winter is coming

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Friday Randomosity: Distraction by Shopping and Cat Edition

I love you and appreciate you. Thank you for being here.

Here are some random thoughts cluttering up my brain this morning.

  • One of the things I most frequently say to Carla is, “Tools only help if you use them.” Well, lately I have been having a hell of a time following my own advice. I’ve been consistently waking up at about 5:30 these days, which is working for a lot of reasons (and is really working for the cat). But for some reason, this shift has caused me to repeatedly forget to take my morning medication. My medication has always been on my nightstand, and my husband is often still asleep when I creep out of the room, and I don’t want to risk waking him up by rattling a bunch of pills. Obviously, just because I have always kept my medicine on my nightstand doesn’t mean I need to continue doing so! I could move them into the bathroom, or into my office, or the kitchen. Or! I could use the pill organizer I already own – and have neglected since my summer visit to my parents’ house – and have my morning medications all ready to go in the same tiny compartment. The tool is RIGHT THERE. Why is it so difficult for me to PUT IT TO USE?
It really is a useful little fella.
  • Speaking of getting up early: I have a plan for getting up earlier. My plan is to continue waking up at the same time I do now even once the clocks change. The cat refuses to adhere to human constructs like Daylight Savings, so I know he will help me by continuing to come into my room to apply his purr-and-bite wake-up system directly to my person. This way, I will soon be waking up at 4:30, and then, MAYBE, I will be able to exercise and shower before I start my day. 
  • By the way, every time my actual alarm goes off at 5:21 and I hit snooze so I can play Wordle and Connections on my phone and cuddle my purring kitten, I think of Sarah and how she referred to this behavior as “bed rot.” The term is amusing enough (I visualize myself slowly rotting like an old zucchini) that it does not spur me out of bed immediately at 5:21, although it is visceral enough that I no longer stay in bed after my snooze alarm sounds at 5:30. Thank you, Sarah, for the motivating morning visual.  
  • My eyes have been doing this thing where they suddenly sting and start streaming tears and I can’t see properly for a long time. The phenomenon has happened maybe ten times in the past couple of years (and definitely started pre-kitten, so there is no need to blame Lenny, not that you would), but it started happening more frequently in August and September. It seems to strike out of nowhere, sometimes in the morning, sometimes later in the day. I haven’t identified any specific trigger. I do all the things: take out my contacts, remove any makeup I’m wearing, flush my eyes with water. A few times, I’ve had to lie on my back with a damp washcloth on my eyes. I reported this issue to the eye doctor who suggested eye drops for dry eyes, so I use those as a preventive measure. But it occurred to me recently that maybe I’m allergic to my mascara? I love drugstore mascaras, like Maybelline The Falsies and L’Oreal Voluminous False Fiber Lashes. In fact, I purchased a tube of Maybelline Lash Sensational Firework mascara in early September. It seemed that I mostly had these weird reactions when I was wearing mascara; maybe I was allergic to it? So I took myself to Google and read a bunch of articles about the best mascara for sensitive eyes and ended up buying this one. Yes, it is $28 (even on amazon), which is FAR more than I typically prefer to spend on my mascara. But oh how I love it! It makes my lashes nice and long. It doesn’t seem to clump. My eyes haven’t had a single reaction in the weeks I’ve been using it. And, best of all, it comes off my lashes without having to use paint thinner. I suppose it’s still early days, and my eyes could decide to revolt against this mascara… or perhaps there is something totally unrelated to mascara that is causing the stinging/tearing issue. But right now, I am in LOVE with this mascara.
  • Speaking of things I love lately, I am really into this guacasalsa from Trader Joe’s. It’s possible I’ve mentioned this before, but I forgot about it for awhile. It’s really good – slightly tangy, slightly creamy, neither guacamole nor (very mild) salsa. I love it on chicken tacos but it is good on nachos, too.
Can you spot the cat in this photo? He is obsessed with the fridge and freezer and will scamper into the kitchen any time we open them.
  • Back to discussing makeup. I have never been a person who wears foundation. I don’t like it. But it seems like maybe foundation – or other products with similar benefits to foundation – has improved since I last wore it, which was at my senior prom in 1999. What I want is something that goes on and feels like a moisturizer but has some sort of blurring/smoothing effect as to even out my skin and hide my undereye circles. What I don’t want is something that makes me skin a different color than my neck, or something that looks cakey or flaky, or something that emphasizes my wrinkles by cracking around my mouth or eyes. Does this magical product exist? Bonus points if it works with sensitive skin (my skin is prone to break outs if cosmetics even glance my way). I think I am looking for a tinted serum, but… that’s as far as I’ve gotten. What do you use?
  • Older kids are amazing part 324: Carla did all the Halloween decorating this year! I am so pleased with how it turned out. All I had to do was bring the box of Halloween decorations upstairs and she took care of the rest. Are things arranged the exact way I would have arranged them? Nope. Do I care? Not one bit. (Update: Lenny / Leo has decided the decorations don’t scare him.)
Cat and pumpkin have achieved an uneasy peace… for now.
  • Colorful leaves are not the only view I enjoy about fall. Right now, I am loving the Halloween decorations I see as I drive. While I know it’s not for everyone, Halloween is such a delightful time of year for me. I’m not even really into it the way a lot of people are, but it’s a season of pure joy (and chills) that has no expectations besides sharing a bit of candy. I love everything – the super scary scenes, the animatronic ghosts and ghouls, the yards that have a million zombies, the roving orange spotlights on people’s houses, the arrangements of pumpkin and squash, the giant skeletons, the inflatable spiders. My only question is where do people KEEP their Halloween decorations during the off season? All of my decorations (except for one stand-up ghost) fit into a single plastic bin and I love that. Some yards showcase so many skeletons and zombies, I wonder if the owners have a separate storage space just for their decorations.
These guys are going through some things.
  • It’s been super rainy this week, as befits the latter half of October. I do hope we get some warm, dry weather for Halloween. For the first time ever, Carla will be trick-or-treating at a friend’s house instead of at our house. Wait. No, for the second time ever. (We went to a friend’s house when Carla was in… pre-K? I can’t quite remember.) Even though I think Carla and her friends are kind of at that borderline age for trick-or-treating (which is not to say I oppose anyone of any age trick-or-treating) so I hope this year is spectacular for them. My kiddo has gone around and around about her costume. Originally she wanted to be one of the characters from KPop Demon Hunters, which is a phenomenon I still find baffling, but whatever, you do you, teens. Then she was waffling between Wednesday or Enid from Wednesday. She went with the latter, which seems to be a good choice; I’ve heard that KPop Demon Hunters is such a popular costume that people are having trouble finding it. And I am NOT a Make Your Own Costume person. I mean, I would support Carla in making her own costume, but I don’t sew and I’m not creative about sourcing inexpensive ways to put a costume together. Which is to say that we bought a costume online. Carla was eager to dye her hair, and I was not, so the costume element I am most excited about is a pack of colorful hair extensions. When I bought them, they were $6.99 – I price I gladly paid to prevent Carla from using hair chalk, which I loathe. Now I just have to figure out how to install (?) them in her hair so they look good! 
The kitten is FURIOUS that *I* am outside and *he* is inside.
  • What are you doing for winter outerwear these days? It was in the mid 40s (8.3 C) and raining when I went for a walk yesterday. I had to wear a heavier jacket than usual and I discovered that it is NOT waterproof. Don’t get me wrong – I adore my jacket, it’s cute, it’s comfortable, it’s lightweight, it’s super warm. And it’s not like it claims to be waterproof. It’s “water repellant.” But apparently it repels water only for so long, and then the rain soaks through into your arms. The cooler temperatures reminded me, though, that Carla needs a new winter coat this year. She’d been wearing a hand-me-down from a friend for the past two years, but now her wrists extend far beyond the sleeves so it’s time to get something new. Ugh. She also needs new snow pants and snow boots. In the past, I got her winter outerwear from Lands End – the snowpants were waterproof and had reinforced knees and I always bought them in a larger size so they would last two years. But she no longer fits in kid sizes. Wait a second – Lands End actually has sizes up to 15-16 years. AND they have a slim line. Maybe I have answered my own question! Boots though. Those are always trickier. I have SUCH a hard time buying expensive footwear when I know it’s only going to last a year. I wish I had Elisabeth’s thrifting eye, but I don’t; thrifting makes me feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable, and it’s not like I even know of any good local thrift shops. Which snow boots do you wear and/or buy for your kids?
  • Let’s talk about something that’s unrelated to spending money! Carla has a parent / teacher conference coming up and, as usual, I am anxious about it. Her school doesn’t do conferences with individual teachers, although I assume I could set some up if I wanted to. Instead, we meet with a teacher who sees her for something like homeroom. Fortunately, this homeroom teacher is also Carla’s instructor for a core class, so at least I can get some in-depth understanding of how she’s doing in one key subject. I never feel prepared or satisfied for conferences. The teachers usually have a prepared list of things they go through, and then answer questions. But we only have thirty minutes together, and a homeroom teacher can only address so many things about a class she doesn’t teach. Carla is having a tough year on several different fronts, so I really want to understand how I can support her at home, but I don’t know the right questions to ask or how to find a balance between support system and helicopter mom. The whole thing stresses me out. Parenting is IMPOSSIBLE. It is so hard to see your child struggle and not be able to step in and fix everything. Ah, okay, now I understand why I just want to write about frivolous shopping needs. Much less stressful.
  • It’s Friday and I still have yet to make a single phone call on my list. The anxiety of making the phone call is a big part of the battle, but the other half is the knowledge that one phone call rarely resolves anything. As Birchie said when I first moaned about not wanting to make any of these calls, “Up to the point where I make the call, it’s just one item on my to-do list. Once I make the call the task expands to 10 items.” PREACH. And yet I do need to make these stupid calls. One of them should be fairly simple: scheduling our flu and Covid shots. Carla’s pediatrician will provide shots to parents, too, which is fabulous. I am going to make this call today. I am. Ugh. I should probably also schedule our furnace check-up. That should be a pretty easy one. The others can wait until next week / never. Are there any phone calls you are delaying? 
  • Have you “inherited” any weirdly specific things from your parents? The other night, I was writing down the word “believe” for Carla (for some reason I could not remember how to spell it without looking at it; my brain is SO fuzzy these days), and then I caught sight of it the next morning and thought for a moment that my mom had written it. Somehow, she and I have very similar handwriting. How? Is handwriting a genetic trait?
I didn’t say my handwriting was *legible.*

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. What random things are rattling around in your mind today?

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Monday Randomosity: Updates and Mediocre Photography Edition

We had our first snowfall of the season over the weekend! It started with some big, fat, gently falling snowflakes on Saturday and then by Sunday it was wet, heavy, drenching snow. While I miss the beauty of the fall — especially the gorgeous yellow tree in my backyard neighbor’s yard that leans over our hedges into our yard — the trees had long since lost their leaves anyway, so I am pretty pleased with this introduction to winter.

Since I am not doing Dinners This Week, this week (I did a double last week), I thought I would post some updates about random things.

  • The State of the Ceiling: The plaster expert is gone – after four days in my house instead of the originally-stated two – for good. (I am a little concerned for him, because he told me a lengthy story about how one of his other clients is sexually harassing him. It was a story that I listened to with a Very Serious face, and at the end, I told him, “I am so sorry you are being harassed.” at which point it became clear that he was telling the story in the hopes that I would think it was funny? “I guess I know what it’s like to be a woman now! Har har!” he said, and I nodded very seriously and said, “That must be an eye-opening perspective, although what an awful way to attain it.” He went back to work.) Despite his tendency to talk too much, and about subjects that made me slightly uncomfortable, he did a wonderful job on the ceiling. Here’s a little before and after for you. I’m sorry it isn’t more exciting.
Perhaps I could have made more of an effort to take these photos from the same angle.
  • Vaccines: My husband and Carla are now both boosted! (They each already got their flu shots several weeks ago.) Despite all plans to the contrary, I forgot Carla’s vaccine card at home. SIGH. What IS it with me doing that??? Her doctor gave me a little sticker to put on her card at home, so it worked out okay and I remain the only one in the universe in our family who has three vaccine cards. Carla had a very mild fever and some arm pain after her vaccine. My husband felt pretty crummy the day after his; the same thing I went through, with the skin sensitivity and the aching and the general yuckiness. No fever though. And now we are all boosted! (As are my parents, who are visiting us VERY SOON!!!! Hooray!)
  • The State of My Feet: I continue to struggle with plantar fasciitis. I got a third injection a few months ago that, like the other injections, did nothing. I continue to dabble with things that are supposed to help: wearing my brace, icing my feet, doing stretches, rolling a ball beneath my feet, trying to pick up a washcloth in the shower with my toes (they are incapable of doing this). I have purchased foot insoles and special socks. I bought a new pair of shoes. I have even tried just Powering Through, and walking even though my feet ache. Nothing is helping. No wonder; what I have trouble with is trying a variety of things that a variety of people have suggested, and doing it inconsistently and haphazardly. What I need is A Real Plan. I can follow A Plan! But I need a medical professional to tell me The Plan so I can initiate it. However, I don’t think I can go back to the podiatrist. He seems… overly invested in the injections. The person who referred me to him claims he is a miracle worker, and that he worked with her extensively to fix her own plantar fasciitis, but he hasn’t been quite as attentive to me. He just says, “Let’s try another shot.” I want him – or some other foot expert – to say, “This is what you do. Do these specific exercises in this order, daily for 15 minutes. Wear this brace every day for two hours. Buy this specific pair of shoes and wear this specific insert.” Not, “Oh, well, let’s check back in two weeks and maybe you need another injection.” Speaking of needles: a (different) friend who formerly had plantar fasciitis said that acupuncture had cured her, so I have an appointment with her acupuncturist later this month. My husband is being very supportive. I told him I am excited to try it, and he said he is excited for me. I said, “Do you think it will work?” and he said, “No.” Sigh. We’ll see.
  • Treadmill Desk: My husband bought me a treadmill desk for my birthday waaaaay back in February and I loved it. But then my plantar fasciitis kept getting worse and worse, and I stopped using it. I have every intention of getting back into the habit. Maybe when my feet are in less constant agony. (There will come a time when they are in less constant agony, yes?)
  • The State of My Skin: I read every single comment with great interest. So many great ideas, so much comforting commiseration. My best guess is that, as many readers suggested, the skin thing is a result of age and/or hormones. Which means I probably just need to tough it out. I have definitely had Skin Stuff before, usually precipitated by trying a new skincare product. But it didn’t seem to linger quite as lengthily as this most recent issue. Anyway, the action I took was to put all my faith in NGS’s comment. She said, “I have terrible eczema and I use Neutrogena wipes to clean my skin every night and don’t worry about the environmental cost because any time I’ve changed it, my skin has gone insane.” So I went back to my old, environmentally detrimental cleansing process. My skin has responded quite well. It is no longer unbearably itchy, and the only remaining problem area is a rough rectangular patch of redness between my eyebrows. This does not mean I am going to give up on trying to find a skincare routine that doesn’t involve disposable wipes. I am going to try again – looking to your comments for ideas. But for now, this has been helping to alleviate my misery.
  • Calcium: I still worry about Carla’s calcium intake, and the variety of foods she eats in general. Especially in this busy season of our lives, the majority of her diet seems to be chicken nuggets, peas, and rice, interspersed with tacos and the occasional filet of salmon. I know this isn’t the worst combination of foods, and she is still growing and thriving, but… I would like to expand her diet to include other things. She ate a bowl of snow for breakfast yesterday, but that’s not what I mean by “other things.” One of the issues, it seems, is that Carla doesn’t have a great grasp on which foods include which nutrients. Like… she’ll indicate that she thinks white rice has protein in it, or that eggs contain calcium. I’ve tried correcting her in the moment and talking to her more generally about which foods fit into which nutrient group (and I wrote some lists on our whiteboard of which foods, in which nutrient categories, would be good for breakfast), but it’s not sticking. It might be useful to find some book resources, but I’m having a hard time finding anything that doesn’t seem too young. I’ve ordered Are You What You Eat? from our library, and I might order Good Enough to Eat by Lizzy Rockwell from Amazon. We’ll see if they are useful. 
Why is it that I can never take a photo with the proper proportions so that it looks straight?!?!?!

Are there any topics I’ve raised in the past that you are burning for me to revisit? (LOL.) If there’s something I brought up awhile ago and you’re curious about the resolution, let me know in the comments or on my Ask Me Anything form and I will post about it.

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

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Sunshine

Sun

It’s been a long time since I wrote, explicitly, about how this pandemic is making me feel. There’s still some of the off-kilter feeling of the early days, but less of it. Or maybe I’m just accustomed to it now; off-kilter is just normal. More, lately, I’ve been feeling resignation. This is what it is.

I know part of this has a LOT to do with the upcoming school year. Carla’s (small, private) school is planning to welcome kids back, in-person, in early September. Of course I have ALL the feelings about sending her back to school. And, along with other parents of her classmates, I anticipate that we’ll have, at most, weeks before school moves to an entirely remote situation. I am resigned to this probability, even as I hope it doesn’t happen.

But These Unprecedented Times – as steeped as they are in uncertainty – are not without their pleasures and joys.

We got together with friends this past weekend – friends we haven’t seen since the Before Times.  We went for a hike in a canyon and slogged through a river and the kids played in miniature waterfalls while the grownups talked. It was one of those perfect summer days that musicians write songs about. The sun was shining in that specifically summertime way, where it was caught and reflected a million times across the water, and tossed upward like a child’s ball and shared, branch to branch, among the trees so that everywhere you looked you were dazzled by its sparkling.

The air was warm but not heavy. The water was cool on our feet. The scent of wet earth and rocks baking in the heat. The cheerful hollers of the kids. The world fell away leaving just the five of us in that liquid sunshine. It was magic.

I was chatting with the wife half of our friends (there is a husband half, too), and we were talking about how good it was to see each other in person, to be together, to watch our children playing. And I was overcome with such grief. Not for the moment, of course, because the moment was perfect. But for all the moments we’ve missed – collectively – and for all the uncertainty of the moments ahead of us.

Right now, we have so many futures spread out across the coming months, just out of reach. Our individual futures, as humans; our collected futures, as humanity. Of course, it’s always been this way – there’s always been possibility and hope and opportunity right there alongside potential for evil and sadness and illness and death. But it’s so overwhelmingly present, now.

During our precious time with our friends, I found myself withdrawing, a little. Not embracing the togetherness as I should have, not facing with stoic good cheer the many, many blessings we do have. But thinking – plaintively, childishly – no, it shouldn’t be like this.

My mother reminds me that there are so many things in human history that have been so much worse than this moment right here. She means this to be comforting. Perhaps it is. To know that things have been terribly, terribly wrong, and yet humans have survived and grown and gone on to thrive and have babies and make beautiful art and feel hopeful and march forward into that great uncertainty of tomorrow with courage and grace. To know that things do get better, if incrementally. To know that this, too, will pass. Of course, it is also deeply exhausting that we continue this eternal seesaw into pain and tragedy and incomprehensible senselessness.

Carla had such a wonderful time, playing with her friends. It was overwhelming, I think – all the physical activity, and the sunshine, and the social interaction. More of each – especially the latter – than she’s used to these days. The next day, we took a break. A “lazy” day, as she called it, where we did no schoolwork, eschewed our regular excursion to one of the local parks, and simply hung out at home. (She made a dragon costume for herself; we built castles out of Magnatiles; I finished a very absorbing book.) I tried to get her to play outside. It was 77 degrees, brilliantly sunny, the air awhir with lawn mowers and honeybees and that wonderful mineral smell of lawns being watered. We need to store up the sunshine, I told her. There’s a long winter ahead and we need to get more than our fill while it’s available to us.

I can make a list of the big and the small, the important and the inconsequential, the silly and the serious – the countless things that I, personally, miss from the Before Times. In-person school and browsing through Target and traveling to visit my parents and talking to someone without wearing a mask and date night and barre class and on and on. We must all have our lists. When will we be able to invite our friends over to our house, to welcome them actually inside our house, to feed them and talk to them for hours about the other worries – everyday and enormous alike – that will continue to fill our lives once the heavy overhang of the pandemic is behind us? (Let it, someday, be behind us.) When will be able to stop punctuating our children’s play by shouted reminders of too close and no touching and six feet apart? When will we be able to look forward to spring, as an inevitable conclusion to winter, instead of feeling like this summer, this afternoon, this breath of sun baked happiness, may be all we get?

What this lengthy, maudlin post is trying to get at, I guess, is that I’m struggling to absorb the fact that this could be it. I won’t stop hoping for the best outcome. But we could have years of political instability and economic collapse and illness and in-home schooling. It’s not inevitable but it’s certainly one of the possibilities. And there’s lots of middle ground between that option and “successful vaccine/election/economic recovery.”

That’s the lesson of life, right? That this, right here, is all there is.

So why not Make the Best of It? Cherish Every Moment and all that? Why is it so hard to live in the here and now rather than despair what we’ve lost, what we still could lose?

Despite the melancholy overtones of this post, despite the normal Call Week stresses and crankiness, it’s been a good week. That few hours with our friends was so restorative, so buoying. When I think back to that sunny Sunday morning, I can almost recreate the joy of being together. I can almost taste not just what was, but what could be again, someday, or someday soon.

But I know my mood is cyclical, too – the down days are right around the corner. So I am going to scoop up my reluctant dragon and drag her outside for as many hours as we can stand it today. Let the sunshine sink into my skin so I can remember the heat of it when it’s just a memory. Breathe it in. Collect it in my pores. So I can dole it out in drops all winter, remind myself that I will feel it on my face again.