(Christmas) Adam and Eve

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

Rest stop

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

Could this BE any less of a book review?

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

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

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

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

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

Retreat

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

***** 

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

Thanksgiving 2023

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

High effing finance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

******

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

****

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

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

Late in the year

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

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

Leaves

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

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

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

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

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

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

God, I’m petty. LOL. 

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

Red Line

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

*****

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

When the Saints go marching in

It’s Saturday morning. One day I’m going to use some kind of crazy AI technology to crawl through everything I’ve ever written and tell me how many times I’ve started a paragraph with the words “It’s Saturday morning.” It’s a lot. 

Yes, it’s swim season again - college swim season. In about three hours or so, my son will swim in his very first college meet. Marymount is swimming a tri-meet against Cabrini and St. Mary’s of Maryland. The Saints are about to go marching in, and we’ll be sitting in the stands. 

It’s early now. I’m watching the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety briefing the press about the Lewiston gunman’s apparent suicide. The ASL interpreter is extremely animated. She is, as they say on the internet, a whole vibe. 

I’m not so solipsistic that I don’t realize that a college swim meet is the least important thing in the on-fire world right now, and that the word “privilege” was coined for people like me who are not burying our dead today, and who are neither fleeing from a war zone nor trapped in one. Other than giving money where it’s needed and praying for everyone everywhere, and doing my own job and taking care of my own people, I can’t do a thing about the state of the world. I hope that everyone who is suffering now will be free and happy soon. Go Saints. 

Rumble at the jumble

Every year, St. Patrick’s Catholic church in Rockville, Maryland holds a huge rummage sale that benefits a community in Montrouis, Haiti. Since 2012, the church has built a school, a clinic, and about 20 houses in Montrouis. A delegation of parishioners used to travel there every summer but now even the most intrepid missionaries are reluctant to enter Haiti, so the money is distributed directly to their Haitian friends in the town. 

I hadn’t been to the rummage sale in several years, but my friend invited me to go, and rummaging seemed like a good way to spend part of a rainy Saturday morning, so off we went, with reusable shopping bags and cash in hand. 

*****

A few months ago, I read a three-novel Barbara Pym anthology. The three novels all blend together in my memory now, but like all Barbara Pym novels, they featured genteel 20th century English women whose lives center around home and church and social life. In one scene, the protagonist helps to organize the church jumble sale (I think almost all Barbara Pym novels feature at least one mention of a jumble sale) and then she watches as several women squabble over a coat or a dress or something. We call them different things on each side of the pond, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a jumble sale or a rummage sale or even a flea market - the shoppers are highly competitive. There’s usually only one of any item, and the first person to see it, gets it. 

I hadn’t planned to buy anything at all on Saturday, but after a few minutes in the crowds of rummagers, I found a very nice oversized Christmas coffee mug, a tiny souvenir dish with the coats of arms of the four provinces of Ireland, and a Charles and Diana commemorative plate. I looked at the plate closely, wondering if it was an authentic souvenir of the July 1981 royal wedding, and then decided that for $2, authenticity didn’t matter, so I picked it up to buy it. Then I saw an older (than me) woman nudge her friend and incline her head in my direction. The women didn’t speak to me, but they followed me around the parish hall as I continued to browse. When I stopped to look at something, they stopped right behind me. Obviously, one of those ladies wanted that plate, and they were waiting for me to put it down. But I wasn’t putting it down. And the more they followed me, the more determined I became not to release that plate from my Kung Fu grip. 

I was holding my three planned purchases in my left hand and my phone in my right, when I thought of an idea for a presentation that I’m working on. Rather than forget the idea, I decided to email it to myself; but just as I was about to put my items down so that I could write this email to myself, I noticed that my stalkers were lurking, tracking me ever so closely. Hmm, I thought. That’s how you want to play this, is it? We’re predator and prey now, are we? I held onto my finds with my left hand, and drafted the email, badly spelled and poorly punctuated but who cares because it’s an email to myself, with my right hand, and my adversaries’ plans to swoop in while my guard was down was thwarted. Nine dollars later, my purchases and I were safely out the door. 

It’s Thursday now, and between the passage of time and the undeniable fact that I don’t really need a Charles and Diana commemorative plate, the thrill of victory has subsided somewhat. I don’t even know what to do with that silly plate, really. Honestly, I feel a little foolish about the whole incident. The thing is that they could have just asked, and I’d have handed Charles and Di right over. It’s not like I had been hunting far and wide for a 1981 royal wedding souvenir. It was an I-can-take-it-or-leave-it scenario, and if one of the ladies had just approached me politely and said something like “Hey, if you change your mind about that plate, please let me know because I’ll be happy to buy it,” I would have given it up without a moment’s hesitation. But that’s not how it played out, is it? I wish I was nicer, but sometimes I’m just not. Bitches want to make a rummage sale into a contest, then I’m going to win, I tell you what. 

Material Girl

When it comes to jewelry, I am simple and low-key. In fact when it comes to all matters of fashion and style  - hair, makeup, clothing, jewelry - I am what the young people call “basic.” I’m a basic bitch. Or maybe it’s Basic Bitch. I’ll see if the AP Style Guide has a ruling on capitalization of that term. 

I own probably 8 pairs of earrings. Four of them could be described as what we used to call “good jewelry” - a pair of plain white gold hoops, a pair of thick yellow gold hoops, small diamond studs, and a pair of brushed platinum “huggy” style hoops (the kind that open on a hinge) embedded with small diamonds. I have had all of these earrings for some time - decades in the case of the diamond studs and the brushed platinum hoops. 

This last pair is the one that I wear 80 percent of the time. I sleep in them, I swim in them (maybe not a good idea) - I hardly ever take them off. One time, I wore the gold hoops, which are rather delicate, and took them off when I got home, meaning to change back into the platinum ones the next morning. Only I forgot, and I left the house that morning without any earrings at all. It was terrible. It was as if I’d gone to work in pajamas, with unbrushed teeth and uncombed hair.  I didn’t feel underdressed so much as just undressed. I felt indecent. OK, that’s a (slight) exaggeration. Let’s just say that I was very ill at ease. 

*****

In the delightful movie “Blinded by the Light,” the lead character’s mother, a Pakistani immigrant in 1980s England, is forced to pawn her few pieces of jewelry after her husband is laid off from his job at the Vauxhall Motors company. The family does its best to scrape by in Margaret Thatcher’s England - the mother takes in sewing, and the teenage children hand their pay packets to their father every week. But the bills keep piling up, and the family is forced to sell some valuables, including the mother’s gold bangle bracelets and rings. She watches as the jeweler sizes up the pieces, determines their value, and then hands the cash over - to her husband of course. She stares forlornly at her unadorned hands and wrists, ashamed of her family’s loss of position and bereft at the loss of the only beautiful things she owned. 

*****

The other “good jewelry” in my small collection includes my platinum wedding band and matching engagement ring, a white gold and diamond ring that my mother-in-law gave me, a small ruby and diamond ring that was my grandmother’s, and a string of pearls. About a month ago, I was on the phone with my sister-in-law, walking around the house as I do when I talk on the phone, and twisting the white gold and diamond ring around my finger, also a phone-talking habit. The prongs felt sharp, and I looked at the ring to see if the setting was loose. Not only were the prongs loose, the diamond was gone. I panicked for a bit, but realizing that the prongs hadn’t been loose for long (because I twist it around my finger all the time, and would have noticed) I started looking around the house for the diamond, and I found it within minutes. It was on the floor. An hour later and it would have been vacuumed up. I put the ring and diamond away, resolving to get them to the jeweler’s as soon as possible. 

About two weeks later, I went to Cleveland for a wedding. I was wearing my platinum hoops because they’re my travel earrings; and my wedding ring and engagement ring, because I never take them off; and my pearls because I always wear them for dressy occasions. Believe it or not, I noticed, when I was getting dressed, that one of the prongs on my engagement ring felt sharp. When I looked more closely, I saw that the prong had pulled away from the diamond almost completely, leaving it perilously loose. I took the ring off and stowed it away for safekeeping. Then I caught the pearls sliding off the string, which snapped as I tried to put the pearl necklace on. So now three of my favorite pieces of jewelry - not even pieces of jewelry, just things that make me feel like myself - were unwearable. I went to the wedding feeling ill at ease and underdressed - and like the mother in “Blinded by the Light,” a little bit bereft. 

*****

In some ways, I might appear not to be especially concerned with possessions. I drive a 6-year-old RAV 4 that I often have to hunt for in the grocery store parking lot, because it looks exactly like every other suburban lady’s RAV 4. This happened just yesterday, in fact. Mine was one of at least four dark blue, almost black late model RAV 4s in the Safeway parking lot, and I had to look carefully to find the right one. My house is neat and clean and cheerful but would not pass HGTV scrutiny. It’s not on trend. My kitchen and bathrooms need “updating.” My furniture is a mish-mash of good, not-so-good, and indifferent; and my walls are covered with everything from family photos to actual art to my children’s school creations, preserved in inexpensive frames. I wear shoes until they wear out. I buy some nice clothes but I also have my share of second-hand items, not to mention some streetwear from the House of Costco. 

But that’s not the whole story, now is it? I also buy at least five new handbags every year. That is not an exaggeration, sadly. I own at least 25 jackets and as much as I tell myself that I won’t buy ANY MORE JACKETS, we all know that this is not true. We all know that it’s only a matter of time before Number 26 shows up to keep the rest of the jackets company. And while I’m quite content with the jewelry that I own and don’t intend to acquire any new jewelry, I also cannot feel comfortable and normal and properly dressed and fit to interact with humanity unless I’m wearing at least my core pieces, no matter where I’m going or what I’m doing. I got my engagement ring and pearl necklace fixed last week (still need to get the other ring fixed - one thing at a time) and I can’t tell you what a relief it was to slide that ring back onto my left ring finger and to know that it’s there, catching the light and anchoring my wedding band in place. I suppose this makes me vain and materialistic. I do like the way that ring sparkles. 

Averted

It’s Thursday, September 28, and we’re 50-some hours away from a Federal government shutdown that seems very likely to occur. I dodged a bullet with the last one, but I won’t be so lucky this time. I’ll be at least partially furloughed and as a contractor, I won’t be made whole as Federal government employees are. Yes, I know that I’m still relatively fortunate and I also know that there are people who will suffer more than I will, but right now it’s all about me. Well, it’s all about me and about 10 Members of Congress representing less than one percent of the population of the United States, who are gleefully steering us directly toward the edge of a cliff. Way to own the libs, assholes. 

*****

It's Friday now. It's payday; possibly my last one for a while. I am still awaiting word on my furlough status. No rush or anything. Take yer time. 

Everyone has known about the funding lapse deadline for some time, but things only started to get real this week. Wednesday and Thursday felt very much like the week of March 9, 2020. Everyone knew that everything was about to change but most of us didn't know exactly how. We found out and we're about to find out again. That's how this works: Lunatics in the House of Representatives fuck around, and the rest of us find out. 

*****

There is a silver lining, because there's always a silver lining. Even if I do end up on the excepted list, it will be part-time, and so I’ll end up with some time off. Yes it will be unpaid time off, and I’m more than a little anxious about this, but I do have some money saved and my husband is still working, and we’ll be fine, as far as paying the bills goes. Meanwhile, a day or two off would not be a bad thing at all. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning, a really lovely Saturday morning, in fact; and I still don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if the government is going to shut down (although it seems almost certain that it will) and I don’t know if I will be on the excepted list if it does (that’s a 50 - 50 proposition). I can’t really plan anything today because until midnight, anything could happen. At 0800 on Monday morning, I could be at work as usual (let’s say 0807 because I can’t get there at 8 to save my soul from Hell) or I could be at home still in my pajamas. 

If it’s the latter, then I’m going to make a to-do list. I’ll cancel some subscriptions and memberships to improve cash flow, and I’ll do some fall cleaning. Maybe I’ll drive to Philadelphia to see my family. Maybe I’ll get all of my Christmas shopping done. Maybe I’ll try out some new recipes. 

*****

Or maybe I’ll just go to work tomorrow morning like usual. It’s Sunday morning now and in the most unexpected of unexpected developments, the shutdown was averted and it’s business as usual. Stunning, really. It’s just a stopgap, and we’ll very likely be right down to the wire again in 45 days, but for now, all’s well that ends well. See you at 8:07 tomorrow morning.