Well, Valentine’s Day has come and gone. I took a bunch of photos, but my lighting was Very Poor due to the persistent clouds/snow so you will have to take my word for it that things were less gloomy than they seem in the pictures.
In preparation for Valentine’s Day, Carla and I did indeed make the adorable stripey sugar cookies. (I also made some polka dot ones just to see if I could.)
They were very cute but… cuter than they were tasty, I’d say. This could well have been user error; perhaps if I had pulled them out of the oven a minute or two earlier, they would be chewier than they were. But I think that the exuberant use of cornstarch in the recipe contributed to their rather… delicate flavor.
I bought myself red and white tulips, because flowers of all kinds but especially tulips make me feel cheery, and I painted my nails red. And then painted my ring finger nails pink with a red diagonal. (I did this Thursday and the polish was gone by Valentine’s Day. Also, I recognize that the photo of my nails is particularly hard to see.)
I bought myself some Reese’s peanut butter hearts (the too-small ones, not that I knew that when I bought them; I thought they would be the size of the Reese’s peanut butter eggs you get in individual packages for Eastertime), and I went a bit overboard with buying things for Carla, including a book of stickers, a drawing book, some stick-on earrings, and a giant, solid milk chocolate Hershey’s kiss.
A new bakery opened near us, so I also got us each two beautiful macarons. And, because I have been wanting to get her one since at least Thanksgiving but haven’t had an opportunity, I got a hot cocoa bomb for Carla.
We had a sugar free-for-all yesterday, and so all the treats are gone. Well, except for the cookies, of which there are still many, even though we packaged some of them up and delivered them to the kind neighbors who always allow Carla to pet their dogs.
On Valentine’s Day, I drank tea in a festive red and white cup. I made Carla a heart-shaped (frozen) waffle. I cut up some berries for both of us and covered them in whipped cream. (I added heart sprinkles to Carla’s breakfast, you know, in case she wasn’t about to get enough sugar.) (My husband slept in, so he missed the festive breakfasting, but Carla made him coffee.)
I did some reading. I took a very long and leisurely walk on the treadmill and watched an episode of The Office. And I snacked on candy and cookies whenever I felt like it. My husband and I ordered pizza for dinner and then watched an episode of The Queen’s Gambit. A perfectly adequate day.
I struggle with days like Valentine’s Day, where it seems like there are Certain Expectations (mine, society’s, the universe’s) which are never met. And yet complaining feels taboo, because a) someone always has it worse, and one should be (and is!!!) grateful for what one has and b) it IS a pretty silly holiday and c) complaining feels hurtful to the person who is not meeting said expectations, and who has, after all, been very clear all along about thinking Valentine’s Day is ridiculous. If *I* am the one who likes the holiday, and *I* am the one who finds it pleasing to have a day in the drear midwinter dedicated to something frivolous and fun, and *I* am the one who enjoys making A Big Deal out of it, then it makes sense that *I* should also be the one who orchestrates it the way I want. It does help, to have that attitude. To go in knowing, I WILL have flowers and I WILL have candy and I WILL cut out a bunch of paper hearts and stick them on the walls simply because it brings me joy, and I don’t have to worry about any expectations because I am meeting them myself. It helps. But it doesn’t eliminate the sensation of hurt. (Especially when my husband and daughter, who already each got several treats and gifties from me, also got gifts from my in-laws, and I didn’t. His parents assured us it was a mail delay, and of course it’s not like I NEED or even WANT anything, but I did feel a little self-pitying and near-tears about the whole day for a while.)
Well. No use sobbing over spilled conversation hearts, is there? I hope that at least YOUR Valentine’s Day exceeded expectations.
The best part about the day was FaceTiming with my parents. My mom had made a necklace of paper hearts for her dog to wear, as well as a huge handmade paper card from the dog to Carla, and it was just so sweet and adorable I can’t stop smiling about it. My mom always had a knack for making holidays joyful when I was a kid – maybe that’s why I feel so driven to make them special for Carla.
I did regret not getting myself a silly heart-shaped box of chocolates, though. I will know better for next year.
Okay, now that the sugar rush is behind us, and we are facing down a week of winter storms, let’s turn to some hearty, chill-banishing meals, shall we?
Crispy Shredded Chinese Chicken: This recipe seems to lend itself well to leftovers. Maybe a stir fry one day and lettuce wraps another?
Lentil Soup: My husband has been jonesing for some lentil soup and I agree that it sounds IDEAL for the weather we’re having. I’m guessing miracle no-knead bread would make for a perfect pairing.
Hello! I’m so glad to see you! Please, allow me to take your hats and mittens. Head right on into the kitchen and I will get you a hot drink.
Can you believe we haven’t gotten together like this since two years ago March? I know! Time is a wild wolverine, full of teeth and impossible to trap. In today’s session, I would be so grateful for your advice on pandemic birthday plans – mine, in particular – so please put your party planning hats on.
But before we get to that urgent agenda item, it seems critical that I fill you in on what an exterminator emergency is. Or at least, was, in the case of my particular exterminator postponement. (Carla speculated that it was bees! in the walls! which would indeed be an emergency, holy hot honey, but it was not that.) I asked our exterminator during his visit (after I determined that he and his loved ones are all okay, phew, may he live a long and healthy life) if he could satisfy my curiosity. Turns out it was a Live Mouse Issue. My mind, as you might imagine, went immediately to a room teeming with mice. But alas (for my imagination, not for him or his client), it was a single mouse that was alive and in his client’s kitchen. His poor client was, how shall we say?, dealing poorly with the appearance of the mouse. (My exterminator, in his low gentle drawl, “Lady was hysterical. What’d she think I can do? I am not a house cat.”) He was able to –
LOOK AWAY to the next ALL CAPS paragraph if you don’t care to learn about the (non-graphic, I promise) demise of a mouse…
— Have you looked away yet?
— Here is some buffer space for that pesky peripheral vision.
– trap it on a glue trap because it was already clearly very sick from ingesting poison and did not want to move much at all. And then he… disposed of the mouse. May it ascend to a cheese filled heaven.
— Buffer space for the lookers away —
— More buffer space in case your eyes are more curious than your brain —
All right, Party Planning Committee. On to the topic at hand, which is my birthday. I turn 40 later this month and I am feeling pre-mopeful about a) turning 40 and b) not being able to make A Big Deal about it.
This is ridiculous for many reasons, the top being: We are in a pandemic, and no one who is not a Kardashian is getting the birthday celebration they want. PLUS, even if we were not in a pandemic, I am not A Big Deal kind of a person, and would feel stressed and anxious about any sort of Big Deal being made over me, so why I am wistful over the lack of A Big Deal is a mystery for the stars to solve.
And yet I am full of self-pity because I am Fun.
So! I think what I need to do is, you know, buck up. And then plan some fun things so that I can look forward to the day if not the event. And that’s where you come in! Because we are in a pandemic! And many of my ideas will not fly!
Let’s establish a pre-pandemic celebratory baseline here.
Normally, for my birthday, I prefer to have a day off. I like to go get a massage, maybe a facial, maybe a pedicure. I like to do absolutely nothing at home – no cooking, no dishwashing, no anything. And I like to go out to a favorite restaurant, drink some yummy wine or champagne or cocktails, and stuff myself with something delicious and decadent. But of course I am not going to places for a massage these days nor am I going to restaurants.
For me, A Big Deal would look something like the above, but maybe with a babysitter for Carla and maybe another couple or two would join us for dinner, and then maybe we’d all go bowling afterward or head to a bar for margaritas or come back to my house to play board games. I remember one birthday when my husband and I went on a brewery tour with couple friends of ours; something like that would be an awesome way to spend my fortieth.
Of course, once again, we are not hanging out indoors with other people nor are we going on indoor tours of places, especially those involving taking off your mask to drink things, nor are we hiring babysitters, or going into bars or bowling alleys, or inviting not-my-exterminator other humans into our house.
In the Before Times, my husband (who turned 40 last fall with MUCH LESS WOE-IS-ME) and I had talked about the two of us, plus Carla, going to Europe as a joint birthday hurrah. That would have been delightful, but I have zero desire to get on a plane anytime soon.
So. Those are the things that are NOT happening.
What can I do instead?
Here are the very minimal plans I have already made:
I have requested that my husband make me lemon pudding cake, which is delicious.
I ordered two cute tops from StitchFix that I have had in my cart for awhile PLUS I ordered myself a Fix, to arrive on my birthday, which I haven’t done in ages because a) I have nowhere to wear Real Clothes and b) I have gained so much weight during the pandemic that I haven’t wanted to buy any new clothes.
Here are some additional things I am considering:
Good food. I am tossing around dinner ideas: would it be nice to make tacos at home, because I love tacos? Or maybe we could order takeout from our favorite Mexican restaurant? Or maybe we could try one of my other favorite restaurants that we haven’t visited since before the pandemic – and order steak or a burger or something that seems really risky (to me) as a takeout option. Probably best not to wing it on my birthday; nothing adds to the self-pity like a lukewarm soggy-bunned hamburger in a Styrofoam container.
Perhaps we could find a movie we haven’t watched yet and watch it. I have no idea what this would be; the new Amy Poehler movie doesn’t drop until March, so that one’s out of the running and I haven’t heard of anything else.
A game night? My brother got us The Deadbolt Mystery Society for Christmas. Maybe I will request that my husband and I start that as a birthday treat.
Near-birthday happy hour with friends. I haven’t had a virtual happy hour with my back-home friends for awhile. Maybe we could set one up on or near my birthday. Probably not ON; I wouldn’t want it to be about me, just about our normal catching up and chitting chat. But doing it the day before or day after my birthday might add to the fun anticipation.
Special sweets. Perhaps I will buy some Reese’s peanut butter hearts and snack on those all day. Ooohhh or order myself some Shari’s Berries, which I haven’t had in years.
Beyond these things – which are surely more than adequate in and of themselves – what can I do to make the day feel More Special? What would YOU Do?
I know for sure that I don’t want to request that my husband set up some sort of birthday parade; I can see how those would be so fun and bolstering for some people, but I would find one for ME to be stressful. I also know for sure that I do not want a big family Zoom session, which Carla had for her birthday and which she recommended with great enthusiasm for my birthday.
A dear friend of mine, who also turned 40 this year, said she and her family did a virtual beer tasting together. Something like that would be really fun, but I am guessing it is too late to plan it and even if not I would feel weird planning it for myself.
For my husband’s fortieth, our little family went on a long-weekend trip to a nearby state. We stayed in an Air BnB and ordered takeout and did outdoor activities and it was a lovely little getaway… but that seems less fun/doable in February, and I’m guessing we would have had to plan it in advance.
If you have had a birthday during the pandemic (most of us have, by now, gloom gloom gloom), what did you/someone else do to make it more special? Or was there something, in retrospect, you wish you had done instead/also? Have you thrown any virtual celebrations for anyone this year that went particularly well? – or badly, I would want to know if something went badly. Or do you have a birthday coming up – yours or someone else’s – for which you are already tossing around plans? If so, I would like to hear all about it. No plan is too simple or too extravagant or too specific to you that I don’t want to hear about it!
And, of course, if you just want to complain about birthdays I am always here for that.
The exterminator just called and told me one of his other clients has an emergency and would I mind please changing our appointment to next week. Um, no, of course not?! I don’t even want to THINK what might constitute an extermination emergency, so please, go help the poor people who need you. We can live with our silverfish for another few days. Anyway, now that I don’t have to flit fretfully around the exterminator while he does his work, I have an extra free hour or so in which I should be writing to kill, so let’s chat a bit, shall we?
It’s ironic that I should use the word “chat,” because I just left a lengthy complaint on Swistle’s latest post about how my wonderful, beloved child has been extra chatty in the mornings lately. To counteract the bad karma of complaining about my cherished daughter, I will effuse to you a bit because she is just SO FUN to talk to these days. (When it is not six-forty-five in the morning and when we are not trying to get out of the house to be somewhere on time.) She has so many questions and it’s fun to a) discover what’s going through her brain and b) see if I have a reasonable answer, or will have to leave her with the unsatisfying-for-all-of-us response of “we’ll have to look it up.” (My favorite chats take place in the car, so we cannot look it up just then.) She likes to ask about word origins, which can be fun to discuss, especially if I have a little insight into the etymology of whatever she’s got in mind. For instance, she might say that “rhinoceros” is a funny word, and I can point out that “rhin” is from the Greek word for nose and we can marvel over how appropriate a name it is for that particular animal. The other day, she asked me why singers use curse words in their music, I assume because she has been listening to some Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber songs that have lots of bleeped-out words. So I got to teach her a new word (“profanity”) and talk about why some people choose to use profanity, and why it’s not always a good choice, and then she got to say some curse words in the guise of asking me questions about them which is always fun for a seven-year-old to get away with. Our conversations are a delight. And fill me with confidence in her curiosity and intellect that I hold up as a talisman when I overhear her and her friends changing “Old Town Road” to “Old Town Butt” and then every other word of the lyrics is “butt.”
This has been a good week for writing. I was feeling, last week and over the weekend, Extreme Self-Pity (the book is terrible, I’m never going to finish, I’ve wasted my life, I’m a failure and everyone knows it, etc. etc.). Maybe indulging in my own personal pity party spurred an overcorrection because I’ve been writing my little fingers to the bone all week. (This round of revisions still isn’t finished.) (But it’s eking ever closer.) Or maybe it was written in the stars…
Astro Poets is the one true source of all my cosmic guidance.
While this is nearly a decade too late to be an “update,” yes, we still have silverfish. Usually they pop out once or twice a year, springish and fallish, but we’re having a little burst of them right now. Four sightings in the past week, plus a Very Unpleasant Incident in which I went to squish a silverfish that was chillin’ above my daughter’s bed right where the wall meets the ceiling, and instead of squishing obediently, the silverfish JUMPED OUT of my Kleenex and disappeared into my daughter’s bedding. And then, after my husband and I jointly and confidently assured Carla that no self-respecting silverfish – especially one that had recently been the victim of a near-squishing – would stay on the bed near the sight of said squishing, and if by chance it WAS on her bed, it was assuredly DEAD… and after we carefully took apart her bedding, piece by piece, examining each stuffed animal to ensure no silverfish, it was of course under her pillow, very much alive… and then after I attempted to re-squish it, it AGAIN leapt from my Kleenex, causing me – the person trying to be calm and unperturbed about something as harmless as a silverfish – to shriek in front of my daughter. (I did get it, in the end, and squished it and flushed it so it is doubly dead.) Don’t get me wrong – I’d MUCH rather have silverfish than many other creepy crawlies (or whatever constitutes an exterminator emergency; I really can’t stop thinking about what that may be). But I can’t say that we co-exist peacefully: they are so wiggly and have so very many legs. The exterminator – who is the same lovely sixtyish/seventyish-something gentleman who has been coming out to our house two to three times a year for a decade now – blames the silverfish on the number of books we have. I guess they like paper? But I have lived in homes full of books all my life, and this is the only house that has ever featured silverfish, so I’m skeptical and have not done anything to pare down our home library. I am looking forward to seeing the exterminator, for the reason of the silverfish, of course, but also because he is older and has been visiting people’s homes in a pandemic and I’d like to put eyes on him and make sure he’s okay. Aside from the microwave installation people, he is the only non-immediate-family-member who has been inside my house since last March. Which is weird.
In bragging news, I went to the grocery store today and scored ANOTHER bottle of bleach spray. My supplies were depleted a little because I scrubbed the grout last weekend and used up most of a bottle of bleach. (I also gave myself pretty serious chemical burns on two of my fingers, though they are mostly healed now.) I also picked up (we are back at the grocery store now) a bottle of different new-to-me Lysol (I still can’t find the lemon scent I prefer). This one has more of a typical antiseptic scent to it, with maybe a slight hint of orange, and I bought it because I need an occasional break from the mango-and-hibiscus Lysol I bought last time. I’m still going to use the tropical one of course; in a pandemic, one shouldn’t look a cleanser horse in the mouth, even if it is very sickly-sweet and gives me a headache. The grocery store seemed to be almost entirely back to pre-pandemic stocking levels. The only aisle that had anything resembling bare shelves was the cleaning products aisle; even the paper products aisle had shelves bursting with paper towels and toilet paper. Of course, no Grape Nuts or bucatini, but we will survive without.
This one gives off real no-nonsense cleaning-expert vibes. Unlike its frivolous, perfume-loving counterpartwho would totally blow off work to go get daiquiris.
Most days, I am okay with our pandemic way of life. I mean, I don’t LIKE it, and obviously I would prefer that everyone would wear a mask and vaccines were abundant and distributed quickly and efficiently so we could return to a pre-pandemic way of life. But mostly, I am getting used to it. About time, since it’s been going on for nearly an entire year.
I feel very fortunate that the isolated nature of our lives these days suits my personality and lifestyle. I already worked from home; I’m socially awkward; I’m an introvert. Once in awhile, though, I so start feeling lonely. And I want to figure out some way, any way, to interact with other non-immediate-family humans. I used to go through that cycle in The Before Times, too, where I’d go for long stretches without seeing anyone… and then I’d overcorrect by setting up a coffee date AND a dinner date AND a family get together all in the same week… which would completely exhaust and overwhelm me into swearing off human interaction ever again. Still happens, even now that there is really no such thing as having a social life. Carla and I are going to our outdoor sport tomorrow and will see a bunch of her friends and their parents, which will be good. And then on Sunday, my little family will be doing another outdoor activity with friends we haven’t seen since Halloween. Which will ALSO be good. But I am pre-exhausted and pre-overwhelmed by the thought of all this socializing. At least I’m not the only one.
My husband just got his second-round vaccine. This is such a HUGE relief; in a few weeks, he should be (mostly) protected from Covid-19 and I will worry about him MUCH LESS. Plus, my parents’ state has opened up vaccine registration to their age group, so they are on a list and should get their first round soon. Woo hoo! My brother and sister-in-law already got vaccinated because they are both front-line workers. Which leaves only six near-immediate family members to continue worrying about. I mean, I always worry about ALL my family members, but I can downgrade the threat level for a few of them now.
The asparagus is gone. But not eaten. It looked fine, but at some point I started to notice a faint garbage-y smell emanating from our fridge so I threw them away. Sorry asparagus. Wasn’t meant to be.
Speaking of vegetables, I am continuing to work on increasing Carla’s vegetable consumption. In the car after school yesterday, she announced, with great conviction, that she HATES vegetables. (She is discouraged from using the word “hate” except in cases where she feels most strongly.) I had to remind her that she likes lettuce and sugar snap peas and green beans and red peppers and tomatoes. (“I only EAT green beans and red peppers, Mommy, I don’t LIKE them,” she informed me. “And bell peppers and tomatoes are FRUIT, not vegetables.”) Getting her to eat veggies, especially NEW ones, requires creative thinking. The other day, I decided to renew my efforts to get her to like broccoli. She only likes the broccoli “floof” (relatable) but claims not to like broccoli at all. (When she was younger, she would eat it frozen OR cooked with cheese sauce! I don’t know when she stopped liking it!) “You just haven’t found a preparation you like,” I said. So we did a taste test. One floret of raw broccoli; one floret of raw broccoli dipped in ranch; one piece of roasted broccoli with salt and olive oil; one piece of roasted broccoli with lemon juice; one piece of roasted broccoli with parmesan. To increase the Fun Factor (wood board my life is sad), I made a survey for her to fill out as she tried each candidate. The results were not promising.
Carla has her own food priorities.
I think I am in a bit of a book slump. After my gloomy post the other day, I decided the best remedy for Feeling Down was to pick up a good book.I finally, after many, many months, downloaded The Heir Affair to my kindle and read it. I knew it would be exactly what I needed – funny, fast-paced, engrossing, well-written, totally removed from the real world – and indeed it was. Everything I hoped it would be and more! I LOVED IT. But I finished it in two days and am now casting about for what to read next. See? Book slump. And it’s not for want of books! (See above re: silverfish vacation destination.) I have SO MANY books both on my kindle and on my bookshelves/nightstand just waiting for me to read them! I am, in fact, in the middle of three separate books (a trait I get from my mother, apparently), each of which is very good, and each of which is completely not what I’m looking for at this particular moment. Which is The Heir Affair again. Or its prequel, The Royal We. Or The Holdout, which was another book I could not put down. That’s what I want: something completely absorbing and unputdownable. But it also shouldn’t be sad. Or… deal with anything too heavy. What is the most unputdownable, semi-light-subject-wise book you’ve read? Or, if that’s too specific, what is the most absorbing book you’ve read recently?
A mix of books I have and have not yet read.
Well, it’s not actually SUNNY outside right now, but the clouds are high/thin enough that there is something approximating light streaming through the windows. And I can’t tell you how cheering it is, in all its diffuse dimness. I will take what I can get!
