so many jars

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Pandemic Randomosity: Turns Out This Is Mostly About Groceries and Masks Edition

First of all, I love you, Internet. Thank you for understanding. Secondly, turns out I am not yet in the mood to talk about cake. Instead, I have some randomosity.

  • Today was my twice-monthly grocery store run. I didn’t see anyone without a mask. Nothing seemed to be out of stock — plenty of pasta, beans, sauces, cheese, frozen pancakes. The green pepper situation was atrocious, which is disappointing to me because they are one of my favorite vegetables, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the pandemic. I am aware there is a graham cracker shortage, based on my previous grocery store run, but I have enough for my family’s limited graham cracker needs. Fortunately, pickles were well stocked. This is relevant to me because I just purchased the sixteenth and seventeenth jars of pickles since the pandemic has begun. Maybe this doesn’t seem THAT outrageous. Until you realize that the only person who has eaten ANY pickles at all is Carla. Since she still barely eats anything green – peas, occasionally green beans, very rarely broccoli – I am counting pickles as a vegetable.
Pickles

I have no idea why this picture is so off kilter. I tried to adjust it so it didn’t look I was standing sideways and no matter how I did it, it looked odd.

  • Probably I should buy THREE jars of pickles every two weeks. Carla would certainly eat them. But considering I am one of the few shoppers who seems to be filling her cart so full that the baggers automatically go and get me an extra cart when I pull up to the checkout, I think we are doing okay with two. Also, there has to be a limit to how many pickles a person can eat. We may not have reached it, but we are certainly VERY CLOSE.
  • I have stopped keeping the pickle jars. My husband helped me recycle a bunch of the jars I had saved and I have since been – woefully, regretfully – recycling each new jar as it is finished. The only thing that has helped me let go of these beautiful, beautiful jars is that they NEVER stop smelling like pickles. I have run them all through the dishwasher multiple times, I have cleaned them out with boiling vinegar and baking soda, I have handwashed them with Dawn, and they still reek of their former occupants.
  • Another pandemic food milestone we have reached – if you can count “sixteenth and seventeenth jars of pickles” as a milestone; frankly, I am counting each new jar as a milestone in itself – is that we have finally reached the end of our frozen chicken supply. Way back in February, when there were murmurings of needing two weeks of food, I started buying extra packages of chicken and ground beef so our freezer would have two weeks’ worth at any time. I have continued to buy one or two packages of chicken and ground beef each time I go to the store, freezing extras, so it took a long time to go through it all. But this week we ate the very last package of frozen chicken. Today, I bought enough chicken for the next two weeks, but not beyond that. (Again, when I’m already buying So Much Food, it feels really weird/greedy to be getting extras, even though there is no limit on number of packages anymore.)
  • Instead of a freezer full of meat, we have moved onto a freezer full of frozen fruit. While I have in general stopped drinking alcohol during the week (except on days when our governor holds a Big Press Conference), I am making Fun Cocktails on the weekends. Pina coladas, strawberry daiquiris, frozen vodka lemonade, frozen mango margaritas, frose. This afternoon I am making frozen palomas; I will report back.
  • Speaking of milestones: Carla finished first grade! Maybe I will say this with every grade she completes, but it feels like first grade is the End of the Small Child Years. Second grade seems so… BIG. Maybe because second grade is the first year of which I have real, distinct memories. I have little clips and memory shorts of kindergarten and first grade, but second grade I REMEMBER. I don’t know whether to hope the same for Carla; second grade for her, after all, is building up to be memorable in very unpleasant ways. Anyway: we got to say goodbye to her wonderful, wonderful teachers – to whom I am so grateful because they are kind and loving and did their absolute BEST to make remote learning worthwhile for the kids and less of a burden on the parents – and we got to say goodbye to endless hours of arguing over work Carla didn’t want to do and I didn’t know how to teach.
  • Carla’s teachers came over to say goodbye in person. It was so sweet. They sat in the grass on our lawn and chatted with Carla while I valiantly held back tears. The import of the moment didn’t really hit Carla – she loved seeing them, but didn’t get upset at all about saying goodbye which is unusual for her. Her biggest takeaway was that they arrived together in one car! Together! In the same car! TOGETHER! This pandemic is really screwing up our kids, isn’t it. We gave her teachers s’mores cupcakes and I wrote each of them a rambling and tearful and effusive letter about how much they meant to me and to Carla. (I also contributed to the class gift; why I feel compelled to stress this point, I don’t know.)

Smores cupcakes

  • We celebrated the end of remote learning (“end” — ha – we’ll see about that, won’t we) with a fancy tea party in our living room. Carla was so delighted by it that I wonder why I don’t do it more often. It takes very little effort and brings her so much joy.
Tea party

Fancy child’s tea set from my own childhood paired with my grandmother’s china. Makes mini PB&J sandwiches and chickpea salad and lemonade that much tastier. And once again I do not understand the camera angle here and why everything looks slightly wonky. Also, I do not iron tablecloths for Thanksgiving or Christmas so I definitely do not iron tablecloths for tea parties.

  • Summer has been okay so far. I was very, very sad that camp couldn’t happen this year. But Carla and I are making do. We are still Staying Home as much as possible – for us, things haven’t really changed since March/April, except that fewer people seem to be doing the same thing. I have been planning some lessons for us to work on each day – some are a bigger hit than others – and we have been doing a LOT of bike riding/walking and scootering/walking (I am the one doing the walking) and a LOT of screen using and a LOT of playing in our backyard and a LOT of collecting bugs. It is a quiet, sometimes lonely summer, but I think it is going better than I anticipated.
Sow bug 1

You cannot see them, but there are sow bugs in the little tupperware. We found them under a big rock in the backyard. Carla put the container in the planter so the sow bugs could have “some beautiful flower scenery.” She didn’t believe me when I suggested that the sow bugs probably preferred their own dark, moist under-rock scenery, but maybe they enjoyed the change.

  • It has been a quiet, sometimes lonely summer, but I think it is going better than I anticipated. In fact, some days are really good. Some days Carla loves the projects I have assigned her, and/or we spend most of the day outside making obstacle courses with chalk and running through the sprinkler, and/or we cuddle up on the couch and eat popcorn and watch movies old together (I’m talking original-Jumanji old, not Casablanca), and/or we have picnics and popsicles under the tree in our front yard, and/or make baked goods together. Some days, though, we have door slamming and very pointed signage.
Mom keep out sign

That, if you have not already guessed, is me.

  • This stage of the pandemic seems to be centered largely around acceptable risk. (I wrote “reasonable” but then erased it, because while I cannot see someone hosting a large, mask-free get-together as “reasonable,” I can see it as acceptable to that person.) I feel sort of a grim determination to stick to my own low level of risk-taking. The only not-my-home building I regularly enter (every two weeks) is the grocery store. I have been to Costco, wearing a mask, twice since February. I have been into Barnes and Noble once, wearing a mask, to get Carla her free birthday cupcake, and she and I went into an empty donut shop, wearing masks, to get a donut. I have also been into the post office two or three times, wearing a mask, to swiftly drop off my pre-paid packages and get the hell out of there. I have been to the doctor once, and then to the lab. I have also been briefly inside a couple of restaurants, to pick up takeout. And inside the gas station, twice, to refill our propane tank. All while wearing a mask. These very infrequent and short-term visits seem acceptable to me, although I fret about them before and after.
  • Other people so CLEARLY have a different, higher tolerance for risk. And there is such a wide range! From hunkering down at home and ordering everything to be delivered and then disinfecting every item, like a friend of mine continues to do, to going pretty much back to business as usual but with a mask, to completely denying that there is a pandemic at all. The gas station where I get propane for our grill, for instance, is some sort of local crossroads for anti-maskers. The first time I went in, I was the only person in the entire place wearing a mask. The second time, after our city made mask-wearing mandatory, only one person was without a mask. But ALL five of the staff had their masks down around their chins. (And the person who took my propane tank order could not understand me!!! While it is most likely that he was just hard of hearing, part of me wonders if he was doing it on purpose, to goad me into removing my mask. I held firm, repeating myself more loudly and slowly. Fortunately, the unmasked construction worker next to me helped me out by saying, “She wants to exchange her propane tank.” Phew.)
  • Carla and I have not been wearing masks when we go to local parks for bike rides. We are so rarely in the proximity of others, and even then, it’s for such a brief period. And we are outside, which scientists seem to agree makes it tougher to contract Covid19. So for me, it is an acceptable risk to leave our masks in the car. (Well, I carry one for each of us in my fanny pack just in case.) But… I still feel anxious about it. Also, when we encounter other walkers/bikers who ARE wearing masks, I feel guilty. “I wear masks too!” I want to assure them. “I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s ridiculous!” Instead, I try to give them as much clearance as possible, and to communicate with my smile that I am WITH them, not against them. But I wonder if, after they pass, they whisper amongst themselves or complain on their blogs about how so many people DON’T wear masks when out riding bikes/walking, what is WRONG with them?! And I don’t blame them. We all have our personal levels of acceptable risk and it’s hard not to feel weird when you encounter someone with a different risk threshold.
  • I have engaged in four social outings, three with the same family. One occasion, we all went on a bike ride with family friends. One occasion, I brought a bottle of champagne to my friend’s house for her birthday and we sat in her backyard on opposite ends of a table and put the bottle of bubbly in the center alongside a bottle of hand sanitizer. (I also brought my own glass.) On two occasions, I brought my husband and daughter along to that same friend’s house. These family friends are being VERY careful, and they are very close friends, and we’ve been outside each time. We sit at least six feet apart. We haven’t shared any meals (although I may be getting closer to being okay with doing so). We haven’t used their bathroom. It’s been very nice to get together with other adults. And I think Carla has loved playing with their kids.
  • Speaking of kids: we have had a couple of accidental playdates. With people we know; they just weren’t planned and I would not have agreed to them had we discussed them in the first place. But I have not been able to figure out how to reject a playdate once it’s sort of already in action. Like if someone shows up at your house to drop something off and then the kids see each other and are so delighted about the opportunity to hang out that you just don’t know how to disentangle yourself. (Especially because you are Staying at Home, so there are no reasonable excuses.) One of the families has a wildly different idea of acceptable risk than I do, so I have been trying really hard to prevent any more accidental (or planned) playdates from happening with them. It’s easier to decline when I am being specifically asked to do something. The thing is: kids are BAD at social distancing. No matter how many times I remind Carla, in advance and in the moment, she can’t seem to remember/understand the six-feet rule. I keep seesawing between wanting to tell her the playdate will end immediately if she can’t keep her distance… and not wanting to give her a complex. It’s so hard.
  • Also, I feel constantly judgmental. Saying that I have this very low-level of risk acceptance – and not doing the things that are above that threshold – just makes me seem like I am questioning your choices. And, okay, sometimes I AM judgmental; if you are the manager of a pizza place and you remove your mask to tell me how things are backed up because it is super hot in the restaurant and everyone has to wear masks at all times, I am going to judge you. (I am also going to feel sorry for you, because it must be super uncomfortable to be wearing a hot mask while working around super hot pizza ovens. But wearing a mask means WEARING the mask.) But usually I am NOT judging you and your choices. Carla has a friend whose parents seem much more relaxed about things – they are operating more in the vein of “social interaction trumps social distancing” and I GET IT. I do not think badly of them for engineering get-togethers for their kids, even though I am uncomfortable joining them. I am not judging them. I am just feeling grim. I wish I felt like I could take more risks. I wish I could be more sanguine about where we are with this pandemic. I wish I wasn’t so full of fear and despair.
  • I am avoiding writing anything about the upcoming school year. It is all horrible.
  • Oh here is something school-related that isn’t quite so awful. Well, okay, it is heartbreaking in its own way, but it’s PRACTICAL and we can DO SOMETHING about it. That is: Masks. Carla has been practicing wearing masks. (I have joined her so she doesn’t feel singled out.) (This makes it sound like her choice; I am FORCING her to practice wearing a mask.) We have been doing it roughly every day for a week or so now, increasing the duration by five minutes a day. It is going okay. I like that I can be there to note when her nose pops out so I can remind her that her nose has to be covered. And I like that I can see the masks in action.
  • To prepare for school, I have been trying to stock up on masks for her. I estimate she’ll need at least one for each day of the week (this is assuming she goes to school in person and for five days in a row — I am such an optimist! both about there being this option and about my comfort level in having her attend!), because I don’t want to wash masks more than once a week. And that she will also need extras because kids lose things. But it’s hard to know what the RIGHT mask is. Right now, she has five masks from Hanna Andersson, which are in cute, bright colors and seem well-made and have a little pocket for a filter. (I haven’t yet figured out filters.) She also has five masks from Old Navy which are also pretty cute, but are wider than the Hanna masks. They don’t have a pocket for a filter. I also got five of the Old Navy ones and I like them just fine. But they don’t fit Carla well at ALL, so I’m really glad we are practicing now so that we can find something that works. I also ordered two face masks from Guess (I had a gift card that has been in my wallet for nearly twenty years and I FINALLY used it to buy masks which was the perfect way to spend it), and the kids’ one is ENORMOUS, even after washing and drying. A friend of mine is sewing face masks for her family and offered to make a couple for Carla, which I gladly took her up on. (I ordered some curbside pickup fabric from Joann Fabric, and also provided my friend with an old, soft pillowcase for the lining.)
Kids masks

Kids’ masks: Hanna on the left, Old Navy on the right, Guess not pictured because it is unwearable.

  • The biggest problem with the kids’ masks is the ear loops. Way back at the beginning of the pandemic, I ordered a couple of masks from Etsy that had the ties that go around your head. Those are so much better for Carla – they just fit her face better – but she cannot tie the ties herself and I am certain her teachers will not want/be able to help her. But the ones with elastic loops that go over her ears… well, the loops are too long and keep coming off her ears. There was a video going around online that showed a way to adjust your mask, but that didn’t work for Carla’s masks. So I think I am going to order some ear loop adjusters from Amazon and see if those help. If not… I guess I will hope that my friend feels up to sewing ten masks for Carla. (Just kidding.)
  • To end on a truly random note, my favorite pandemic food (currently) is this vodka pasta that is attributed to Gigi Hadid for reasons I have declined to care about. It is SO delicious and decadent.

 

Okay, that’s enough babbling for today, Internet. What’s up with you?

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Pandemic Randomosity: Six Pounds of Sour Cream Edition

Yesterday I wrote out a long whiny self-pitying post because I was having A Bad Day. But I didn’t finish it or post it you’re welcome  and today I am feeling MUCH better. So let’s try some randomosity.

  • It’s Friday, which used to mean something. For me, it used to mean the end to silence. My pre-pandemic days used to be filled with blissful silence and multiple, consecutive hours of time to myself. Now, I am with someone 24 hours a day. Well, unless you count the couple hours a night when my husband and I go to our separate corners of the house – he to the basement to play video games, me to the living room to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I have two episodes left in the series and I am DEVASTATED. Whatever will I watch next?!?! Anyway, I suppose I should count those two hours as alone time, but I DON’T. I guess what I am missing is productive alone time? Time where I could write or exercise without being interrupted? I don’t know. Anyway, NOW Fridays are meaningless because the weekend is just more of the same. Well, I suppose weekends are now two days of no school, which is FAR preferable to distance learning days… but it still feels the same. Just with less sobbing.
  • I harvested some lettuce yesterday. I probably should have taken a picture of what the lettuce looked like, all full and fluffy, before I cut off a bunch of leaves. But I did not. I don’t expect your disappointment, should you feel any at all, to last beyond this sentence. I added carrots and onion, as is my custom, and doused the whole thing in ranch dressing. It was fun to eat lettuce that I grew and harvested but it wasn’t as crunchy as grocery store lettuce. I read about that and knew to expect it, but the salad was still a little… limp.
  • Still on the topic of salad, somehow: I got a head of iceberg in my curbside grocery order yesterday. It was the smallest head of lettuce I have ever seen. Imagine that someone had chopped a slightly-below-normal sized head in half and then carefully wrapped the cut edge in the outer leaves of lettuce. I have not checked to see whether this is what actually happened — that I, in fact, am the proud owner of half a head of lettuce. Well. Nonetheless. We must not complain about these things. The grocery store gods taketh away, but lo, they also giveth! The last time I got curbside delivery, I ordered two 8-oz containers of sour cream, on sale for $1 apiece, and instead received two three-pound containers of sour cream, and was charged $1 apiece. That is SIX POUNDS of sour cream for $2. So what if I had to remove a bag of green peppers from my order yesterday and throw them directly in the trash (they were so wrinkled and softened and had large spreading bruises and I am so very sorry but I was not ever going to eat them) – I have a BOUNTY of sour cream. If there is a sour cream shortage in the near future, you know who to blame.
  • How long will it take to figure out the New Shopping Rules? I’m not talking about masks and one-way aisles etc. I am talking about PLANNING when a) you don’t know what a store will have and b) you don’t know when you’ll be able to go next and c) you are not quite able to predict what you will run out of/need? I am erring on the side of Buy All the Things, Just in Case, but even so I encounter deficits. When I went to the store a week ago (was it only a week ago??? time no longer makes sense), I did not realize that I needed to buy my husband the milk he likes. And then by the time he told me he needed more, I had already placed the curbside pickup order (you have to order five days in advance, and there is no way to update your cart once the order has been placed) and am not planning to go to the real grocery store for another week if I can help it. Well, and when I can go will depend entirely on my husband’s in-office schedule. Perhaps he could have let me know when his milk was half-gone, so that I could have put it on the list. But of course HE doesn’t think about things that way, because a) he has never been the primary grocery shopper and b) he has not adjusted AT ALL to the scarcity of both shopping frequency and available items. Well. Next time we will know. And I still haven’t gotten the hang of not being able to run to the store for odd things I forget, either. I am kicking myself for not anticipating how much I would be craving avocados. But we do have a good supply of tomatoes for those in my family who like them. And, of course, the aforementioned sour cream surplus.
  • I have been on a quest to find margaritas. For some reason, I have a serious hankering for a restaurant-style marg. I mean, I have tequila (for now), and I always buy limes when I go to the store, so I can make my own at home. But, while lime-juice-and-tequila is good, it is not quite as satisfying as a big ol’ properly mixed drink. Plus I am tired of squeezing limes. And it takes a LOT of lime juice to achieve my preferred level of sweetness. Fortunately, we have a few Mexican restaurants in the area that allow you to purchase margaritas. Unfortunately, takeout tacos are not very good. Nevertheless, I think we’ll try them out this weekend if ONLY so I can get a proper marg.
  • Last night, I had a very long in-depth dream about writing a memoir. This is ridiculous because I have a very un-book-worthy life. I think it might be my brain’s reaction to the very mediocre memoir I am reading right now. I like memoirs. But some of them can be SO DREADFUL. This one is particularly boring. And it seems AWARE that it is boring, because occasionally the writer will throw in some event that seems designed to counteract the tedium… but it ends up feeling forced. This one also seems very superficial, like the writer is declining to do any sort of introspection about his life. I don’t know if that’s because the writer is afraid of introspection, or incapable of it, or if the introspection itself is boring, or if there’s something deeper and more sinister beneath the surface that would get out of control if he examined it? I don’t know. But I’m disappointed and a little exasperated with the writer. He’s led an objectively interesting life and could at the VERY LEAST go into some interesting details about the behind-the-scenes world of radio programming. The little he does share is not enough. (For me.) I wonder if it’s harder to write a memoir when you are still a working celebrity. Maybe you have too many concerns about blowing up your life or ruining your relationships to be as forthcoming as you could be. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations here, but I would think that the POINT of a memoir is to be as honest as possible. Okay, okay. I know the ACTUAL point is to make money. I’m not naïve. But if you are going to read a celebrity memoir, I recommend Jessica Simpson’s – in which she writes as though she is sharing her life story and intimate feelings with a friend – over this one, which feels like the writer is simply sharing sanitized-for-syndication stories with an audience of strangers. Which, of course, is exactly what he’s doing, why am I so hard to please?!?!
  • There are a couple of gift-giving occasions coming up, and I am struggling to figure out what to GIVE. First is Mother’s Day. My husband and I ordered gifts for our mothers yesterday after discovering just how extensive some shipping delays have become. Even so, the gifts aren’t due to arrive until the day AFTER Mother’s Day, which is a bummer. I am kicking myself for not planning ahead. Anyway, I would ALSO like to get something for my sister. She is a single mom who works full time AND of course cares for her daughter almost constantly. And now that her daughter is home with her 24/7, there aren’t even any thoughtful preschool teachers to help her daughter make her a card or anything. So I definitely want to celebrate her in some way. The hard thing is that we aren’t particularly close, so I don’t know, for instance, her favorite local takeout places. A gift certificate to an online store might be good – like Sephora or something – since she can use it to order exactly what she wants. But gift certificates are also so impersonal, even if they are useful. Maybe that’s what we’ll end up doing. But I am OPEN to any and all suggestions for great gifts that ANYONE would like.
  • Again, on the Mother’s Day topic: Can you think of any way I can get her daughter to make her a Mother’s Day card/gift/anything without her knowing or needing to be involved? I considered reaching out to my niece’s father, but he is in law enforcement and therefore kind of busy. I have the contact info for my niece’s father’s sister, but she is ALSO a single mother and I don’t want to make her life more difficult or rub the whole Mother’s Day THING in her face. Whereas I can give Carla a fairly wide berth when she is on FaceTime, and even leave the room to let her chat with her grandparents or whomever, my niece is four-almost-five and seems to need constant supervision. UGH. I don’t know what to do. Any brilliant ideas? At all?
  • Speaking of my niece: Her birthday is coming up in May as well. I am thinking of getting some sort of decorate-your-own-cookies kit to send her… and some sort of gift. Ideally I would get a her a gift that allows for lots of independent play and minimal setup/cleanup. But apparently now that my own daughter is nearly seven, I have completely forgotten what a newly-five-year-old is capable of and likes to do. HELP?
  • And now I am starting to feel pre-anxious/sad about Carla’s birthday. It is at the end of June and I had hoped hoped hoped that we would have achieved some sense of (new) normalcy by then… But it doesn’t look like that will happen, does it? I know people all over the world are dealing with shelter-in-place birthdays, and it’s not really a big deal, even in the — what’s the opposite of “grand scheme of things”? short-term scheme of things? But I am already sad and overwhelmed at the idea of making the day special for Carla. Okay. I am going to Not Think About It right now and allow Future Me to deal with it in a few weeks. Perhaps things will have changed.
  • My husband and I plan to embark on a Baking Project this weekend. We have already made a couple of fun things – including homemade naan (YUM) and homemade cinnamon rolls (ALSO YUM) – but this time we want to try a lemon olive-oil tart. The only thing holding us back is a lack of a tart pan. I think that we can get away with making the tart in a regular pie pan because it doesn’t matter what it looks like so much as what it tastes like. My husband disagrees because he is even more of a Stringent Rule Follower than I am. Neither one of us is willing to budge from our clearly superior position. So for now we are at an impasse. Maybe I will see if tart pans are part of Target’s curbside pickup offerings. (I won’t tell my husband unless they ARE; I don’t want to appear to have given up my perfectly reasonable alternative solution that easily.) Maybe I will make focaccia instead.
  • Surprisingly, most of all to me, I have been keeping up with my loose Housecleaning Schedule pretty well. The clutter still presents a constant threat, but we’ve been hacking away at it when it springs up and seem to have gotten into a rhythm. Yes, I know this is like talking about how your baby is finally sleeping through the night; I know how Putting It in Writing works. But SO FAR. My floors are free of debris, my appliances – but for one completely anonymous handprint on the fridge door – are shiny, the clean laundry has been folded and put away (ignore the dirty laundry in to-be-washed piles on my closet floor; I can only handle one load a day). It’s pretty neat and tidy around here. Except for one thing. Apparently I forgot to put “clean the microwave” on the to-do list. It looks like an episode of Law & Order: Cheese Dip Explosion Unit in there. But it has a door I can close so most of the day I feel like there is no problem at all. Isn’t that the very best kind of solution?
  • It feels like I am writing about the exact same things I’ve already written about. Am I the blog equivalent of your elderly Aunt Sylvie saying, “Stop me if you’ve heard this already” before launching into the same old story about that time she saw Bette Midler in the dog park that you can recite along by heart? If so, please forgive me. My brain is so very foggy and there is so very little going on in my life right now.
  • It seems that I have become A Person Who Cannot Get Rid of Jars. Sure, in The Time Before, I kept the occasional jar; I use them for homemade salad dressing and pizza sauce and lime juice (for margaritas). But I never had more than four jars at a time and was perfectly fine putting an empty (washed) jar into the recycling bin. But now I am INCAPABLE of getting rid of them! Just now, Carla finished another jar of pickles and I said to myself, “Self, you already HAVE a pickle jar. And ten other jars. You do NOT need this pickle jar. Just rinse and recycle. Rinse and recycle.” And I kept muttering, “rinse and recycle” to myself as I rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher because obviously I am going to keep it. Such a strange form in which my pandemic anxiety has chosen to manifest! It’s not like there’s a JAR SHORTAGE during this pandemic! I would feel much less perplexed by my choices if I were hoarding toilet paper. Or yeast. But JARS? This is going to be A Thing Carla talks about with her future spouse, isn’t it? “Oh, I know it’s weird. But as long as I can remember, she’s always had shelves full of jars!” “What do you MEAN you got Mother a collection of artisan jams for her birthday? You KNOW she has a jar problem!”
  • We just got an email about summer camp.  I opened the email with pounding heart and mounting dread. I mean, I know deep in my bones that camp isn’t happening this summer. And even if it IS an option, will I actually feel comfortable sending Carla? Would it be better to keep enrollment to people whose parents work full-time and really need childcare? But right now, in the first week since our governor confirmed there will be no more school this year, I feel like the prospect of No Camp — no, the prospect of being Carla’s Sole Source of Support and Entertainment… and also food and clean laundry and cuddles and discipline and education — is just too heavy and heartbreaking to face. But there is no ruling yet. The camp just wanted to let us know that they will decide in the next few weeks. THE SUSPENSE. IT IS WORSE THAN THE KNOWING.
  • In Other Things We Don’t Yet Know, I am torturing myself about school next fall. It is so far away that it really isn’t worth fretting over. So many things can and will change before August. But I keep turning over and over in my mind the question: what would have to happen to make me feel safe sending Carla to school? I know I am in a uniquely privileged position of even being able to think about this, of even being able to consider NOT sending her (if that is something I would consider, which… I don’t know!). My barre studio sent out an email survey this week, asking about measures we’d like to see before we returned to studio workouts. And I found myself asking something similar: what would have to happen to make me feel safe returning to small, enclosed room full of heavily-breathing women? I don’t know. Well. * Brisk brushing-off motion. * This sounds like another concern for Future Me.

 

That’s all I’ve got today, Internet. I am off to bathe myself in sour cream, probably.