Wardrobe

It’s six weeks in, I think. I haven’t looked at a calendar. I know that it’s Saturday because I’m not working today. At least I hope it’s Saturday, because I’m not working today.

Six weeks in and we don’t have many rules for this, other than mask-wearing and six feet of social distance. I go through my closet every morning, wondering “What do I wear for this? What is fitting? What is proper?” I haven’t worn a skirt or dress in six weeks. I hardly ever wear a nice blouse. I wear, almost every day, some combination of a t-shirt (long- or short-sleeved; graphic or print or plain), a cardigan (usually an open-front style) and either yoga pants or jeans.

There’s nothing stopping me from wearing nicer clothes, but it just doesn’t seem appropriate. But what’s appropriate? I don’t know. There are no rules.

*****
It’s Sunday now, 9:15 AM. I’ve been up for an hour, but I’m still in my pajamas. It’s raining. I’m wondering what I should do. Take a shower and get dressed? Get dressed without showering first? I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, so there’s nothing forcing me to act. No rules.

I’ll take a shower, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get off the couch and start moving and get ready for the day, even if the day won’t include any activity for which getting ready is required. That’s the only way to prevent inertia from gaining a foothold.

*****
It’s hard to believe that it’s almost May. With everything suspended and every week much the same as the last and the persistent gray and chill it seems more like March 57 than April 26. I’ll always remember this whole time as an extended, endless March.

*****
Today, someone texted me a hilarious video about teachers teaching during the pandemic. Or maybe it was a video about parents homeschooling their kids during the pandemic. Actually, it might have been about children trying to deal with spotty technology and inept parents who don’t understand new math? I don’t know, because I didn’t watch it. I sent the sender a laughing emoji, though, just to be polite.

Although, God help me, maybe that wasn’t polite because maybe it wasn’t a funny video at all? That would be awkward, wouldn’t it? I hope it was a funny video, and that my ha ha ha emoji was the appropriate response. Two points: One, I’ll never know for sure unless the person tells me because there’s no way in hell that I’m going to watch another hilarious coronavirus video. Two, if it was a funny video, then maybe the laughing emoji was not the right response, because do I really want to encourage this sort of thing? No. I do not.

*****
Someone else sent me this meme, which I did and do find legitimately hilarious.

I didn’t buy a dragon or a crozier or a miter, but I did buy a sweater and a pair of earrings and a wallet and a bunch of t-shirts for my husband and sons and a pullover anorak from my high school alumnae association and some skincare products. And some pants. And some wine.

This is embarrassing, now that I see the list; and I’m sure I forgot something. On the other hand, I’ve also donated over $1,000 since the crisis began. Every time I see an online fundraiser for people who are suffering, I throw some money at it.

I honestly don’t know how it is that I have so much money, both to spend and to donate. I haven’t put gas in my car in over a month, and I only grocery shop once a week, so that accounts for some of the extra cash. I’m not buying lunch but I never really did buy lunch--I bring my lunch to work almost every day. We get takeout twice a week--probably about the same as before all this. I think that when I’m out in the world, I spend money carelessly and thoughtlessly and it just runs through my fingers and I never really know where it goes. Now that I hardly ever leave the house, I don’t have any chance to spend little sums here and there. That leaves me with extra, for charitable donations and for unnecessary earrings. And bracelets! I forgot that I bought a bracelet, too.

I’m worried about money just like everyone else. I’m lucky that I’m still working but I’m aware every day that this state might not continue and that I could lose my job any day. I should probably save more than I do, just in case.

*****
Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just keep giving money away, because you can’t take it with you. Maybe I should continue to buy new clothes and Kindle books. I’ll need plenty of reading material in the coming weeks; and even though I can’t go anywhere, I can keep upgrading my wardrobe so that I’m ready when it’s time to actually leave the house. I have or will soon have new tops, a jacket, earrings, a bracelet, a scarf, and a sweater. I’ll try out some outfit combinations, and see what works. If I need to accessorize, I can always buy a crozier or a miter. It’s a lot of look, but I can probably pull it off.

Six degrees of Nora Ephron

Is there such a thing as a reverse hypochondriac? If so, then I was one, until corona. Aside from check-ups, I avoid doctors like (wait for it) the plague. My response to most medical symptoms is to ignore them until they go away or kill me; and since I’m still sitting here, that approach is obviously working very well.

But I sneezed last night, and in 30 seconds, I was mentally on a ventilator. I heard hooves and went right for the zebras. That’s not really a good analogy, though, because coronavirus is widespread enough now to be a horse. I feel better today. Well, physically I feel better.

Forget about coronavirus, though. Let’s talk about books. I wasn’t going to write about books until the end of the crisis but reading is just one of the things that I’m doing right now so it’s just as good a thing to write about as anything else. Here’s what I've read in the last two weeks.

Things I Want to Punch in the Face, Jennifer Worick. A waste of three hours, even during a quarantine when I have more time than usual. I don’t know why I keep reading these ostensibly hilarious books written by popular snark bloggers. A word of advice: If you’re going to write an anger truck collection of pet peeves, then you better make them a lot sharper and funnier than just about everything in this book. I’ve been blogging since 2008 and I know that even then, “I just threw up in my mouth a little” was already Internet-shopworn and so there was no excuse whatsoever for a New York Times bestselling author to repeat this disgusting and lazy phrase multiple times in a book published in 2012. Don’t ask me why I was reading eight-year-old blog-turned-book garbage in the first place. It’s been a long fucking quarantine.

Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women and Scribble Scribble: Notes on Media, Nora Ephron. These are actually two different books, in one Kindle edition. Every time I think I’ve read every Nora Ephron essay, Kindle taps me on the shoulder and says “Hey! You missed some!” Both books are so 1970s-topical that I didn’t know whom or what Nora was writing about half the time, but that’s why God invented Google.

I turned eight in 1973, and I was more keyed into current events than most eight-year-olds. I knew about Watergate, but I didn’t pay much attention to the more peripheral characters, like Martha Mitchell or Rose Mary Woods. Of course, now I have the benefit of hindsight and historic perspective on 1973, and I know that Rose Mary Woods was hardly a peripheral character in the Watergate scandal. Crazy Salad is a compendium of essays about a few particular prominent women of the time, including Rose Mary Woods; and about women’s issues large and small. Even though some of the essays (“On Consciousness-Raising” and “Baking Off”) are pretty dated now, many of the others are as relevant today as they were almost fifty years ago. If Nora were living, she could probably write an essay similar to the Rose Mary Woods essay, this time on Ivanka or Kellyanne. And sadly, a woman trying to break into the ranks of MLB umpires today would probably fare no better than Bernice Gera did in 1972.

Scribble Scribble: Notes on Media, which includes essays on journalism (print and TV) and entertainment, is just another example of Nora Ephron writing about events in my life years before they happen. One night last week, I was looking for a movie to watch and I stumbled across “Shirley Valentine,” a British movie from 1989. I had never seen it before, and I only watched a few minutes--it doesn’t hold up. The movie stars Pauline Collins as an unhappy housewife in working-class Thatcher-era England. I looked Ms. Collins up because she looked so familiar but I couldn’t place her, and that’s how I remembered that she starred in “Upstairs Downstairs,” which was the “Downton Abbey” of the 1970s. The very next day, I landed on Nora’s essay on “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

Coincidence? Oh really? Well explain to me how the essay just happened to comment on an episode in which a character died of Spanish Flu during the 1918 pandemic? Did Nora know that 40-odd years later, a person would be reading this essay after having seen one of the stars of the program in another production, which she was watching because she was bored during another pandemic quarantine? Uncanny.

And the parallels do not end there. During the time she was married to Carl Bernstein, Nora lived in an apartment building in Washington DC, which had its own mimeographed newsletter, distributed periodically to all of the building’s residents. I also live in a neighborhood that has its own paper newsletter (The Bugle, published and distributed quarterly). I even write for it.

Happens Every Day, Isabel Gillies. You know how sometimes you see a movie and then you find out that it was based on a book, and so you read the book? Well this book was not a movie, but its author performed in one. “Metropolitan,” a 1990 independent production about a group of privileged New York teenagers during Christmas break, is one of my favorite-ever movies. I hadn’t seen it in forever, but one bleak quarantine Sunday morning, I was flipping channels and landed on a showing. Full disclosure: I’ve seen it twice more since then. It’s such a good movie, and it seemed odd to me that I’ve never seen most of the actors in anything else, so I looked it up on IMDB to see what else the rest of the cast had been in and that’s how I found out that Isabel Gillies (who plays slutty Cynthia) is a writer.

Happens Every Day is a memoir about the heartbreaking end of Gillies’ marriage to an Oberlin professor, who left Gillies and her two toddlers for another Oberlin faculty member. I read it very quickly. Isabel Gillies is a wonderful writer; and her book manages to balance the tension between the raw, devastating, in-the-moment suffering of a woman whose marriage is crumbling with the 20-20 hindsight and perspective of a person who has healed and moved on to better things. Within just a paragraph or so, she can expand out onto the universal pain and sorrow and anger and fear of a mother about to be abandoned by the father of her children and then contract into the vital importance of a cup of tea at the end of a bad day. Isabel Gillies is serious about tea. We have that in common. Happens Every Day is funny and charming and honest all the way through. And I’m glad things ended happily for Isabel Gillies.

Wolf Hall. I wrote a little about Wolf Hall right here, and I think I’m too tired to write anymore. I just started the next volume in the trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies, in which another marriage is about to end badly.

Spoiler alert: The discarded wife is Anne Boleyn, and there won’t be a happy ending  this time. Note to Isabel Gillies: You could have done worse. Note to Tudor-era single women: Don’t marry Henry VIII. In fact, don't even date him.

*****
I haven’t sneezed again since I started writing this on Monday. It’s Friday now and I have a headache, probably brought on by too much writing and reading and movie-watching.

I am invited to yet another virtual happy hour later this afternoon, and I could not be less enthusiastic about this. In fact, my enthusiasm level is quite low in general. It rained all day yesterday, forcing me to skip my daily walk. Maybe that’s all that’s wrong. I just need to get out of the house and breathe some outdoor air and think some non-corona thoughts. I have more books to read, and more movies to watch, and maybe even some more odd symptoms to look up on WebMD. Yes, a walk is just the thing. And some tea maybe.

On the inside

Someday when all this is over, someone will conduct a forensic analysis of my best-selling coronavirus memoir, with Power BI visualizations to illustrate use frequency for certain words. “Netflix” will certainly be among my top twenty words.

Anyway, I was watching Netflix yesterday, during my daily break between work and compulsive housekeeping. I must be a huge snob because I never watch American political thrillers or crime procedural dramas, but I love this kind of crap when it has a British accent. I’ve never seen a single episode of “Law and Order” but I watched all three seasons of “Broadchurch” and I also watched a season of “Hinterland” because murder in Wales is even better than murder in England.

RIght now I’m midway through “Bodyguard.” Spoiler alert--I looked up a spoiler because I wanted to know how it all turns out. So I already know what happened, even though I’m only on episode three of six.

“Bodyguard” features Gina McKee as a high official of some British security service. She played the friend in the wheelchair in “Notting Hill,” a movie that I don’t particularly like or dislike, but have seen. Until “Bodyguard,” that was the only thing I’d ever seen her in. She looks much older now as of course she would and should because “Notting Hill” is an old movie now. Age aside, though, Ms. McKee is instantly recognizable and looks very much like she did in 1999--just older. Does that make sense? I find that people fall into two categories vis-a-vis aging: Some older people look completely different than their younger selves where others look just like older versions of the people they always were. I’d rather be the latter (I think), but only an observer who knew me then and knows me now can say for sure which category I fall into. I’m not a screen actress so there’s not much video or film evidence of my existence as a person in her thirties.

*****
My body is falling apart. Not really, I guess, but every day I find some minor thing that’s wrong that wasn’t wrong the day before. My left knee and my left shoulder are both messed up and in typical fashion, I’m ignoring the pain until it goes away on its own. I used to be able to do the stretch where you connect both hands behind your back, with one arm  high and the other low; and I can still do it with my left arm high and my right arm low but I can’t do the reverse. Not even close. I also can’t really do the one where you clasp your hands behind your back and then bend over as if to turn yourself inside out. I mean I can clasp my hands and I can bend over, but doing both at the same time is really so much harder than it used to be.

On the upside, I can bend over at the waist and place my hands palm-down on the floor and keep them there. I can still walk long distances. I haven’t been running for a few weeks because I’m afraid that I’ll injure myself and then be forced to divert valuable medical resources away from coronavirus victims. But I could probably run a little bit if I needed to.

*****
I haven’t gotten sick, thankfully. I’m trying to eat properly (a losing battle) and I’m exercising and drinking water and taking vitamins and forcing the rest of my family to do the same. But I still feel a lot more creaky and exhausted than normal. Why is this, I wonder? Wouldn’t you think that with more time on my hands because I’m not rushing here or there all the time, and I’m not spending time dressing up for work and making lunches and putting gas in the car and all of the other million time-consuming daily normal-life tasks, I’d be more rested and less stressed?. Well, that’s ridiculous; first of all, because I’m me and secondly because this isn’t a damn vacation, is it?

So maybe my body isn’t really falling apart, it’s just feeling the effects of this unnatural, uncertain, open-ended crisis. I look in the mirror every day; and other than the shaggy, still-longer-than-usual outgrowth of a self-inflicted haircut and several additional pounds, I don’t think I look much different than usual. But I feel a lot different. It feels different in here, inside my body.

*****

How did I get from British crime dramas on Netflix to creaky joints and hot-mess hair? Oh, how do I ever get from A to completely non sequitur B in these ridiculous posts? That’s a completely different subject; in fact, maybe I’ll write about it.

Oh, I remember! Gina McKee! I was thinking, as I watched “Bodyguard,” that even though she looks older, she doesn’t really look different, but she probably feels different. We can see that she’s the same Gina McKee who sat in the wheelchair in “Notting Hill.” It’s been almost 20 years since “Notting Hill;” and in 20 years, a lot of things happen in a person’s life and in her body and in her mind. Things change, and not only in a bad way. For every wrinkle, there’s probably a new insight or experience. Every gray hair corresponds with some deep sorrow or some hilarious joke. Only Gina McKee knows what it feels like to be in her body; but watching her performance, I got the sense that she's comfortable where she is.

*****
Or maybe she’s not. Maybe she has good days and bad days. Maybe sometimes she doesn’t mind looking older and maybe other times, it bothers her a lot. Anyway, that’s how I feel, so maybe I’m just projecting. What do I know about anything, anyway?

I do know one thing. I realized a few days ago that my recent pain and creakiness might be the fault of the hard wooden chair that I’ve been sitting in during the last six weeks of working from home. I got a better chair and I’m thinking that it will make all the difference. I’ll report back later. Meanwhile, I finished watching “Bodyguard.” As I said, I’d already found out how it ended, but not in detail, so I didn’t really know until I watched all the way through who among the police and intelligence agents would turn out to be a villain. Gina McKee’s character stayed on the right side of the law, which made me happy. I’d been rooting for her.

If you want something done right

When I was 22 and just out of college, I worked for a Big 8 accounting firm, in an office on the 21st floor of a high-rise office building at 16th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. That was my first real experience with a corporate job. I was a proofreader. Every morning when I came in to work, I found a pile of financial statements and audit reports on my desk, which was a long counter built into the wall; and I would plow through them with a 10-key adding machine (we checked the numbers) and a blue pencil (to mark typos and misspellings). The proofreaders (there were four of us) had a room to ourselves, and the typists were in the room next door to us. The production manager had her own tiny office; she managed the flow of work between us and the typists.

One of the other proofreaders was an older lady (she was probably about my age now, but I was 22 so she was an older lady to me). She had a daughter about my age, who was a distant acquaintance of mine. She attended a different parochial school, but some of my high school friends knew her. Anyway, the lady I worked with also had a 19-year-old son, and a husband who worked in a nearby office building. She loved her family, but she complained about them all the time. The children both worked and attended classes, and they still lived at home; and apparently, no one in the house ever lifted a finger to help her. She did all of the shopping, cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc., for her whole household, and also worked full-time. She was a pleasant, congenial person--even her complaining was good-natured. But I still felt rather bad for her.

One of the things Marie (I’ll call her Marie, because that was her name) complained about was ironing. She ironed everything--jeans, t-shirts, knitted garments, even sheets--for a household of four. One time she told me that her daughter tried to help her with the ironing, but Marie shooed her away. “She irons wrinkles INTO the clothes, not OUT of them.”

This conversation gave me better insight into Marie’s home life. The more I got to know her, the clearer it became that even if she claimed to want help with the housework, no one could ever really help her because no one could ever do anything to her standards. I’m very much like this myself. I might grumble to myself that it would be nice if someone would clean up the kitchen after dinner; but actually, they do clean up the kitchen. They just don’t do it the same way I do it so I end up redoing it because I can’t think straight knowing that there are still food scraps in the sink; or that someone might have put the leftovers away without wiping down the containers first.

Seriously. If you don’t wipe off the containers, you’ll have a gross ring of food crust on the refrigerator shelf. What’s wrong with you?

But one thing that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can do better than I can is ironing. I never iron, and I mean never, and I mean NEVER. Really never. Most of my clothes don’t require ironing. When things are wrinkled, I hang them in the bathroom--two or three days on the hanger in the shower steam, and they’re ready to wear. My dryer has a wrinkle release setting, which also works pretty well. And for anything that won’t respond to shower steam or tumble drying, there’s always the dry cleaner. For the longest time, I didn’t even know where my iron was; and I didn’t miss it.

*****
I’ve remained fairly busy during the pandemic quarantine/period of isolation/whatever we are calling it today. I’m still working full-time, and I’m trying to help neighbors and remain in something of a routine. But still, I’m not driving to and from work every day. I’m not grocery shopping very often. I don’t have concerts and swim meets and baseball games to attend. I’m not going out to socialize. So I still have more free time than I did before this started.

So much more time that I actually ironed some things yesterday. I thought about the last time I had ironed something, and it was almost eight years ago--my son had to wear a white oxford shirt for his first middle school band concert and I ironed the front of the shirt. The sleeves, as I remember, didn’t look that bad; and no one was going to see the back. I made a cursory pass of the iron over the front of the shirt and the button placket and the job was done. And then I sat through my first middle school band concert, which is a better way to spend time than ironing.

I took a similar approach with the three blouses that I ironed yesterday. Two of them are pullover blouses, that fasten with single buttons at the back. I laid them flat, ran the iron over them, and didn’t worry about the crease that I pressed right into one of the sleeves. Finally, I thought--now I know what Marie meant when she complained about ironing wrinkles INTO a shirt. The button-up blouse took five steps--a swipe for each of the two front panels, a swipe for each sleeve (the sleeves were the worst part) and a swipe over the button placket. The collar was fine, and I always wear a cardigan over this particular blouse, which means that no one will see the back.

That was April 9, 2020. Barring another pandemic or an ironing emergency, I don’t expect to iron again until around January of 2028. I won’t have time. I have to write about not ironing, and I have to wipe down the refrigerator shelves. There are only so many hours in a day.

Pandemic shopping lists

Yesterday, I made a note to remind myself to write about pandemic shopping. I think that when I made that note, I was thinking about grocery shopping for my elderly neighbors; but maybe I should also mention that I just spent $235 on a sweater and a pair of earrings, neither of which I need. But anyway, back to the grocery shopping.

We live in an old Levitt-built neighborhood, built in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Quite a few original owners still live here, and they’re old, so they can’t get out right now. My other neighbors and I are shopping and running errands for them. I did some Passover shopping for the couple who live two doors down from me. They needed some matzo meal and parsley and radishes. “We’re doing Passover on the computer,” the lady told me in her Brooklyn accent. “Did you know you could do that?” I did, actually. I did.

CDC recommendations aside, I didn’t wear a mask to the Safeway, but I did wear gloves. I stayed at least six feet away from other shoppers, and people who crossed the six-foot threshold got the evil eye. I don’t want to catch the damn ‘rona.

*****

When I was little, my grandmother had a set of hardbound “best of” Readers’ Digest anthologies, and I read all of them. In a profile of Alfred Hitchcock, I learned that one of the foundational rules of screenwriting is that you cannot introduce a gun or a knife or even a bowling ball into a scene, unless a character will later use the gun or knife or whatever in a way that is meaningful to the story. I remembered this later that day, as I was watching “Better Call Saul” on Netflix. There was a scene in which a character is about to enter a diner, and the camera rests for a second or two on a sign in the diner window. The sign reads “Today has been canceled. Go back to bed.”

Maybe the sign was a clue, a portent of something that would happen later in the episode, but I’m not sure--I was only half paying attention. “Better Call Saul” is set in 2002 or so, and this episode originally aired in 2015 or 2016 so there wouldn’t have been any way for the producers to know that lots of homebound people would later watch it during a pandemic quarantine. The last half of March 2020 and now probably all of April and part of May have been canceled. Go back to bed.

*****

“Better Call Saul’s” Jimmy McGill is what people used to call a quintessentially American character. He’s quick-witted and optimistic and can talk himself into or out of absolutely anything; and his brain is an instant-recall database of mid-century popular culture, from “Leave it to Beaver” and Monty Hall to Guy Lombardo and Karnak the Magnificent. He could have been a character in every screwball comedy or gangster movie made from 1930 to 1950 or so. Watching him makes me a little sad. Something is lost and it will never be found. Something is ending, if it hasn’t ended already.

It’s raining, and I still have work to do. I haven’t left the house today. I suppose that most people in America haven’t left the house today. Thirty years ago or even ten years ago, I couldn't have imagined this. I’m watching a news report that suggests that maybe things are beginning to look up. Maybe we’re turning a corner. I hope so. But we have already turned a different corner, and that’s probably for the best. Things have to change, and not just a little bit. Still, I’ll miss fast-talking, wise-cracking optimism. I’ll miss the shared understanding that Jimmy McGill just assumes as he rapid-fires his way through one pop culture reference after another. Does anyone even remember Monty Hall anymore?

*****
So I shopped for my elderly neighbors. The online Passover couple are bearing up remarkably well. They’re celebrating the holiday on Zoom and they even figured out Instacart. The other neighbor is someone I didn’t know before this whole business started. She makes Chuck McGill look pretty low-maintenance. She won’t leave her house because she believes that someone or something poisoned her; and she also told me that the Internet is against her religion. I spared her the knowledge that A. I found out that she needed help via a neighborhood listserv and B. the mobile phone that I use when I’m talking to her could not operate without the Internet. It’s like the cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

Because I didn’t know this lady until a few weeks ago, I have no way of knowing if she’s always as crazy as she appears to be when I talk to her (likely yes) or if she’s corona-crazy, like so many of my once-sane friends, relatives, and neighbors. Just this morning, a person who is normally quite intelligent and reasonable sent out a link to a series of corona-conspiracy articles from a site that can only be described as the paper of record for tinfoil hat wearers. It’s Chuck McGill’s space-blanket suit all over again. I spent two minutes on the accompanying comment thread and then I got out while the getting was good. Everyone is losing their damn minds.

*****
My crazy lady’s shopping list is very specific and a little eccentric because of course it would be. The first time I shopped for her, she asked me to get whole wheat matzo, which I did not know existed. I thought that matzo was matzo. I was wrong. There are quite a few varieties. The second time I shopped for her, she asked me to just buy every box of whole wheat matzo in the store. Which of course I would not do because what about all of the other eccentric old ladies who need whole wheat matzo? Did you ever think about them?

Whole wheat matzo, and Smucker’s natural creamy peanut butter and unsalted butter and cinnamon raisin bagels and powdered milk for coffee (not a bad idea actually) and ginger ale and a few other things. I found everything she wanted, because I’m just that good.

Lent is almost over, thank God, which means that I can have my daily piece of Dove dark chocolate with my cup of Bigelow’s oolong tea. It turns out that there’s room enough in this town for more than one eccentric lady. I don’t know how to sew masks, but at least I can make sure that someone’s kitchen is stocked with familiar, comforting foods and treats. At least I can do that. Meanwhile, I have more shopping to do; this time for surgical masks. As of next Monday, they will be required apparel for grocery shoppers in my town.

*****

Hands clean

I have never been a germ-phobe. I’m a clean person, and I wash my hands frequently. My house is clean (because I’m compulsively neat) but I don’t use a paper towel to open the door of a public bathroom after I wash my hands, and I am a firm believer in the five-second rule for food that falls on the floor. I wash my produce, but I don’t scrub it. I don’t use hand sanitizer unless soap and water are not available.

But that was then, and this is now, and now we’re living in a world of pandemic anxiety. I went grocery shopping yesterday, in a store, for the first time since March 13, which I’ll remember as the last normal, pre-corona day. I wore rubber gloves, and I wiped down my entire grocery cart with a sanitizing wipe and I stood back before I entered an aisle to make sure that others could pass at a distance of at least six feet.

The store was reasonably well stocked unless you were looking for toilet paper or cleaning products. Signs posted around the store reminded shoppers that quantity limits would be enforced, that reusable bags are no longer considered safe, and that everyone should maintain safe social distancing limits.

I thought that the gloves might be overkill, but most of the other shoppers were wearing them too; and some shoppers were also wearing face masks. Even with face masks, I’d have recognized my friends, but I didn’t see anyone I knew. I got groceries for my family; as well as my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and an elderly neighbor. Then I went home.

*****
Oh my gosh! OK, Governor Hogan, I got the message! We all got the damn message!

It’s 3 PM on Monday now. I’m working from home because that’s where I work now, and the Public Safety Alert alarm just blasted out of every single electronic device in this house. And we have a lot of fucking electronic devices. We had already seen the stay-at-home order, so it wasn’t news, but thanks for letting us know, in a particularly traumatic way, just in case.

This is the first day that this really started to get to me, and not just because of the air raid siren that just blew out the speakers on my phone. I’ve been on Facebook too much lately; which is to say that I’ve been on Facebook. I’ve begun to snooze certain of my friends who seem to sit in front of their TVs (or maybe they have ticker-tape machines in their houses), and post bold-headline alerts with the latest testing numbers and the overnight death toll and the finger-wagging stay-at-home-and-save-lives reminders from every public figure in the United States. I know I know I know, and I don’t need to know anymore, so I’m cutting off updates from these people until at least the end of next month. If you’re one of those people, you know who you are, and you’re dead to me until May.

*****
OK, it’s Tuesday now, the first full day of Governor Hogan’s stay-at-home order. Or is it shelter-in-place order? Or quarantine order? I don’t know. So far it’s no different from every other day since March 13.

It’s also the last day of March and about 20 degrees colder than yesterday. I don’t remember how March came in but it’s going out like an asshole, and you can tell it I said so. I actually wore gloves on my thoroughly washed hands today. At least we’re still allowed outside.

I just read a list of 52 recommended novels for quarantine-reading. Today feels like it belongs in a novel. Chilly and silent; a solid gray sky with no sign of rain, and newly green grass dotted with purple violets and bright sunny dandelions. It feels like something should happen. It feels like a day that a character would recount in a first-person-narrated prologue to an epic novel; a day that the character would remember as the last day of a passing era or the first day of a new one.

*****
April 1. Not funny. I'm in the car now. My husband has to pick up his police car from the garage, and I'm riding with him so that he can drive back. We'll see if I remember how to drive.

Today hasn't been a particularly good day. I'm working every day and trying to keep everyone sane and positive and it's harder than I thought it would be. And if one more person posts an aggressively upbeat reminder to enjoy the downtime or take the opportunity to learn a new skill, or (my favorite) practice "self-care," I think I'm going to lose my damn mind. No wonder the whole Internet hates white women. Only a privileged white woman doesn't know that self care requires both money and time. Some of us have enough of the former, at least for now; and some of us have far too much of the latter but not much of the former. If you’re able to spend this unwanted world shutdown meditating and exercising and organizing and reading the great books and attending law school online and learning how to play the harpsichord and practicing a 14-fucking-step Korean skin care regimen, then good for you. I just don’t want to read about it, and I absolutely for sure don’t want to see pictures.

*****
So that was fun, right? It’s Thursday now and my outlook has improved. But this is still a long week, made up of long days, in what I suspect will be the longest April of my entire life. And I’m not a fan of April under any circumstances.

My sister and I have been entertaining one another with virtual drinking games. We have to “drink” every time we see a FB or other social media post in a certain number of categories. Our current favorite is the war hero/police officer/one-eyed, three-legged diabetic geriatric service dog with an expired flea collar who can’t get one like or share. We spent Sunday cracking ourselves up captioning ugly dog photos.

Why can't this furry son of a bitch get one fucking like or share?
What the fuck is the matter with you people?

We didn’t make fun of first responders, but I can’t say with certainty that we won’t. A few more weeks in quarantine and there’s no telling what depths we’ll sink to. We’re the worst.

*****

Did you ever see the handwashing video in which a person puts on latex gloves, and then covers her hands with a black dye? The video pauses every few seconds so that the handwasher can show the viewer how much of the gloves’ surface remains clean even after what looks like a pretty thorough application of dye. The point being, of course, that where handwashing is concerned, we’re all doing it wrong. Or rather, we were. Because now, I’m performing at least 30 CDC-style handwashes every day, and my hands are a bit of a mess. But I appreciate them more because I’m spending so much time thinking about them. They’re not much to look at but they work really well. I almost think with my hands, if that makes any sense at all. It’s a writing thing.

*****
It’s 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon, three weeks in. Is it three weeks? It is. I’m finishing work soon, but taking a break to get all of this out of my head and into my very clean hands and onto the page where maybe you’ll read it or maybe you won’t. Another weekend on lockdown. I like hanging around with my family but I miss the rest of the world. But the neighbor ladies might need more groceries, so there’s that. And I do have lots of things to read.

*****
Saturday again, one week later. I have four or five writing tasks to complete. Sometimes, I switch back and forth among several projects, but I decided this morning that I would force myself to complete at least two things, without stopping to write or read anything else. For me, this is easier said than done. Adult ADD, I assure you, is a real thing. But I succeeded in getting two drafts finished. Then I gave myself a manicure, so my nails look shiny and neat as they tap across the keyboard. God help me--meditation and 14-step Korean skincare can’t be far behind. At least I will spare you the pictures.

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.