Punctuation

I'm trying to finish all of my book notes from 2023. We're exactly three weeks into 2024, and I'm already writing about books that I am reading this year, even though I haven't finished with last year yet. So typical. So me. 

Last September, I read Mary McGrory's Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. If you like literary memoirs, especially of the small town girl in NYC variety (and why would you not), then the first few chapters of this are great, almost reminiscent of Helene Hanff, and this is very very high praise. In the early chapters, McGrory writes about her early life in Ohio (where she was the first woman to drive a milk delivery truck, which is no easy job anywhere, especially Ohio in winter) and her move to New York City, where she joined the New Yorker as a copy editor, a job she would hold for decades.  I don't know if it's possible now for a young person from a working-class background to show up in Manhattan, find a poorly paid literary job, and then build a life full of books and friends and adventure and fun. America has gotten better than it was when I was young, in so many ways, but some things have changed for the worse. Some things have been lost and won't be found again. 

Anyway, the rest of the book is fine, too - it just turns out that I don’t care as much as I thought I did about correct usage of the serial comma (I agree, though, that we in the United States should refer to it as the serial comma and not the Oxford comma) or the distinction between the relative pronouns which and that, or even appropriate case vis a vis “between you and me” (correct) vs. “between you and I” (incorrect). Or that is to say, I do care, but I don’t care enough to do anything other than to always use the serial comma and enforce its use when I’m in charge of style decisions, always use a comma before which when the word begins a non-restrictive clause, and always know the difference between the subject and the object. I’m no longer inclined to correct other people’s grammar and usage unless I’m asked to do so professionally (this actually happens fairly often). 

McGrory, though, does not come across as dictatorial or pedantic when she makes her case for correct use and style. And her stories - about style debates at the New Yorker (whose house style is odd to say the least) and her relationships with quirky editorial staff and her encounters with famous writers - are entertaining and good-humored. She writes with love and affection but also honesty about New York in the 1970s as it was for a young person pursuing a literary career and a literary life. I’d have enjoyed more of that and more of the stories of the inner workings of the New Yorker, and maybe less of the arguments in favor of the serial comma and against incorrect use of “me” in a phrase that calls for a subjective pronoun, but maybe that’s because I am already on board with these positions, as I suspect anyone would be who chose to read the work of a self-professed comma queen. We’re the choir, is what I am saying. There’s no need to preach to us. Technically, “between you and I” is not grammatically correct but it’s not unclear and it doesn’t bother me when other people say it. Age has mellowed me, I suppose. 

Journalism

It’s Friday, a WFH day, and I’m not particularly productive right now. I have several big projects to tackle and I have to panic for a bit, and beat down my adult ADD, before I can really make progress. I wish I wasn’t like this but I am. It’s a holiday weekend, so I plan to get some things done to clear some space in my head. If you’re going to declutter, then you might as well start with the messiest place. My house is pretty neat; and now that Christmas is over, it’s pretty free of clutter, too. My brain, however, is like an episode of “Hoarders.” I might not be able to dig out on my own. 

*****

One of the things I hope to do this weekend - maybe not finish but at least work on - is my 2023 book list. I’ve already written about a book that I read in 2024, so I’m out of order as usual, but I am making progress on finishing the 2023 list and maybe I’ll publish it in January not February. 

It’s Saturday morning. We’re leaving for a swim meet in a little while (Marymount @ Gallaudet) but right now I’m just enjoying the three-day-weekend Saturday morning vibe. I love my job but there’s nothing better than a holiday weekend. It’s even better than vacation because a paid holiday is just a pure, unearned gift. Marymount hosted Catholic last night, our first evening meet as a Marymount swim family, and the boys’ team’s first loss of the season. But it was close and competitive and a lovely way to spend a Friday night, sitting in the Rose Bente Lee Center pool as the late winter afternoon faded into twilight. 

And see, there’s the problem right there. If I’m ever going to finish that book list, I need to write about books, not swimming. 

*****

“... what they had wanted all these years was not for concrete things to happen but for abstract possibilities to remain available.” This is Lea Ypi, writing about her parents’ ambivalence about Albania’s first post-Communist election. I’m reading Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, her very extraordinary memoir of her life as a child and teenager in late Communist and post-Communist Albania, a country about which I know practically nothing. Ypi’s family kept secrets about their “biography,” including the fact that her great-grandfather was one of the country’s last pre-Communist Prime Ministers. When Communist rule ended, Ypi had to relearn her own family’s history, and re-examine everything she knew and believed and thought that her family believed. How does a young person, already whipsawed by adolescent confusion, regain her bearings when she finds that the country, the belief system, and the family that she thought she knew turn out not to be a sturdy structure with a rock-solid foundation but a rickety makeshift shack held together with spit and glue and lies? Who are you if your family isn’t who you thought they were? What are you if your country no longer exists?

******

And what are you if you can’t seem to get up off the couch? It’s Monday now, MLK Day so I’m off although I did plan to do some work today to make up for a planned short Friday. But it’s 10:30 and although I have showered and done some housework, I’m nowhere near my desk. I can’t seem to pull myself off the couch right now, physically or mentally. It’s very cold, and snowing lightly. I don’t have to leave the house today and I probably won’t. MSNBC is on as background noise in my family room, the warmest room in the house. 

Oh my gosh what is wrong with me and what am I doing? It’s 10:45 now and I’m wearing pajama pants and a hoodie, curled up on my couch, my hair still wet from the shower and absolutely no plans or ideas or energy or inspiration for this gift of a day off that I don’t want to waste but am in fact actually wasting. I need to pull myself together. Or maybe I just have to accept that today is one of those proverbial days, filled with lots of abstract possibilities. I just don’t seem to have the energy to make any of those possibilities concrete. 

*****

I’m back at work now. It’s Tuesday, a day on which I almost always work from home, and everyone else is working from home today too thanks to the unexpected snow accumulation. Why unexpected, I don’t know, because the forecast was clear, and it is January, but it’s been so long since we have had actual winter weather that I didn’t think that a real snowstorm was possible. I thought the forecast was just weather-industrial complex hype. I thought it was just another media narrative. 

We only got maybe five inches or so, but this is the DC suburbs of Maryland, not Buffalo. We’re famous for freaking out at the smallest accumulation of snow. I haven’t left my house since Sunday but I’m sure that if I ventured out to a grocery store today, I’d find shelves stripped bare. Thankfully I didn’t run out of milk or toilet paper because I’m always ready for the worst case scenario. Rain, snow, whatever - I seldom run out of anything. 

And speaking of the worst case scenario, yesterday was also Iowa caucus day and of course Trump won by a landslide. Not that Haley or DeSantis are anything other than repugnant to me, but the idea of another Trump presidency,  which is a very real possibility, fills me with something close to despair. I just can’t bear the thought of looking at his face and hearing his voice every day for four more years. I dread the rest of this election season. I used to love election years, too. Sad!

*****

But I’ll tell you what. An entire childhood and youth obsessed with political repression and dictatorships had its upside. I’m prepared. No matter how much I hate what might be happening a few miles from my front door in Washington, I am prepared to live my life and do my work and go on with my daily existence without regard to politics. Unless it gets really bad and they start rounding up dissidents and I end up in a detention camp. 

And this is why I shouldn’t be reading political memoirs, or doomscrolling my newsfeeds, or listening to MSNBC all the gosh darn livelong day. I should probably just go outside except that it’s literally 12 degrees out there, which is absolute nonsense. This weather is trash. This weather is for penguins and polar bears and ice fishermen. 

*****

Have you seen “The Holdovers?” A friend and I had planned to see it in a theater, back in November or early December; and what with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes life for middle aged ladies, we ended up postponing our plans multiple times and ultimately missing the short theatrical run. And then we had to cancel three consecutive planned dates to watch it at my house. One damn thing after another, I tell you. Last Saturday, I realized that my husband had to work in the evening, and my friend’s husband was going to be glued to an NFL playoff game, so we made a last-minute plan to watch the movie together with another friend, and we were all free, and no one got sick and no one had a last-minute work obligation or family emergency, and we actually got to sit down with wine and popcorn and watch the movie. 

I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of movies and books about exclusive boarding schools and colleges - preferably in New England in the middle of the 20th century, but any story about a boarding school or prestigious college will do. The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Prep, The Secret History, Brideshead Revisited, “Rushmore,” even “The Dead Poets Society” - I love them all.  I also adore Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (absolutely hilarious in “Only Murders in the Building”) - and so I knew going in that I’d love “The Holdovers.” And I did. It is hilariously funny, but also heartbreakingly sad, with its little band of outcast characters stumbling through a cold and gray holiday season full of empty days, loneliness, and grief. And the cold and gray and emptiness are sweet and human and really beautiful. It’s a beautiful, perfect little movie. I hope it wins everything. I can’t wait to watch it again. 

*****

It’s Friday again, and in my original plan, I’d have been driving to Fredericksburg for a late afternoon meet between Marymount and University of Mary Washington; but there’s another winter storm, and the college swimming powers that be cancelled the meet. It’s just as well. The idea of my son and all of his teammates riding on snowy roads in a charter bus was making me very anxious, and although I had been looking forward to the meet, I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s meet at St. Mary’s of Maryland will proceed as planned. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been writing this for a whole week and I’m still looking for the unifying theme that will give me an excuse to paste the whole mess into my blog editor and press publish. Didn’t I say something about brain decluttering? Not only have I not decluttered my own brain, but now I’ve dropped a whole bunch of junk off in yours. Sorry. 

****

At the end of Free, Lea Ypi shares some of her teenage journal entries from the year 1997, a violent and chaotic year in Albania. It was my favorite part of the book, just a person thinking and feeling and writing it all down knowing that it’s possible that someone might read her journal one day but that it’s just as possible that no one ever will. And that is my unifying theme, for this post and for every word that I write on this blog. Sometimes people read this stuff, which is lovely; and sometimes they don’t, which is fine. I write because it’s the only way that I can begin to make sense of things. I write because I have to. 

Regulation

It seems that I am not the only person who struggles with anxiety. My newsfeeds are filled with advice from experts real and self-proclaimed on how to regulate my stress response, activate my parasympathetic nervous system, stimulate my vagus nerve (what?), drop my shoulders while engaging my core and practicing breathwork, and just calm the heck down. I don’t do any of this. I look out the window instead. 

If we ever left this house, the view outside my office window is one thing that I would really miss. And it’s not a particularly spectacular view. It’s just pretty - a large number and variety of trees on both sides of the fence between my neighbor’s house and mine, the hanging birdfeeders and the visiting birds, and the sky, which is wintery pale bright blue today, with a few fluffy pink-edged clouds. There are many window views that are more beautiful but few that are more soothing. 

*****

I wrote that yesterday, which was a rather bad day. Today is much better. It's Friday afternoon and I'm in the stands at the Rose Bente Lee Center pool at Marymount University, watching the first meet of the second half of the 23-24 season. Marymount is hosting Randolph Macon and my son's medley relay just scored its first victory of 2024. As the B relay they should have finished second but someone forgot to tell them that. 

The women's 1000 yard freestyle is just finishing up, and the men will follow. Distance events are not my jam but I certainly admire the athletes in a better them than me kind of way. 

*****

We’re midway through the meet now, and the swimmers are warming up for the second half. It's a close, competitive meet, fun to watch. I think we're winning but I'm not sure. But we're not running away with it. Marymount completely dominated its early season opponents, so much so that it was almost like watching an intramural meet. Winning is great and all but I'd rather see a real race. I like a good old fashioned duel in the pool. 

*****

Saturday morning, cold and very pale gray. It’s January 6, and we’re waiting for the threatened or promised winter weather that was supposed to begin this morning. So far, it’s nothing but January cold and a silvery gray sky that looks very soon-to-snowish. The rest of the house is asleep, and I’m back in front of my window, watching the birds enjoy breakfast at the just-refilled feeder. The seed mix that comes out of that big Costco bag must be delicious because it’s a scene out there, bird-wise. It’s a bird party. I could sit in front of this window all day. 

Yesterday’s meet finished in a split decision - a win for the men and a loss for the women. My son won one of his individual events, too. Today, I’ll work for a bit to catch up. I had had some vague idea that I’d try to work for a bit during the distance events at the meet yesterday but that was just silly. But I don’t mind working today. Yesterday was almost a day off. It felt very Saturday-ish. And the weather today is dreadful, so I’m not going anywhere unless I have to. 

*****

Saturday was a gloomy gloomy day. Not unpleasantly gloomy, just weather gloomy, with an ice storm vibe. It wasn’t quite cold enough for ice, but almost. I got my hair cut in the morning and then came home and worked and did housework and read my book (The Broom of the System) and watched a movie (“Leave the World Behind”) and hung around the house, now pretty much completely clear of all signs of Christmas except for a few boxes of chocolate that still remain in the kitchen. It’s sunny and bright today and the place feels wide open. The day feels wide open. It’s Sunday and I don’t have any particular plans other than to get out of the house. An indoor day is nice once in a while but one is enough. 

*****

Have you seen “Leave the World Behind”? It’s a disaster movie, kind of, but we never really find out what causes the disaster - a foreign attack, a cyber event, an environmental catastrophe - but the world goes haywire just as an affluent Manhattan family begins its impromptu vacation in a beautiful rental house in the Hamptons. The owners of the house, a Black man (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, show up in the middle of the night after escaping from chaos in the city, and the tenants (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) must decide whether or not to trust them, having never actually met them face to face. Things get increasingly chaotic and terrifying - strange animal encounters, and self-driving cars going haywire, and a mysterious illness that strikes one of the vacationers’ children - and the two families are forced to overcome their mutual suspicion and mistrust, given that they appear to be the only people remaining, except for an angry, armed survivalist played very well by Kevin Bacon. 

Most of the action takes place in and around the beach house, and with the very small cast (the two families and Kevin Bacon) it has a closed-off, quasi-theatrical feel. But it’s still realistic, and scary. I liked the movie very much, even though dystopian disaster movies are the last thing I should be watching right now given my pretty fragile grip on reason. Julia Roberts is especially good as the everywoman wife and mother who is angry at the world and racked with guilt over her own ill temper and bad disposition. She shares the movie’s best scene (in my view) with the very talented My’hala Herrold as Mahershala Ali’s done-with-these-damn-white-people daughter. Surrounded by a pack of wild deer and other animals who appear to be poised to attack (and I keep telling you that the deer are going to turn predator), the two women stick together, face down the animals, and ultimately scare them away. They hold hands, clinging to one another as they realize - to both their relief and dismay -  that they need one another, and that even though people are the worst, it’s far worse to be without them. 

*****

I like to re-read books sometimes, especially at times like now when my mental health is not great. I hadn’t thought about The Broom of the System - or David Foster Wallace in general - in years, but Zadie Smith reminded me to revisit Wallace, and The Broom of the System was my favorite book for a short time during my twenties. I wanted to see if it held up. 

Wallace wrote The Broom of the System, his first novel, when he was in his 20s and it created quite a stir - critics recognized Wallace as a genius right away. I think it was popular too - my friends and I all read it, at least. What still works - the book is still very funny, hilariously so; and very imaginative. Wallace juxtaposed the real (Cleveland, Ohio; Amherst College, Gerber baby food, Bob Newhart) and the imagined (the Great Ohio Desert, Stonecipheco Baby Foods, the Reverend Hart Lee Sykes) seamlessly, and creates a world that is both absurd and believable, and that the reader recognizes and understands almost immediately. The dialogue is hilarious, and the characters are flawed and neurotic (or downright crazy) and interesting. 

The book still holds up, for the most part, though of course I saw it very differently as an almost-old woman as I am now vs. a very young woman (maybe 22) when I first read it. I really loved Lenore Beadsman, the main character, when I was in my 20s. She was different from every other female character in books and movies and TV. She was quirky and fiercely independent. She was not glamorous or fashionable but she was obviously beautiful, being the object of desire for at least four of the novel’s male characters. She was, of course, an early Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which explains why I loved her so much. Even before we had a name for her, young women in their 20s were (and remain) very susceptible to the allure of the MPDG. She’s not like all the other girls. 

*****

I started writing this a week ago, in the midst of an anxiety spiral that has mostly passed. Writing about it and then thinking about other things - like swim meets and books and movies - helps me to get a grip and to calm down a little. It helps me to regulate my nervous system, as the influencers like to say. Of course, who am I to need regulating? I’m not walking on a beach or digging in a peaceful green garden but I’m also not fighting for my life in the middle of a war or disaster. I’m not facing down a pack of attack deer (I promise you, they will be a thing very soon). I’m not lost in the middle of the Great Ohio Desert, handcuffed to a madman (Wallace reference, IYKYK). Everything is fine. Everything is grand. Reading and writing are all I really have any business doing anyway. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

“One never knows at Christmas time, does one?” That is Miranda’s mother in the Christmas episode of the first season of “Miranda,” commenting on the dateless and timeless quality of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s December 28 in my life, a fact that I can only cite because I looked at the date on the bottom of my computer screen. Absent that reminder, I would have had no idea of the date. And I think it’s Thursday. 

And I’m pretty sure that I forgot to write anything yesterday, too. So that’s two days out of 365 in the year 2023 when I failed to write any words. And it’s fine. There are enough of my words out here; a few days missed production won’t make a difference. 

It’s been a weird, though not unpleasant Christmas break. We didn’t really go places as we normally do because my husband is sick with the flu, and it rained for two days straight. We’ve been watching movies and sports. We’ve been eating cookies. We ventured out to the bookstore and the grocery store. It’s been low-key but kind of nice. 

*****

Have you seen “Saltburn”? Starting at the end of the year, I try to catch up with movies that will likely garner major award nominations, and Christmas vacation is the perfect time to do this. “Saltburn,” which is expected to be an awards contender, is streaming now so I watched it. 

Much has been made of “Saltburn.” It’s violent, sexually transgressive, mean-spirited, sharply critical of British upper class social snobbery, and full of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothing in beautiful settings; so naturally, critics have praised it rather lavishly. 

Spoiler alert: “Saltburn” starts with a scholarship student at Oxford, a student named Oliver Quick whom we are at first supposed to believe is a poor and clueless outsider, completely out of his depth among his aristocratic classmates, unable to cope socially in a world of money and privilege. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Oliver, scorned and ostracized by Oxford’s elite, who grew up with an arcane and complex code of etiquette with which he is totally unfamiliar. Poor lonesome Oliver longs to belong, and he falls in love with the upper class in general and with one person in particular, the beautiful and charismatic Felix, who is the center of everything, the most inside of the insiders. 

Does this sound familiar? It will if you saw “The Talented Mr. Ripley” or if you read Brideshead Revisited, both of which tell the stories of middle-class outsiders invited into the inner circles of the rich; and both of which are far more interesting and nuanced than the stylish and misanthropic and hateful “Saltburn.” Of course, nothing is what it seems in “Saltburn,” and the series of tragedies that follow Oliver’s invitation to join Felix and his family at Saltburn, their country estate, are not chance occurrences. You’ll have to watch it if you want to find out what actually happens and how. Or you could just read the Wikipedia plot summary, which might be a better idea than sitting through this movie. I did that after I watched the movie. This is how I learned that the movie was filmed in a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the more conventional 16:9. I’m sure that there was an artistic reason behind that technical decision, but I didn’t notice it when I was watching the movie, but I don’t tend to notice details like that. I’m not a critic. 

Barry Keoghan is mentioned in all of the critics’ “best of” lists and is sure to receive many nominations for his performance as Oliver. But he left me cold, as did the entire movie. Even Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike, whom I normally adore, are wasted here. “Saltburn” is a two thumbs down for me, but what do I know, other than the difference between right and wrong?

*****

Thursday was the first nice day all week, so we drove to Harper’s Ferry for the afternoon. West Virginia sounds so dreadfully far away but on a good traffic day, Harper’s Ferry is a one-hour drive, even when I’m driving. Harper’s Ferry is a little gem of a town, rich with history, architecturally very interesting (especially the WPA-era train tunnel), and surrounded by stunning natural beauty. It sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, and at the intersection of the Appalachian and C&O Trails, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as a natural backdrop. You can hike or stroll or bike or canoe or poke around in little shops and get your National Parks passport stamped, all in just an afternoon. We had a lovely time there, basking in the unseasonable warmth and clear bright late December sunshine and clean mountain air; and we were home before dark. 

*****

I had to work on Friday, oddly enough. At least one person needs to be in the office during business hours (why, I don’t know) and Friday was my turn, so I left my house at 7 and breezed on to the base at 7:25. There’s always an upside of working on December 29. The streets were near-empty. And the office was near-empty, too. I worked in fits and starts, finally hitting a groove at about noon, with a burst of energy and concentration and inspiration that allowed me to finish a project that’s been hanging over my head for a bit. At 2:30, the only other person on the floor stopped by my desk to wish me a happy new year. “Don’t stay too late,” he said. It had already been unnaturally quiet on the floor, but now that I knew for sure that I was the only person left on the floor (and likely the only person left in the building) the quiet was a bit eerie. I finished my work listening to holiday-week NPR on my headphones and then packed up at 4 and walked across the empty brick courtyard for the last time in 2023. By 5 o’clock, I was home in cozy sweats, back in holiday mode. 

*****

After one pretty bad movie, I watched a pretty good movie. Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” which was slightly controversial because of the prosthetic nose that Cooper wore to play Leonard Bernstein. I suppose I can see both sides of this little uproar, but the movie is really quite good. Cooper manages the macro and the micro very well; the micro being the story of Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montelegre (Carey Mulligan in an absolutely lovely performance) and the macro being the whole American century that made a life like Leonard Bernstein’s possible. The movie is beautiful to look at and listen to, with outstanding performances from the entire cast, especially Mulligan. 

*****

So it’s late December (well it’s January now) and what would late December in the post-COVID era be if at least one member of the household wasn’t stricken by a hideous upper respiratory infection? Three of the four of us were sick to varying degrees, with one person going down just as another began to recover. A bunch of COVID tests, dozens of oranges, a bottle of zinc tablets, two urgent care visits, Tamiflu, amoxicillin, and a partridge in a pear tree. Everyone’s fine now. For now. 

****

Clutter is delightful for exactly two weeks of the year, and not one second more. From about December 19 to about January 3 or so, our house is full of presents wrapped and unwrapped, treats homemade and store-bought, Christmas decorations and knick-knacks and trinkets, wrapping and baking supplies, and a big fat Griswold family Christmas tree that takes up half the living room. And it’s lovely but when it’s over, it’s over. It’s January 3 now, and it’s over. Two days ago, my house felt sparkly and magical and cozy all at once, and today it feels like a very special episode of “Hoarders.” It’s time to break it down. 

I’m always a tiny bit sad when I start taking down the Christmas decorations, but once all the Christmas stuff is packed away and all of our pictures and paintings and books and objects are back in their proper places, freshly dusted, the house seems calm and peaceful and welcoming again. The tree will stay until January 7. Its exit will clear a ton of physical and metaphorical space for a new season and a new year. The past few years have taught me not to tempt fate with hilariously snide “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” messages to the departing old year. I don’t want to encourage “Hold my beer” energy from 2024, know what I mean? I'll just leave you by saying Happy New Year. 

(Christmas) Adam and Eve

It was overcast and gray when I woke up this morning, and Christmas cold - 25 degrees according to my weather app. I was on the couch in my sister's living room, where I'd gone to escape my husband's snoring. It was cozy there. There was a light on over the stove and the outside Christmas lights twinkled from the front window. I piled on some blankets and propped myself up on some pillows and read my book until I fell back to sleep. My sister's dog, who loves me, had followed me downstairs, and he slept on the floor next to my couch. 

When I sat up, the dog popped his head up and lazily wagged his tail. He knew that I was going to take him out for a walk but he wasn't in a hurry and neither was I. I let him outside, made some coffee, plugged in the Christmas tree, and wrapped myself back up in a blanket. It was 7 am on December 23 - Christmas Adam. 

*****

We usually visit my family after Christmas, but schedules were booked, and December 22 and 23 were the only available options. So we drove up yesterday afternoon, arriving in mid-afternoon after a surprisingly trouble free drive. Temperatures were in the mid-50s when we left our house in Maryland and we dressed accordingly, and were rudely surprised when we got out of the car in my sister’s driveway, where it was 35 degrees at 3 PM. Fortunately for me, I had a winter jacket in the back of my car so I was quite comfortable in the still cold December afternoon as I took my sister’s dog for a walk. We walked around the silent streets, and then a school bus rolled in and discharged its passengers, a joyful, screaming gaggle of elementary schoolers arriving home for Christmas vacation. Later, we had dinner at a favorite restaurant, and then sat around an outdoor fire, wrapped in parkas and blankets. 

*****

It’s Christmas Eve now, the day after Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve. We spent the morning and early afternoon yesterday at my sister’s house, exchanging gifts and eating brunch and cookies. After one last dog walk, we drove back home, arriving just at twilight, the perfect time of day in December. Tomorrow is Christmas and winter is just beginning but the days will get a little longer each day now. It’s peaceful here. I hope it will soon be peaceful everywhere. 

Rest stop

The 1-95 corridor is probably the most heavily traveled stretch of road in the United States, and never more so than on a Saturday in the summer or during the holidays. From Maine to Florida and back, people are on the road, for a few miles or hundreds of miles. 95 on a Saturday is not for the faint of heart. You need to know where you’re going and what you’re doing. You need to be on top of your Ps and Qs. 

In Maryland, there are several rest stops on 95; or rather, travel plazas. They are called travel plazas now. The Maryland House and the Chesapeake House travel plazas are located right smack in the middle of 95, accessible via left exits to both northbound and southbound travelers. The plazas and the buildings are large and clean and well-maintained and offer everything that a road traveler would need - bathrooms, food, gas, silly souvenirs, and even massage chairs, which I wouldn’t touch without alcohol wipes but to each his own. 

A travel plaza in the middle of December is a rather exciting place to be. People are traveling to see family for Christmas, college students are returning home for winter break - the Maryland House is a hub of happy buzzy energy. There’s no better place to watch people and see how they present themselves. 

Most people stay casual for a road trip, but there’s more than one kind of casual. There is truly carefree casual, a person who just gets up, puts on some sporty or slouchy clothing, pulls back their hair or puts on a hat, and then goes, grabbing whatever jacket and bag are hanging on the hook nearest the door before they hit the road. And then there are the others, who appear to be casual in dress and demeanor, but their casualness is of the well-thought-out and carefully considered variety. 

This morning, I was just meeting my brother, who was picking up my mom to take her back home to Philadelphia after a week with me. We texted, only half joking, that we hoped that no one would witness the old lady handover and report us for human trafficking. Since I was only dropping off and returning home, I was genuinely casual, but when I’m taking an actual trip, road or otherwise, I plan my casual look very carefully, down to the jacket and bag (which are the most important elements, of course). And I could tell, just by looking, who else had done the same before heading out on the road that morning.

I saw a young woman (mid 30s, maybe) in jeans and a cashmere pullover hoodie (the one that keeps chasing people all over the internet) with boots and a short puffer jacket and a Le Pliage, and I imagined her planning her travel look with some care, thinking about which outfit would be most comfortable and appropriate for a road trip with rest stops, and would look nicest when she reached her destination. She planned well, actually. She looked both genuinely comfortable and genuinely stylish and nice. I also saw a mother-daughter duo in somewhat matching outfits, Lululemon leggings and North Face fleece jackets and Ugg-style boots. The mother was young, maybe about 40, and very fit. Her clothes fit perfectly and her hair was shiny and straight. Her hands were flawlessly manicured and she wore a touch of makeup - nothing garish, just a bit of pale lipstick and some mascara. Her casual look was the work of at least an hour. Her daughter, who wore nearly the same thing, looked slightly rumpled, with an oversized jacket and a messy ponytail and a clean-scrubbed face. Both women looked beautiful and road-trip appropriate. I saw hundreds of other people dressed in casual and loungewear both basic and fancy and almost all of them had put some thought or effort into their road trip look. I wished a safe and happy journey for all of them. 

*****

Tomorrow, I’ll be back on 95 heading north toward Philadelphia for a quick overnight visit with my family. I’ve already planned the carefully considered casual outfit that I will wear for the ride. This year, I don’t really feel like visiting family - I would rather stay home and enjoy my younger son’s very short stay at home before he has to return to campus for winter training. But I am looking forward to the drive. It’s fun to dress for a road trip, especially when you have exactly the right outfit. It’s fun to pack an overnight bag and I’m determined to pack only what I need because I know that we’ll be coming home with Christmas presents and because I want to carry only one tote bag and one handbag. It’s fun to listen to Christmas music on the radio, and to stop for a coffee midway through the trip, even though it’s a less than three-hour drive. I’m looking forward to seeing fellow travelers at the Maryland House or maybe the Bel Air Wawa. It’ll be fun to see what everyone’s wearing. 

Could this BE any less of a book review?

We were home on a Saturday night in October when my son looked up from his phone and said “Oh bummer - Matthew Perry died. You know, the “Friends” guy?” I don’t think he expected us to react as strongly as we did. We were genuinely shocked and saddened, surprising even ourselves. 

I’m slightly older than the demographic that grew up watching “Friends.” I didn’t even really watch it very often when it was still airing on Thursday nights but of course I’ve seen pretty much the entire series now, like everyone else in the English-speaking world. There are actually a lot of things wrong with “Friends,” which I won’t bother to discuss because you can read the “Friends doesn’t hold up” discourse pretty much anywhere on the internet, and I don’t really have anything to add to that discourse. But when the show was good, it was really really good and Matthew Perry was a big reason why. “Friends” was his best work as an actor, but he was also wonderful in “The Whole Nine Yards” and “Fools Rush In,” an absolutely delightful and underrated movie. I was a Matthew Perry fan, I suppose, and didn’t realize it until my son shared the news of his death. 

But we’re talking about the book, aren’t we? "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" is a celebrity memoir, which is a genre that I don’t usually read, unless I happen to really love the celebrity. I read Carrie Fisher’s memoirs, and Bruce Springsteen’s. That's who you have to be to get me to read your memoir. I would never have thought to read “Friends, Lovers…” if Perry hadn’t died; but struck by how unexpectedly sad I was at the news of his death, I bought the book and read it in a day. 

First of all, it’s good from a pure literary standpoint. Perry was a good writer (not surprising) and storyteller. Secondly, it is honest in a way that celebrity memoirs maybe attempt but seldom achieve. The Big Terrible Thing was Perry's alcoholism and drug addiction, which he tried over and over again to overcome but ultimately could not. It’s one thing for a celebrity with a history of drug use and wildness to tell stories of promiscuity and partying and waking up in strange homes after blacking out. It’s quite another for that same celebrity to tell his fans about his colon rupture and the months in the hospital with a colostomy bag. I didn’t know that colostomy bags were prone to breaking. I know this now, and although I wish I didn’t, I admire Matthew Perry for sharing the humiliating details. I don’t think he was interested in shocking readers or grossing them out (although I bet he enjoyed the gross-out part). I think that he knew that by sharing his suffering, he could make others suffering similarly feel less alone.  

Last week I was home alone on a Friday night. I was so tired I could have gone to sleep at 8, but I turned on the TV instead, hoping to find a hockey game or an old movie or something. Instead, I found a “Friends” marathon. I think you can turn on a TV anywhere in the United States at any time of day and if you flip through enough channels, you will find a “Friends” rerun. I hadn’t watched the show in years, and I tried to look at it without thinking about 9/11 or new social and cultural norms or the late Obama years or the Trump administration or anything else pre-”Friends.” I tried to look at it as it was in 1994, from the perspective of a person watching it in 1994. And amid funny moments interspersed with cringe (because it's really not 1994), I watched Matthew Perry’s delivery and inflection and timing, which might seem familiar and even hackneyed now but which were completely new and original at the time. Matthew Perry was not wrong when he writes that his performance as Chandler Bing influenced the way an entire generation spoke and even thought. He was a brilliant comedian, a fine actor, and a brave and generous person for telling us about the worst parts of himself, with no filters and no excuses. Rest in peace, Matthew Perry. 

Retreat

Today I'm attending an all day off-site retreat, an 8-hour meeting of brilliant and highly educated people, and me. This is just fact, not false modesty. I'm the only person here without a medical degree or a PhD. A few of these overachievers have both, with an MPH or an MBA or a JD just for sport. I myself was full up on formal education when I received my BA, but these people don’t know when to quit.

***** 

One thing that some successful people do not know how to do - at all - is dress casually. The retreat organizer specified casual dress for today. For the military officers, I think that means anything but their uniforms. Most of us didn't even bother with the casual directive. We wore pretty much what we’d have worn to work anyway, with maybe a more comfortable shoe, or a cardigan rather than a jacket. It’s not a terribly formal workplace in the first place. A few people did attempt a look more relaxed than their usual workwear, with mixed results. I guess if a man usually wears a suit, then a sweater vest layered over an oxford shirt with khakis and loafers will pass as casual.  Maybe for a woman who usually wears a suit, a cashmere sweater layered over a silk blouse with a brightly patterned silk scarf knotted smartly at the neck is as casual as it gets. Well, everyone seemed happy and everyone looked nice, and I’m the last person who should be critiquing anyone’s look. I just think that if you are more at ease in more dressy attire, then that’s how you should dress for work. Comfort is relative. 

*****

We do these offsite retreats on a fairly regular basis, and I always try to think of ways to get out of attending, but it’s hard to make a case that you’re too busy to leave your desk when everyone else in the group is a military officer or an MD or both, and they all seem able to make the time to get out of their offices. And of course, it’s not the offsite itself (most of them are pretty great), it’s the large group interaction. Introverts like people just fine - we just like them a few at a time, in smaller time increments. Faced with the idea of hanging out with 50 people - some of whom I don’t know well at all - in the same room, for an eight-hour day, and I will brainstorm pretty much any ridiculous excuse to get out of it. And then I’ll enter the resignation and acceptance phase, steel myself for the ordeal of enforced camaraderie, and show up with a smile on my face and appropriate semi-casual, semi-business attire. And 90 percent of the time, I have a pretty good time. 

*****

And as usual, I did have a pretty good time, but I said too much, and I’m not the only one. The whole thing was very confessional (adjective), and I only do that here, or in an actual confessional (noun). I’m still a little stressed out about having over-shared. Well, it’s all out there now. Nothing I can do about it now, except maybe go for a walk. 

I’m a little stressed out about everything, really. I wouldn’t mind retreating from the world in general, just for a few days. But that is not an option. A walk is the next best thing. Going for a walk is my cure-all, for myself and others. It’s what I do when I’m anxious and worried (100 percent of the time) and it’s what I tell everyone else to do. It’s an early December Tuesday now, the trees dark colorless gray against a white-gray sky. I worked from home today and am about to finish just in time to walk a few steps outside, racing against sunset, which gets earlier every day now. But only for a little while longer. In two weeks, the tide will turn. The days will begin to lengthen and the darkness will be pushed back a tiny bit each day until there’s more light than dark. Maybe that’ll happen to the whole world, too - every day it'll get a little less dark. We can't retreat from the world; we can only hope. Right now, I can only hope. And walk, of course. 

Thanksgiving 2023

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. We used to host a blow-out all-are-invited open house party on the night before Thanksgiving. People would start arriving at 7 and the last stragglers would depart at 1 AM. And then I’d get up in the morning and spend the entire day cooking a giant Thanksgiving dinner. Madness, I tell you. I don’t know how I did it, really. I had a lot of energy then. 

“Then,” of course, means 2019 and earlier. We couldn’t hold the party in 2020, of course, and for one reason or another, we just stopped altogether. It’s OK. That party had a good, solid 12-year run. People still talk about it. Oh, the before times. But since we don’t have guests tonight, we’ll go to the Capitals game instead. Always a silver lining, 

*****

I didn’t work today. Well, I took a vacation day and didn’t work at my paid job. But I worked like a fiend all day. Today is Thanksgiving prep day, and Thanksgiving prep day means potatoes, and potatoes are a lot of work. How much work? Maybe I’ll tell you. 

*****

It’s 4:03 PM on Thanksgiving Day. Or day. You can style that however you like. The rest of the food is done and has been done for some time. Only the turkey has stubbornly refused to reach the recommended temperature of 165. It’s at 162 now, and it’s on the stove, resting. That turkey can fuck right off. I’m the one who should be resting. We’re going to wait five minutes, or maybe ten; and then we’re going to cut that turkey, and we’ll just see what happens. It’ll be delicious or it’ll be undercooked and we’ll all end up sick. There’s only one way to find out. 

*****

I made a lot of mashed potatoes - enough to fill two large baking dishes. That is what I do - I make the potatoes a day in advance, spread them out in glass baking dishes, and then warm them up in the oven on Thanksgiving day. It takes almost ten pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes to make enough mash to fill two large baking dishes. Why two large dishes? Because these potatoes are really good and everyone wants leftovers, and I like to give the people what they want. 

I worked like a swimmer, in sets - take five potatoes, peel them, cut them, and then take a  two minute break to clean up or stretch or move the laundry from the washer to the dryer; and then back to the potatoes. Work methodically, psyching yourself by chunking tasks and setting very short-term goals, and you’ll be done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, as Sue Ann Nivens used to say. I hate peeling potatoes like nobody’s business but it’s very satisfying to complete a hated chore a little bit at a time, and to watch your progress, counting down in five-potato units until you have a nice pile of potato peels and two pots of chopped potatoes boiling merrily on the stove. 

Of course, that’s not all there is to it. There’s the mashing and the beating, adding butter and cream and salt (this is not vegan spa cuisine), continuing to beat until you have a nice fluffy puree that still has some potato texture. When you finally have the perfect potatoes, you dish out two huge bowls for your college student sons to have as a “snack,” and then you spread the rest out into the baking dishes, warning all present that the preview was a one-off, and that the rest of the potatoes are off limits until dinner on Thursday. 

And then you clean up. And let me tell you that there’s no mess like a mashed potato mess. The coffee maker and the toaster and the sugar and tea canisters have absolutely no involvement in the making of mashed potatoes, but they all have to be thoroughly scrubbed afterward, along with the countertops, the stovetop, and the floor. Is it worth it? Yes, it 100 percent absolutely is. That’s how good these potatoes are.

Still, I won’t be making them again for another year, not in those quantities. I don’t know why, but if you double or triple a recipe, you will increase the mess by 10-fold or 100-fold. It’ll take a while to recover from that. The kitchen’s been through some shit. 

*****

Did I tell you that the turkey was perfect? Well, it was perfect. It turns out that 162 is a good out-of-the-oven temperature, and that the turkey will continue to cook from the inside out for a few minutes after you take it out of the oven. I let it rest for 15 minutes, and then my husband started carving, and it was just right - not dry, but not undercooked, and very flavorful thanks to salt and pepper and onion and apple and celery stuffed in the cavity, and butter slathered all over the outside and underneath the breast skin. I have had very good luck with turkey roasting, but every year, I worry that the previous year was just a fluke and that I won’t be able to duplicate my turkey success. So now I have a written record. Even if no one reads this, I’ll at least have some notes to refer back to next year. 

*****

The holidays are now well underway. We put up our Christmas decorations on Friday morning, as has become our custom since 2020. I used to put up our indoor decorations two weeks before Christmas, but 2020 changed that, too. And it’s nice having the Christmas things around a little earlier. No tree yet, because we get a real tree and it would dry out by Christmas if we got it now, but the house is festooned with all of the other Christmas swag and trinkets. 

Last Tuesday night, I went shopping for some last-minute Thanksgiving groceries, and the Safeway was alive with the happy energy of all of the other parents welcoming college students home for the holiday, looking forward to four or five blessed days of having everyone under the same roof again. Those five days passed with lightning speed of course. Thanksgiving leftovers in the family room, Christmas movies on TV, kids coming and going, a house full of kids watching college football together, perfect silvery pale skies and early blazing gold sunsets, and now it’s over. We’ll all be back in the grocery stores later today, laying in supplies for the week, but the energy will be very different. Yes, they’ll be back for Christmas but every holiday is just a reminder that they’re only visitors now. But I’ll take what I can get, and I’ll be thankful for every minute. I am thankful for every minute. 

High effing finance

Do you know why I can’t be a rich person? No, it’s not because I keep buying stupid handbags (although that doesn’t help). It really has very little to do with income or spending - I could make a lot more money and/or spend a lot less money, and I still couldn’t be a rich person. And this is why.  

I have two checking accounts in two different banks - a smallish community bank and a credit union. The credit union account is really both a savings and checking account. It earns a little bit of interest, and it’s where I save money for short- and medium-term goals; things like travel and holidays. My emergency fund money is also in that account.

I keep a very simple tally - on paper, mind you - of money in and out of the credit union account, categorized by type of expense or fund (travel, holiday, emergency) for which deposits are intended. Every so often, I reconcile my total with the actual account balance to make sure that I have the money that I think I have. 

This is all fine. Where it gets complicated is electronic transfers between the accounts. 

I have a Visa card, which is my only credit card, from the credit union. I normally pay the bill for that Visa card, on the rare occasions when I actually use it, from my primary checking account, which is how I pay all my bills. However, I used the card for some holiday shopping and rather than pay the bill from the primary checking account and then transfer funds from the credit union, as I normally do and definitely will do again for reasons that will be clear in just a moment, I decided to pay it directly from the credit union share draft account that holds my holiday short-term savings. The money intended for holiday shopping goes directly toward the credit card that I used to make the purchases. Eliminate the middleman. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Except that I made this payment on November 8 and on November 17, it still does not appear in my payment history, although it is showing clearly as a debit to the share draft. 

I don’t usually use the banking app for the credit union, because I don’t pay bills from that account, and so I had been hesitant to pay a bill using this untried app. Rather than pay the entire balance as I normally would (it was about $470 or so), I made a $100 payment. Even as I sent that payment, I thought that the test payment amount should have been $10, not $100, because who am I, Oprah? Anyway, just to be sure, I checked for this payment every day for several days, and when it didn’t appear in my credit card transaction list, I realized to my dismay (dismay defined as 20 percent “what happened to my money?” and 80 percent “Oh my God, I have to CALL SOMEONE?”) that I had no choice except to call the credit union to figure out where it had gone. The money came out of one place but didn’t go into the other, so where was it? That was my question for the member services representative who answered my call today. 

Long story short (yeah I know, too late) the representative also saw the payment on the outgoing side but not the incoming side. He and I agreed that this was very weird, very weird indeed. He suggested that the whole mess was kind of my fault because I made the payment using the bill pay application and not the credit card application (although there is absolutely nothing on the bill pay application site that tells customers not to use that application to pay credit union Visa bills). Then he said that I could wait a few days to see what happens, or stop the payment for a mere $30, or 30 percent of the amount in question.

Lol! After firmly but politely disabusing him of the silly idea that I should pay for the credit union’s mistake (remember -  it was a payment from the credit union to the credit union) I decided to wait until Monday, and see what happens. No big deal, right? Easy come easy go. A hundred here, a hundred there - whatever. What's a single Benjamin in the fast paced world of high finance?

******

Sometimes, I tell myself that I long for the days of Friday-is-payday, so you go to the bank and deposit your check, you take out some cash so you have some walking around money, and then you write checks for all of your other bills. It was a simpler time. And it actually sucked. Imagine having to stand in line at a Center City Philadelphia bank at lunchtime on a Friday, you and every other schmoe who just got paid, because direct deposit didn’t exist. Credit cards existed, of course, but they were not as easy to obtain as they are today. We even had ATMs, but they weren’t on every corner and in every grocery store like they are now. And the check-writing. My God, the check-writing. I hate writing checks SO MUCH. Just thinking about having to open all of those envelopes, dig through the inserts to find the bill, write the checks, address and stamp the envelopes, and then get them to the mailbox or the post office - it just doesn’t bear thinking about. So no, I do not long for those days, not one bit.

****

The payment finally posted, ending a few days of minor stress and worry. I think I’ll go back to my old way of doing things, when I’d just spend the holiday or travel funds as appropriate, and then reimburse my checking account by writing an actual check from the credit union share draft account. 

And that is why I cannot be rich. I can earn money, save money, and save money, but I don't want to track the flow of cash through the electronic ether of the American banking system. I don't want to balance my books. I can't manage this level of administrative complexity. I need to keep it simple. 

Late in the year

It's Sunday morning, and I'm on my way home from visiting my mom in Philadelphia. It's golden November now, the short interlude of perfect light and color as autumn winds down and winter comes swanning in, throwing its weight around and trying to assert its dominance. The deciduous trees are at peak color right now and the sky is milky pale blue, decorated with delicate pink- and gold-edged clouds. The air is light and fresh, soft and slightly misty, not dry and crisp. It’s lovely, so much so that I’m going to stop writing so that I can just look out the window at the fleeting November beauty. It’ll be gone in a week or two. 

*****

We made the drive home in near-record time. My mother is OK, except that she’s not, and there is not much we can do about it because she persists in certain terrible health habits, and refuses to take care of herself and refuses to listen to anyone and refuses to even acknowledge that anything is wrong with her. Living in her own reality is a top ten skill for my mother, and it always has been, so at least some things never change. 

Does that sound harsh? Yes, it does and it probably is but there we are. I’m just here to keep it real, and to tell you that it’s possible to love someone and be furious at them at the same time. It’s possible to both blame someone who chooses to do the wrong thing all the time, and to feel sorry that they have to live with the consequences of their choices. Sometimes people cannot help their poor health but sometimes they can and it’s hard to watch someone stubbornly cling to their worst habits and not be angry at them. 

*****

Yes I know. I’m one to talk. I don’t really have any bad health habits to speak of, but I do avoid doctors like rich people avoid the IRS. I’ll do better, and I’ll stop being so judgmental. 

Well, I’ll do better and I’ll TRY to stop being so judgmental. No promises. I can only do what I can do. 

My mom is doing better now or so she says. She insisted on going home to her own house, which is really not the best place for her right now. But I understand. I'm very attached to my own house. I like being in my own environment surrounded by my own things. I like living by the house rules when they happen to be my rules. When I’m old, I don’t think I’ll want to live with grown people other than my husband, even if I grew them myself. There is really no freedom like the freedom of home.

*****

It’s Wednesday now and I’m so immersed in my routine that I’m not thinking about my mom every minute of the day. For a few minutes at a time today, I forgot about her and her health and what I think she should do; and instead, I just did my work and lived my life. But it’s always there, always in the back of my mind. Today, a coworker’s mother suffered a stroke, and it was a reminder that my own personal mama is not in the best shape and that any moment could bring bad news. 

But there’s no bad news right now. She was fine yesterday, and I’ll check on her again today, and I’ll keep doing my work and living my life until she needs me again. I’ll shop for Thanksgiving groceries and read books and walk outside in the still-perfect November light and watch college swimming and compulsively clean my house until other priorities intervene. We’re all living on borrowed time, anyway. 

Leaves

I live in the suburbs, in an old-fashioned Levitt neighborhood filled with colonial, ranch, and Cape Cod-style houses built in the late 1960s. If you grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s in America, then you’d probably picture something like my neighborhood when you hear the word “suburbia.” 

In the suburbs, you cut your grass and you shovel your snow and you rake your leaves. Well, someone does all of that, and it’s usually not me. My husband and sons have always been in charge of the outside of the house, and I have always been in charge of the inside of the house. It’s not necessarily a good bargain for me, but it at least keeps me out of the cold and rain. 

But it wasn’t cold today. It was a balmy, mild early November day. Our yard, front and back, is buried in leaves, and no one has been home to deal with them, except me. So I finished work at 4 today, fired up the leaf blower and went to work. 

Yes, yes, leaf blowers. I know. Everyone hates them. Well, not everyone, because a lot of people including me have leaf blowers and so it’s not possible that all these people have leaf blowers, and that everyone also hates leaf blowers. That doesn’t add up. That math doesn’t work. 

It’s more accurate to say that certain influential, thought-leader-type people hate leaf blowers. For example, there is a very prominent historian and writer who sometimes dedicates an entire issue of his Substack newsletter (one day, I’m going to write about Substack) to his hatred of leaf blowers. He especially hates gas-powered leaf blowers and I suppose I don’t blame him. But most of this man’s leaf blower opposition centers around noise. My leaf blower is battery powered so it’s not discharging fumes into the air. But it is loud. And I don’t care. I have too many leaves to gather them all with a rake. I don’t use the leaf blower early in the morning, nor later than 7 PM or so, so I’m not waking people up first thing in the AM nor keeping them awake at night. I don’t use it very often at all, full stop.  And who said that Mr. Man was entitled to perfect quiet and peace at every moment of the day, anyway? Rich people really are something else. I wonder what he does with his leaves. I am guessing that other people take care of his landscaping and his other menial chores, leaving him free to complain about the noise as the poors clean up their ramshackle little properties. 

Really, every time I hear a rich person complaining about leaf blowers, I want to go and buy a jackhammer. 

God, I’m petty. LOL. 

*****

My front yard is pretty big, because we don’t have sidewalks in our neighborhood. I think that sidewalkless streets with lawns that slope right down to the road were a suburban ideal in the late 1960s. We have three shade trees out front, and those three trees drop a great deal of leaves. Somewhere between a boat load and a shit ton, if we’re being exact. With a rake, it would take all day to wrangle those leaves into a pile. With the leaf blower, it took me one hour. I moved in methodical rows, the leaves swirling and eddying as I blew them down toward the ever growing leaf pile. I watched with satisfaction as neat green paths of grass opened through the leaves until the entire front yard was pretty much clear. 

*****

That was Tuesday, and now it’s Friday, a Federal government holiday and an unearned gift of a day off, which is my favorite kind. Blowing those leaves was much more fun than I expected; so much so that I would like to do more today, but it’s raining and I’m not going to do yard work on a 55-degree rainy November day. It was also much more physically demanding than I’d have guessed. The leaf blower is heavy, but it’s well balanced, so you don’t necessarily notice how heavy it is until you blast leaves for an hour. I had to stop because it gets dark so stupidly early now but I’d have had to stop anyway because I was physically exhausted, and my hands hurt so much that I had a hard time holding on to a glass of water. But I was fine the next day, and my front yard looked very nice. 

*****

It’s Saturday now. I might have planned to do the rest of the yard today, a beautiful sunny, not-too-cold November day, but I have to drive to Philadelphia in a few minutes to see my mom, who is not in good health. That’s probably all I have to say about that right now. Except that she probably can’t live in her house anymore. She can’t take care of herself there, and she certainly can’t take care of that house. There aren’t many leaves to rake - there are no more than five trees on the entire street - but the house has three stories and a dungeon-like basement, and no first-floor bathroom. She hasn’t really been able to live there reasonably for some time but she is stubborn and would never listen to the slightest suggestion that she downsize and find an accessible and safe place to live. But she fell last night and ended up in the emergency room, and likely cannot return to the house at all. And so I think that someone else is probably going to have to finish our fall yardwork here in the Maryland suburbs. I have some work to do in the city. 

Red Line

We are going to our second Capitals game of the season later today. Just two of us, so we’re taking the Metro, which I vastly prefer over driving to the game. My husband is a much more aggressive driver than I am (to be fair, almost everyone is) and the ride down Georgia Avenue through jaywalking pedestrians and crazy kids riding in and out of traffic on their bikes and scooters and skateboards and people randomly flinging open the driver’s side car door without a care in the world is hair-raising on a good day. It’s raining today and it’s Marine Corps Marathon day, so it really will not be a good day on Georgia Avenue or any other main state-named avenue in the District of Columbia, so I’m happy that my husband agreed to take Metro, a quick and easy 20 minute ride on the Red Line from Glenmont to Gallery Place. 

But does that mean that I am not anxious about the trip? LOL, that is hilarious. It’s like you don’t know me at all.  Well, you don’t, but you know what I mean. There’s always something to worry about. There’s always a new source of anxiety. 

You might be thinking that urban crime is my biggest Metro-riding fear, but you would be wrong, and it’s not even close. I’m not cavalier about crime; I know that it’s a real problem But I grew up in Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s and early 90s and have been a crime victim myself - several times, in fact - and so crime is not a fear that keeps me awake at night, because I have been there and done that. The things that keep me awake at night are either a) stupid and trivial or b) vanishingly unlikely to happen or c) genuinely horrible but unknown to me. The unknown is the scariest, especially for people like me who can imagine the worst and then make it even worse through sheer panic. It’s a skill. 

But we’re talking about Metro, and the things that scare me about Metro fall into categories a (What if I drop my phone on the train? What if I leave my jacket on the seat? What if I fall asleep and end up at the wrong stop?) and c (What if the train derails? What if there’s a fire in the station? What if the tunnel floods and we all drown?)

*****

Well it's Tuesday now and we traveled to and from the game without the slightest of hitches. Trains arrived quickly, the ride was smooth and uneventful in both directions, and I came home with everything that I had with me when I left the house, and that’s an accomplishment because I had to carry my wallet and my phone in either my hands or my stupidly shallow pockets thanks to the even stupider handbag embargo at Capital One Arena - but I digress. I didn't get left behind and I didn't leave anyone else behind. And it wouldn't be a big deal if someone had been left behind because we're all grown ups now and no one is going to get lost on the Metro. 

That leaves me with a brand new cause for alarm. It's 745 AM, or 0745 as we say at NSAB and I'm preparing for a very large and important meeting. I expect at least 100 people in person in the lecture hall, and another 150 or so online. There are a lot of moving parts, lots of things that could go wrong. But everything is set up, the technology cooperated, and my speakers are here and ready to go. It'll be fine. 

Well, it totally wasn’t fine, but it was still fine, if you know what I mean. The audio wandered in and out at will, the recording randomly stopped in the middle, and we had to admit online attendees one by one even though we set the meeting up to allow self-admittance with no waiting room. I do love it when Google decides to do its own thing. I find it whimsical. Charmingly quirky, even.  You’re delightful, Google Meet. 

*****

That takes us to Wednesday, also known as today. Today’s worry spiral is actually legitimate. My younger son has COVID - for the very first time - and he’s home recovering. As delightful as it is to have him home, I’d sooner he stay healthy. And I have another meeting tomorrow, which I really should attend in person, but I’d rather not carry the gosh-darn coronavirus into a closed meeting room filled with 40+ military physicians. I don’t want to be a disease vector. I’m going to just stay at home but I’m worried that people will think that I’m attending remotely because I’m just too lazy to attend an 0730 meeting. 

*****

Ridiculous! I hate 0730 meetings more than I hate pumpkin spice latte, but I show up for those meetings in person, all the time, and no one is going to think that I’m lazy if I work from home for an extra day. My reputation around there is sterling. No one blamed me for the Google Meet fiasco, either; first of all because it wasn’t my fault, and second of all because I work really really hard to do things right and people are inclined to let me slide a little bit when things go awry. That is the upside of being an extremely anxious, overly conscientious people-pleaser. There is always an upside. There’s always a silver lining. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, and my son tested negative this morning. He’s technically not allowed to return to school until Sunday, but his coach is trying to persuade the AD and campus health services to allow him to return tomorrow, pending results of a PCR test, so that he can swim in Saturday’s meet. He won two of his three individual events last week, and swam the eighth-fastest 100 breaststroke time in program history. He’s a point-scorer. He is a mainstay of the team, just one week into his freshman season. 

*****

Friday afternoon. It’s been an extraordinarily long week. My in-office and at-home days were all out of order, and we started the week with August-like weather, and finished with an overnight freeze last night. I was in shorts last Sunday, and this morning, I had to scrape the ice off my windshield. Halloween came and went. “Spooky season” and its accompanying sweaters and jeans and PSL are gone, replaced in a flash with early winter sunsets and Christmas decorations in the grocery store and Christmas carols on the radio as we enter the relentless, no-turning-back run-up to the holiday season. Once again, I’m amazed by people who look forward to the imminent “fall back” time change and its hour of extra sleep in exchange for six months of darkness. It’s not a good trade, people. It’s not a good deal at all. We’re getting ripped off. We should complain.  

*****

And now it’s Sunday. I’ve had the benefit of that much-lauded extra hour of sleep, and it’s all downhill from here. My son did get to swim yesterday and although he didn’t win every time he got in the water, he did come away with two 2nd place finishes and a first place - not bad after a week of COVID and no practice. And I conquered one of my biggest new demons, which is driving on the under-construction and heavily barricaded George Washington Parkway. It was a clear, bright afternoon, with moderate traffic, and I told myself that it would be ridiculous to take the long way just to avoid that four-mile stretch of GW Parkway, so I pulled myself together and drove. And it was fine. I was terrified, but it was fine. It’s hard to drive when you’re holding your breath, but it was fine. My hands are still a little sore from maintaining a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel for the entire drive, but it was fine. My son is fine now, my family and I are all fine, and I’ll battle each new stupid trivial fear and manage each new idiotic panic attack as and when they occur, which will be every minute of every fucking day. The Capitals won last Sunday, and the Marymount swim team won yesterday, and I also went three for three this week. #Winning