Okay, NEXT topic is that I know I SAID I was going to stop buying so many treats, and that SORT OF worked: when I was at the grocery store, I Didn’t Buy several things that caught my eye, and it was because I imagined my giant stash of treats at home. I didn’t buy snack cakes or cookies for the kids, because I imagined my giant stash of treats at home. But then I ordered two new kinds of fruit jellies to try, and each order involved MULTIPLE POUNDS of fruit jellies, so. A little forward, a little back.

Next topic! Life of a Doctor’s Wife and I want to talk more about the decision to bring the housecleaners back in a pandemic. She wrote:

Your post today mentioned that you are considering rehiring your housecleaners (hooray!), which I immediately latched onto… and I wonder if you might be open to talking about re-hiring the housecleaners? I am also in this same HAPPY (and privileged) boat, but feeling super awkward about calling her up and hoping she’s available and doesn’t hate me for ending our previous arrangement and hoping she will have the same day open and will be okay coming back at the same rate.

And also I want to talk to her about masks, because my daughter won’t be vaccinated until who knows when. So there’s THAT added layer of awkwardness. (Even though it’s perfectly reasonable, it still feels like I am accusing her of being GERMED.)

Like apparently any social interaction I enter into (and even though this is technically a business interaction), it feels so FRAUGHT with potential for awkwardness and hurt feelings.

I feel EVERY WORD of this. I will say all the things that made the situation MUCH EASIER in my own particular case:

1. The housecleaners have texted me several times to find out if we are interested in having them come back. This tells me that they DO WANT TO come back. (But if this HADN’T happened, I would have reassured myself by thinking that if they DIDN’T want to come back, it would be easy for them to say “Sorry, we are all booked up!” When I know it would be easy for someone to say no to me, it makes it easier for me to ask.)

2. Also, in one of those texts, the housecleaners told me that they had been vaccinated. This means I don’t have to ask. I DO NOT KNOW how I would have managed that. Direct, friendly interactions are not my forte. Probably I would have said, “Hello!! We have been vaccinated; if you’ve been vaccinated also, we’d love to have you back! <3”

3. Also, in one of those texts, the housecleaners volunteered the information that they were wearing masks while working. This was a year ago, so I don’t know if they’re STILL wearing masks, but at least it tells me that they WERE willing to take precautions / take the pandemic seriously. Since they are vaccinated, and since so far it seems very unlikely that a vaccinated person would transmit the virus, and since we will not be home while they are cleaning, I am not going to ask them to wear masks: if they wear them, great; if not, I won’t even know. (I am not sure if I should put a box of disposable masks on the counter. Is that a nice thing to provide, or does it seem passive-aggressive and Pointed? I can fret the other direction, too: they might LIKE to take one, but think they weren’t supposed to. I could write “Take One!” on the box, but now we are back to passive-aggressive/Pointed.)

4. I had been very uncertain about WHEN to stop paying the housecleaners not to clean our house, and FINALLY I sent a check with a note saying it was the last one—and, as it turned out, the housecleaners returned that envelope to me, unopened, along with the previous two checks, also unopened, in a holiday card that didn’t mention the checks and just wished us well in the new year, so they don’t even know I EVER decided to stop paying them, and THEY are the ones who decided I was making it weird and should stop. (But if this HADN’T happened, I would have reassured myself that if I were a housecleaner, and one of my clients paid me for over six months even though I wasn’t cleaning for them, I would not resent them for eventually stopping those payments—and in fact, like our housecleaners did, I think eventually I would feel like it was Weird and should Stop.)

5. It’s spring, so I can open the windows before, during, and after their visit, and I can take all the kids out of the house, even if we just go sit in the car in the park or something. In winter, I couldn’t figure out how we were going to handle this. By next winter, I have hope that our whole family will be vaccinated AND that the kids will be back in school and I will be back to work, so we won’t need to worry about finding a place to go.

If you are struggling with this same happy/privileged type of issue, I would love to hear what you’re thinking on the topic, and/or what your experience has been.

There is so much to say, I almost don’t know where to start! Part of the backlog is because I was planning to say some of it yesterday, but had forgotten it was Edward’s Remicade day. Those appointments have gotten a LOT shorter (our hospital has switched from the standard infusion, which took two hours and ten minutes, to a rapid one that takes one hour); but with the driving (an hour and a half each way) and the waiting for the pharmacy to send over the medication (usually about an hour, sometimes as long as two), it’s a fairly all-day thing, or at least an all-day-FEELING thing. By the time we get home, I just want to play phone games and perhaps sip something nice.

So let’s see, the FIRST thing I wanted to do was update on the family charity-choosing project, since several of you asked for a follow-up. Elizabeth was the very first to choose a charity, as she’d apparently had one all set to go back when we had a family meeting (via whiteboard, since our schedules are so varied) to decide how to spend some of the stimulus money, since we are in the small and privileged segment of the population that does not need to spend it on survival. (Other options suggested: one big check to a local food pantry; new pet; secret room behind a bookcase; restaurants once it’s safe to go; just chucking it into the FIVE COLLEGE EDUCATIONS fund.) She chose the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Rob too had a charity all set to go: he chose the Against Malaria Foundation. (He is a fan of Give Well, and interested in the whole concept of Effective Altruism.)

The other three kids had more trouble choosing. Henry first narrowed it down to his two most important issues: environmental concerns and world hunger. From there he chose the National Resources Defense Council.

Edward chose polio vaccines, but procrastinated on looking into where he could donate for that. With some prodding, he chose UNICEF, and we did the “choosing a gift” feature that let him say he wanted the money put specifically toward polio vaccines. (We discussed ahead of time how the money still doesn’t necessarily go for exactly what you choose, which on one hand is disappointing but on the other hand is GOOD: if they are FULL UP on polio vaccines, you don’t want them WASTING your money on vaccines they can’t use.)

William was the very last. He got stuck on something I’m familiar with as a sticking point, which is feeling as if no one charity is The Very Best One to give money to, and that that makes it hard to choose among the others: how can a person donate to environmental causes, when people are starving? How can a person donate to vaccinations, when our habitat is in such crisis? How can a person donate to U.S. poverty when there is world poverty? How can a person donate to malaria/polio when there are SO MANY OTHER DISEASES?? Etc.

I’d said on the whiteboard that it was fine to just choose a CATEGORY rather than a particular charity, and William finally chose “United States homelessness,” which I asked for your help researching, and that was EXTREMELY HELPFUL, not only for the specific charities suggested but also in giving a better picture of the TYPES of charities. I was then able to go back to him and say that the primary choice seemed to be between NATIONAL (advocacy/laws/policy) and LOCAL (food/blankets/shelter). I also specifically mentioned Covenant House to him, since it seems to have both national and local impact, and since they specifically help youth, and I thought that might appeal. If I’d had to GUESS, I would have guessed he’d choose Covenant House, and that his second pick would be local/shelter/food—but instead he chose national/advocacy/policy. So we donated to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. (Coincidentally, one of my acquaintances recently participated in a Covenant House Sleep Out fundraiser, so we’d ALSO ended up donating there, separate from this project.)

It was a very satisfying project, and I recommend it. It was fun for me to see what the kids chose, and to discuss options with them, and to show them how to use Charity Navigator, and so on.

Okay, that seems like it’s long enough for a post to be, so I will save the other topics for other days!

Rob and William have had their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine! Pfizer, if you are interested! (I find I am very interested, despite, as someone mentioned their nurse pointed out to them, never giving one moment’s thought to the maker of my flu shot.) They got them in the afternoon; that same evening/night, William had a little fever, a pretty bad headache, a pretty bad sore throat—but felt better by morning, and completely well by mid-day. Rob had no side effects.

On a completely unrelated topic, I am dealing with a bout of Possession Oppression. It crept up on me gradually, then in a rush, and I think part of the recent surge is because we’ve been talking about when we’re going to bring our housecleaners back, so I am seeing my house through their eyes.

Another part is that there has been this long pandemic time period when certain things were in short supply and other things needed to be stocked up on to reduce shopping trips, and we are still IN that time though it feels like it is lessening, but in the meantime there is a backlog, and also a bit of a problem of me failing to prevent myself from continuing to add to the problem. We WILL go through all the hand soap eventually, so this is not a matter of donating it or whatever, it’s more a matter of I need to stop buying more of it every time I see it even though it still falsely triggers a “HAND SOAP = PRECIOUS ITEM!!! PURCHASE!!!!!!!!” This may take time.

In this same category: my parents moved across the country, and they did not want to pack/move all of their cleaning supplies and laundry supplies and foil/baggies/wrap and so forth, and I WANTED those things and am GLAD to have those things and we WILL use them all eventually, but Right At This Moment they are a little oppressive in their multiple boxes of partially-used items when we already have a full supply of partially-used items as well as pandemic-level supplies of back-ups for those items. (I mention “partially-used” specifically to prevent the suggestion of donating these things to a local pantry. And anyway: we will use them! I consider them Riches! It’s just that RIGHT NOW and COMBINED WITH OTHER THINGS they are adding to the OVERALL feeling of oppression, and also to the feeling that our housecleaners are going to be side-eyeing the situation.)

Another element is that I’ve been feeling inclined toward certain Little Indulgences because of the pandemic. If I am at the grocery store and there is room in the cart, I am more likely to buy snack cakes for the children, or the weird new Oreo flavor. If I am shopping online, I am more likely to buy fun little things, too: a new conditioner! a new skin care product! a new nail polish! a pretty mug! some festive string lights! Combine this with the feeling of needing to Stock Up, and I am ending up with TOO MANY new conditioners, TOO MANY new skin care products, TOO MANY little pretty things and product samples and fun things to try.

And THIS leads a category of items I find very difficult to know what to do with, which is “Fun New Things I Tried and Didn’t Like, But Now They’re Partially-Used and Can’t Be Donated.” It’s the sort of thing where maybe I could ask friends if they wanted the things? But that feels a little wearying. And when I picture it reversed, and friends asking if others want their partially-used conditioners/lotions/etc., I don’t find myself thinking “Ooo! Yes! Fun!” Maybe if everyone brought their stuff and laid it all out and people could take what they wanted? But even that feels sort of…tiring…and also, we’re not yet getting together in person.

Another element is one I feel a little shy to talk about because it involves food/dieting. You may know that generally I follow a keto diet; now that I am maintaining my current weight, I take one day off from that a week, and on that day I eat EVERYTHING I WANT. This has led to something I consider a USEFUL DIET TOOL, which is that I never have to think “I can’t have that” but instead I think “I can have that on my next Day Off.” I will see something fun and anti-keto while shopping (new Pop-Tart flavor! weird appealing cereal! yummy-looking Spring Edition cookie!), and I don’t have to pine/suffer: I can buy it and put it aside and have it pretty soon. But partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many hand soaps and other necessities, and partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many conditioners and nail polishes and other indulgences, and partly that sometimes I want to try something that is only sold in a 2-pound pack, and partly that my Day Off eyes are much bigger than my Day Off stomach, I have ended up with embarrassing piles of candies and cookies and snack cakes. “Well, give the extras to the children!,” you might suggest, which is where I am forced to reveal that it has recently gone beyond that in scope. Like, it’s too much to give to the children. Clearly the main thing I need to do is stop buying SO MANY TREATS. And I WILL! I WILL! But also: what to do with a bunch of opened, partially-used treats that can’t be donated? Well. Part of this will be resolved naturally: I will stop buying so many; the levels will recede; the children will do their share; and soon perhaps I will be able to bring out the extras at get-togethers, or Paul and I will be able to leave things in the break rooms at work.

But last night it was all oppressing me so much it felt like I was on the edge of panic. Some of that was Night Sadness, and the only cure was to go to sleep; but then this morning I also tried to CHIP AWAY AT IT a little. This isn’t something where I can just go through and Fix It: there has to be the Buying Less element, and the Gradually Using It Up element, and so forth, and that will take time. But I’ve noticed that sometimes, even doing a relatively small amount of work, even an amount of work that might FEEL like it’s not worth doing because it would make AT BEST such a tiny insignificant dent, is enough to shift the line from TIME TO PANIC back to Okay, Okay, This Is Going To Be All Right.

Such was the case this morning. My OVERALL goal was “make even a small difference; don’t try to solve the whole problem right now.” Here were my more specific goals, all of which I accomplished:

• Go through the Treats Heap and see if anything is unopened and CAN be donated (sometimes I buy multiples of an item); put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store. Move SOME treats to the Kids’ Treat Shelf; put some other treats aside to refill that shelf later. Throw away some treats. Sort the rest of the treats neatly into the mostly-unused cabinets in my little sunporch room, where it reduces the embarrassment I feel about the housecleaners seeing it, but also I can easily see what I have. Resolve to CONSULT THESE SUPPLIES before buying MORE.

• Glance into the bathroom medicine cabinet and throw out even just a few things: the beard oil I gave Paul for Christmas many years ago, which he didn’t like the idea of and never uses; the half-used sample of hand lotion I didn’t like the smell of; the once-used pot of a face treatment that maybe caused my weeks of itchy eyelids so I’m too nervous to try it again; a lipstick I never use. Gather up any unopened beauty samples I don’t want and put them in the gift drawer in case they’d work to put in with a care package sometime. Resolve to keep more on top of this in the future: it is worth it to toss just one item.

• Go through the bathroom-supplies cupboard and see if there are unopened things we don’t want, and put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store.

• Take that conditioner I used twice but didn’t like and yet kept in my shower because it was more than I usually spend on a conditioner and I’d thought it was a treat and that I would love it, and put it into the kids’ shower where perhaps someone will use it.

• Commit to using up the six little sample bottles of shampoo/conditioner and three little sample bottles of body wash, because then they can be GONE OUT OF THE SHOWER and stop making it feel so cluttery.

THEN: I am going to TRY to avoid what is apparently a common United States Consumer Cycle, which is to buy too much, and then have the relief of DECLUTTERING and GETTING RID OF THINGS; but then the cupboards/closets feel so blissfully empty/available, and also we accidentally got rid of things we were actually using, so then we buy too much again. (Businesses LOVE this and encourage it: it is a very high-profit for them if we keep throwing away perfectly good things and then re-buying.) I will not expect to fully succeed (I am aiming for an ADJUSTMENT rather than a revolution), but I will attempt to bring some awareness back into my shopping, and I will try to think of it as a waste issue as well as a financial one. Fun purchases are fine!—but I will space them out a little more so that I appreciate them and don’t waste them. Treats for Days Off are great!—but I will space them out a little more so the supplies don’t get oppressive rather than delightful, and when possible I will buy them in smaller packages. Happy Fun Things Coming in the Mail is an utterly understandable desire during a pandemic!—but I will imagine where those things will have to be stored in the house, and make sure I want to do that; and I will try not to buy things just because they’re on sale or just for the satisfaction of having Things On Their Way. Getting rid of things is fine!—but I will try to make sure I’m not just alleviating panic by getting rid of things I will then re-buy. And I will continue to work, as ever, on not caring what the housecleaners think, since they likely couldn’t care less, though they would very likely appreciate a reduction in clutter even more than I would.

I am baking a cake for the joint birthday party of two of our cats, one of whom has a birthday on April 5th and the other on April 7th. Last year, the first year of the pandemic, I baked them each their own cake; this year I am toning it down in anticipation of a return to Somewhat Normal Times. (Another idea I have used in previous years: bake one cake mix in two round cake pans and serve one round on each of the two evenings. Still one cake, and one cake-baking process, but two parties’ worth of cake. I didn’t do it that way THIS year because yesterday I was thinking I would not bake any cat cakes at all, and then today I changed my mind, and so now it is a Combined Cake to cover my change of heart.)

In selecting a cake mix, I discovered I owned two boxes of mix that had best-by dates in 2018, and I’m sure they’re fine, but I clearly need to stop buying cake mixes so far ahead. It’s just, I’ve had a few times when I was extremely grateful to have a couple of cake mixes already on hand, and those times have lodged compellingly in my brain. Similarly: the time a box of mixed crackers and a couple extra bottles of wine allowed me to discreetly save an awkward party-food situation, so now I ALWAYS have a box of Pepperidge Farm Cracker Trio and at least one huge cheap bottle of white wine in the cupboard, and always will.

I just finished a book that has left me feeling wan:

(image from Target.com)

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, by Mona Awad (Amazon link). I requested it from the library after reading about it on Hello Korio, where it was described like so:

I think just about every woman can see some example of her own personal youth, or her own young adult behaviors, or her own motivations in these stories, in ways that don’t pull any punches. It’s harsh. It is a harsh book. I really liked it, and I really recommend it.

And yes. I agree, except I don’t know if I recommend it. It put little sad truth burrs all through my joie de vivre. It made me feel sad for all of us, and all of our daughters, but without feeling like there’s any way to stop/fix any of it.

Anyway. Right before that, I read a book that made me happy, so let’s do that one next:

(image from Target.com)

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Amazon link). Looking at this book, and reading the description, and looking at its WHOLE VIBE, I would never have chosen it. I read it ONLY because first Miss Grace recommended it to me, and THEN Hello Korio mentioned a DIFFERENT book by the same author, and described it as a book where all the mysteries and so forth end up making impressive logical sense, and that is CRUCIAL to me, and so then I put the Spinning Silver book higher on my reading list, and I finished it right before the other book I just mentioned, and as it turned out it was EXTREMELY MY THING. I don’t even want to tell you about it, because if someone had described the plot to me, I would not have read it. It was already hard enough to get past the font and illustration choices on the cover, all of which loudly communicated that this book was Not For Me. BUT IT WAS FOR ME.

Do you remember awhile back, when I said I’d always thought I disliked science fiction, but it turned out what I disliked was science fiction written by middle-aged men? This book caused a similar insight. Now I have to finish my other library books so that I can go on to read LOTS OF NAOMI NOVIK.

I got my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine yesterday. (If you are interested: the one I got was the Pfizer kind.) I didn’t mention it to you ahead of time because I felt there were many opportunities for it to Not Actually Happen. For one thing, I had friends who were eligible ahead of me, and some of them ended up with appointments in late April; but when my group became eligible and Paul made our appointments, the appointments were at the end of March: weeks earlier than the earlier group. That didn’t seem right at all, and smacked of Something Has Gone Amiss Here.

For another thing: well, you can see above, PAUL made the appointments. He is not the appointment-maker of our household. I am the appointment-maker. So I get real TWITCHY when someone else makes appointments, just as he gets real twitchy if he’s not home and I have to be the one to start the pizza dough in the bread machine, because he is the pizza-dough-maker in our household. But I was much, much twitchier, because I follow the recipe when I make the pizza dough, and the pizza dough has never come out wrong when I’ve made it, whereas Paul does not have a similarly stellar history with making appointments. So I had Concerns on several levels.

The REASON Paul made the appointments is that registration was not supposed to open until 8:00 a.m., but he was up at 5:30 a.m., so he checked the website just to see, and it DID let him register for appointments, and I was still asleep, so he just went ahead and registered us both, which I grudgingly admit was probably the correct course of action. But on the other hand (as I started worrying within 30 seconds of waking up and being told I did not have to spend my whole morning trying to make an appointment), what if that was a glitch and the system didn’t actually accept those appointments? What if the state was running a little test before opening for real at 8:00, and they didn’t even realize people were able to interact with it while it was being tested, and when they took it out of test mode those appointments vanished? What if he somehow made appointments for a town with the same name as our town but in a different state? What if he accidentally made appointments for Covid-19 TESTS instead of Covid-19 SHOTS? Also: he registered himself, and then put me down as his “plus one”; what if he did that wrong, and so now HE gets his vaccine but I don’t get mine, and when we find this out and I have to make a new appointment, I find that the system is now booking into JUNE, and then it turns out I can NEVER LET THAT RESENTMENT GO AS LONG AS I LIVE? These were some of my myriad concerns.

My concerns increased when we arrived for our appointments and the line of cars for the appointment site was backed up for over half a mile, with a police officer directing traffic. AND the line doubled into TWO lanes’ worth of cars in the line up ahead. This was about 20 minutes before our appointment time.

Well! We waited about two hours altogether, from “20 minutes before appointment time” to “shots done and driving away,” staying in the car the entire time (this was a drive-up thing), and I needed to pee for about one hour forty-five minutes of that time, enough to be cranky but not badly enough to use the portable pandemic toilets, and in the end WE DID GET OUR SHOTS (AND I DID NOT PEE MY PANTS). There was no trouble with Paul’s appointment, nor with mine, nor with the “plus one” appointment concept. He had put my information in correctly, or at least correctly enough for me to get a shot. The appointments were indeed for shots and not accidentally for tests. The appointments were for shots in our own state and not another state. Etc. And we had not missed our appointments by being in line for so long: the appointment times seemed to be more of a way to pace people throughout a particular day, and the workers were fully aware of the line and its limitations.

The shot itself was no big deal. I had heard that it hurt surprisingly little, but it turned out I was too wound up to notice one way or another: my brain did not see fit to record that part of the experience. I remember the name of the guy who gave me the shot, and I remember what design of mask he was wearing, and I remember what he said while he was giving the shot (“You might have some soreness here; it might be sore to sleep on tonight; you might get a little fever”), and I remember him putting the bandaid on afterward, but I don’t remember the shot itself. I do think I would have remembered if it hurt MORE than I’d expected.

On the other hand, shots don’t bother me a whole lot. They DO bother Paul a whole lot, so I can report that he said he definitely felt his and that it hurt, but that it was “…okayyyy” compared to a flu shot (i.e., not as bad as what he thinks of as a typical flu shot). But he also said he had not been able to relax his arm for the shot: I can make mine dangle limply, and that’s supposed to help with pain at the time and with soreness afterward. Also: when we were back home and he got out of the car he yelled “ARG, OW!!!!” and I said “GAH WHAT IS IT??!??” and he said “My butt is sore from sitting for so long,” so let’s let that little anecdote adjust our Pain Experience Translators accordingly.

Two small things did not go quite right with the shots. One: They did not have us wait 15 minutes afterward, and in fact moved the line out with a hearty wave goodbye so they could deal with the next batch of cars (the line had not shortened when we drove past it on our way out), and we didn’t know what to do about that. Pull over into an adjoining lot and wait on our own? What we did was, we just drove off like everyone else was doing (possibly because everyone else also REALLY NEEDED TO PEE), and I fretted about it for 15 minutes, and then at that point stopped fretting because by then we would have been done waiting anyway. But Paul and I agreed afterward that if we’d had more time to think, and hadn’t been surprised by it (we’d thought we were in the waiting phase, but then the line suddenly moved), we probably would have pulled into an adjacent lot and waited there, just in case.

The second thing that did not go quite right is that they did not book our second appointment. Fortunately, we had heard from friends that SOME vaccine sites/workers were booking the second appointment on the spot and SOME were not, so we knew to be ALERT for that, and we knew to go home and go back to the vaccine website and book our second appointments. I fretted about all the people who will NOT know to do that. If I hadn’t heard about it from someone else, I might have thought vaguely that we would Hear Something From Someone About It.

Actually there was a third thing that didn’t go quite right, which is that there was an area on the card for them to write the date after which we should get the next shot, and they had not filled that out. Again, I fretted about people who would not know what to do about that. We’d looked it up, so we knew we needed to wait at least three weeks, and that three to four weeks later was considered typical and/or ideal for the second shot. (Paul had read somewhere that since the second shot of Pfizer is supposed to be three weeks later and the second shot of Moderna is supposed to be four weeks later, a lot of places are just using four weeks later for all second shots, to avoid confusion and mix-ups.)

And a fourth thing: we did not get stickers. I realize this is minor. But I was hoping for a sticker. It is the same when I vote: I do not NEED a sticker, but I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO HAVE a sticker.

I haven’t looked much into side effects or when they might happen if they were going to happen, but I’ve been braced for a couple of days of feeling pretty bad. It’s been just over 24 hours, and I can say I had just enough soreness in my arm that when I woke up in the night and was lying on it, I decided to switch to my other side; but other than that I wouldn’t know I’d had a shot. And yesterday evening I felt a little extra tired, but that could have been the aftermath of all the vaccine-appointment-concern adrenaline. Paul reported more arm soreness, and when he woke up this morning he took a pain killer for joint pain—but he said he didn’t notice when the pain killer wore off, and didn’t need any more. But, like, maybe that joint pain was vaccine-related…or maybe it’s that we’re in the age group that is eligible for vaccines, is what I’m just sort of wondering aloud about here. And also, remember that little anecdote I told you earlier.

And most of all I am stunned and amazed: THE VACCINE is into THE ARM. What mostly surprised me was how very quickly we went in our area from “We are still not eligible, and we have no idea when we WILL be eligible, and maybe we won’t get an appointment for MONTHS, maybe not until JULY or AUGUST” to “Wait—already the first shot is done?” There has clearly been a big shift UP in vaccination speed, and if it has not yet happened for you, and you are thinking “I am genuinely happy for others because every shot makes us all incrementally safer, BUT ALSO I WANT A VACCINE TOOOOOOOO,” I hope you end up feeling similarly about the speed of that transition.

I have not yet been among those wailing because a child doesn’t get to have an 8th grade graduation or a birthday party or whatever; I would say I have been a combination of stoic (these disappointments are happening to everyone; there is no reason my own special child should be exempt from disappointment) and lucky (so far there have not been many missed events that were Very Important to us). But now we are approaching one that is giving me, while not the urge to wail, a good-sized TWINGE, and it is the twins’ 16th birthday—or, more specifically, Elizabeth’s 16th birthday, because Edward doesn’t care and because I think of Sweet Sixteen parties/gifts as being A Thing for girls but not for boys.

We are not big Party People, but I had been thinking we would do something special for her 16th. She’s at the perfect age for sleepovers: she had one a few months before the pandemic and it was the perfect kind where they all stayed up in her room most of the time, and everyone was old enough to make their own arrangements for drop-off and pick-up. So I guess I was picturing a birthday sleepover, but maybe with something else, too: our local movie theater will rent you a whole room for a pretty reasonable price and that seemed like it would be fun; or maybe they’d all like to dress up and go for a sit-down dinner somewhere, with Paul and me at a different table; or maybe they’d like to do something appealingly silly and retro-babyish like going to Build-a-Bear.

Well. Just like everyone else, we can do a belated celebration. And in fact, since all her friends are turning 16 in this pandemic as well, maybe it can even be a fun thing where we do a whole month of Sixteenth Birthday celebrations, one or two per weekend, once everyone is 16 and vaccinated.

But also, while I have you here, I am looking for ideas for a Special Gift, and I am thinking along the lines of jewelry. When I turned 16, my parents bought me a silver bracelet from a local arts/crafts fair (like, the fancy kind of fair where the artists have to belong to a guild to participate, and everything is Pretty Expensive), and had it engraved, and I really liked that and wore it every day for years and years.

ANYWAY. Something like that. Not super expensive, but expensive ENOUGH.

One classic possibility is A Charm Bracelet, with a few charms to get started. Do people still wear them? I have one that I think was my mom’s, and it’s an item I enjoy owning but don’t wear anymore (almost all of the charms are Christian symbols), and I think I added maybe one charm to it myself, and received maybe one additional charm as a gift. I don’t want to do the Pandora kind, because (1) too expensive and (2) they seem like they’re more for older women. Like, they do sell charms that look like they’re for younger girls, but my impression is that it’s so that older women will get the idea of buying them for younger women, not because younger women like them. I could be completely wrong about this entire thing.

Talking about charm bracelets is making me feel weary instead of excited; I wonder if maybe something less complicated would be better. She has a few inexpensive necklaces she chose, and each of them has a very simple pendant (a small circle, one single rhinestone, one single faux pearl). I could get her a real silver version of one of those.

Or it appeals to me to get her a silver bracelet similar to mine. Or…what if I passed that bracelet down to her? Hm. That has some appeal, although it would appeal more if it had already been passed down a few times: my grandmother’s 16th birthday gift, passed down to my mom and then to me and then to Elizabeth. Perhaps I should wait and get that going by passing it down to a granddaughter on HER 16th. Or let one of the kids decide to do that if they want to, after I die and they inherit it.

Back to the SIMILAR, though: I just went to the website of the art/craft fair, and they have some things online, and they have MANY bracelet options that are the same basic gist as mine!! In fact, it may very well be the same craftsman: his little bio says he’s been doing silver work in our state since a year that is before the year I was born, so. This is my bracelet, which is pretty tarnished but you can get the gist of the style:

It has a hook closure I find appealing, and I used to endlessly pop it open and closed in a fidgety way. So I could get her a SIMILAR one, and get it engraved, and possibly start a little tradition of daughters getting a silver bracelet for their 16th birthday. Or not! Which would also be fine!

Or maybe birthstone earrings, with real versions of the birthstone? Hers is pearl, which seems nice for a special jewelry gift. Pearl would work for a nice simple pendant necklace, too.

Well, what do you think? Did you get something like this for your 16th birthday, and if not, would you have liked to, do you think? And/or what did you do for your daughter’s 16th / do you have anything in mind for your own daughter’s 16th?

I have just over a dozen pages left before the end of A Prayer for Owen Meany and I have put it down. I feel the need for Emotional Preparedness, which may never occur. At the very least, I am going to need a room containing no one who will make fun of me for crying.

I need to mention, by the way, that the book was published in 1989 and makes use of the R-word. [Edited to add: plus at least one instance of a person described as “Oriental.”] Also, it is a men’s book: it is about men, and things that happen to men. All the female characters are there only as accessories to the men: a man’s grandmother, a man’s girlfriend, a man’s cousin, a man’s teacher, a man’s mother. They are only there to help tell the men’s stories. I am not really reading books like that anymore, so I thought I should give you a little content warning so you won’t be surprised. This book is getting grandmothered in because I THOUGHT I HAD read it, so this is more like going back in time to keep me from being a liar. (Spellcheck knows the word grandfathered but not the word grandmothered. Click “Add to dictionary”/”Gradually reduce automatic patriarchy”—there, that’s better.)

And I have to skim a lot of the stuff about the Vietnam War and the political things that were going on at the time. It’s depressing to see how similar politics are now, and to realize that it’s not just that things got abruptly worse with the election of our 45th president (though they did), it’s also that I didn’t tune in until it got that bad—but it had been Pretty Darn Bad at many times earlier. Well, a lot of us are paying attention NOW, so good strategy, politicians! Fun idea, to see just how far you could push it!

I went grocery shopping today. We were getting low on a lot of things so I went in twice: first for things that don’t care about temperature, and then for everything else. That kind of trip is satisfying, because I can get EVERYTHING, and also have room in the cart for Bonus Items such as an impulse pack of bakery cinnamon rolls, and a box of unnecessary-but-the-kids-enjoy-them fruit snacks; but also stressful, because I do different aisles each trip, and I’m always worry that doing so will undermine the part of my list that is only in my mind and is triggered by walking past the items. That is, no one has to put milk on the list, because I remember it when I walk past it. But if I alter my route, who KNOWS what I might not walk past!!

Well.

This was my third grocery trip with the updated advice to double-mask (I wear a KN-95 first, with a cloth mask over it), and I really hate it, but also it does make me feel a little safer. But it’s so uncomfortable and humid. And I hadn’t realized how comfy my cloth masks were until I wore a disposable, though that’s unfair to the disposable: it’s against my face so it’s getting most of the blame for the issues caused by two masks. Still. Now I’m looking forward to wearing just one mask, a cloth one, after I’m vaccinated! HOW FAR WE HAVE COME.

Oh! A note: if your store has been weirdly out of horseradish sauce, as mine has been, it’s worth checking with the cocktail items (maraschino cherries, cocktail olives, grenadine, margarita/daiquiri mixers): I walked past that section today and there was horseradish sauce just sitting there! Although there was ALSO that one same kind of horseradish sauce in the regular section this time, so maybe it wouldn’t have been with the cocktail stuff before, either.

They were out of the little cocktail hot dogs again. They were out of those for AGES at the beginning of the pandemic, then suddenly had them in stock again Awhile Ago, and now haven’t had them for the past two trips.

Still no Lemon Pop Tarts, but that’s a new item so I might be missing a display, or my store might just not have them yet.

You know the BIG containers of spices? Like, not the usual cylindrical jar of cinnamon, but a big rectangular container? We needed a new Big Basil, and I have checked three trips in a row now, and they haven’t had it. The whole Big Spices section has been all spread out, with maybe three Big Spices taking up allllll the Big Spice slots. This time they did have Big Crushed Red Pepper, which they didn’t have last time.

Canned beans are still weird. They had the big cans of black beans and pinto beans, and those were spread out over two shelves of the missing other varieties.

Canned fruit is still weird. Cranberry sauce or pineapple or Weird Stuff, those are your choices. I’ve been ordering from Target.

Last time they were out of lemon juice; this time they had it, but just the store brand. (Which is fine, but notable.)

Almond milk was VERY LOW. I had to buy coconut-almond milk (which is fine, but notable).

The vegetarian meat-substitutes are still patchy, but at least they had some chicken nuggets and chicken patties, which we were getting perilously low on. No Gardein beefless ground, for the third trip in a row (that is the ONLY vegetarian ground beef we like; it’s that or nothing).

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED MARCONA ALMONDS. The deli section had a big display of them on sale, so I bought some just to try them. I can’t stop eating them. I told Paul to please take them away from me and put them somewhere I wouldn’t see them for awhile, because I was getting worried I would actually make myself sick before I’d stop. They’re skinless almonds, fried in oil, and then salted like they love you and want you to be happy.

I’d been seeing ads for Super Coffee (a keto thing), and thought I’d check to see if my grocery store had that brand, and they had two kinds of the refrigerated liquid creamer, so I bought the sweet cream one. It’s…okay. Very artificial-sweetener-flavored (which is fine/expected, but notable). I’m glad I didn’t order a case of it or something. I forget to check for the bottled flavored coffees when I was in that part of the store, but I’ll check next time.

Do you have a peanut-butter cereal you’d recommend? I have been eating a keto one that has put me very in the mood to have a NON keto version on my Days Off. I bought a box of Reese’s cereal, thinking that would be top tier stuff, and I ate one bowl of it and don’t want any more: hardly any peanut butter flavor at all. I know I can add actual peanut butter to cereal, but I’m checking first for options that don’t involve doing that.

I had a sudden craving for Sugar Babies, and checked the grocery store for them, but they didn’t have any. I don’t know if that’s a pandemic thing or if those are now an Old Person Candy and will have to be ordered from a special catalog that also carries the perfumes and toiletries of my distant youth. That, by the way, is how I will KNOW my peers and I are truly Old as opposed to “ha ha we’re so old!”: when the Vermont Country Store catalog starts carrying the things we love/remember. That’s the next level up from hearing your high school Top 40 played as elevator music, which is an achievement we have already unlocked.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but as vaccinations/hope loom on the horizon, this is how Sara and I are feeling:

I mean, feeling a lot of hope and happiness ALSO! But. We cancelled so many things. And in my household, there are seven of us, multiplied times all those well visits, dental appointments, optometrist appointments, allergy appointments, etc. Well, not seven times ALL of them: Henry had to keep going with his orthodontist appointments, which means he also kept going with his dentist appointments. And Paul didn’t want to stop his dentist appointments, which is probably wise because HE DOES NOT FLOSS, so he has also been seeing the dentist. And only two of us see an allergist, though I am going to have to see about those stress hives. And I am the only one who postponed a pap and a mammogram. BUT YOU GET THE GIST. IT IS STILL A LOT OF CATCHING UP.

Here is what I am thinking. You know how when you’ve just had a baby, people say “Nine months on, nine months off”? This catchy little phrase presumes that it is imperative for you to get back to your pre-baby size/body, and we hate that, but stay with me: the basic idea is that you should not expect to be back to your usual self immediately when there has been a lengthy disruption to the normal state of things, and that it is reasonable to assume that getting back to normal would take approximately as long as the disruption lasted.

In the case of the pandemic, I think we are going to lose what is left of our minds if we try to get immediately caught up on everything. (Plus, then in future years, ALLLLL the appointments are going to come due the same month.) Let’s say that by the time we are vaccinated and ready to face the world again, it has been an average of 15 months since we began isolating/cancelling. Then I think we should plan on giving ourselves roughly 15 months after that to get caught up on all the dentist appointments, paps, mammograms, well visits, optometrist appointments, etc. We may be caught up sooner than that! in which case we get cake! But let’s give ourselves a little slack.

I went grocery shopping this morning, and I don’t know if I just lucked out or if it’s always that deserted at 7:30 on a Friday morning, but anyway there were many entire aisles that were completely empty, or just an employee stocking shelves.

My preferred frozen broccoli florets were back in stock, which is SUCH a spoiled-sounding sentence and I know it, but I cannot hide this aspect of myself from you: I am picky about broccoli. I like (1) florets, and furthermore I like (2) a particular BRAND of florets, and further-furthermore I like (3) a particular PACKAGE SIZE of that brand. It is the store brand, and their smaller bags of florets come in an opaque bag and are sometimes disappointing/terrible; the larger/family size is not a better deal per ounce, but is packaged in a clear bag and is consistently good. That was more than I intended to write about frozen broccoli.

Chicken nuggets were still kind of low on selection, but better than before. Canned beans were low on selection, but they had the kinds I wanted. Mustard was weirdly low on selection, probably just a non-pandemic-related glitch. Plenty of paper towels and toilet paper. I did not even visit the cleaning supplies aisle, because I have enough and didn’t want to be tempted. (Gosh.)

They did not have the new lemon Pop-Tarts, but they did have a crisp apple flavor, which I bought because I want to know if it’s good or if it’s terrible.

In keto grocery news, they had tons of Rebel ice cream (lots of varieties, and plenty of each variety in stock), and they also had one flavor (peanut butter fudge) of the Enlightened keto ice cream I’d wanted to try, but still not the new Enlightened keto cheesecakes, unless I am looking in the wrong place, which is entirely possible. And they had the unsweet vanilla almond milk I wanted to try. (I was very hesitant to try almond milk at all, but did so at the encouragement of my sister-in-law, and I REALLY LIKE IT and to my surprise find it a completely acceptable substitute for milk. I get the Silk brand, BECAUSE OF THEIR CUTE COMMERCIALS, and I am not kidding.)

Probably we don’t even NEED grocery shopping reports anymore, now that everything seems pretty much back to normal, but I am finding it hard to stop. Also, I am still so interested anytime anyone says anything about their grocery-shopping experience, and perhaps I am not the only one. I leaned forward in my chair, chin on hand, to read Life of a Doctor’s Wife’s recent post on the topic, and was still thinking about it when I was at the store, and checked on my way past to see if my store had the frozen pancakes her store has been out of (they did), and then wondered about that for awhile, and with considerable interest. WHY these weird localized outages? And I almost BOUGHT SOME, not because I needed any but because SHE couldn’t get any, which made me feel like frozen pancakes were something to be SNATCHED UP.

Well. As she says, this sort of interest/agitation may be a FOREVER sort of issue for those of us who handled the grocery-shopping during the pandemic. I think I will feel SOMEWHAT better/calmer when it feels Permissible to go shopping more often: right now, part of my agitation is that if the store is out of something, I feel like I can’t check again for at least another week. Once we are vaccinated, I will feel much more comfortable running into the store in between the bigger trips.

I had Mask Stress Dreams last night, but they were lighter/cheerier than usual. In one, a clerk reprimanded me for not wearing a mask, and first I panicked and scrambled—but then I noticed something and said, “Wait, YOU’RE not wearing a mask!!,” and he said, with absolutely undaunted snoot, “Perhaps I would have remembered if I’d seen customers wearing them!!” In another dream, Paul and I were talking about a risk we’d taken in accidentally seeing friends (in the dream), and he said “When this is over, we should have them sleep over!” and I said happily “YES! Why should they EVER GO HOME!”

I have seen people mentioning that in some ways the lockdown has become HARDER with the end in sight. A lot of us had finally settled into a sort of Indefinite Stasis, no longer saying “ANOTHER week??”/”Another MONTH??”/”THE REST OF THE SCHOOL YEAR??” as we did at the beginning, but just sort of long-hauling it as The New Normal without thinking about it much. (And I don’t know about you, but until relatively recently I was more than half preparing for another four years of the former administration, so my hopes for the end were very far away.)

But now the hope is near enough to count in months! Near enough to write things several pages away on the calendar! Near enough to think of Actual Plans! Near enough to say things like “Well, but by then I’ll probably be back to work—so better make it afternoon.” Near enough to think with amazement about HALLOWEEN and THANKSGIVING and CHRISTMAS. And that shift makes me IMPATIENT in a way I haven’t been for awhile. While also making me MORE patient in other ways: We’re so close to safety now, it feels even more foolish to take unnecessary risks—like trying to merge into traffic between two tightly-spaced cars, when behind the second car is a long stretch of empty lane. This is one reason I was astonished to see photos on Facebook of yet another in-person maskless wedding. MY DEARS. In JUST A FEW MORE MONTHS it will be possible to do that WITHOUT the strong possibility of having your Joyous Occasion forever associated with a friend or family member’s illness/death! (Also, I cannot believe people are resisting the lure of Fancy Formalwear masks, and the kind of pandemic-affected wedding pictures people will actually want to look at later, and/or use in stories/series/books about the pandemic. But no: everything just boring as well as reckless.)