We lost power one evening this past week, very abruptly and for hours, which reminds me to strongly recommend an item I LOVE WITH ALL MY DARKNESS-FEARING HEART:

(image from Target.com)

General Electric Power Failure Nightlight (Target link) (Amazon link). It’s a nightlight—but it charges itself at the same time, and if the power goes off it comes on automatically, using that charge. We have one at the top of the stairs, for normal nighttime safety and for power-outage safety. We also have one in our bathroom, and it’s enough light to brush your teeth and get ready for bed in a power outage. You can also unplug it and use it in flashlight mode.

So basically it is awesome, and I have ordered two more, and might order a couple more after that but also might not, because it would have been nice if they had come on automatically all over the house, but on the other hand let’s not get carried away: I had a set of LED pillar candles (housewarming gifts from dear friends) I could switch on right away, and also a couple of wax/jarred candles I still had on the counter because IT CAN TAKE SOME OF US AWHILE TO PUT AWAY THE FINAL CHRISTMAS TIDBITS OKAY, and so very soon we had a nice amount of light. Plus of course we all had the flashlight mode of our phones, so there is no reason to GO OVERBOARD as I am absolutely planning to do. (It was just SO PLEASANT, moments after being plunged into abrupt darkness, to have these BEACONS shining forth helpfully, as if they’d waited their entire lives for this moment—and it made me want MORE BEACONS.)

Two more meh books for the pile, though I did finish both:

(image from Amazon.com)

The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout (Target link) (Amazon link). This was a re-read, and I’d remembered that I hadn’t liked it as much as some of the author’s other books; but there was a mention of some of the characters in ANOTHER Elizabeth Strout book I was reading, so I thought I’d try it again. I’d say it still has too much sad/upsetting/traumatic stuff to be worth the good writing and good plot and good characters—but also that it wouldn’t be a mistake to risk it if you generally like Elizabeth Strout books, all of which contain a certain level of sad/upsetting/traumatic.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Operator, by Gretchen Berg (Target link) (Amazon link). I was intrigued enough by the plot (1950s telephone operator routinely eavesdrops on telephone conversations, and one day hears something scandalous/shocking about her own family) that I kept going for fully half the book despite finding the writing uneven, and the characters odd and one-dimensional and boring, and the author’s commentary on her characters intrusive and snarky; and despite feeling that our wait to hear the Scandalous Reveal was drawn out for FAR longer than ANYONE could POSSIBLY think was wise. And then the Scandal as initially presented was so…relatively unterrible? I mean, a surprise for sure! But it was treated as if it were absolutely devastating in every way, to everyone involved, in SUCH an over-the-top, dramatic, we-are-all-ruined, deliberately-misunderstanding-the-situation-for-higher-drama way that it managed to talk me out of finding it dramatic at even the level it deserved.

(It’s hard to explain this without spoilers, but let’s say the scandal was that a character’s teenage child had DONE DRUGS!! But then this turned out to mean that the child had had one inhale of a joint at a party, without realizing it was a joint. And then ALL the characters acted as if this would mean the family would need to LEAVE THE STATE to avoid jail time and/or being cast out of the community and/or the child being put in foster care, and as if the child was now drug-addicted and would need to go to rehab, and as if this incident might mean their extended family would never speak to them again—and then gradually the reader realizes that the AUTHOR does not think the characters are over-reacting! and the over-reaction is not the point of the story! It doesn’t take long before even a reader vehemently opposed to all drug-use finds themselves thinking things like, “Well, I mean, it’s just a single hit of pot, and it was an ACCIDENT, and I think probably everyone/everything is fine here and we can simply move forward with our lives without making such a big deal of this? I mean, I know this is set in the 1950s, but…even in the 1950s would it have been THIS bad?” While the characters in the book continue to thrash and wail and panic and blow everything out of proportion, chapter after chapter.)

I almost didn’t keep reading, but then I wanted to find out if it was ever going to explain why there was such an overreaction, so I kept reading, and I guess I would say I was glad I did. It never did justify the overreaction, but the author built a pretty entertaining house despite the foundation resting on sand.

BUT THEN: I got to the Author’s Note at the end, and it turns out this was based on something that really happened to the author’s grandmother. So…perhaps that was what was wrong with it. I was reminded of a Richard Russo book or short story, where the narrator, a college writing instructor, is talking about how sometimes a student’s story will be soundly criticized by other students in the class for being unrealistic and/or seeming untrue and/or not making sense; and, as they’re talking, he’ll see a smug angry expression growing on the face of the student in question, and he’ll know what’s coming: and indeed, the student will say triumphantly that ACTUALLY, this REALLY HAPPENED, so that shows what the critics know about anything!! And the narrator explains to the reader that what the student doesn’t realize is that that makes the situation FAR WORSE: the student has managed to take something ACTUALLY TRUE, and make it SEEM FALSE. Anyway, I think if the premise appeals to you, it’s worth trying, but I’d get it from the library.

So, update: possibly I hate yoga! And also: I would like to know how many hours, exactly, women are expected to spend per day on exercise and self-care? Because it seems as if men are not expected to “””take time for themselves””” in this PARTICULAR way (which just COINCIDENTALLY has an ABSOLUTELY COINCIDENTAL SIDE EFFECT of working to shape women’s bodies for men’s preferences), and it seems as if this gives men a lot more free time to start wars and harass/assault women and take away rights and so forth! Not that I think that if women get that time back by discontinuing our 11 steps to perfect summer eyebrows, we should use it to start wars and harass/assault men and take away rights! I am only saying that it seems to theoretically be VERY PRODUCTIVE TIME. I am reminded, by perhaps a less-connected mental leap than you might be expecting at this juncture, of how the PTA seems to have been designed to give distracting busy-work and faux empowerment/management duties to the mothers who would otherwise be restlessly bothering the teachers and school office staff, but who are instead now very very busy bothering each other in a separate loop; and running fundraisers that barely pay for their own running, and doing so only if a lot of women consider their time to be free of charge! Whoever came up with that idea was VERY VERY SMART! Probably a joint psychology/business major/sociopath!

No, I did not get any sort of notification from my period tracker today, and also shut up. AND IF I DID: as I understand it, it is AFTER menopause that our hormones are “normal”—i.e., as they are during PMS. Which means that PISSED OFF ALL THE TIME AT HOW EVERYTHING WORKS AND HOW EVERYONE IS is the way women SHOULD BE. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME.

I feel as if I can’t just Not Comment on the Russian attack on Ukraine, as though it’s not happening / as if I am oblivious to it / as if I think what I am writing is more important. But also: what are any of us supposed to say? It’s a nightmare, right? Stupid and horrifying and dismaying to see people pulling strings and acting as if other people’s lives are unimportant toys for them to play with when they’re bored. I bet some middle-aged Ukrainian/Russian woman would LOVE to be pissed off about yoga and peri-menopause right now, instead of wondering if her kids will survive this and knowing it is NOT IRRATIONALLY ANXIOUS to prepare for the possibility that they will not. I’m all the way over here, and I’m wondering if we’ll survive this, or if we’ll get a little weather alert on our phones notifying us of impending nuclear fallout, possibly because of ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE OVER A NUCLEAR PLANT. I read On the Beach a long time ago, but I feel like I remember the gist. Merciful pills for our pets first, and then for our kids, and then for ourselves. But we saw how the U.S. government handled the Covid pandemic, so we know the merciful medication will be plentifully available 1-2 years after we have all already perished from radiation or whatever it is that kills you when it’s a nuclear thing, I AM NOT REAL CLEAR ON THE DETAILS AND NOT REAL INCLINED TO LOOK IT UP, NO I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME RIGHT NOW

A little gift of peri-menopause, for me, seems to be the WILD MOOD SWINGS. Not that anyone would EVER have described me as a steady, level, consistent person. But right now I am going from COMPLETELY HAPPY when I remember that it’s the weekend and that means a bonus challenge on my phone game!!! to thinking that really it would be the best thing for everyone/everything if humanity wiped itself out via nuclear disaster. Like, within five minutes. I go from “OH!! I just remembered I have a new sweater I got on clearance and I can wear it today, and now I am wearing it and it’s making me happy and I should tell other people about it!!” (it’s this Lands’ End shaker sweater in Rubellite, and I think the only reason it’s on such a deep clearance is that the wee tiny vertical stripes make it look very weird on computer monitors ((also because Lands’ End prices are doubled, and you should never pay more than 50% off original price to begin with)), and I wish I’d risked buying the Baltic Teal as well even though that color looks even weirder on the monitor; I also got this Lands’ End fine-gauge crewneck sweater in Soft Magenta Heather and Soft Azure, because I love a colorblock) to thinking the only TRULY sensible solution is for me to leave my family and go live in a commune of people who are not men, where we will all SHARE THE CHORES and SHARE OUR SWEATERS and DO NICE THINGS FOR EACH OTHER and HAVE CHICKENS. (Someone other than me is going to have to take care of the chickens, because I only like chickens from a distance. But I WILL CLEAN TOILETS, so I feel like I have a lot to offer. I will also COOK CHICKEN EGGS.)

I had basically stopped doing yoga, not on purpose but just by getting less inspired to do it, and then doing it less and less until I was hardly doing it at all. I had a few favorite videos, but I was getting tired of hearing the same patter every single time; and I was getting bored; but also kept getting discouraged when I tried to do new ones, and even by trying to FIND new ones to try. I was still doing the back-pain ones when I had back pain, but otherwise not.

Then I was assigned a shelf-reading-type task at work. You are familiar with shelves: tall at the top, medium-height in the middle, short at the bottom. So when I am reading the top shelves, I can stand; but at a certain point in the middle-shelves region I am stooping uncomfortably, and it becomes more comfortable to kneel; and for the very lowest shelves, it is most comfortable to sit on the floor.

Well. My goodness. I CERTAINLY NOTICED that I had not been doing yoga. When I was doing yoga, I DID notice that it was easier and more comfortable to sit on the floor, etc., but I didn’t think it was THAT big of a difference. (IT WAS THAT BIG OF A DIFFERENCE.) So I have started doing yoga again. The first day I went back to the 12-minute core video, my muscles complained for SEVERAL DAYS afterward, but also I could FEEL how it motivated me to stand up straighter. The first day I did the back pain video I like (which I like even more for leg/hip/knee stretching/flexibility), I was like whyyyyyyyy haven’t I been doing this when it is so NICE??? (And I was alarmed by how much progress I’d lost on some of the poses, including such classics such as Sitting Criss-Cross-Applesauce, as well as pigeon pose.)

But I do need to add more videos to the rotation, because I can now anticipate nearly every word of the scripts, complete with errors, and that is annoying. This morning I tried the first of a 30-day series, so that I could have 30 days of not having to figure out which video to watch. (I am not going to do yoga every day, but I mean I intend to work my way through this series on the next 30 days I DO do yoga.) (Or maybe it will take more than 30 yoga-doing days, because if I happen to LIKE one of the videos, or feel motivated in any way to repeat it, I will repeat it, thereby extending the number of days I don’t have to figure out which video to watch.)

On Day One (all I’ve done so far, so my report is…early), I hated it the way I almost always hate new yoga videos, and also it was a lot of my least-favorite things: downward-facing dog, three-legged dog, planks, and a lot of rotating quickly (for me) AMONG the things I don’t like, so that I ALSO felt as if I could barely get INTO a pose I hate before she’s already done with it and heading into the next pose I hate (often saying “No need to rush!,” INFURIATINGLY). As usual I got frustrated enough to cry, and wanted to quit, and thought viciously about how much I hated the way everything felt, and how much I hated yoga in general, and also hated all exercise. I felt my body and mind were in perfect alignment on these views. Plus, I have been watching older Adriene videos, so I hated the “new” intro (I don’t know how new it is) and the whole vibe of it, and also I felt as if Adriene herself had changed, and was now doing much more…of her…speaking…pattern where…she puts…irregular…pauses…in…her talking which…seems to go…on…and on…as if she doesn’t…know what…she is going…to say…or how…to stop.

BUT: I also thought about how with some exercises, the ONLY way to go from “hating the way it feels” to “liking the way it feels” is to keep doing it until the necessary muscles/skills develop. And I thought about how I DO WANT to get better at these poses and not hate the way they feel, if that is within my abilities; and I won’t know if it IS within my abilities or not until I’ve tried for awhile. And how “working on getting better”/”trying it to see if it improves” are achievable goals, absolutely INSTANTLY achievable goals, even when “doing it the way the instructor is doing it right now” is not. And how I really am not required by any law to do what the instructor is doing, and no one is going to force me, but I can at least TRY! I can just TRYYYYYYYY. If she says to do this odd plank thing, and I look at her and think “I cannot do that,” I MAY VERY WELL BE CORRECT—but that doesn’t mean I can’t just TRY it, just to keep myself from getting bored as I wait for the next thing. And sometimes it turns out I CAN do it A LITTLE BIT, for A FEW SECONDS, which is A START!; and other times I CANNOT do it, but it feels like the TRYING is still working on the very first step of those muscles/skills; and other times I find to my surprise that actually I CAN do it. So even if I hate it, and I hate the way it feels, and I hate being so frustrated, I still feel motivated to keep working on it, at least for now, and to make the “working on it” and “feeling better sitting on the floor again” the point.

I was on a real streak with books there for awhile, finding tons to bring home among the ones I was supposed to be re-shelving at work, and reading them one after another like sleeves of Thin Mints. After finishing Plainsong by Kent Haruf, I read Eventide and Benediction, both of which I liked—though neither as much as Plainsong. Eventide was a sequel, sort of, but it made me half-wish I’d stopped with the first book (though not really) (but sort of), and Benediction was not really a sequel, but only a book that took place in the same town, with some very light character overlap. Then I was reshelving Benediction (it is oddly pleasant to come upon my own returned books on the reshelving cart) and saw Our Souls at Night, another book by Kent Haruf, about two elderly acquaintances, both widowed, who begin having platonic sleepovers because nights are so lonely and difficult, which I thought I hadn’t read but it turned out I had, and I enjoyed re-reading it, though I felt the conflict was forced and required more justification, and shouldn’t have been written as if it’s a normal thing that happens. (And if it IS a normal thing that happens, then I am sad and outraged and I wish to find a solution.)

(image from Target.com)

Now that I work at the library, I try not to take home New Releases, because New books are checked out more than any others, and once they are no longer New they tend to go dormant, which is when I will definitely see them and remember I want to read them; and Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, which I have been waiting to read, was moved off the New shelf AND was hanging out on the regular shelf (sometimes a non-New book has a long hold list so will still be absent from the library), so I checked it out, but first I re-read My Name Is Lucy Barton to remind myself of the gist (Oh William! is not exactly a sequel, but it is another book about the same woman), and also because My Name Is Lucy Barton is one of my favorite books, and I’ve read it at least three times, despite the title being so odd and unappealing to me (the title Oh William! is also odd and unappealing to me). Then I read Oh William! and liked that too—not as much as My Name Is Lucy Barton, but I don’t know if I liked My Name Is Lucy Barton the first time as much as I like it now. Oh William! is about an older woman and her relatively friendly relationship with her ex-husband, which is the sort of plot I like very much. My Name Is Lucy Barton is about the same woman when she is younger (though still an adult) (and married to William), and experiencing a lengthy hospital stay, and her mother comes to visit, and they chat about people they used to know; gradually these stories reveal the extreme dysfunction/poverty she grew up in, and you would not think I would like this book, considering I have said I will not even CONSIDER reading any more memoirs about people’s dysfunctional/neglected/abused childhoods, and yet here we are. Fiction is different; but also, this author does it in a way I can stand.

(image from Target.com)

Let’s see, I think that is when I had three or four books in a row that I really disliked, and I persevered with each one for awhile because I really wanted the promised plot, but just could not chew through them. I don’t want the authors to search themselves online and end up here, but in case you are interested, one was emoC htiW eM by neleH namluhcS (I spent quite a chunk of time trying to decide if the order of the words should also be backward, and I still don’t know what’s right, likely because both ways are, clearly, wrong), which was supposed to be a book about getting to see what your life would have been like if you’d made different decisions, but I dragged myself through almost 50 pages and it just seemed like the author was trying very hard to be cool, and was doing that thing where there’s one line of a conversation, then two full pages of backstory, then another line of conversation, then two more pages of backstory, and can we just have the conversation and stop interrupting it? I also tried ehT repaP ecalaP by adnariM yelwoC relleH, which was supposed to be about a middle-aged married woman having a fling with an old crush, and I only got through 20 pages before realizing I hated everyone: all of the characters, the author, even the setting.

Those are just the two books I still have here at home; I can’t remember the others I tried and returned, but in any case I was starting to get worried. Did I not like books anymore? Would I read 20-50 pages of every book from now on? Well. On to the next one in the pile.

(image from Target.com)

Poison for Breakfast, by Lemony Snicket (Target link) (Amazon link).

This was on my shelving cart, and I was surprised to see a book of adult fiction by a children’s-book author. I didn’t think I would want to read it, because I didn’t like the Series of Unfortunate Events books—though really that was an issue of plot and not style. But then I saw two things. On the front flap: “In the years since this publishing house was founded, we have worked with an array of wondrous authors who have brought illuminating clarity to our bewildering world. Now, instead, we bring you Lemony Snicket.” And on the back cover: “Some people might call Poison for Breakfast a book of philosophy, and hardly anyone likes a book of philosophy.” So I got it, because it is free to try books from the library and, since I work there, also very easy. It is a small book, and it is only 158 pages long, and there are illustrations, and in the back there are notes that include things such as “The author I said I would not identify is _____.” I think this book IS in some sense a children’s book; I can see how there may have been a struggle to decide how to publish it and where to shelve it. It is written simply, and with big words still defined as he does in his children’s books (“Sally’s suitor, whatever his name was, seems a bit impulsive, a word which here means ‘too quick to leave town just because Sally didn’t show up at a certain time'”). It feels as if the author is chatting to you: he mentions books he’s just thought of, and conversations he remembers, and why he likes specialty shops. There are little remarks phrased so simply and directly and purely, I had to stop, and blink, and wonder why I had never thought of saying it like that before—but that is the gift, to be able to say things that way, so that other people stop and blink and wonder why something so easy wasn’t easy to come up with themselves. There are little looping asides, where he reuses a word he defined earlier, as if trying to help you learn it. I was charmed by it all, and bewildered. I finished it and walked directly to my computer. If your library has it, I think you should try it, even if you don’t work there and so you have to make a special trip.

I continue to find it satisfying to do a pick-and-choose Valentine’s Day each year, based on inclination and mood. Last year, which was the first Valentine’s Day of the pandemic, I felt like buying cozy/at-home Galentine’s Day gifts and leaving them sneakily at local friends’ houses, and doing a Galentine’s Day care package giveaway that got wildly and beautifully out of hand. This year I am doing:

• heart sweater
• heart sneakers
• heart earrings
• heart mug for coffee
• classroom-style paper valentines (candy taped to each one) for co-workers
• giant Hershey Kisses for the kids
• Valentine care packages for the college kids
• Valentine care package for niece/nephew
• heart-shaped plastic plates

Which looks like a lot when I list it out, but FEELS very low-key: I already owned the sweater and the sneakers and the earrings and the mug and the plates. The co-worker valentines were a last-minute decision, half an hour before I left for work, when it suddenly seemed like it would be fun; I already had a bunch of paper valentines on hand, and I had a bag of heart-shaped York peppermint patties, so I combined them real quick and they were fun to hand out / put at people’s work areas. (I knew from previous years that a few co-workers hand out similar things, so I wouldn’t be the only one.) I always get the giant Hershey Kisses for the kids, so that was very low mental effort. The care packages were small and casual, not elaborate.

In previous years I’ve ordered myself a shipment of See’s Candies to arrive in time for Valentine’s Day. This year I didn’t, because I’d ordered myself some See’s back in the fall, and was still working on it in January, so it seemed less special/tempting. Also, I’d wondered if Paul might suddenly order some, because recently it seems to me that he senses a disturbance in the force and has been attempting to do some of the things I have finally given up on him ever doing. Probably I will buy myself some sort of Valentine’s Day candy, maybe See’s or maybe a box of something at Target, but I will buy it on sale/clearance this year.

And I have flowers, because I like flowers, and happily I like grocery-store flowers, so in The Difficult Months (January and February and often well into March) I try to have two bouquets going: one $3.99 misc-but-mostly-carnations bouquet, and/or one $4.99 tulips bouquet, and/or one $1.89 daffodils bouquet, depending on what is available. The vase with the $3.99 misc bouquet starts out looking pitiful, because a $3.99 bouquet is fairly thin; but the NEXT time you go to the grocery store and get ANOTHER $3.99 bouquet, part of the FIRST $3.99 bouquet (including usually all of the greenery) is still fresh and good!—so you just pull out the wilty items, freshen the water, trim the stems of what’s still good, add in the new bouquet, and now the bouquet is much fuller! This is how it works with the daffodils, too: $1.89 worth of daffodils is pretty okay, but it’s even MORE okay if you go back and get another $1.89 of daffodils, and get rid of the wilty daffodils from the first batch, and keep doing that every time. (I have a THIRD vase, a small one that is in fact a surprisingly prettily-shaped a Starbucks frappuccino bottle and I highly recommend acquiring one, for the flowers/greenery that have lasted longer than expected, but have been trimmed so many times they’re now too short for the regular vase). The $4.99 tulips typically last at least a week, but they all blow out at once; so I let them do their thing, and then I throw them all away, wash the vase, and start with a new batch.

Oh, and I ordered heart-shaped boxes of See’s to be delivered to the unit where Edward was in the hospital for a week, and I see that those were delivered today, so that’s fun!

I do miss going out for dinner with Paul: we’d get cocktails AND dessert; and, because we don’t usually eat out, it felt special enough that then we could stop having the discussion about what we were doing for Valentine’s Day. But we are not yet eating in restaurants, and it is not warm enough to eat outdoors, so we got take-out yesterday, and that did not feel at all the same. Well, perhaps next year.

I keep mentally composing yet another post about how I don’t have a chore partnership in my marriage, but I am so extremely sick of thinking about that and writing about that. Usually the way it seems to work is that once something like that occupies my mind, I HAVE to write about it before I can write about anything else; but I deeply don’t want to, and it doesn’t feel as if it would be therapeutic to do so. Maybe it would work to pretend I already wrote about it, or pretend that this paragraph counts as writing about it. Or what if I just say that one of the other things I’ve been mentally composing is a little speech that begins “I’m leaving,” and then goes on to explain why actually I should have left 25 years ago / why nearly anyone should be able to understand, without 25 years of explanations, that they need to do their own fair share of household chores / the many, many ways in which men systemically and societally and personally exploit women. Okay, let’s call that “written about.”

We have been home from the hospital for a week and a half. I don’t remember if I mentioned that, when we’d been home several days, and it had been a week and a half since Edward’s surgery which led to a hospital stay, we got a letter from our insurance company explaining that our doctor’s request for the emergency surgery and hospital stay was denied, because it was not medically necessary. As if it were not FAR TOO LATE at that point, and as if they were not WELL AWARE OF THAT, and as if they did not KNOW that such a letter would stop the heart of anyone receiving it.

The main reason I did not need to be scraped out of the batty attic is that this has happened before, and what has happened each time is that, without my needing to get involved at all, our doctor has called the insurance company and, I like to imagine, used some colorful language to explain to the insurance company that ONE OF THE PEOPLE ON THE PHONE is the Chief of Pediatric ENT at a large children’s hospital and knows what is medically necessary, and THE OTHER PERSON ON THE PHONE is not and does not.

And that is what apparently happened in this situation, because we got another letter yesterday, two and a half weeks after the surgery, saying that the doctor had provided them with “new information,” and the procedure and five days in the hospital were now approved. We spent either seven or eight days in the hospital, depending on how they count it, so let’s see if we get another letter soon. In any case, imagining having to pay out-of-pocket for two or three days in the hospital (which will not happen) is a much nicer nightmare than imagining having to pay out-of-pocket for surgery plus seven or eight days in the hospital. (My understanding is that doctors actually get all of these things fully approved before the things happen, because they know, as the insurance companies do, that almost literally no one can afford to pay for them out of pocket, and doctors/hospitals would like to be paid; and that this paperwork is just the late-arriving chaff of those long-since-made decisions.)

We are home from the hospital and have been since Wednesday afternoon. I feel as if I have barely stopped moving since then. There was one day when I got to bedtime and realized I had NOT PLAYED ANY OF MY PHONE GAMES ALL DAY; I had to hurry and log into each of them, just to avoid losing my streaks. Paul and Elizabeth and Henry kept up with dishes and so forth while I was gone, it’s not like I came home to a big mess—but there are a million little things that accumulate surprisingly quickly: the dish mat needed cleaning, and the toothbrush cups needed to go through the dishwasher, and the flowers needed fresh water, and the clock needed winding, and there was laundry and grocery shopping and bill-paying to be done. That’s not a very impressive list; I don’t know why it’s been keeping me so busy. I think part of it is that thing where once my Feeling Busy detectors get triggered by a certain level of responsibilities (giving Edward his antibiotic three times a day; monitoring his incision and putting more ointment on it; making sure he’s catching up on his schoolwork; asking my boss for yet another day off to take him to his follow-up appointment next week), any additional responsibilities, even normal/small ones, tip me over the edge into Overwhelmed. And when I’m Overwhelmed, I see Overwhelming Tasks EVERYWHERE. Obviously the toothbrush cups can wait another day, but IT FEELS LIKE THEY CANNOT.

I had a blood donation appointment on Thursday. I’d been sulking/abstaining, because of how EXTREMELY LONG the Red Cross keeps me waiting past my appointment time—and they are ONLY doing appointments right now, so this is not an issue of needing to figure out how to incorporate walk-ins: they are DELIBERATELY AND KNOWINGLY overbooking. The last time I donated, I sat in the waiting area breathing air unnecessarily with strangers for well over an hour past my appointment time; and, while I did that, THREE donors had to leave because they couldn’t wait any longer / had to go pick up kids from school / etc. One of them said he lived right in the neighborhood and asked if he could run home to meet the bus and then come back, and the Red Cross person told him no, if he left his appointment would be canceled.

So it has been A BIT RICH to see all these many, many articles recently about how the Red Cross is DESPERATE for donations, it’s an EMERGENCY. I feel as if change, in this case, should come from within. Let’s not START by nagging donors; let’s instead schedule appointments in a way that makes sense, and not overbook the drives, and KEEP the regular donors we have rather than losing them in droves and then having to harangue them to get them back. I said so online (am I new here), and got a lot of people Explaining to me that a lot of workers have been out sick. Oh, yes, thank you for the news. But this has been going on since LONG before the pandemic, and at MULTIPLE locations, so I believe this to be systemic rather than fleeting/coincidental. (Someone else informed me that SHE has never had to wait longer than 5 minutes. Oh…….good…….?)

Also, it is hardly new to have the Red Cross claiming that there is an emergency. EVERY email I get from them claims there is currently an unprecedented and urgent need for blood.

Anyway, finally I succumbed to the barrage (and the story on NPR) and was like “FINE I WILL DONATE BLOOD, IF IT’S SO URGENT.” I couldn’t get an appointment for weeks, and only at a place half an hour away, which, again, if it is so urgent, CAN SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT THAT. The happy thing was that at this location, maybe it was a fluke, but I was seen as soon as I got there, and was out of there half an hour afterward. But with the hour of driving, the whole thing still took about as long as when I have to wait for an hour—though, true, I was not breathing air with strangers for that hour, but was instead driving along listening to music and enlarging my carbon footprint.

Well. It is good to be home. Edward can’t shower for two weeks after the surgery, but we are already a week and a half into that time. His HAIR is the main issue, because the important thing is to avoid getting any water or dry shampoo or anything else on his incision, which is about an inch below his hairline. In the hospital they gave us an interesting “shampoo cap,” which was like a microwaveable shower cap lined with soapy no-rinse shampoo—but it didn’t actually work. Or rather, it might have made his hair cleaner, but his hair didn’t LOOK any cleaner. And it was still really difficult to avoid getting anything on the incision. Today I might try bandaging it up and putting plastic over it (but it’s hard to tape it securely, because of his hair) and then washing his hair in the sink.

[Edited to add: The comments section seems to be getting derailed on the topic of How Often People Shower. I hope we can all agree to agree, whatever our own personal bathing philosophies / skin issues / avoidance of consumerism / etc., that for a TEENAGED BOY, two weeks without a shower is NOT GOOD.]