onto F Street and into the sunshine. Cars passed, honking three quick “Let’s go Caps!” blasts, and the crowd responded with cheers. A win against the Penguins at home is a big deal.

It was a nice day. I wish I didn’t feel so bad today, and I wish I knew why I do, but there it is. Sometimes even watching Sidney Crosby break his hockey stick in frustration on a beautiful Sunday afternoon isn’t enough to keep the demons at bay. But this will pass, like everything else. Good triumphed over evil at Capital One Arena yesterday, and this too will pass.

A tale told by an idiot

I’m reading Conversations with Friends right now, because the whole internet told me that I should be reading Sally Rooney. It’s just as good as everyone says it is, and I keep trying to take it apart to figure out why. The best thing I can say is that it’s alive throughout. That was Flannery O’Connor’s standard for literary merit in fiction, and so it’s mine, too.

*****
Google, of course, knows exactly what I’m up to, because as soon as I started reading this book, Sally Rooney stories started popping up in my newsfeed. Here’s a headline: “Sally Rooney is capturing what it feels like to be alive now.” Here’s what actually happens: A person reads a book and five seconds later it’s a data point in someone’s AI-generated algorithm. That's what it really feels like to be alive now.

*****
I’m almost finished Conversations with Friends. I’m rationing the last few pages, because I’m not ready for the story to end; and because I don’t know what to read next.

(A few days ago, I heard a radio commercial for a coming stage production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and I thought about my woefully inadequate Shakespeare knowledge, leading me to the brilliant idea of reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. And then I thought about spending the next six months obsessively reading all 37 plays and checking them off a list, possibly annotating as I read, possibly writing about each play. And then I thought better of that and decided that i could live with my continued ignorance. I’ve read “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear,” “Henry V,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” “Julius Caesar,” “Measure for Measure,” and “Othello.” That’s probably enough for now.)

Anyway, I’ve been sick for a few days. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Nothing serious, I’m sure. We had to rearrange some furniture last night; and when I say “we,” I mean “they,” as in my husband and sons. I sat on the couch reading my book as the men worked. There’s something very restful about remaining still amid a flurry of movement and activity. Better them than me, I thought.

The main character in Conversations is sick, too, with a mysterious illness that turns out to be endometriosis. I’m not yet sure how things will turn out for her because I’m still not finished with the book, but I feel better than I have all week. I ignored it, and it went away. I’m telling you, that always works.

It’s Saturday morning now, and I have a plan for the day. I have places to go and things to do and a book to finish reading. And then I have to figure out what to read next. Maybe I WILL read all 37 Shakespeare plays. Or maybe I’ll just think and talk about Shakespeare for the next few days, and then Google will magically tell me all about the 20+ Shakespeare plays that I never got around to; and I’ll tell you all about that, too. “To write and read comes by nature.”

#amwriting

It’s 6:30 in the morning, a rainy Tuesday, New Hampshire primary day. Morning Joe is taping in a cafe in Nashua or Concord or maybe Dixville Notch, in front of a live audience of dressed-for-winter New Hampshire primary voters. Lots of ragg wool and Fair Isle. I wonder if these people are born and bred Granite Staters, or transplants dressing the part.

I always thought that it would be fun to be in New Hampshire during the last few days before the primary. I’m sure they’re happy when it’s over, but there must be a letdown, too, as the candidates and the media abruptly pack up and head to South Carolina, not to return for three and a half years.

I usually write in the evening, but I have an unexpected hour this morning. My son has early-morning baseball workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I was supposed to drive him today because my husband had a physical therapy appointment. Stuck behind a bad accident, the therapist cancelled at the last minute, so my husband came home and picked up my son, leaving me with the choice between going to work absurdly early or writing. Even at my normal time, I’m among the very first to arrive in the office. If I get there any earlier, the place will just feel deserted and creepy. So here I am.

I noticed a new hashtag this week. Well, I don't really know if it's new, or just new to me. Probably the latter. I'm slow to pick up on trends. Anyway the hashtag is #amwriting. As in “I am writing.” People post bits of their works in progress or pictures of their laptops and their half finished coffee, along with a few words about how whether it’s going well or badly, and the hashtag #amwriting.

*****
Daphne Gray-Grant says that you shouldn’t try to edit as you’re writing, and I think she’s right. I'm trying not to edit this as I go along, but it’s hard.

*****
Right now, I’m reading Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist. God rest Carrie’s soul. I loved her 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 back to the hashtag. I could share a post about almost any moment in my life, tag it #amwriting, and the post would be true. Even if I don’t have a pen or a keyboard, I’m almost always writing something in my head. There’s always a running narrative under construction (and edited live as I go along--sorry Daphne). I write every day not just because I’m good at it but because I can’t not write. It’s 7:09 now. Time to get dressed and go to work. It’s nice to have a head start on the day.

Ninotchka

Early last Sunday morning, I watched a few minutes of “Ninotchka,” one of my favorite movies. I just love Greta Garbo’s performance in this movie. It’s so hard to reconcile Ninotchka with the Garbo of popular myth--the forbidding, unapproachable, unsmiling Swede who famously wanted to be alone. The movie poster for Ninotchka reads “Garbo Laughs!” because it was the first time moviegoers would see Greta Garbo as anything other than serious.

Garbo plays the lead character, Ninotchka Ivanovna Yakushova, an ambitious Soviet bureaucrat and party apparatchik. She is stern and earnestly dedicated, but full of wry cheer. Ninotchka is torn between her genuine commitment to the ideals of the Russian revolution and her honest and clear-eyed realization of its grim reality in practice. The political conflict is real and timely (“Ninotchka” was made in 1939, just as the worst of Stalin's purges were winding down) but it's also a metaphor for Ninotchka's personal conflict, between her desire to succeed in her work and her desire to be a happy woman. Ninotchka is resigned to the demands of life as a rising star of the Russian Communist party but she can't hide her love for life and people and her lively sense of humor, especially from Count Leon, played by Melvyn Douglas. He falls in love with her and she with him. Their only problem is the jealous Duchess Swana. And the vise grip of the party, of course.

Greta Garbo as Ninotchka with Melvyn Douglas as Count Leon.
Was there a more fun couple in any movie, ever?
No, there was not. 

"Ninotchka" is a comedy about the most serious of subjects. It was banned in the USSR and its satellite states, possibly for brilliant dialogue like this:

Buljanoff (the errant party apparatchik whom Ninotchka is sent to Paris to retrieve): How are things in Moscow? 

Ninotchka: Very good. The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

Despite her determination to complete her assignment in Paris and return to Moscow, and her uncompromising dedication to the Revolution, Ninotchka falls in love with more than Count Leon. She falls in love with the beauty and joie de vivre of pre-war Paris. “I’m so happy,” she says. “Oh I'm so happy. No one can be so happy without being punished. I will be punished and I should be punished.” Ninotcha’s devotion to the Fatherland and her guilty love for Paris form just one of the movie’s love triangles. The other is between Ninotchka, Count Leon, and Grand Duchess Swana, a White Russian exile in Paris and Ninotchka’s rival for Leon’s affections. Ninotchka and Swana first meet at a Paris nightclub:

Grand Duchess Swana (commenting on Ninotchka’s elegant evening dress): Isn't it amazing? One gets the wrong impression of the new Russia. It must be charming. I'm delighted conditions have improved so. I assume this is what the factory workers wear at their dances?

Ninotchka: Exactly! You see, it would have been very embarrassing for people of my sort to wear low-cut gowns in the old Russia. The lashes of the Cossacks across our backs were not very becoming. And you know how vain women are.

Grand Duchess Swana : Yes. You're quite right about the Cossacks. We made a great mistake when we let them use their whips. They had such reliable guns.

Like everything else in “Ninotchka,” this conversation is about more than one thing. And like almost everything else in the movie, it is both modern and timeless. It’s a perfect verbal sparring match between two beautiful and brilliant women who both want the same man, and the political passive aggression makes it as relevant today as it was in 1939.

Political intrigue and aggression aside, "Ninotchka" ends happily because love wins over all. Given a choice, people prefer beauty and friendship and art and fun and laughter to ideology and dialectics and the vanguard of revolution. It’s 1939 again, and most of us prefer Paris to Moscow. 

One Person in New York

I was listening to "All Things Considered" one day last week, and I heard a story about a snowplow driver in Montana (or Wyoming) who wrote a song about being a snowplow driver. He recorded it on YouTube and (as they say on the Internet), the silly thing went viral. People liked the song so much that they called their local radio station and asked to hear it over the air. The radio station offered to produce a professional recording of the song. Asked what he thought about the song’s success, the man said that people like the idea of an ordinary person with an ordinary job doing something creative or artistic.

Later the same day, I scrolled my news feed and was shocked and saddened to read about Jason Polan’s untimely death at age 37. Jason Polan was an artist. His best-known project was published in part in Every Person in New York, a book of his sketches of New Yorkers (he also had a blog of the same title). Polan drew quick sketches of thousands of people, some of them famous and many of whom didn’t know they were being captured on paper. He aspired to draw literally every person in New York, an impossible goal no matter how long he might have lived, but he finished over 30,000 drawings. Who knows how many he might have done if he had more time?

According to his New York Times obituary, he held informal drawing meet-ups, usually at Taco Bell restaurants. Anyone could show up, and lots of people did, many of them non-artists. They drew pictures of each other, or of their food or the contents of their bags, or whatever else was in front of them. It didn’t matter if they were talented or skilled or not. Something about the idea of carrying around a sketchbook and drawing what you see appealed to Polan’s roving band of part-time would-be art students. Maybe they were ordinary people with ordinary jobs, but they were also artists, because they made art.

Jason Polan wasn’t ordinary at all. His other major project, Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art, was apparently an attempt to get a job at MoMA. MoMA didn’t hire him, which is probably good for the rest of us, though I have to wonder about the competence and vision of museum curators who aren't capable of recognizing and rewarding such obvious genius. Their loss.

I don't write songs (though I do sing quite a lot) and I don't draw much, but I do this. I write about whatever I think about, whatever is interesting, whatever is in front of me. I'm just one of a million other ordinary people who try to spend a few minutes a day making something. Jason Polan was a great artist who saw the beauty and value of ordinary people, not just as subjects but as fellow artists. It's a terrible loss.

Estate planning

It's Saturday afternoon, cold and drizzling. It's 5:15, not quite dark yet, but soon. 

January finally ended after three months or so, and it's the first day of February. The groundhog will come out of his little hole tomorrow to let us all know if we should expect an early spring or another six years of winter. Six weeks. Six months. Whatever. 

I made a will today. No, I don't have a terminal illness, nor do I plan any especially dangerous excursions. My husband is a police officer and he made me go to a Wills for Heroes event today. It was fine. I know now, not that I didn't know it before, that I would never want to be a lawyer. My volunteer attorney looked exactly like Walter White, and he was very particular about where the notary placed his seal. 

*****

It's 5:40 now. I'm at MLK Swim Center for the high school swimming divisional championship. It's going to be a long meet, and my son is swimming in exactly one event. But my friends are here and there aren't many other places where I'd rather be. Winter will end, eventually; and my affairs are in order, so it's all good. It's all good.