I am feeling very low about parenting lately. It feels to me that I am failing at even the small things. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, AGGRIEVED PERSONAL ANECDOTES, and A SIGN, the boys don’t change the position of the toilet ring before/after peeing. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, TEARFUL RANTING, and a SIGN, there are dirty dishes on the counter above the dirty dishwasher when I come downstairs in the morning. Even with rational/cheerful discussion, clear communication, a helpful list of suggestions, specific reminders, occasional shrieking meltdowns, and THE PURE INHERENT JUSTICE OF IT, hardly anyone except me is doing a small daily chore to keep up with the housework. (To add to the outrage: the person in second place, chores-wise, is the only other female person in the household.)

I started this post by calling these “small things,” but these actually feel to me like the kinds of things that add up to the point where later the grown child’s spouse asks the heavens why their in-laws bothered to send a half-trained child into the world to cause other people grief and frustration. Like, these are the “small things” that cause actual suffering in an adult household. And even with my STRONG FEELINGS on these sorts of things, and putting in a LOT of work over MANY years, my training does not seem to be TAKING. I have raised a household of thoughtless inconsiderate beasts—like the world needed more of those.

This doesn’t even get into the issues we’re having with remote schooling. Some of the kids are absolutely handling it. Two of them (Edward, 15, a 10th grader; Henry, 13, an 8th grader) are absolutely not, and I feel like we are DRAGGING them through this school year and it is taking BOTH parents to do it, and they are STILL going to be VERY LUCKY to end up with PASSING GRADES.

Originally (like, LAST spring) I thought cheerily, “Well, it’s actually good that I can’t do my library job right now: it leaves me available in case I’m needed for remote school!” Well. I did not realize how much work Paul and I would BOTH be putting in for this STILL, after a YEAR, and have them still “forgetting” to do homework, “forgetting” to check for assignments, “forgetting” to click the submit button on assignments, “forgetting” to make corrections on things that are marked literally F, and even FORGETTING TO GO TO CLASS.

I don’t understand it. I get that this is a pandemic. Things are weird! Things are stressful! OMG YOU HAVE SO MUCH EXTRA FREE TIME, JUST DO YOUR STUPID HOMEWORK. I know schools are suffering, teachers are suffering, everything is impossible—but our particular school has absolutely dropped the ball on remote schooling (a LOT of blame goes to the loud, vocal parents who are insisting on prioritizing in-person school—but the school also deserves their share of the blame for caving to that; the teachers do NOT deserve any of the blame, they’re just as stuck as we are), and it is such a small amount of work the kids are asked to do, and such a low number of online classes they can attend, and two of my kids are STILL not doing that SMALL amount without having their hands held / collars gripped. I don’t worry as MUCH about Henry, because 8th grade is still not transcript time—but it matters because with these grades and this performance he is not going to get into the college-prep classes in high school (NOR SHOULD HE), and that DOES affect transcripts. And I do worry about Edward, not just because this will affect his transcript but because it SHOULD affect his transcript: colleges SHOULD worry about a high school student who can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum, a high school student who doesn’t wake up to his alarm and only gets up when his mother comes running into the room yelling “WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING IN BED?? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN CLASS!!” And I know this is a weird year and colleges are going to have to deal en masse with this terrible school year, but it is still NOT GREAT BOB, especially when our school’s in-person students have access to classes not available to the remote learners, and so the remote learners will look relatively worse EVEN IN LIGHT OF this year.

And, like, last night I was lying in bed and I kept hearing odd sounds, and finally I got up to investigate, and I found Henry up and about in his room with the light on, an hour and a half after he was supposed to be lights-out-in-bed, and Edward was NOT IN THE ROOM, and I found him DOWNSTAIRS PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES. I have been almost WEEPY as I contemplated telling the doctor at his next Remicade appointment that his health has been slipping to the point that he’s taking naps every afternoon—but it’s apparently that he’s UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES??? And then this morning I came downstairs and there were dirty dishes on the counter surrounding the “Dishwasher is DIRTY / You should put your dishes into it” sign, and a pan in the sink. And yesterday when I was calmly talking with Henry about his grades and how tired I was of nagging, he implied that it was the NAGGING causing his grades to be low, and it just feels like this whole parenting idea has been a complete failure.

Normally I am kind of shruggy about such things. All parents have strengths and weaknesses in their parenting, and I think most people turn out pretty okay and end up making their own corrections to adjust for the gaps. And I think people, even people who are children, have a responsibility to handle their share of the situation: it’s my job to train/instruct/correct/etc., but it’s the children’s job to take on those responsibilities for themselves as they’re able. And I think there are a lot of things kids DON’T do when they don’t have to, but that they pick up later on, which is probably why one’s twenties seem to be such a forgiving decade in terms of diet and sleep. But right now, RIGHT NOW, I’m thinking that my children-in-law are going to be blaming me for these children.

Tiffanie suggested I show the Easter purchases I mentioned, and I do not have to be asked twice about such things.

(image from Target.com)

Cute-bunny-butt plate. This is salad/lunch sized. It’s surprisingly THICK plastic—like, as if it were ceramic, but it’s plastic. This is the item I was either MOST or SECOND-most worried would sell out before my account could be unlocked. (There is a matching mug but I DO NOT NEED MORE MUGS.)

(image from Target.com)

Spring floral lunch plate. From the same seasonal line as the bunny plate. Salad/lunch size, surprisingly thick plastic. (There is a matching mug but etc.)

(image from Target.com)

Spring floral dinner plate. Same seasonal line again, surprisingly thick plastic again, but this is the dinner-sized plate. On its own, I don’t like it as much as the bunny and the smaller plate, but I love it WITH those other two plates.

(image from Target.com)

Lindt mini eggs. I like Lindt chocolate, and these look like the delightful crispy-shelled Cadbury mini eggs, so I bought a bag to taste. I found them Disappointing. The chocolate was Fine. The shells had a flat flavor I found unpleasant. I think that’s because I’m used to the Cadbury kind, which have a strong vanilla flavor. Anyway, I would not buy these again, but the Fun of Trying Something New was worth it.

(image from Target.com)

Bunny & Farm Easter Eggs. Every year a certain number of our plastic eggs get broken or lost, so most years I like to buy one new set, just to keep supplies level. Normally I would wait and buy a set on clearance, but NOT IN A PANDEMIC YEAR. In a pandemic year, I pay $5 to buy it not even on sale, and I buy its friend too:

(image from Target.com)

Spring Patterns Easter Eggs. FIVE dollars for a set of just EIGHT only slightly-oversized Easter eggs, when normally I would get them for $2.50 or even $1.50 on clearance? YES. IT IS A PANDEMIC, PLEASE JUST TAKE MY MONEY AND WE WILL RESUME NORMAL OPERATIONS NEXT YEAR. (ONE HOPES.) These (two sets of) eggs were the item I was either MOST or SECOND-most worried would sell out.

(image from Target.com)

Paper floral Easter basket shred. Normally I do not buy Easter basket grass(/shred?), because we do an Egg Hunt and not Easter baskets. But IN A PANDEMIC I have been having a lot of fun sending little seasonal boxes through the mail to my niece and nephew whom I miss, and this stuff would be perfect in the Easter box, so THIS YEAR WE BUY EASTER GRASS(/SHRED).

(image from Target.com)

M&Ms Easter Mystery Mix. Life of a Doctor’s Wife recommended these, saying: “There is only so much time left until Easter, so I advise trying them right away to determine how many bags you need.” Wise advice, and I heeded it. I am going to put them out in a bowl this afternoon as today’s Attempt To Put a Little Joy in Our Lives.

My slump of the other day is gone, replaced by near full-capacity joie de vivre, a swing that is absolutely typical and must be absolutely exhausting to live with—something I think we should all keep in mind when I am complaining about how Paul cleans bathroom floors (unnecessarily thick wad of paper towels attached to Swiffer, using a method that shoves all the dirt on the floor up against the edges; skips area around toilet; skips molding).

The other day when I was feeling so thwarted, I thought that what I should do to shake myself out of it is try to Accomplish Some Things—ANY things, even if they weren’t Top Priority Things. But also that what I should try to do if possible is accomplish some of the Most Oppressive Things. So yesterday I organized the tax paperwork which, as those of you who organize your tax paperwork know, can be about 75% of doing taxes. But our taxes have become challenging to the point where that percentage no longer holds, and I was enormously stressed every year and didn’t feel I could accurately do them anymore, and so now I take great satisfaction that my years of doing them myself mean that I Know How To Organize Our Tax Paperwork Nicely—but then I drop it off for someone with knowledge and expertise to take it from there. And I DID that. It’s DONE. And I wish I’d done it EVEN SOONER (I feel like tax customers who drop off their forms in February are the ones who get the biggest gold stars), but I did not, and March 2nd is better than March 3rd or March 4th or March 5th or March 31st, so I will try not to fret. And I emailed the tax accountant to tell her I’d dropped off the packet, so that she’d know to look for it and would tell me if it wasn’t there, so that I wouldn’t get into a Worry Loop about not having heard from her about it and start concocting ridiculous ideas of how it could have gone astray, like maybe RACCOONS could have squeezed through the mail slot and gotten it.

I also made a fresh batch of coleslaw, and I know that doesn’t sound like much, but for some reason it’s a hurdle, and having a new batch in the fridge is restorative and happy.

And I wrapped gifts for a birthday. I don’t even MIND wrapping gifts, and I LIKE choosing wrapping paper (I have Too Many, which is just the right number), so I don’t know why I was putting it off.

And I have started a new book I really like, which is not on the subject of accomplishments/tasks, but is contributing to the overall joie de vivre. Laura recommended it on the books worth buying post: it’s Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld (Target) (Amazon), a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice, which is a book I’ve read several times, and have watched several movie/miniseries versions of, and have read the annotated version (Target) (Amazon) of (fun/interesting, and I think it would make a good gift idea for an Austen fan), and I’m not at all sure about my grammar/structure in this paragraph, but my gist is that I was a little nervous going into a modern retelling of it (especially by Sittenfeld, whose books are hit-and-miss for Laura and me), but so far I love it and am enjoying reading it, knowing what comes next but not how on earth she’ll do it. It is the kind of book I am thinking about when I am not reading it, which is a gift.

And I have an interesting thing to look into today: Paul is reading me an Agatha Christie book (he reads to me every night, which is another thing we should keep in mind when I am complaining about how he fixed the sliding shower door but while he was working on it he put it ONTO OUR BED, so that there is a rip in the quilt now and also several black streaks I can’t get out, and WHY WOULD HE THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT IT ON THE BED???), and there was a mention of “Queen Anne and Georgian houses,” and I have no idea what kind of houses those would be, so I am going to look them up!

And I feel so hopeful about the vaccine news! Maybe we’ll all have access to it by MAY?? Maybe I will be back to my library job THIS SUMMER?? Maybe we will be able to see friends again within a matter of MONTHS?? Maybe Paul and the children will be OUT OF MY HOUSE BY FALL??? MAYBE THE HOUSECLEANERS CAN RETURN???????

But most of all, more than any other thing, is that the Target situation is fixed. Lisa Ann found me a corporate email address to try, which is not something I had found on my own, and I tried it, and I got a response, and they fixed it. THEY FIXED IT. IT IS FIXED. I placed THREE Target orders yesterday: two Galentine’s Day packages plus one Drive Up order for myself, and I was just FLYING mood-wise. I forgot allllll my feelings that it was Basically Too Late to even DO Galentine’s Day packages, and instead felt fully bolstered by all the comments mentioning how lovely and refreshing SPRING things are at this time of year, even if all the hearts merchandise is sold out.

Also, I was able to pick up a bunch of Easter stuff I wanted, which, after the hearts mugs drama, I’d been hand-wringingly certain would sell out before I could get to it. BUT IT IS SAFELY IN MY GRASP.

And the person I talked to from corporate was so delightful and friendly and easy to talk to, and I did not ask her if she wanted to be friends but it crossed my mind. Instead I asked her what would happen if I went back to ordering the care packages: would my account lock up again? She said, “Hm…..how MANY packages?,” and I said “Like…twenty,” and she said “Hm……maybe,” but that if it DID, I could call/email her and she would unlock it for me again. She advised ordering just one or two packages a day, and interspersing those orders with orders for myself, which is what I am going to try: not only might that keep the account from getting locked again, but also it feels really fun to stretch it out like that. It can be a whole Galentine’s MONTH! I can wake up each morning and think about the two packages I’ll send that day; and I have a TON of stuff I still want to order for myself (exciting things such as Grape-Nuts, which are available again, and also just keeping-my-grocery-store-trips-lighter-and-less-frequent things such as peanut butter and rice and canned fruit) so I can parcel that into smaller orders in between, and this is just going to be FINE, it’s going to be FINE, it’s going to be BETTER than fine!

I am having another slump. I see a lot of people having a slump in response to it being March again, but I don’t think that’s it for me: this year March seems full of hope, and it feels to me like winter was shorter than usual and spring is already inevitable, and some people I know are already getting vaccinated, and there is a pretty good end in sight for all this. I expect I’ll be sending the kids back to school in the fall, and going back to work myself sometime between now and then. It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen friends, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be too much longer now until we’re all vaccinated and can go back to something that we’re going to appreciate the way we appreciate the washer/dryer/dishwasher after it breaks and we don’t have one for two weeks, except probably more than that and for longer than that.

My current slump is, I think, because I have been Thwarted by too many things all at once. There is the locked Target account situation, which still has not resolved, and I feel like it never will be. I hate seeing disputes with companies put publicly on Twitter, but I even tried THAT (because part of the reason I hate seeing it is because of the way it often WORKS, when companies OUGHT to handle things WITHOUT public shaming)—and all the Target Twitter account did was tell me to call the same number I’d already told them I’d called twice; when I said (AGAIN) that I had ALREADY CALLED THE NUMBER, TWICE, and that THAT WAS WHY I WAS CONTACTING THEM IN THIS NEW WAY, they said oh, okay, DM them my email address so they could look into it—and I did that, and they responded by telling me they were sorry I was having an issue, and they once again referred me to the number I’ve already called (TWICE).

So that is probably The Primary Thwart. I feel like Galentine’s Day is not just Belated but Ruined at this point: it’s MARCH. There is no sense in which the care packages can feel like a Valentine’s/Galentine’s thing at this point. A lot of the stuff I was including in the packages (Valentine’s Hershey Kisses, heart dish towels, heart stickers, heart socks, heart plates, cute mugs) has now sold out. And my own household pandemic-supply-acquisition system has had a serious disruption: I buy a LOT of stuff from Target, and I’m having to find other sources for those items, and THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC is NOT A GREAT TIME FOR THAT. The whole situation has taken something that was EXTREMELY FUN (as well as just a HUGE hit of Isn’t Humanity Lovely Sometimes??) and turned it into something discouraging and disheartening and frustrating that will permanently damage the joy I got from shopping at Target.

(Several people have suggested making a new account on Target. But I have the Target credit card, which gets me various discounts including free shipping and is presumably linked to my account; and also, if I got a new account, and started sending care packages again, presumably the new account would be automatically locked in the same way as the first one.)

The Secondary Thwart has to do with spider webs. This house has a large unheated/unliveable area, which makes the house LOOK impressive from the outside but is actually pretty useless: it can only be used for certain kinds of storage, because some stuff doesn’t do well in alternating temperature extremes; and since the areas are uninsulated with lots of cracks, bugs and mice and dirt/leaves and so forth can be issues. ANYWAY. My goal for while the weather was still nice and cold was to get rid of a lot of the spider webs/eggs that were getting out of control, and which I don’t want to try to handle when it’s warm and there are Live Spiders. This was not an appealing project to tackle, but I FINALLY made myself get out the shop vac.

And it was just an utter failure. Multiple outlets in the barn/loft were discovered to be non-functioning. The ones that did work were not located near the areas I particularly wanted to vacuum. And, worst of all, it just didn’t WORK: the vacuum cleaner got almost immediately clogged with the sticky webs. All I was really doing was using the end of it to swoop up masses of web, like a cotton candy machine. I’m sorry for the gross imagery, but it’s part of explaining the resulting levels of despair. I’d hoped that the vacuum just needed emptying or something, so I emptied it, and the dust and the tiny fragments of metal (Paul had used it in his workshop, as one might expect) just went EVERYWHERE, and stuck to my coat and my gloves; and the filter popped off and landed in the bottom of the deep garage trash can and I had to fish it out, and then I had significant trouble getting it to go back ON. And now I don’t know WHAT to do about the spider webs: I’d thought “shop vac” was the answer, but if it’s not, then what IS? I could just use an empty wrapping paper tube and have the same effect as the shop vac, so maybe I should literally do that—except I’d liked the idea of vacuuming up dirt and dust and leaf fragments and wood splinters at the same time.

Tertiary Thwart is the housework. I just can’t keep up with it. And Paul cheerfully/willingly does some, but he does such a poor job (not Differently than I do it, but literally WRONG, so that things are STILL DIRTY, and he doesn’t realize it and can’t seem to see it, and it’s been over twenty years and I’m done trying to parent him); and so then I still have to do that cleaning but I have to do it SECRETLY, like it’s a TREAT I’m sneaking, so that he doesn’t think I’m a bossy overcontrolling never-satisfied person who has to have everything done My Way! GAH.

And then I just feel like such a giant baby. I’m not even being thwarted in any kind of LARGE way. My rights of free speech haven’t been restricted. I am not unable to acquire food and essential supplies. My children have not been taken from me by a government. I just can’t currently shop at one (1) store I’d like to shop at; I am a LITTLE afflicted with spider webs; and I have to clean my own house—and here I am, listlessly reclining on my Desolation Couch.

This whole post is just FRET FRET FRET, in case you want to go read something else. I would not remotely blame you. Maybe you would enjoy Bibliomama’s funny post about subbing in the school office? Kids say funny things about blood; and she forgets to ask a teacher’s name and has to come up with a description of him for the principal on the fly. Or perhaps you would rather read today’s Questionable Content, which is an accurate rendition of how I send care packages.

On to the frets. I kept waking up every morning with a sick adrenaline feeling about phone calls I needed to make, but then Not Making the Phone Calls, which started to seem as if I was deliberately stretching out something unpleasant to make the unpleasantness last as long as possible, which struck me as stupid, so today I Made Two of the Phone Calls, and also discovered it was too soon to make the others.

First I called the dentist and made appointments for all of us for August, by which time I have HOPE of us being vaccinated—or at least that a lot of OTHER people will be vaccinated, including presumably the dentist and staff. Or if things don’t look good as we approach those dates, I can reschedule. But at least the appointments are MADE, and I will not wake up tomorrow imagining everyone else having the same idea, so that the receptionist says “Oooo, yeah, no, everyone else is all of a sudden trying to come back too? so we’re booking into February? Maybe more like March.”

One reason I was so stressed about the call, by the way, is that there are just so MANY of us. With things like this (appointments we need seven of, or in this case six because Paul makes his own; fast-food orders for seven) I fret that I should do it in two separate batches so it won’t be So Much, but that just seems weird. Still, the receptionist always says things like “Hang on, let me write all this down” and “Okay, now WHO’S next?” or whatever. Does she do that if someone calls with a family of four instead of a family of seven? My guess is no.

(Wait, hang on a second: I am sensing that one of you is, RIGHT THIS MINUTE, thinking of informing me that my two eldest kids can actually make their OWN appointments, you know. Oh, girl, you KNOW that I know! And one sweet day, not long from now, we will transition to that. That day is not today, but you can bet your boots I DO have it in mind, and I look forward to it the way I looked forward to my kids being able to fasten their own seatbelts.)

Then I called Elizabeth’s allergist: she has to have an annual appointment/paperwork session with him or the school won’t let her attend in person. My working assumption is that there is a good chance she will be going back to in-person school in the fall, so I wanted to get that appointment made for August too—but when I called, they said they weren’t booking out that far yet. Which reminded me that that’s the same situation with the pediatrician: those appointments were on my list to make, but the pediatrician’s office only books 2-3 months ahead, and I think that’s the case with the eye doctor too, so if I want August I can’t book until May or June. SWEET RELIEF. NO MORE PHONE CALLS FOR NOW.

Now I can go on to worrying about my taxes. I never know when it’s safe to assume that all the paperwork has arrived. I remember hearing/reading that most forms have to be sent to taxpayers by January 31st, which means it would be pretty safe to assume it had all arrived by mid-February, but we have some investment thingies that send paperwork much later than that for reasons that appear to be reasonable/allowed. And then last year, the person doing our taxes emailed and say “Hey, did you guys do an IRA contribution this year?” and we HAD but we didn’t have any paperwork for that, and maybe paperwork isn’t SENT for that? Maybe we just have to know to tell her? I don’t know. My lack of knowing is one of the reasons we finally started having someone else do our taxes, but it doesn’t resolve all the issues, because she only knows what I tell her (or, with time, what we did/had in previous years), so I can still make mistakes. I am trying not to worry about it too much. It’s not like I’m going to fail to remember something BIG. Probably.

[P.S. I am so glad some of you are mentioning that we have to claim the stimulus payments because I DID NOT KNOW THAT and WE DID NOT RECEIVE PAPERWORK. Now I am low-grade panicking because I don’t know what we received for the first payment, or when, or how to find out. (It was sent on a scammy-looking debit card that turned out to be legit.) (Okay, whew, Paul was able to find out how much it was.)]

[P.P.S. I am still locked out of my Target account.]

Happy Pandemic Valentine’s Day! I would like to share with you on this festive occasion the advice of my glamorous, charming aunt, who is in her 70s and absolutely still Has It; and who told me, when I asked if she was dating anyone, that she was not interested in “taking care of some old man,” and advised me to cultivate and invest in my female friendships. I have taken that advice to heart.

We are going to be taking a little break from the Galentine’s Day care package fulfillments: I’d sent 25 of them when the “Sorry, we had to cancel your order” notices began coming in from Target. Luckily, so far it seems it is only the 25th order that was canceled, plus an order I’d placed for myself (I was jealous of the packages I was sending out). I contacted Target Online Chat which, after a brief chat, referred me to an actual phone number I had to call, WHICH I DID DO and if that is not proof of my love for you I don’t know what is. I talked to a very nice customer service person who looked over my order history and said yeah, she could tell me right now this was going to have to go to a review process, and that that’s going to take a few days. Which, fair: I WANT them to be concerned if my account suddenly sends 25 packages to addresses it has never sent packages to before.

So! I have every confidence that the situation will soon be straightened out: Target and I BOTH want me to be spending lots of your money on their site. But it may take a little longer than expected. If you were in the FIRST GROUP, the group of thirty winners, then 4/5ths of you should start getting your packages over the next days/week or so (and, incidentally, an AMUSING number of items are apparently being sent out individually-packaged) (seriously, someone is going to receive a single-serve package of hot chocolate, sent all on its own), while 1/5th of you will be waiting awhile longer. If you are in the SECOND group, the group of fourteen additional winners, I have not yet even opened your emails! So don’t worry when nothing arrives. And in the meantime: CULTIVATE YOUR FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS.

Happy Galentine’s Day! I am drinking out of my festive mug!

This holiday is increasingly fun for me with each passing year, but I think we can agree that this year really takes the cake. I spent THE ENTIRE DAY yesterday working on various aspects of the care packages, and I don’t know if I can adequately describe the happy energized feeling. ALL DAY LONG I felt the buzz of Happy Industry, combined with the fun of Getting To Choose Gifts (if gift-giving is not one of your love languages, this may be baffling; you will have to trust me), combined with the extreme brain chemicals of having so many people being so kind to other people. And I am nowhere near done! More on this later in the post.

There are two anxious elements, because there are always going to be anxious elements. One is that I am worried my organizational system will fail me and I will mess this up somehow; the other is that I feel like I need to HURRY. For the former, my Coping Thought is that we will figure this out, and if something falls through the cracks (an email gets sent to spam, someone gets chosen twice and I don’t notice right away, I choose too many or too few winners, etc.) we will simply fish it back out. For the latter, my Coping Thought is that these care packages were ALWAYS going to be belated! Even when it was just ONE package, it wasn’t going to arrive in time. There’s no actual rush! I will just take it bird by bird! (I am not sure how familiar that phrase is. Paul had never heard of it. It’s from an Anne Lamott book where she tells a story of her brother being overwhelmed by a project that had to be on some overwhelming number of birds, like thirty or fifty or something, and their dad said something like “Just take it bird by bird, son.”)

And there is no sense in RUSHING through something Rare and Fun, when going a little slower means wringing every single good brain chemical out of the experience! So yesterday I sent out the thirty emails to the thirty winners, and then I started going through the responses in the order they came in, putting together the first care package for the first respondent and so on, and meanwhile my inbox looks like this, except there’s screen after screen of it:

Target sends an order confirmation, but then also sends a shipping notification for every single part of the order that ships, and then sends another email to say the package will be delivered the following day, and then sends another email to say that the package is out for delivery that day, and then sends a final email to say the package has been delivered. So far, most of the packages I’ve put together look like they’ll be shipped in approximately three separate boxes per order, so the notifications are going to POUR IN: approximately thirteen per care package. And it was pretty thrilling how quickly things started shipping: by the time I was working on the tenth package, items from the first package were starting to ship!

BUT THERE IS MORE. Because the entire day, while I was working on the packages, MORE DONATIONS WERE COMING IN. MORE DONATIONS. MORE. I don’t even KNOW at this point how many more winners we have, but AT LEAST FOURTEEN MORE, because ONE SINGLE PERSON sent enough for FOURTEEN PACKAGES, and then there are ALSO more emails from PayPal I haven’t even OPENED yet. So here is the task list for the days ahead:

• I will choose AT LEAST FOURTEEN more winners. My goal is to choose those first fourteen today, and add their names to the original post. There WILL BE more winners than that, but it’s a little tricky to figure out exactly how many, so I will keep choosing more winners until all the money that has been sent in is gone, and then I will choose one more winner (because the original plan was that I was going to pay for one myself).

• I will EMAIL those new winners in as many batches as it takes.

• I will go bird-by-bird through the responses to those emails, taking as much time as each package needs to be FUN.

I woke up this morning SUFFUSED WITH JOY at the thought of continuing this project. Last night I had to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I was halfway through a care package and felt like I should maybe rush to finish it so I could check it off the list, but instead I just left it where it was on the “don’t rush if it makes it Less Fun” principle—and this morning when I woke up I felt so HAPPY that I could spend more time on it!

Elizabeth has found a 4-year-old shelter cat online and she wants us to adopt it. She is good at the kind of persuasion that works on my temperament type: she never seems like she’s pushing or nagging or whining, she just seems Really Cute and Happy about the idea and it makes me want to make it work out for her. This morning I said to Paul, “We should probably discuss that cat, in case we need to nip this in the bud,” and he said “I leave the decision entirely to you and Elizabeth.” Which, er. Probably means we’re going to get the cat.

My renewed efforts to take care of physical/mental health seem to have worked, to my relief. I would still say I am in an adrenaline valley, but I’m no longer worried that I’m getting sick. I’ve gone back to the rough checklist I had earlier in the pandemic, where every day I attempted to check off these things: exercise, email/letter, reading, blogging or working on blog-fixing project, chore…and there was something else, but I threw the chart away at some point, feeling like I had it down-pat, which was clearly a mistake.

I would like to make two complaints. But one is against Target, and you know how I feel about Target; and the other is against a book in a series I love, so we have to START with the understanding that this is like complaining about one’s spouse or one’s children: OBVIOUSLY there is a baseline of INTENSE LOVE, and this is just a SMALL COMPLAINT with the FULL KNOWLEDGE that the complaint is DWARFED by the…etc.

Okay, first Target. Many of us have remarked on how VERY MANY BOXES the orders sometimes arrive in. My assumption early in the pandemic was that it was a result of the abrupt and unexpected increase in online ordering, and they just didn’t have the right boxes or enough of them, and also that there were warehouse issues. But we are over ten months in, and if anything the box situation has gotten worse. Yesterday I received SIX boxes from Target. TWO of them were their typical Fairly Large boxes—capacity of, say, four to six large bags of chips. One of those largish boxes contained one single plastic plate, plus YARDS of plastic cushioning balloons. The other contained another single plastic plate, plus a tiny box of eye drops, plus YARDS of plastic cushioning balloons. A third box contained one (1) can of pears. A fourth box, somewhat satisfyingly, had exactly the capacity of the one bag of chips it contained. And so on.

Meanwhile, I am getting delivery emails from Target that say “Looking for a packing slip? We’ve got some ambitious sustainability goals. One small step? Skipping packing slips.” Okay, you saved one piece of paper per box and I agree that is well worth doing, especially considering how very many boxes there are, but WHAT ABOUT THE MILLIONS OF UNNECESSARY EXTRA CARDBOARD BOXES AND MILES OF UNNECESSARY PLASTIC BUBBLES?? I feel like I personally have wasted 1-2 dinosaurs, just with my Target ordering since last March.

Okay, second thing. I love this series, and this book, but it is driving me a little bit up a tree:

(image from Target.com)

Magic Lessons, by Alice Hoffman (Target) (Amazon)

This is the prequel to Practical Magic. And I am glad I have it, and glad to be reading it, and now I want to re-read the rest of the series. It makes me wish I were a witch. And it was published in 2020 and I think it has real 2015-2019 vibes, with some nice pointed content about how, generation after generation, the people who consider themselves the most moral are going to be the ones doing some of the most evil in the name of morality, and men are gonna men and some of them are going to blame/punish women for it, and unjust judges are gonna judge, and humans are gonna human, and so on.

HOWEVER. It is driving me nuts in two ways. One is the Lofty/Legend/Fairytale/Portent tone/phrasing/wording, which might have been just the same in the other books and I just don’t remember it. A lot of “for” used instead of “because,” and a lot of the pronoun “one,” and verb choices such as “vowed”: “He vowed that such-and-such, for he was a such-and-such man who such-and-such, and when one is that kind of a man, one…” Tiresome.

The other complaint is that it is RIFE with errors. RIFE. Some of the errors involve spoilers, so I can’t list them. But there’s one that is not a spoiler so I will tell it to you. A young woman wants to avoid love, and in addition to her thinking that to herself (“vowing” that to herself) MANY MANY TIMES, there is a whole paragraph about the various measures she takes to protect herself from it. It uses these exact words: “to protect herself from love.” NOT THREE PAGES LATER it says about the same young woman: “…but in all this time she had not once thought to protect herself from love.” EXCUSE ME BUT SHE HAS THOUGHT IT AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THE ENTIRE BOOK SO FAR, IT IS IN FACT ONE OF THE MAIN THEMES OF THE BOOK.

And there are LOTS MORE OF THOSE. There is one part where I can picture the author and editor both noticing the issue but not being able to fix it without spoiling something later in the book, and I can see their conundrum—but it really needed to be fixed, or else left out. It CAN’T be the way that it is without creating a little paradox that undermines one of the recurring themes of the book.

One more complaint, this one about Paul: the sounds he makes while eating have gotten worse with age. And/or with me being trapped in the house with him all day every day for ten months.

Okay, I am done. Feel free to complain about any of your darlings.

Yesterday and today I have felt logy and exhausted, which of course is worrying in a pandemic. I have a cousin who tested positive for Covid-19, and she said the first two days of it all she felt was extremely tired. So it springs to mind. And it was about a week ago I had to take Edward into a hospital for his Remicade infusion, and we were there for several hours breathing hospital air, so it is good to keep in mind as a possibility.

But I think it is more likely this is a sudden decrease in anxiety/adrenaline that my brain/body is interpreting as depression and exhaustion. I think I’ve been running on stress for awhile, and my body isn’t sure what to do for energy now.

Also, I think in my relief over the inauguration, I may have abruptly stopped alllll of my stress/coping supports. I haven’t been careful about taking my vitamins. I haven’t been careful about food. [Clarification: I mean, haven’t been eating enough of it. Initially I left it deliberately vague since there are many ways to be uncareful about food and it’s more relatable if we can each imagine our own way—but now I am more concerned about making sure I’m not feeding into (ha) the idea that the only way to eat uncarefully is the way that results in gaining weight.] I haven’t been using the lamp that mimics sunlight.

Also-also, are you too finding that you suddenly have so much more free time and mental space, now that you don’t have to constantly worry about the president steering our airplane into a mountain? Until the last week, I had been worrying about going back to work someday: I originally got that job in part because of feeling like I had way too much time on my hands; but since the pandemic began and I stopped working, I HAVEN’T been feeling bored or like I had too much time. I didn’t know where my time was going (TWITTER DOOM-SCROLLING), but I felt like I was easily filling it (TWITTER DOOM-SCROLLING). I was also spending a LOT of time planning/monitoring groceries and supplies, and that need hasn’t gone away but it has abruptly dropped in urgency, so then I don’t spend as much time searching for out-of-stock things. I am finding myself with more time than I can fill. (I realize this is not a sympathetic complaint right now, as many people are trying to work from home and care for small children. Try to think of it as me listing a symptom, rather than as me complaining that my heaps of diamonds keep scratching up my furniture.)

I still check Twitter, and when I see some minor outrage that is being blown up into a huge outrage (I think because there is a sudden drop in huge outrages, and a lot of other people don’t know what to do with that new situation either), I can just…stop scrolling Twitter. I can listen to the NPR news update once or twice a day, but don’t have to leave it on afterward to hear someone explaining how potentially dangerous and democracy-destroying the most recent action by the president is. If I start feeling stressed about the former president, I can snip that right off at the root: he’s just some terrible person with no connection to my life now.

Anyway, today I am taking some steps. I got up and made a good hearty breakfast, and took my vitamins, and used my sun lamp. I am writing some posts. I will do some chores, perhaps. I will read a book. I will try to keep warm, because once I get too chilly I don’t want to budge. I will find some things to do. I will look forward to getting back to my library job.