Last things

It's Thursday night and I'm here at Rockville High School for the annual cluster concert. Old jokes being the best jokes, I will tell you that the cluster concert is a cluster in more ways than one. When they tell you that motherhood is sacrifice, they were talking about the cluster concert. 

The cluster concert is a performance of all of the music ensembles at Rockville and its feeder schools, known collectively as the cluster. This is my first cluster concert since my older son's senior year, in 2019. The concerts were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, and I missed it in 2022.

Well I didn't really miss it if you know what I mean. 

The concert is different this year. In past years, the elementary school band played, followed by the middle school bands, and then the high schoolers would take the stage, resplendent in concert dress. Their entrance always brought the house down, partly because they look so nice, and partly because their arrival is a visible reminder that no one will have to listen to an elementary school band for another year. 

This year, the ensembles are combined. Symphonic Band, Orchestra, and Jazz Band, each with musicians from all of the schools. It's just as well. No one who isn't closely related to the elementary school kids should have to listen to them playing musical instruments. 

I'm just keeping it real. 

*****

It's intermission now. The Symphonic Band played very well and now we await the orchestra. This new format is less cluster and more concert and I'm all for it. As always I chose my parking spot carefully and I have already planned my exit strategy. I'm not a senior parent for nothing. 

But that's why I'm writing about this silly thing to begin with. It's because I am a senior parent, and everything is the last thing. It's the last cluster concert. Saturday morning will be the last regular season swim meet before the championship season begins. The last team dinner, the last baseball game, the last spring concert - 8 years as a Rockville High School parent, all coming to an end, and the year is passing with breakneck speed. I'm not ready but I'll have to get ready. 

*****

It's Friday now, and we're doing a college visit today. The swim coach at a small Catholic college that my son never even considered invited him to come for a tour and breakfast with the team so here we are. I think he was just flattered to be recruited at first, but after a full court press visit that included breakfast with the team (waffles are very convincing) and a 1:1 meeting with the coach, who made clear that he wants my son on his team, I think that this small college is now his first choice. It’s not as prestigious as Villanova and Virginia Tech, but prestige is not all it’s cracked up to be. Ted Cruz and Jared Kushner went to Harvard, know what I mean?

*****

And back to last things. It's Saturday morning now and I'm sitting on a bleacher at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center, waiting for the officials briefing to begin. I'm a stroke and turn judge to today, not the referee, so I just have to attend the briefing. I don't have to conduct it. 

It's the last regular season meet of the year and my last regular season meet ever. More importantly, it's senior day, and there will be a little senior send-off during the break. All three schools competing today will be recognizing their seniors so it could go on for a few minutes. 

*****

And that's a wrap. The meet was a blur of splashy starts and fast races and screaming kids, and the senior send-off went by so quickly that I almost missed it. Names were called, senior swimmers shook hands with their coaches, and the seniors, balloons in hand, lined up for photos. I didn't get a good shot. I hope that someone else did. A few minutes later, I saw my son on deck. He held up his arm to show me the curly black and orange ribbons wrapped around his wrist. “My balloon broke,” he said, shrugging. 

Feudal

Did you know that it’s possible to write a whole darn thing and then forget completely about it? Yesterday, for example, I started compiling my 2022 book list, and I started writing about Cloud Cuckoo Land, thinking to myself that it was one of the few books that I had read and not written about. And then as I started to write about it, I remembered that I actually HAD written about it. 

Did you also know that Google Docs will allow you to give two different documents the very same name? That doesn’t seem wise. 

Anyway, here is what I wrote about Cloud Cuckoo Land, the book; by way of “Heartburn,” the movie, just about a year ago. There’s a connection, however tenuous, I promise. 

*****

Last week on the very cold MLK Day holiday, I watched “Heartburn” on Hulu. I wrote about the Nora Ephron book upon which this movie is based right here. I don’t think that the movie was particularly popular or well-received when it was released in 1986, but it’s a good movie, as 80s movies go. Or maybe it’s not so much a good movie as a movie worth watching because of the great acting and the amazing scenery and sets and costumes: upper middle class homes and gardens, and spot-on bourgeois bohemian fashion, and mid-80s Washington and NY street and restaurant scenes. So I enjoyed watching “Heartburn,” but of course, it doesn’t hold up in a lot of ways. Few 80s movies do. 

*****

In the first act wedding scene, which takes place in Rachel’s father’s dream of an Upper West Side pre-war apartment, I noticed a Black guest. The actress who played her looked like Anna Maria Horsford (and I later looked her up on IMDB, and she was Anna Maria Horsford, thus explaining the resemblance). I thought that maybe Mike Nichols, who directed "Heartburn," thought that representation was important, and that’s why he made sure that his wealthy and artsy but powerful characters had Black friends who would naturally be invited to their weddings. 

LOL, no. Eventually we learn that Horsford’s character is not a wedding guest at all. She is Rachel’s father’s housekeeper, Della. There’s a scene in which we see poor Della minding her own business, doing her job, when Meryl Streep's Rachel (who has just left her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson) blows into the apartment like a hurricane, hugely pregnant, all wild hair and maternity sack dress and oversized big-shouldered jacket, with a toddler in one hand, and a Kenyan sisal tote bag* slung over the opposite shoulder. She takes up a lot of space. In five seconds, the large room is filled with nothing but Rachel. 

She flings her jacket and her bags and her personal belongings all over the apartment that Della is trying to clean, and immediately asks Della to babysit so that she can run right back out the door to do New York writer things. There is no mention of any additional compensation for the extra work, which is exactly what you would expect from Rachel and her ilk, now and then. What makes the scene typical of the 80s is that there is no real acknowledgement that for the housekeeper, caring for a toddler IS extra work in the first place. Spoiler alert: Della agrees to take care of the baby, of course, because what choice does she have? 

*****

In some ways, the whole movie is like that, all about the pretty much feudal relationships between upper class Washingtonians and New Yorkers and the people who clean their houses and care for their children and deliver their groceries. We don’t know if Rachel’s own nanny, Juanita (played by the same actress who played the housekeepers in “Clueless” and “Regarding Henry”) receives vacation pay or Social Security or any of the formal acknowledgements of the dignity and worth of her work that Rachel and Mark take for granted, but it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t. It was widely accepted then (as it is now) that only certain occupations are worthy of respect and therefore worthy of fair compensation, job security, dignified working conditions and treatment, and benefits. 

Still, working class people were better off then, in a lot of ways. Even if Juanita doesn’t receive benefits, she at least knows who her employers are. They interact with her daily. They pay her directly, cash in hand, not through a third party and certainly not through a mobile app. The grocery delivery man receives a tip from Catherine O’Hara, but he also gets a paycheck from the grocery store. He’s not subject to the vagaries of a five-star rating system designed by software developers whom he will never meet and who will never have a clue about any aspect of his job. 

*****

Wait, did you not come here for Soviet social realist film criticism? Yes, sorry, that took a bit of a turn. The thing that I can’t get out of my head is that I was an adult–a barely formed adult, but still an adult–when that movie came out, and the world that it depicts is almost completely gone. And in some ways, good riddance, obviously. But the gap between the working class and the well off, though it was wide enough at the time, still seemed bridgeable. Now that gap is more of a chasm, vast and ever widening; and the system of work and compensation has been so disrupted by the high tech industry (and not for the better) that it feels like the rich and powerful will continue to get richer and more powerful and the rest of us will be ever more subject to their whims until in 30 years or so we become a 5G feudal state. 

*****

I thought that maybe I had made up the phrase “5G feudal state” but I Googled it and found that of course somebody else got to it first. Did I say thirty years? Make it ten.

*****

Sometimes after I watch a movie, I’ll read the book upon which it is based but I have already read Heartburn and as we have already established, the book doesn’t hold up any better than the movie. It’s not Nora’s best. I like her essays better than her fiction. 

Instead, I read Cloud Cuckoo Land. I started this book with absolutely zero knowledge of the plot or the characters or the themes or anything at all. A friend whose taste I share recommended it and so I just opened it and started reading. My friend was not wrong - it’s a great book. The plot bounces around in time and space, moving the reader back and forth between 20th and 21st century America and the (of course) post-apocalyptic future and 15th century Constantinople (soon to become Istanbul). 

I won’t reveal any plot details except that there’s a part that involves an infectious disease and a quarantine. I don’t know if Anthony Doerr started writing Cloud Cuckoo Land before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but I guess that he did because the research and plotting for a book this complex must have taken more than two years. Well, it would have taken me more than two years, anyway. 

*****

The Cloud Cuckoo Land plot line that involves the virulent disease takes place in the post-apocalyptic future and given the last two years of plague, you’d think that this would be the most compelling part of the book. But it’s the 15th century scenes that seem most modern and relevant to me right now, filled as they are with desperately poor vassals and slaves and indentured servants who are utterly powerless and subject entirely to the whims and demands of their wealthy and powerful overlords. I don’t think that it’s likely that a small remnant of humanity will end up on a spaceship on a decades-long journey to a possibly hospitable planet (OK, one spoiler) but I do think that it’s likely (very) that we will return to a late middle ages social and economic and political system. It’s already happening. The 5G feudal state is under construction. 

*****

Again, I wrote most of this about a year ago, when people still thought Elon Musk was a genius. Things change in a year. 

We just had a three-day weekend, so we drove back to Philadelphia where we had just been two weeks ago so that my high school senior could visit Villanova. My sister lives ten minutes away from Villanova and she is also an alumna. My son is interested in several schools but his aunt is pushing him toward Villanova. 

My children are quite different from one another in many ways, including politics. My older son is a Bernie Sanders and AOC fan, and very attracted to radical progressive ideals. My younger son hates Trump but has no other thoughts about or interest in politics. 

Older son is a student at the University of Maryland. He's opposed to private colleges and universities, on principle, but he's still on winter break so he tagged along for the trip. We stopped at the bookstore and I asked him jokingly if he wanted a Villanova sweatshirt. 

He scoffed. "No," he said. "And I also don’t want golf clubs or a sailboat or a Vineyard Vines belt with little whales on it.” 

I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “If you’re out here wearing a Villanova hoodie, you can’t stick it to the man because you are the man.” We said the “because you are the man” part in unison. This is one of my favorite jokes, and my children know it well. 

*****

And so I’m still hopeful for the future. Young people aren’t going to knuckle under to high -tech feudalism, not without a fight. Yes, they're all scrolling TikTok all the livelong day, but they’re not stupid. They are immune to the charisma of genius tech bro disruptors. They are wise to the gig work sector’s false promises of “flexibility.” They are neither afraid of nor awed by the Internet. They are less materialistic than their parents and grandparents, less worried about the right house and the right car. They aren’t afraid to fight the power, whatever and wherever and whoever it is. They aren’t afraid to stick it to the man. 

*****

* I used to have one of those tote bags. I bought it in 1985 when I was a student at Temple University, after months of seeing them on the shoulders of the most stylish students on campus. Some things never change. 

The smell of snow

I remember when I first noticed that I could smell when snow was coming. I was probably in sixth or seventh grade and it was a school day in late December, just a day or so before the last day of school before Christmas vacation. My classmates and I were giddy with anticipation. We weren't allowed to run at recess because our schoolyard was nothing but a tiny cement quad surrounded by the school building, the enormous stone church, the parish hall, and the convent with its cemetery for a backyard. It sounds like 19th century Dublin but it was a parish Catholic school in 1970s Philadelphia. We weren't allowed to run because there was no room to run freely without crashing into other kids, and the cement wasn't kind to the bodies that landed on it. Arms got broken. Foreheads split open and bled like geysers. The nuns, who weren't always kind or reasonable, were entirely justified in enforcing the no running rule. But with vacation approaching, they threw up their hands. They knew and we knew and they knew that we knew that there was no stopping kids from running with Christmas on the immediate horizon.  

We didn't run during recess, we 6th and 7th and 8th grade girls. We didn't really even play anymore, although sometimes a girl would bring a Chinese jump rope to school and we'd jump rope, for old time's sake. But mostly, we stood around in little circles and talked. 

You couldn't just say anything. The bossy girls didn't let us talk about schoolwork or our families (except to complain about unfairly strict parents) or books or current events. You could complain about nuns and teachers, you could say mean things about other girls, you could talk about pop music (and only pop music) and movies and TV shows and clothes and hair and who was allowed to have pierced ears (not me) and who wasn’t. And of course, you could talk about boys. You definitely couldn't talk about the weather and so when I blurted out "It smells like snow," I braced myself for the inevitable scoffs. We were working class Irish Catholic Philadelphia school kids in the 1970s. We scoffed at everything, on principle. But no one scoffed. "It does," everyone squealed. "We're gonna get a white Christmas!" I don't remember if it actually snowed or not. I don't remember if we had a white Christmas. But I remember the relief of abandoning the cool soon-to-be-teenage girl facade for that minute or so, and just being little girls again, excited about Christmas. 

*****

That was a very long and roundabout way of telling you that it's Saturday morning, chilly and January gray, and I'm on my way to a high school swim meet. Rockville vs. Magruder. This is one of the last regular season meets of our last high school swim season. It's 8:45 AM and it smells like snow. 

More Mitfords

I started writing this on December 26, 2022, which was a holiday, but only because Christmas was on a Sunday. So we Americans got the Boxing Day holiday, just this one time.

I’m not really an Anglophile (well maybe a little bit), but I do think that the British get some things right, and Christmas is one of those things. Or at least it used to be. Maybe they don’t get any more time off than Americans any more. Down time is not profitable. It’s not efficient. It’s not hard core. The UK is just as capitalist as the US is now. Mrs. Thatcher made her mark. 

But since I was lucky enough to be on vacation at the end of the year, I had time to read, and to write about it, and Mary S. Lovell’s The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family was probably the most British thing I could have been reading on December 26, the most British of days, at least to an American. 

Last year, I read The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (edited by Charlotte Mosley, Diana’s daughter-in-law). The sisters documented their lives very thoroughly in their letters, so I was already familiar with the events detailed in the book, but I wanted to read about the family from a more detached perspective. But Ms. Lovell, though somewhat impartial, is far from detached. She generally avoids taking sides in the well-known disputes between and among the sisters, though she does seem to favor Jessica a bit. But she also repeatedly makes excuses for Diana, who was by all accounts beautiful and brilliant and generous but also an unrepentant Nazi and so clearly indefensible. Unity was an even more committed Nazi than Diana and far more overtly anti-Semitic and although she was obviously mentally unstable even before she shot herself, she knew right from wrong and still chose to follow Hitler and embrace Nazism. Nevertheless, the author defends both Diana and Unity. To be fair, though, she’s certainly not the only Diana and Unity apologist among Mitford fans and scholars. You’d think that the “Nazis are bad, period” school of thought would be the dominant one but this does not seem to be the case. 

But maybe it’s not fair to call Lovell an apologist. I can’t point to any specific example where she outright defends the sisters’ politics. However, as she points out the inconsistency of Decca's willingness to forgive Unity but not Diana, she also seems not to understand why anyone would really condemn either of them. Late in the book, Lovell acknowledges that Decca is right to criticize Diana for complaining about the miserable conditions at Holloway during her imprisonment, while failing to consider the far worse conditions in Hitler's concentration camps. However, during the passages that detail the Mosleys' detention, Lovell makes the very same error, asserting that prison conditions for the political prisoners at Holloway were unduly and gratuitously harsh, while failing to note that entirely innocent prisoners in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen suffered much worse punishment. 

Try as she does to come across as scholarly and reserved, Lovell is really just a Mitford fan girl. She loves the whole Mitford family, including the often-maligned Sydney (“Muv”) and David (“Farve’) also known as Lord and Lady Redesdale. She loves them personally and particularly, and she loves the English class system that produced them. And she expects that her readers share her understanding and admiration of that system. We’re meant to laugh along with the author when she shakes her head at Hitler’s ignorance of English titles (hearing Unity mention her father, “Lord Redesdale” Hitler seemed to mistakenly assume that Unity, with a different surname than her father, must be illegitimate, and he pities her). That Hitler - such a bumpkin! So provincial! So non-U!

*****

It was December 28 and I was on an airplane heading to Florida. This was unusual for us. We always go to Philadelphia for a few days at Christmas (and we did that, too) but we really never take a bona fide winter vacation. I felt like a jetsetter, sitting on that plane. I felt like a Mitford sister. 

My sisters and I had been texting each other the previous day.  My youngest sister sent us a link to the website for a place called Gatorland. She suggested that my middle sister, who was also going to Florida, and I should visit Gatorland. But then she told us not to even think about going to Gatorland without her. There was trash talk. There were funny gifs. The Florida-bound sisters sent cartoons and gifs of silly alligators. "Gatorland here we come!" The youngest sister sent angry faces and a gif of a lady maniacally waving both middle fingers. "Don't you fucking dare!"

I don't know if any of the Mitford sisters would have tossed around the F word as often as my sisters and I do, especially when we're texting. Maybe Decca would have, just to try to shock Diana. On the other hand, Diana spent almost two years in prison so I'm sure she was familiar with that word, and probably unshockable in general. 

*****

I wrote most of this and then I set it aside to work on something else and to think about why I keep reading about the Mitfords. Part of the answer to that question comes from Simon Pegg, an unlikely source. In a video that is making the social media rounds, Simon Pegg rants about Richi Sunak and his government. “Fuck the Tories,” he says, shaking his head in disgust. 

Fuck the Tories indeed. I don't like the Tories either (and I do hope that Mr. Sunak and his henchpeople lose their seats in Parliament assuming they ever allow a general election), and I don’t wish for a return of the early 20th century British class system that produced the Mitford sisters. But if it weren’t for the Tories and the aristocrats, there wouldn’t be a Labor party. There wouldn’t be punk rock or working class solidarity or Simon Pegg waving his middle finger at a video camera. Rebellion isn’t possible unless you have something to rebel against. 

I have lots of other books in my queue right now and it will be a while before I return to the Mitfords. But I will return eventually. Appalling politics aside, the sisters were endlessly interesting. They always make good reading, and good company. 

Clearwater

I never thought of myself as a Florida vacation in winter type of person if that is in fact a type but it might be time to rethink because I'm up to my eyeballs in Florida warmth and sunshine on December 30 and it is all that and a bag of chips. The good chips, too. The crispy kettle chips. 

This is a relatively short vacation - we came in on Wednesday and we’re out on Sunday. But it's enough. A few days of nothing planned and no deadlines and sand and water and palm trees is pulling me right out of a pretty bad episode of depression. Maybe the effects won't last but I will take it for now. 

*****

I've been to Florida several times but this is my first time on the Gulf Coast. Normally I take a little time to study the geography of a new place before I arrive, get the lay of the land. But I didn't have time. I've been zombie-walking my way through my days and when my husband told me that we were coming to Clearwater Beach, I said "OK," requested the vacation time, and packed a bag the night before we left, perfectly willing to go wherever he wanted to take me. I'm looking at the view from my hotel room balcony and I don't know if the causeways spanning what I think is Tampa Bay connect to the mainland or another island. Maybe one of each because I can see two different causeways. But who cares. I'll look at an atlas later. 

*****

Avalon, New Jersey has been my beach town for many years. We usually go there for a week in August, staying in a little rental house or condo; and we spend that week sitting on the beach, swimming in the ocean (and pool when we're lucky enough to have one), walking and bike riding and looking at boats and seabirds, and collecting shells. Well, my younger son and I collect shells. We have bowls and jars of shells collected over many years. I like looking at them. From a distance they're all white and beige but up close you can see delicate stripes of faint pink and blue and yellow and gray. It's always amazing to me that something so beautiful just washes up on the shore, free for the taking. I never tire of walking slowly along the water's edge and spotting a perfect tiny shell to scoop up into my collection. 

No offense to my beloved Jersey shore, but shell collecting in Gulf Coast Florida is next level, as they say on the Internet. You don’t have to hunt for them. You can stand still just as a little wave breaks on the beach, then bend over and scoop up a hundred perfect little clam and scallop shells in colors both pale and bright, varying shades and hues of pink and blue and coral and gold. I picked up in one short walk what it normally would take a week to collect in New Jersey. 

I collected these shells in 15 minutes. Really!

*****

I expected Clearwater, on the Gulf Coast as it is, to be a lot more Trumpy. Of course, we saw our share of Trumped-up Trumpity Trumpsters, including plenty of people sporting Let's Go Brandon gear. Perhaps they don’t realize that even Joe Biden makes fun of that one now. But other than those few silly people, I didn’t get an overt Trumpy vibe from anyone else in Florida. The people on the streets and in the hotel and on the beaches seemed very cool and nice, regardless of what their politics might or might not be. And there were quite a few international visitors from various races and nations of origin. All of them seemed comfortable. All of them seemed to feel welcome in Florida. 

*****

It's New Year's Day now. We're in an Uber on our way to Tampa International Airport, where we will catch an 11:30 AM flight back to DCA. 

Our driver, in his cargo shorts and turquoise bar t-shirt, with long and unruly gray hair flowing from underneath his ball cap, looks like central casting’s idea of Florida Man. But he is actually from the Czech Republic. He and my husband are chatting about NHL hockey while the rest of us sit quietly in the back seat, gradually preparing for the transition back to reality. 

Mr. Czech Republic is our 4th Uber driver this week and they have all been lovely. A nice Black lady picked us up at the airport on Wednesday, and she gave us an overview of the area with cheerful and funny commentary about the good and bad of life on the Gulf Coast of Florida. A native of Michigan, she moved south to escape the cold. Our second driver, who carried us from Clearwater Beach to Amelie Arena for the Tampa Bay Lightning game, was an Air Force veteran who now works for the Navy in Newport News. He drives for Uber during his winter vacations at his little house in Clearwater. On our way home we rode with a full-time Uber and Lyft driver, who is also from somewhere in Eastern Europe if the accent was any indication. His SUV was brand-new and he proudly pointed out the panoramic sunroof, multi-zone climate control and Bose sound system. He is putting two children through college on what he earns as a full-time rideshare driver. He offered snacks and hand sanitizer and bottled water with an air of magnanimous hospitality. A delightful person and a very pleasant ride. 

I have issues with tech-driven service platforms that exploit workers with the promise of spurious "flexibility" and "independence." But all four of these drivers seemed happy and prosperous, likely in spite of and not because of their gig work lifestyle. In any case, we are good tippers. And we were happy to meet all of them. 

*****

In our one evening in Tampa, we learned that Florida is home to some serious hockey fans. The Lightning’s fan slogan is “Be the Thunder,” and these people absolutely were the thunder for their beloved Lightning. Amelie Arena is loud, I tell you what. We were happy to root along with them, since the Lightning were playing the New York Rangers. I still think it’s crazy that Florida has hockey teams (two of them!) but there’s no way that I’m going to root for the stupid Rangers. 

*****

We made the vacation last until the last minute. We flew to Florida direct from Washington National to Tampa International but there were no affordable direct flights home so we had to connect through Charlotte. Our flight from Tampa to Charlotte was quick and easy - in fact, both flights were shorter than our 2.5 hour layover in Charlotte. But it was a nice day in the airport. Charlotte has a decent airport, and we ate lunch in one of its restaurants. After a stroll through the terminal, we sat at our gate, reading and relaxing, watching planes land and take off in the clear post-fog sunshine. 

A young couple near us was wrangling twin baby boys, chubby and lively, about 8 months old. Baby number one was smiling and cooing, while baby number two had had it with the airport and was making his displeasure known. Their mother pulled a coffee shop muffin from a white paper bag, and both babies suddenly sat at attention in their twin stroller. Baby number one insisted on feeding himself, grabbing the little muffin pieces as his mother offered them and stuffing them flat-handed into his mouth, squealing with delight the entire time. Baby number two, placated by the snack, was no longer complaining. He was perfectly content to allow his mother to feed the muffin bits directly to him. He opened wide like a little bird as each morsel approached. I could have watched those silly babies all day long, but the boarding call put an end to the show. 

*****

It’s January 4 now and the party is well and truly over. I teleworked on my first day back to work and went into the office today. It was nice to be back. Work is not a problem at all. I like work in general, and I like my job in particular very much. 

But the funk was back. I could tell as soon as I woke up this morning. See, last week, I thought I had turned a corner. I felt as though someone had pushed a reset button somewhere on my person. But it was just the warmth and sunshine. It was all illusory. 

The day got better, though. I left work at 4:30 and even though I took a slight detour to drop a friend off at the Medical Center Metro, and even though Connecticut Avenue was its usual jerkface self, I still made it home just before darkness fell. For the last few minutes of the drive, the sky, still blue, was streaked with pink and gold. The whole palette was very Florida, very Gulf Coast retirement community. I pulled onto my street just as the very last daylight faded. 

And tomorrow I’ll have another minute or so of daylight. And the days will just keep getting a little longer each day. The sun will return. It won’t be cold and dark forever. 

Peace on earth, good will toward men and everybody else - A week in review

It’s late December. It’s 5:30 PM and I was too busy today to stop working for a few minutes to catch the last few minutes of late afternoon December light, and now it’s dark. The 10-day Christmas countdown has begun, and it’s just over two weeks until the end of 2022. This is now the third “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” year in a row, and I’ve learned a few things. I’m not going to make any flippant remarks about how happy I am to see the back of this Godforsaken year because the next year absolutely HAS to be better, because what have the last few years taught me except that the next year does not at ALL have to be better, and that it could easily be 100 percent worse. 

God I’m fun, aren’t I?

*****

It’s Friday now and I thought ahead, so I was able to finish my workday at 4:30 and then spend the last half hour of daylight outside. It was a perfect December sunset afternoon, thin sunlight gradually fading as the sky turned gold and pink and orange. It’s cold but not unbearably so. It was still and quiet outside, and I walked fast, trying to cover as much ground as possible and return home before darkness fell. I saw only two other humans: a neighbor boy on his bike, and another neighbor, a swimming friend, out for a late afternoon walk. 

It’s 5:30 and I have to go to a holiday party with my husband’s work colleagues. What I’d really like to do is stay right here in the house where the dark has collected in the corners and the Christmas tree and the TV (MSNBC, on mute) are the only light. I could start a fire. I could read a book or watch “Elf” for the 47th time, because watching “Elf” is the second-best way to spread Christmas cheer. But I’ll go to the party because I said I’d go, and I’m sure I’ll have a good time. 

*****

It's Saturday morning, bright and clear, and the Christmas party was fine. I’m not 100 percent sure that it was better than sitting on my couch would have been, but right now few things appeal to me more than staying at home on the couch. 

I’m just keeping it real. 

Anyway, Christmas Eve is one week from today but before you can experience the peace of Christmas you have to run the gauntlet of the last week of preparation and shopping and social activities. It's going to be a week. Right now I'm on my way to the MLK Aquatic Center, where I will serve as referee for today's meet against Northwest High School. I have the whistle around my neck. I'm wearing my white polo shirt. I hate white polo shirts but I love high school swim meets. 

*****

The meet went very smoothly (because of competent officiating, obviously) and was over in a flash. High school swim meets are short and sweet. We rolled out of there at 11:30 and that's when the real work; i.e., cookie baking, commenced. Unlike most people who love Christmas (and I do love Christmas) I don’t like baking cookies. But now it's done, and I don't have to bake another cookie for a whole year. I started writing this paragraph just as I set the 10-minute timer for the very last batch. When that timer went off, I surveyed what I had wrought - about 300 or so cookies, cooling on racks on counters all over the kitchen, which was destroyed. A veritable crime scene, I tell you. Flour everywhere, and tiny bits of cookie dough stuck to everything. The faucet and the door handles on the refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher; and the countertop, and the salt shaker - the salt shaker! Everything was absolutely encrusted with gosh-dang cookie dough. But the place is clean now, and my shopping is done. 

I’m not out of the woods yet, though. I still have a very busy work week ahead. The shopping is done, but nothing is wrapped. I’m finished baking but I haven’t even started cooking. Peace on earth and good will towards men is a shit ton of work, I tell you what. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. Last night I remembered yet another thing that I was supposed to do and didn’t do. Well, I should say “hadn’t done,” because of course I stopped what I was doing and did the thing as soon as I remembered it, but my mind is still not at ease because what else did I forget? Who else is mad at me right this minute because I promised something and failed to deliver? 

*****

The winter darkness seems darker this year. The cold seems colder. Everything seems hard, and I mean everything. I have to plan my day around the simplest tasks. I have to steel myself to get up out of bed or off the couch or even out of my desk chair because it’s way easier to keep working than to shift focus and transition to another thing. I’m overcome with inertia.  

What is wrong with me? WHAT is WRONG with me?  It’s supposed to be a joyous and peace-filled time but I feel neither joyful nor peaceful. And I’m just so tired. 

*****

I told some friends that I am in a bit of a mental health crisis because there’s really no other way to put it. My inclination during such times is to just isolate myself and avoid contact with others. This never works. So I reached out, as the saying goes. And I’m glad I did. I feel a little better about how terrible I feel, if that makes any sense at all. I feel less alone with it. It feels less heavy. 

One of my friends even ordered a UV light for me. She had it sent directly to my house, which was so kind. And I think it’s helping a little. 

I keep thinking that I need a few days to rest; a few days when I don’t have to do anything or cook anything or clean anything or even look at a clock. Just a few days.  

*****

It’s Thursday night now, and I’m finished working for the year. I have a lot of wrapping and cooking and cleaning to do, but I’m sitting on my couch and writing about it instead of doing it. I came home from work at 5:30 or so, filled with good intentions. And I did do a few things, but then the cold and the rain got to me and everything felt overwhelming, and now I’m stuck on the couch. 

I could start packing cookies and treats for the neighbors. I think I’ll do that. I’ll be upset if I let the entire evening pass without trying to accomplish something. And transferring all of my anxiety from my mind into this document does not count as an accomplishment. Especially when it doesn’t even work because I still feel anxious. Now the anxiety is in my head and on this page, all for you. You’re welcome.

I have to say, that did make me feel better. There’s a nice stack of boxes of cookies and treats in the kitchen, and I even wrapped some presents. Lucky I did all that because I woke up sick and ended up in urgent care for two hours today, December 23. I don’t have COVID or flu or strep (which is what I thought I had). I just have some undefined viral infection. I feel sick. I feel too sick really to come up with funny descriptors. We’ll just keep it at “sick.” 

But I feel better in my mind. I know why I’ve been so tired and lackadaisical, and I’m just going to stay inside for the rest of the day and let myself recover. It’s very cold outside but the house is cozy. I have books to read and a movie or two to watch, if I can stay awake. God willing I will evict this virus from my body in the next day or so. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. 

*****

It’s 4:35 PM again, my favorite time of day in December. Absent Christmas, December is trash but there’s no denying the beauty of a late-afternoon December sky. 

Oh, and it’s also Christmas Eve, and all of the presents are wrapped and everything that I can do to prepare for dinner tomorrow is done, and all we have to do now is be together, all of us at home, in the house where once again the dark is beginning to collect in the corners. The Christmas tree is alight with twinkly lights and there’s a nice fire in the fireplace. My husband and sons are watching football while I tap away on this keyboard. It’s lovely to have everyone in the same room at once. I don’t even feel sick anymore. 

I could stay right here just like this all evening but we’re going to Christmas Eve Mass at 6 PM, so we’ll have to get up soon. This is positive inertia. Is that a thing? I’m making it a thing. Positive inertia is when your lack of desire to move is the result of contentment, not anxiety or indecision or just plain tiredness. I feel like a cat in a sunbeam. 

*****

Christmas dinner is easier than Thanksgiving dinner. It’s 3 PM on Christmas Day now and I’m waiting for the last few things to warm up. Most of my Christmas menu lends itself easily to advance preparation or even advance cooking. On Christmas Day, I make some vegetables and I put the ham in the oven, and I warm up all the stuff that I prepared the day before, and I wait for the accolades to roll in. And the accolades do roll in. I’m a mediocre cook, most of the time, but my holiday dinners rule. My Christmas dinner in particular kicks ass, in the most positive purely metaphorical sense. 

It’s been brutally cold here for the last few days but the sun is out today and my husband and I went walking. I was layered from head to toe - leggings under my pants, two pairs of socks, three layers up top, a scarf wrapped around my head, and gloves on my hands. My husband deigned to put on a jacket. We walked a shortish route at a briskish pace, and didn’t see another human. Now I’m finishing the last few minutes of preparation. Christmas is the product of weeks of work and planning, and it’s over in a flash. 

When I was young, I enjoyed it as children enjoy it, opening the presents that our parents bought and wrapped for us, eating the food that my mother and grandmother prepared, basking in the warmth of holiday lights and music and reveling in a week and a half free of school and homework and early morning wake-ups. As much fun as that was, though, it’s more fun to be the person who gives this time to others. My children and my niece and nephew are opening gifts and eating treats and basking in holiday coziness, all of which I worked very hard to produce, and I am all for it. It really is better to give than to receive. Merry Christmas.  

Tannenbaum

When you have a Christmas tree that needs decorating, and no one in your household seems to have time to do the job, you should hire a six-year-old girl. They are crack decorators and they generally work for pretty much free. 

It's not going to decorate itself. Trust me. 

In my house, this year’s Christmas tree decorating proceeded in stages. My husband picked up the tree on his way between work appointments. He dropped it off on our front porch, and went back to work without so much as a hello. I was working from home that day, and I never even knew that a tree had been dropped on the porch until my son came home from school. “There’s a Christmas tree on the front porch,” he said, because he generally tells it like it is. I told him to text my husband to verify that it was in fact our tree. With that question resolved, my son set up the tree, sorted the lights into working and not-working piles, and strung the working lights onto the tree. 

The next day, someone bought two new strings of lights, which were duly added to the tree. We have a few Star Wars ornaments that plug into the main strings of lights, and so those were added. The rest of the ornaments were in boxes on the floor next to the tree, where they sat for the next three days. 

If you know me at all, even a little bit, then you know that stuff sitting around on the floor, in or out of boxes, is one of my least favorite things in life. I’m all about neatness. I’m all about a place for everything and everything in its place. And I’m REALLY all about getting things done right the heck now. Note that I said “getting things done” and not “doing things” because I didn’t have time last week to decorate that tree. And no one else did, either. But sometimes the cavalry shows up just when you need it most and in my case, the cavalry was one six-year-old Girl Scout who has very definite ideas about what a Christmas tree should look like. And I was more than willing to take direction. 

And it’s a good thing, too, because she’s more than willing to give direction. That is the thing about six-year-old girls. They like to work. They like to be busy. But they also like to be in charge, and their management approach is best described as “authoritarian.” 

When the children arrived (nine-year-old nephew was there to watch football with my sons, not to decorate), I asked my niece if she’d like to decorate the tree. She nodded yes immediately, and then looked right at the boys who were sprawled in front of the TV. “Actually,” she said very pointedly, “I like to decorate the Christmas tree WITH OTHER PEOPLE. I don’t like doing it all by myself.”

The boys pretended not to hear her. “Don’t even look at them,” I said. “I gave up on them two days ago. But I don’t like doing this all by myself either. So we’ll work on it together.” 

And we did. She hung a few candy canes, and then helpfully began giving direction. “Put one here,” she would say, pointing at various spots on the tree that she felt were in need of additional ornaments. “No, not there - THERE.” 

“We need some up high.” 

“You need to put more pretty ones in the front and put the ugly ones in the back.” (Harsh!)

“That one is making the branches bend over. We need to fix it.” 

She’d step back every few minutes, survey our work, and give additional direction. 

We (I) finally finished, just as I had begun to feel a little browbeaten. “My boss doesn’t bark orders at me like that,” I told her, “and he was in the actual Navy.” 

“We can eat the candy canes, right?” she said, blithely ignoring my subtle criticism of her communication style. This ability to deflect and distract will serve her well in her career as a dictator or a tech billionaire. 

“Yes, we can eat them,” I said. And we did, one each. They were delicious, and the tree looks beautiful. Merry Christmas. 

On deck

What's better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? How about two swim meets? It's Saturday morning and I am working at the check-in table at the Potomac Valley Swimming Turkey Claus, a four-day swimming extravaganza at the University of Maryland. Never mind the insanity of kids missing a day or more of school just to compete in a swim meet. My son missed school yesterday but he swam in the winning medley relay, so I guess it was worth it. 

I thought that the check-in table would be a more fun place to work than the pool deck but having now seen the grass on both sides of the fence, I have to say it's not any greener over here. My son’s club is hosting the meet, and the University of Maryland is charging a lot of money for the use of the aquatic center, and the money has to come from somewhere, and "somewhere" means an admission charge for parents who already hand over a lot of money to the swimming industrial complex. It's not an easy sell, but I have to say that most of the parents are pretty understanding. And I can talk the rest of them around. I'm pretty good at talking people around. It's one of my special skills. 

After prelims this morning, we will make our way to the Kennedy Shriver Aquatic Center (KSAC to the initiated) for Rockville vs. Richard Montgomery, the first meet of the high school season. My youngest is a senior, so it is his and our last season of high school swimming. 

*****

It's 7:30 on Sunday morning and I'm back at the Eppley Recreation Center pool for the fourth and final day of Turkey Claus. It's a clear and cold early December day and I'm looking out the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the pool. It’s a lovely view. Early winter morning sunlight is streaming through bare trees in the little wooded area just outside the pool. My older son goes to school here but I don't think I have ever noticed that the main campus at UMD is really a very pretty place. Well, parts of it are. Yesterday, I lost my car in the Terrapin Trail parking garage, which is very much NOT a pretty place. That garage is dead to me now. 

My son made finals in breaststroke last night and he finished fifth. He wasn't happy about missing the medals but 5th place out of almost 130 is pretty good and we'll take it. This morning will be low key. I'm not volunteering, he's swimming one event in which he will not make finals, and we should be out of here by 11. 

*****

We were actually out of there just after 10. I brought a book with me so that I'd have something to do during the twenty-plus heats of the two events that preceded my son’s sole event but I didn't end up reading for two reasons. One is that they added another medley relay event that included my son, and the other is that I was engrossed in the other races. I'm usually so busy at a swim meet that I forget that I really love to watch swimming. My son's club swept the last minute relay, winning first, second, and third place. He finished somewhere in the middle of the 100 freestyle pack and then we went to the College Park Diner where the boy ate an astonishing amount of breakfast. Swimmers can eat, I tell you what. 

And that was Turkey Claus. There’s nothing but easy-peasy high school swimming until January. 

*****

It’s Wednesday night now, and I’m writing because I write every day, and because it’s just as good a way as any other to avoid cooking dinner. Dinner isn’t even hard. I know what I’m going to make and the ingredients are sitting right there. I’ll get right to it just as soon as I finish cleaning out my already pretty clean desk drawers. 

This is how I act when I’m out of sorts, and I’m out of sorts. Seasonal affective disorder is no joke, and the darkness and cold are combining with overwork and exhaustion and inability to see the light at the end of the busy-all-the-time tunnel. I wish I could sleep. Three months should do it. I’ll sleep until the middle of March and when I wake up there will be daylight until 7 or so. 

But of course, then I’ll miss Christmas, not to mention this last high school swim season. And the house will be a mess, too. They’re all pretty neat, my family, but they’re not compulsive. They’ll leave the folded laundry on top of the dryer for a week. They won’t vacuum unless there’s actual visible dirt. They won’t even think about the refrigerator shelves. And the bathroom? No, this won’t work. I’m going to have to wake up every day, at least for a few hours, or the whole operation will fall to pieces. Plus I have a job. There’s always a flaw in the plan. There’s always some damn detail. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, and I’m in a much better frame of mind. I was out of sorts yesterday, but I replenished my stock of sorts, and things are looking up. Yesterday wasn’t rock bottom, but it wasn’t far from rock bottom and the slope seemed slippery. I do hate those days. I hate feeling sad and I hate feeling sad about being sad because what on earth do I have to be sad about? I don’t lack for a single thing. How dare I? 

I’d never tell another depressed person to snap out of it. I’d never even think it. But that’s what I tell myself. And sometimes it actually works. It worked yesterday. A few hours sleep, a little pep talk (to myself), and “Here Comes the Sun” (the Richie Havens recording), and I’m right as rain, pretty much. 

“Here Comes the Sun” works every time. 

Tomorrow is Friday and I’ll work from home, and then we’ll go watch the Capitals play the Seattle Kraken. On Saturday, I’ll be on the deck with my clipboard for Rockville vs. Einstein. And really, what’s better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? 

High voltage

It was 5:30 on the Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend when the lights went out, abruptly and completely. It’s pretty much night time around here at 5:30 PM in late November and so we were, as they say, plunged into darkness. 

I had just been thinking that it was probably time to cook dinner. I knew what I was going to make, which is, for me, half the battle. It’s like writing - if I know what I’m going to cook, or what I want to write about, then the rest comes pretty easily. But last Sunday at dinner time, the early dinner planning availed me nothing, because not only was my kitchen completely dark, I also have an electric range. 

“We’ll give it half an hour,” I said. “If the lights aren’t back on by 6:00 or maybe 6:15, then we’ll get in the car and go eat out.” Not gonna lie - I was hoping that the lights would stay out because I love going out for dinner. 

We decided that we’d go to Villa Maya, a Rockville neighborhood favorite. Then my son looked up from his phone. His girlfriend, who lives about two miles from our house and around the corner from Villa Maya, had just texted him that power was out on her street, too. 

“Well,” I said. “No point going to Villa Maya - if they don’t have power they can’t serve food and if they do have power, then the whole neighborhood is going to descend on them.” Then, as if on cue, my phone started to blow up. 

"What's going on?" "Do you have power?" "Our lights just went out - what about you?" One friend had been away for the holiday weekend, and she arrived home at 5:45 to find that the entire neighborhood was pitch dark. Another texted that he was on his way home from picking up a kid from a friend's house, and that the traffic lights were out on Georgia Avenue from Olney all the way to Silver Spring. This is a long distance, about five miles or so, and this text was my first clue that this was a bigger deal than our average normal neighborhood power failure. 

We all started scrolling and didn't see anything on social media or news sites, not right away. I called Pepco and got their usual outgoing voice message. Then my husband turned on the battery powered radio and tuned to the local all-news station, where we finally heard the first report that a small plane had crashed into a high-voltage tower, taking out power to the entire eastern half of Montgomery County. 

We all naturally assumed that the crash had killed the plane's occupants, and we were sad for their families. Then we heard the unbelievable news that the pilot and passenger were still alive in the plane, which was entangled in power lines, half stuck in the tower and half dangling, over 100 feet in the air. 

I couldn’t even imagine how terrified those poor people must have been. They must have been sure that they were about to die in one of several horrible ways. They could have been electrocuted 100 feet in the air. The plane could have exploded, or it could have plunged to the ground. All three of those things could have happened, really. So many dreadful possibilities that must have seemed all but inevitable to the people trapped in that tiny cockpit. Terrifying. 

But as it turns out, death was not at all inevitable. If you follow the news, you know that the two people actually survived after seven fearful hours suspended in midair in the wrecked plane. First responders from Montgomery County and the state of Maryland and the Potomac Electric Power Company got the people out, got the remains of the plane out of the tower, and restored power to almost 100,000 people. They did all of this in about seven hours, in darkness and fog. 

*****

Sunday evening is really not a bad time to lose electric power. We had candles and flashlights and a radio and plenty of no-need-to-cook food to eat, and the evening was very pleasant. The power was restored at midnight and so I went to sleep knowing two things: The plane crash victims had survived, and I’d be able to make coffee on Monday morning. Win and win. 

*****

People can be the worst. We really suck sometimes. But when we are good, we are very very good. And this is when we’re good. When a human is in danger, there are no lengths to which other humans won’t go to save their lives. 

Later, I read a news story about the pilot. This was not his first plane crash. He crashed another small plane in 1992. Thirty years later, he chose to fly his small plane from New York to Maryland at dusk in already dangerously low-visibility conditions. By his own admission, he knew that the fog made flying dangerous. By his own admission, he was flying too low. I stopped reading at that point. I didn’t want to know if he had some compelling reason to endanger his life and the life of his passenger and the lives of anyone on the ground who happened to be underneath his plane had it happened to fall to the ground or if his decision to fly that day was driven by selfish hold-my-beer look-at-me-I’m-a-pilot bravado. Of course, I’m happy that his life was spared. But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any consequences for his actions. 

*****

And so while some people risked their own lives to save two people in danger, others endanger the lives of innocent people in order to make a stupid political point. Last week’s power outage was an accident, as far as we know. What happened in North Carolina yesterday was by all accounts not an accident. I hope that people there won’t be in the dark for too long. I hope that the pilot who entangled himself in a high-voltage tower in Maryland loses his pilot’s license, and I hope they catch the people who sabotaged the grid in North Carolina. 

The prehistoric elephant site

I joined Mastodon last week. I’m on some random server on the “fediverse” and the place is both completely different from Twitter and oddly familiar. More experienced users (it’s been around for a few years but most people never heard of it until the genius billionaire took over Twitter) are likening migration to Mastodon as a move to a new city - it seems overwhelming at first, but just take your time and explore and you’ll be at home in no time. And I do feel quite at home there now, but it’s not like a new city at all. It’s more like a countryside filled with villages, most rather charming but some less so, versus the sprawling monolithic metropolis that is Twitter. 

It took me some time to set up my account. I couldn’t upload photos for my profile avatar and header, which I first thought was user error but then came to understand was a result of latency arising from a huge influx of traffic on the Mastodon servers. There are a lot of people moving although I take issue with new Mastodon arrivals calling themselves “refugees” from the Twitter warzone. Given the number of actual refugees fleeing terrible places and clamoring to enter new places that mostly want nothing to do with them, this metaphor seems rather stupid and solipsistic. So I guess it tracks. 

*****

I joined Twitter in 2008. I was, uncharacteristically, a relatively early adopter. I say “uncharacteristically” because I’m usually the very last to pick up on a trend. I’m the one chasing the bandwagon long after it departs and moves on to pick up the early adopters of the next hot trend. But I was right on time with Twitter. Not the leading edge necessarily, but not late to the party either. 

At first, I really liked Twitter. I had a blog (still have it, as  you can see), and I used to have quite a few readers. They followed me on Twitter, I followed them back, I followed their friends and followers, and they followed mine, and we all shared our writing and posted pithy little jokes and comments. When I started on the hellsite, Twitter still supported only 140-character posts. I don’t remember when I saw my first thread; maybe around 2010 or so? You couldn’t post pictures or videos, and I don’t remember that there were any ads, either. The whole point of it was “what are you doing?” - 140 characters all about what you’re doing at that moment. Watching a movie? Walking around Manhattan during a snowstorm? Boarding a plane? Eating a snack? Getting married? Changing a baby’s diaper? Robbing a bank? Going to work? Going home from work? Any or all of it, from the mundane to the dramatic, was Twitter-worthy. Just write a very short and ideally funny or touching or thoughtful comment about what you’re doing at that moment, post it, and wait for people to react. And of course, read and react to everyone else’s funny, touching, or thoughtful observations about their daily lives. 

I tweeted on and off for a few years, and even made some friends. Then at some point, the combination of work, school (I was an adult student then, God help me), young children, PTA, swim team and baseball and school concerts and compulsive housekeeping made blogging and tweeting completely unsustainable, and so I stopped, pretty much cold turkey. I started blogging again, sporadically, in 2015 or so, but I didn’t go anywhere near Twitter again until years later.

Right in the middle of the pandemic year of our Lord 2020, with too much time on my hands, I installed the app on my phone (I didn’t even have a smartphone when I first joined Twitter in 2008 - practically no one did), logged back in, and found that I barely recognized the place. I avoided Trump, of course, but he still dominated the discourse - it was also an election year and most people on Twitter were reacting to him in one way or another. And a few huge accounts with tens of thousands of followers controlled everything else. Comment threads were either orgies of OMG-you’re-so-amazing fandom or delete-your-account pile-ons, sometimes (often) over the most innocuous things. It was entertaining sometimes but it wasn’t congenial. It wasn’t good for anyone’s mental health. 

*****

Just before I stepped away from Twitter for the first time, in 2013 or so, a mutual invited me to an “Elf” Twitter watch party. The host made up a hashtag for the watch party, asked everyone to start the movie at 8 PM, watch with family and friends, and live tweet their comments and jokes and reactions, using the party hashtag. 

It was HILARIOUS. The group was mostly (but not all) mothers with young and school-age children, so many of the tweets were about our kids' comments and reactions to the movie. During the breakfast scene, my youngest, who was 7 or 8 (so this must have been around 2012), said “He’s going to get dia-beet-ee-us.” My sons tried to recreate the Santa and Buddy fight scene. My older son took a flying leap at the tree to put a star on top. I tweeted about all of this, to the great amusement of the party attendees. During the mailroom scene, I tweeted “That’s the oldest-looking 26-year-old I’ve ever seen. Sunscreen. Antioxidants. SOMETHING.” About 35 people liked and commented on that tweet - probably my best tweet ever in terms of sheer numbers.

The thing about 2013 is that it wasn’t that long ago. Less than a decade. Of course, Donald Trump existed - he was very famous and had been for years. And I’m sure that he was on Twitter then, too - I think that the whole Barack Obama “birther” controversy started on Twitter. But no serious person took him seriously. You could follow him and read his stupid tweets if you liked that sort of thing but most of us on Twitter were there for fun. Most of us were there to try to make each other laugh while we watched “Elf” with our kids. Those were the days, I tell you what. 

*****

Mastodon is a quieter place, at least so far. It kind of reminds me of old Twitter. No one knows anyone, not yet, and you have to make connections organically. You have to find people and listen to them and talk to them. I use it the way I used to use Twitter. A funny thing will occur to me and I’ll post it. I’ll see something interesting or beautiful, and I’ll share it. I follow people who interest or amuse me. 

During my first few days on the site, the few political posts that I saw seemed jarringly out of place. Mehdi Hasan was yelling just as loud on Mastodon as he does on Twitter. But most people seem to get the difference between the two sites. This is not to say that people shouldn’t post about politics. People should post about whatever interests them, and the people who tell other people not to post about politics because it harshes their vibe should just calm the heck down. Filter out the terms you don’t want to see and just look at your cat photos. It’s fine. 

What I mean about the difference between the two places has to do with the tone. The tone is different. There’s not as much flamethrowing. There’s not as much trolling for reaction. There’s not as much anger for its own sake. You can’t see how many boosts (the Mastodon equivalent of an RT) a post has received unless you actually click on the post. You can’t see how many favorites (likes) it’s received at all, unless it’s your own post. There is really zero incentive for bandwagon-jumping or piling on. There’s no reward for sycophants or haters. 

There are definitely many things that I will miss about Twitter. Viral inside jokes can be really fun. It’s fun to get the joke, and then come up with another joke that amplifies and improves on the original joke, and then to see everyone’s reactions, and to be part of the party as every funny person on the internet jumps in and tries to one-up everyone else. Twitter is also really good at creating communities of shared interest around topics both really broad and really idiosyncratically narrow. 

But there are many other things that I will absolutely not miss. I won’t miss the bullies and their hangers-on. I won’t miss stupid people who disingenuously misinterpret every tweet or comment to find offense where none exists. I won’t miss the sad people who shamelessly beg for followers. I won’t miss “follow me, blue crew!”

*****

I went to the Capitals game on the night before Thanksgiving. It had been a busy few days and I was tired like tired has never been. I even thought about giving my ticket to one of my kids and just staying home but I really wanted to go to the game. 

Earlier that day, a Mastodon mutual had posted a hilariously silly thread about how much tea he drinks and how much he loves to drink tea and how he was going to stop posting that very minute and go drink more tea. I guess you had to be there. Anyway, I remembered that thread as I drove home from work in very light pre Thanksgiving traffic and thought that a cup of tea and a few minutes in front of my kitchen window watching a late November sunset would be just the thing to put me right. And it was, and 20 minutes later I was on the Red Line on my way to Capital One Arena. I posted a few pictures and comments on the game, and a few Capitals fans found me, and now I have a few more mutuals based on a shared interest. Yesterday, I watched “Elf” with my now-grown children, and I posted running commentary, cracking myself up the whole time. Last night, I connected with a few more new people, and we shared status updates on the massive power outage in Montgomery County (more about that later). 

No billionaires, no crypto, no Draft Kings, and no venture capital. It’s too soon to know for sure, but I think that Mastodon might be the new place to be. Look me up if you happen to be around there. 

Slow ride

Do you know how much IB exams cost? I learned the answer to that question the hard way (which is how I learn most things). The answer is “a shit ton.” Each IB exam costs a shit ton of money, and my son has to take a shit ton of IB exams. Never mind the cost of college. Let’s talk about the cost of getting ready to go to college. I can either support my ridiculous handbag habit, or I can pay for IB exams and university application fees. I can’t do both. 

*****

And do you know what I found in the mail today, right after I finished draining my checking account to pay off the shakedown artists of the International Baccalaureate? A speed camera ticket. A SPEED CAMERA TICKET! I drive like a blind old woman on her way to confession on Saturday, and Montgomery County Maryland expects me to believe that I was caught on camera doing 47 in a 35. On CONNECTICUT AVENUE AT 5:15 on a WEDNESDAY. People walk faster than automobile traffic moves on Connecticut during the afternoon rush hour. Bubba Wallace couldn’t go 47 on Connecticut Avenue between Jones Bridge and Knowles Avenue at 5:15 on a Wednesday. The whole thing is suspect. Suspect, I tell you. 

*****

I wrote this yesterday in a huff of righteous indignation. I was ready to contest that ticket. I was ready to fight City Hall. I was ready to stick it to the man. 

The thing is, I’d have to write emails. I’d have to talk to people on the phone. I might even have to go to court. Do I look like I have time for all that? I haven’t looked at the video yet, but today, I am just as strongly inclined to just pay the stupid $40 and get it over with as I was determined yesterday to fight like Norma Rae on the factory floor. 

$40 is a strategic amount, isn’t it? If it was $50, even though $50 isn’t what it was ten years ago or even one year ago, more people would push back. “Fifty bucks,” they’d think. That’s midway to a hundred. That’s half a Benjamin. But $40? I don’t know, it just seems so much less than $50. If a kid tells you he needs $40 for a school fee, you just hand over the cash. If he needs $50, you say “What? Fifty dollars? Are they crazy?” 

Unless you just paid for a shit ton of IB exams, in which case $50 will seem like chump change. 

*****

“Chump change.” Now I’m a gum-snapping, fast-talking wide-shoulder dame from a 1940s screwball comedy. Which really is not a bad thing to be. I think I was born too late. I belong in a George Cukor-type movie with a script by Donald Ogden Stewart, playing the wisecracking best friend. They could have called me any time Rosalind Russell or Eve Arden were busy. That was a better time, assuming that you’re willing to overlook the racism and the sexism and the manual transmissions. 

OK, so it wasn’t a better time except for one thing: In those days, they had to actually see you speeding if they wanted to give you a ticket. 

******

I started writing this two weeks ago, and in the interim, I received yet another speed camera ticket. This time, I was allegedly driving 47 in a 35 in Darnestown, which is well out of range of my usual stomping grounds. I was driving to a friend’s brother’s funeral. No good deed goes unpunished, you know? 

I still haven’t paid the first ticket, and now I have two, and I’m thinking of contesting both of them. There is no video of either incident. There are photographs that prove that my car was near the cameras, but no moving footage showing how fast I was going, and I have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether or not the camera’s triggering mechanism is properly calibrated. If I contest the tickets and go to court, I could end up paying both the fines and court costs, plus I’d lose part of a work day. I don’t know if it’s worth the time or money. On the other hand, this feels very arbitrary and unfair and I find myself very much unwilling to remit $40 to the County every time they decide to drop a speed limit in order to generate some revenue. 

I think I’ll do some research on court costs and likelihood of a positive outcome, and then I’ll decide what to do. 

*****

Yeah, I paid them. I know.

I’m telling you, I was ready to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. And when I learned that court costs are usually assessed at less than $25, I was even more enthusiastic about this plan. Then my husband, a police officer, dissuaded me. “They will find you guilty,” he said. “They find everybody guilty - some guy from Safe Speed testifies that the triggering mechanism is properly calibrated and that the camera system is working just fine, and then unless you can prove exigent circumstances or that you were not driving the car, you’ll pay the fine and the court costs and you’ll have wasted half a day, at least.” 

“But...” I said. 

“No ‘but’,” he said. “That’s just how it works. That is how it always works. Do what you want, but when you sit in court all day and still come home $125 poorer, don’t think I won’t say ‘I told you so,’ because I totally will.” 

I’ve been married to this man for 22 years, so I didn’t think for a second that he wouldn’t say “I told you so.” And that is what decided it, really. I could live with the $125. I could even live with losing a day of my life to Maryland Circuit Court. But I couldn’t live with a week or more of “I told you so.”  Everyone has a breaking point. 

*****

The next day, Saturday, I was driving home from my son’s swim meet in Laurel. It was 6 PM, already dark, and my night vision was cooperating. I could see perfectly well, and I got us from the Fairland Aquatic Center on to Maryland 200, known around these parts as the ICC, with no difficulty whatsoever. I moved into the center lane, keeping my speed at around 62 as traffic whizzed past me on both sides. A few people honked as they flew by, obviously annoyed by my determination to obey the 60 MPH speed limit as closely as possible. But I didn’t care. People can climb up my bumper, they can pass me, and they can honk all the livelong day. I was already a cautious driver, and now I’m taking caution to a new level. I’m finished handing over fat stacks of cash to the extortionists at Montgomery County Safe Speed. It’s slow ride time, from now on. 

Julie and Julia

I was very sad to learn of Julie Powell’s untimely death last week. I’m not sure why, really, other than just normal human sorry-to-hear-that impersonal sympathy. I never read her work. In fact, food literature is one category that I generally avoid. Of course I’m sorry to hear of anyone dying an unexpected death at age 49, but I felt this celebrity death a bit more than I expected to. 

Last weekend, during a spare 30 minutes, I started watching “Julie and Julia” on Hulu. I saw the movie when it first came out in 2009 and I remembered really loving the Julia scenes and not really loving the Julie scenes. Quick no-spoiler synopsis in case you haven’t seen the movie: It is based on both Powell’s eponymous memoir and Julia Child’s My Life in Paris, and it alternates between immediate post-9/11 New York City, where Julie Powell lived and worked as a mid-level bureaucrat; and Paris in the 1950s, where Julia Child lived an utterly enchanted life with her diplomat husband, Paul Child. Meryl Streep’s Julia, as I remembered her, was energetic and funny and full of infectious joy. Amy Adams’ Julie, on the other hand, was a whiny, anxious bundle of ridiculous neuroses. 

Well, now it’s perfectly obvious why I hated that character. Because it was like watching all the worst parts of myself, if only I looked like Amy Adams. 

Joking! Lol! Hilarious!

But in all seriousness, I watched part of the movie again, and as Johnny Cash once sang, I come away with a different point of view. I still liked the Julia parts of the movie better. Who wouldn't? Paris, international diplomacy at the height of the Cold War, glamour, mid century style, and what appeared to have been a perfect marriage vs. crowded subways, cubicles, yuppie bitch antagonists in place of friends, overwork, and domestic discord - really, no sane person would prefer Julie's life to Julia's. 

But the women themselves? Well movie Julie wasn't so bad. Yes she was whiny and spoiled and prone to temper tantrums but she was also compulsive and panicky and plagued with anxiety. 

Yes, I know. I keep coming back to this. She really is very much like me. I'd have freaked out over those stupid lobsters. I'd have dreaded boning the duck. Who wants to bone a duck for crying out loud? And I would for sure have pushed myself close to the brink of sanity to meet a fake, self-imposed, and entirely ridiculous deadline.

And besides, movie Julia (and I guess, real-life Julia) lived in Paris in a beautiful free apartment and she only worked because she wanted to. It was easy for movie Julia to be delightful. There would have been no excuse for her to be otherwise. 

*****

I never did read Julie and Julia, but now I think maybe I will. I’ll probably skip Cleaving (as the snotty-faced NYT called it, “Powell's sophomore and only other effort” - burn!) since I have already read one mercilessly honest exceedingly sexually frank overshare of a memoir this year. That one was enough for 2022 and it might have been enough of that genre for pretty much ever. But Julie and Julia is just my kind of thing - a memoir about a specific part of a person’s life and a story about a hard and exhausting though absurdly specific and quirky project. It’s a book about a person doing something that only she could have done. I’m going to finish re-watching the movie at some point, and then I’ll read the book and report back. 

EDT vs EST

I’m preoccupied with time; the limited quantity of time that I have every day and every week and really for the rest of my life. It’s Friday, and I worked in the office today, which I don’t typically do. I arrived home at 5:20 or so, did a few minor chores, and then changed into my sneakers to go walking. I had only about 30 minutes of daylight remaining and that daylight was the achingly lovely early November sunset light that creates a glow around everything including the trees that are already a riot of color. The leaves crunched beneath my feet as I walked as fast as I could, trying to outrun the waning golden daylight. I turned the corner back onto my street just a minute or so before it was well and truly dark, and just as I remembered that this will be my last after-work walk for a while. We fall back on Sunday, an extra hour of sleep in exchange for months of early darkness. 

Yesterday, I heard a news story about Daylight Savings Time on NPR, with a new angle on the debate about keeping the annual clock adjustments or dumping them. Like most people I know, I was delighted when the Senate voted last year to make DST permanent. An extra hour of daylight during the darkest hours of the year would be such a gift, and by late January, we’d have daylight until 6:30 PM or so. 

But I had to be at work by 7:30 on Thursday morning, which means that I had to leave the house by 6:45, which means that I had to drive to work in the dark, which I really really hate. I don’t just hate driving in the dark, I also hate feeling like I’m starting my day in the middle of the night. Although I have to admit, it was really nice seeing the sun rise over Walter Reed as I drove on to the base. 

The NPR story featured a doctor who believes that we should ditch the semi-annual clock back-and-forth, but that Daylight Savings Time is the wrong time standard to hang on to. I was working as I listened so I fogged out a bit during the part where he presented his evidence about circadian rhythms and sleep patterns. But he summed it up in a pretty compelling way, and he just about had me convinced. 

The thing is, though, that by keeping Standard Time, we wouldn’t be making winter any worse than it already is. But we’d be making summer less great. I love those weeks in late June and early July when the daylight hangs on until almost 9 PM. I’d hate to give that up. But I’d also hate months of mornings when the sun doesn’t rise until 8 o’clock. 

There’s no making me happy is there? I know. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, the first Sunday in November, and half of my clocks, the digital ones connected to the internet in one way or another, all read 9:18 AM and my old analog clocks all read 10:18 AM. Someone will turn those clocks back at some point. But we all know what time it is. And that was it - we fell back, we got our extra hour of sleep, and now it’s going to be dark before 6 PM for maybe the next two months. Blah.  

So my conclusion is that as terrible as it is to deal with the one-hour shifts twice a year, we should keep the whole Rube Goldberg spit and glue system in place because it’s the least terrible way to manage the daylight hours and make sure that as many people as possible get as much daylight as possible on both ends of the day. It won’t give me any extra time in a day but I’ll still get 24 hours, same as everyone else.