I have successfully dropped Rob back at his college. I told him I wanted to leave at 9:00 a.m. and we were on our way by 9:45, which is better than the year I said 9:00 and he wasn’t ready until noon. Progress.

On our way there, he realized he had forgotten:

• sheets
• comforter
• pillow
• shaving cream
• laundry detergent
• the frying pan he’d told his roommates he would bring
• which, as it turns out, he thought they wanted a baking pan rather than a frying pan
• so it’s just as well he forgot it
• and who knows what else he’ll realize over the next days/weeks he’s also forgotten

He is 22 years old, and I have made a CONSCIOUS EFFORT to gradually back off over the years, so that he will be ready to launch. When he was getting ready for his first year of college, I helped him make a list; the second year, I asked if he wanted me to print out a copy of the list; after that, I assumed he now HAD the list and/or knew he COULD HAVE the list, and/or could use that as a basis for his own list. The first year, I went over the list with him: “Do you have this? How about this? Did you pack that? It’s a good idea to have a separate little list for last-minute items”—but after that, I assumed he understood that method and could do it himself. This year is his FIFTH, and I did nothing except tell him what time we were leaving, because he is a grown adult and can manage his own life—and he forgot a whole CATEGORY of crucial things, and when I said “WHAT?? HOW??” he said it was hard to remember everything. I said “This is WHY I MAKE LISTS.” I didn’t just say that. We were driving at 65mph and he was trapped in the car with me and I had plenty of time, so I went on at some length, with examples.

The journey itself was…okay. Many of the rest stops were closed, which not only meant I had to plan more carefully, but also meant that the remaining rest stops were very crowded. There were signs everywhere saying face masks were REQUIRED indoors for all, REGARDLESS of vaccination status. About half of the people indoors were not wearing masks; even quite a few employees were unmasked. There was no enforcement of the mask policy at all. I heard a lot of coughing, including loud extended coughing sessions that would have caught my attention even in non-pandemic times. We used the restrooms as quickly as possible, then got food and took it outside to eat at our car.

The hotel, too, had large signs saying everyone must be masked indoors except when they were in their own rooms; the signs asked that guests consider their own safety, but also the safety of hotel staff, and of other guests. The hotel’s desk clerk, standing in front of one of those signs, was not masked. About half of the other guests I saw were unmasked. I saw several members of the cleaning staff; they were all masked. I left a big tip for housecleaning.

I usually like to go to the mall’s Food Court to get dinner (especially if I have kids with me, so we can all choose our own food and don’t have to agree on one place), and almost all of the Food Court restaurants were closed—not just closed for the night, but closed as in stripped of signs and everything inside. There was a pizza/subs place and a coffee-and-ice-cream place and the rest of it was empty and dark. It was unsettling and upsetting.

After I dropped off Rob and his stuff, I found I was very, very, very twitchy. I sometimes get pretty twitchy at that point of the process anyway, and I don’t know what it is—especially since I SO look forward to the time alone, and then there I am, my mission accomplished and hours of happy alone time stretching ahead of me, and that’s when sometimes I get a very unpleasant feeling. Long ago, when I was trying therapy, I described the feeling to a psychiatrist and she nodded and said “Panic,” and wrote me a prescription. So I guess it’s panic. But WHY panic, is the question. When I was describing it to the therapist, it had been happening at a similar sort of time: I’d arrange to leave my small children with their father and go out for some time by myself, and I’d be out by myself, and instead of feeling wonderful and free I would feel like everything was scary and full of potential doom, and the store would feel eerie/creepy and as if something bad were about to happen, and the light felt wrong both indoors and out, and I would feel skittery and unhappy and heart-poundy and I would just want to GET OUT OF THERE and get back home. Which as you can imagine is very discouraging if you have been just about PERISHING for some alone time and you finally get some and then you hate it.

Anyway, it still sometimes happens. I’d thought it might happen this time in particular, since I knew I’d already be a little pre-twitchy with pandemic-related things. I wish I’d thought to bring along one of the several take-as-needed medications I’ve hoarded since that time in therapy, but I hadn’t. (NEXT TIME IT WILL BE ON MY LIST.) Instead I tried the 4-7-8 yoga breathing, but the holding-my-breath segment made me feel frantic so I stopped that, and instead talked quietly and kindly to myself (easier with a mask, where it’s harder for other people to tell you’re doing it): “You’re fine. You’re fine! This is all completely fine. Nothing is wrong, and everything is fine. This is the feeling of panic, but it is panic on its own, with nothing scary happening to cause it. You thought you might feel weird like this, and you do, and you know from experience that soon you will not feel this way anymore. Let’s get you some dinner to take back to your nice comfy hotel room, and you can watch some HGTV while you eat and won’t THAT be nice! No, don’t just flee to the hotel room: I think dinner is going to be helpful.”

This is unfortunately when I drove to the Food Court to get some familiar comforting teriyaki chicken and rice, and found that place had gone out of business, as had all the other Food Court places where I like to get food. I went instead through the drive-through of a Taco Bell (the first familiar place I saw), chose pink lemonade as my drink (I love their pink lemonade, and I thought it would provide Comfort and Cheer as well as Hydration), took everything back up to my hotel room, turned on the TV, and tried to settle in. By the time I’d watched part of an episode of House Hunters (it was the one where SHE wants a charming fixer-upper with character and HE wants something brand-new with high ceilings, and he says something like “she has a lot of strong opinions about what she wants, but I want to make sure it’s a place that’s right for BOTH of us,” and so they compromise on…the place that is exactly what he wants, with nothing of what she wants, where in fact she specifically STATES that it is as if the agent chose it exclusively for him but with nothing for her, and in short I suggest she get out of this before they have kids), and eaten most of my familiar comforting food, and consumed the entire pink lemonade and refilled it with water and had some of that as well (I didn’t drink enough during the day, because I didn’t want to have to stop at too many rest areas), I was feeling okay again, and had a nice evening watching TV and eating candy.

Oh! An audiobook report! Thank you SO MUCH for all your recommendations—that is going to be an EXCELLENT reference for future trips, too. I made a list of the ones that sounded most likely, and then from those I selected what happened to be available on the shelf of my library: I picked a Maeve Binchy as planned, plus a David Sedaris, plus the John Green Anthropocene thing. I let Rob pick what he wanted to listen to on the way there, and he picked the David Sedaris, and we listened to the first part of three or four segments and then gave up on it. I’d made the mistake of choosing the “best of” one, and apparently David Sedaris’s own favorites (at least on the first disc) are the ones I skip/skim in his books: fake newsletters, fake Christmas card letters, fake reviews. My favorites are his real-life stories about his real life/family. I will choose better next time, and/or look ahead at what’s on which disc so I know which discs to listen to.

On the way home, I tried the John Green one and thought it was PERFECT for a road trip: interesting, soothing, no big deal if I don’t listen to the whole thing on one single trip. I listened to the first two discs, and then tried to put the third disc in, and the CD player said there was already a disc in there but failed to spit it out when I pressed eject (because there WAS NO disc in there), and I tried a bunch of different things (AFTER PULLING OVER of course) and nothing worked, and the CD player kept saying it was trying to read a disc that wasn’t in there, so then I had to listen to the radio for the rest of the trip, which is normally fine and I enjoy it, but this time I was comparing it to what I WANTED to be doing, which was to be listening to more of the John Green thing.

Well! It was fine! It was all fine! I am home safe and sound, and not at all fretting irritably about what else Rob might have forgotten to bring, or imagining that I feel my throat getting sort of…coughish.

We have taken William back to his college, and he is settling in. I was first very stressed (as we prepared for him to go), then a combination of stressed and bereft (when he was nearly leaving and then leaving and then recently gone), then mostly just bereft (in the two or three days after he left), and now I feel just the mild background stressed/bereft of having one of my babies out in the world where I can’t see them. I am mostly glad he can be back at school, and that he is glad to be back at school. (And that his school is requiring Covid-19 vaccinations among the many other vaccinations they already required, plus masks indoors, plus weekly testing for all staff and students.)

This weekend I will take Rob back to HIS college. (Rob’s college is also requiring Covid-19 vaccinations among the many other vaccinations they already required, plus masks indoors. I can’t remember what they’re requiring for testing.) It’s been a long time, but you may remember I LOVE driving Rob to/from his school, because I consider it the perfect length for a road-trip: about 7 hours of driving each way, and I stay in a hotel overnight by myself in between. I bring a big box of snacks, and I watch HGTV in the hotel, and I have a very nice time. I will have to make some pandemic modifications to the trip (for example, I would love to eat a big restaurant breakfast in the morning, but I am not yet eating at indoor restaurants), but I think it will still be fun.

As I was working at the library this morning, I realized I will be driving a car that has a working CD player; this was not the case in the past. This means I could consider an AUDIOBOOK for the drive. But I have literally never checked out an audiobook before. I am hoping to rely on our group experience for recommendations.

Here is what I would like: I’m not sure. I think I’d prefer fiction, but maybe not. I considered just checking out a Maeve Binchy, since I know I like her books and I like that kind of real-life drama. But maybe I need something even a little more dramatic than that? Maeve Binchy can be kind of peaceful, and I need to stay alert. I don’t want anything scary or gory; it can be dramatic/tense/suspenseful, but it shouldn’t make me nervous to be alone in a hotel room, or jumpy about weird sounds. I don’t usually like classic murder/dectective-type mysteries: I have trouble keeping track of lots of clues/details, and I don’t like to try to figure things out. Rob will be with me in the car for half of the trip, so NOTHING RACY.

Here are a few books on my To Read list that my library also has on audiobook, if anyone happens to be able to report on any of these:

In Five Years, by Rebecca Searle
The 7-1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel

I am in one of those little interludes where it seems every person in my household is enmeshed in at least one stressful situation, and where most of those situations include a high level of uncertainty. I sometimes have dreams where I am driving a car but there is no friction, so the car is on the road but gliding along disconcertingly smoothly, as if on ice. Usually in the dream I don’t do much scary sliding; the scariness is more from feeling like the sliding could/will start at any moment, especially if I were to attempt to use the brakes in any way, and oh dear now we’re going down a steep hill, and maybe it will be fine or maybe I will plunge smoothly off that cliff to the right. I keep being reminded of the feeling of that dream.

I was going to list all the stressful things, but that’s already how I’m spending my 3:00 a.m.; and also, I know it would cause some of you to experience uncomfortable empathetic stress. Still, I’m going to list SOME of them. I’m going to try to do it BRIEFLY [proofreading note: why do I even attempt such a thing?], and I’m going to lean heavily on the ones that have mostly been resolved and are therefore now down to the final little stress tendrils.

1. William needed college housing for one semester. (He’ll be doing an internship second semester. This is another source of stress, since we don’t know what/where it will be, or what kind of housing he’ll need.) The college did not have enough housing to go around, and William did not even make it onto the waiting list. His college is in a big city. He had to somehow find housing for (1) just four months (2) and in a pandemic (3) and in a housing crisis (4) and in a big city. Time grew shorter and shorter, and many options were truly terrible (e.g., he found a place, but he’d have to take on a 12-month lease, and pay for the 8 extra months if he couldn’t find someone to take over the lease), and we didn’t know what he’d do if he COULDN’T find housing, and it seemed amazing that he might have to literally drop out of college for a semester because of not being able to find a place to live, but that also seemed to be the direction we were headed. Anyway he DID find a place. Now we’re down to the smaller stressors, like how are we going to get some furniture and kitchen stuff to that unfurnished apartment in a big city with no parking, and what furniture / kitchen stuff should that be, and what day should he go, and GAH how can a windowless basement bedroom with four other people sharing the bathroom/kitchen be the same price as our MORTGAGE payment (okay our mortgage payment from 20 years ago BUT STILL) but it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s only for four months, and this is a pandemic housing crisis and things cost what they cost, and at least we are not paying for TWELVE months.

2. Rob is back home, and would prefer not to be, and is also having trouble finding housing—but at least in this case he CAN do his semester remotely, it would just be BETTER if he could get nearer to it and do some of it in person—so we’re not working with a time deadline, or with the collapse of his plans. But there have still been a lot of stressy conversations/plans/attempts: he’s mostly handling it himself, but he wants to vent to me about it, and also there are things he wants/needs to run past me, and so on. BUT: today he got a very encouraging update that looks as if he may actually be able to get actual college housing and maybe everything is going to work out great. (After seeing what was involved in acquiring non-college housing for William, I have freshly and fervently renewed appreciation for the relative ease of college housing.) It’s not a done deal yet, so we are not counting on it, but it is an encouraging development. I was SO HOPING that what made sense to me (i.e., that there might be some little empty slots in college housing for various reasons, and that the college would be very motivated to fill those slots with paying students, and that after the start of the semester there might not be very many students competing for those slots) seems to be the case for Rob’s college. AND: if this DOES work out, I get a nice little road trip, which I would LOVE. (You might think I’d be too stressed about pandemic stuff to enjoy it, but I feel I can decrease risks pretty substantially while still having a nice time.)

3. There was a whole huge thing involving work needing to be done on our car, and Paul trying to handle that for me because I was so stressed about everything else—and instead he inadvertently made things so much worse, and in such a bizarre/nonsensical/ridiculous way as if we were in some sort of clown sitcom, that I involuntarily near-shouted “ARE! YOU! KIDDING! ME!” with incredulous dismay and then sat in silent incredulous overwhelming despair for half an hour, wondering if there was any way at all to fix it other than going out and impulse-buying a new car. But then all of it self-resolved as if by divine intervention: the main issue he had solved in such an unworkable way ended up no longer being an issue, so then everything else untangled itself.

4. Edward needed an MRI. It’s been such an ordeal each time; and last time he managed to get most of the gross prep fluid down and then he threw it up; and getting medical procedures done is so much more stressful in a pandemic. Also, it meant a long drive to a big city. But it’s done now, and also he got a technician who remembered him from last time, and who corrected the receptionist when she said he had to drink one bottle of prep fluid in 15 minutes and then two cups of water in the next 15 minutes and then a second bottle of prep fluid in the 15 minutes after that, so instead he was instructed to drink one bottle in 30 minutes, then have just a little bit of water, only as much as he wanted to drink, and then to “just do what you can” with the second bottle—which he found so encouraging/comforting that he ended up drinking more than half of it, when I would have predicted he would interpret “just do what you can” as permission to drink two sips and be done. And he was NOT queasy and did NOT throw up.

5. Elizabeth realized she is not willing to do gym class in a mask when everyone is breathing hard and no one else is wearing masks including the teacher, so she needs to drop the class. (She signed up for it on the assumption that everyone would be masked, as they were last year, but our school system has buckled under pressure from parents and is not requiring masks even for staff.) She further realized that her required math class is somehow not on her schedule. And the guidance office recently sent a weary email to all parents/students saying schedule changes are pretty much not happening this year, so please don’t email asking about changes, and that is a real hurdle for rule-following people-pleasers, but Elizabeth is going to have to attempt it. There are numerous other issues/complications here, and I have no idea how they’re going to pan out. But she wrote a good email, and now we wait.

6. While helping Elizabeth deal with her scheduling situation, I realized that FOR SURE Edward would need to drop gym because it is not safe for HIM to be around people who are unvaccinated and breathing hard and not wearing masks—which is when we discovered it is somehow not on his schedule. It is a required class, so there is no reason it would not be on his schedule. On one hand, this is convenient: I don’t have to deal with it right now. On the other hand, the school’s errors are piling up in a way that feels alarming. Their guidance counselor is new as of spring 2021 when the school system required all staff to be personally in the school building again even if not necessary for their jobs, and 30% of the staff quit.

7. The three younger kids started school. I am still prepared/preparing to yank them out. Approximately 10% of students are wearing masks, and 50% of their teachers are wearing them at least part of the time (some teachers take them off when they’re up at the front of the room, but put them on if they’re going to circulate among the students); the principal and vice principal were not wearing masks. Lunch is indoors and normal: not distanced in any way, no outdoors option. The administration sent out an email informing parents that large fans will be provided to every classroom to “increase air circulation.” THAT IS EXACTLY THE WRONG KIND OF AIR CIRCULATION. Also they are still talking about washing hands and disinfecting surfaces as if it is spring of 2020 and we don’t yet know the problem is the AIR. I mean, hand-washing and surface-disinfecting are good! Let’s for sure keep doing those for many OTHER reasons! But that is not the “addressing the Covid-19 issue” they seem to think it is. On the VERY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL we got an email alerting us to a positive case, with the reassuring information that they would clean and disinfect the school as usual. Wow great!

8. I needed new glasses. I was very fretful about the entire thing, especially since one of the pandemic adjustments our eye-doctor has made is “guided browsing”—i.e., they bring you a selection of glasses, and you are not allowed to search on your own. (They will keep bringing you more and more glasses if you want them to, but I knew my own personal ability to ask them to do that would be low.) And you must wear a mask, so how would I even be able to tell if I liked the glasses or not? And glasses are SO EXPENSIVE, and the pricing is so exploitive. (I do like/use Zenni Optical! But I am finding it overwhelming to think of dealing with that right now, and wanted to get at least one pair at the eye-doctor’s office.) So I was very stressed. But now it is over and I have chosen/ordered glasses, and I also asked how much it would be to replace the lenses in my current well-loved frames, so if I hate the new glasses I will just clench my teeth at the wasted money and wear the new glasses while waiting for new lenses to be put in my old frames.

9. Paul is experiencing kidney stones. And I AM very sympathetic: it sounds like it’s pretty dreadful. But is not possible for you to overestimate how often I am receiving Kidney Stone Updates from him, nor how often he says “oof” and “phwoo” and “ow ow ow.” At one point I actually had to leave the house for a little while.

Our school district starts later than many, so I have been watching as other school districts open up and then bad things happen with Covid-19. I keep hoping our school system will watch this too, and make changes, but no. In fact, our school district has recently released their Final Version Covid-19 plan, which is to wait for the horse to get out, and then to start closing the barn door afterward (but only in increments). There’s a whole color-coded chart. We will start in Stage One, which is leaving the barn door open: vaccination will be optional for everyone including staff, mask-wearing will optional for everyone including staff, and there will be no distancing at all, and no precautions of any kind. The next step up, Stage Two, is “When the horse gets out”: at that point, we will have vaccinations/masks optional for everyone, and no distancing or precautions—but the stripe on the chart will be a DIFFERENT COLOR. The next step up from that, Stage Three, is “Horse is trampling more than x% of the population,” at which point vaccines/masks will be optional for everyone, and we will make sure people “social-distance” to 3+ feet apart. When the horse is trampling an even larger part of the population (Stage Four), vaccines/masks will still be optional for everyone, and we will distance to 6+ feet apart you guys!!!—which they told us last year was impossible to do, given the space limitations of our school building, so I am not sure how they plan to do this. The next step up from that is Stage Five: full remote learning. The stripe is PINK!! to show the danger!! There is no stage at which masks will be required for anyone.

You will not be surprised to hear that our school district has a large/active/vocal group of parents campaigning against ALL preventative measures, arguing that “Our kids have gone through enough!”—as if that type of argument is relevant in any way to this sort of situation. “Stop preventing kids from swapping hats in the lice outbreak! This outbreak has gone on too long, and our kids have been through enough! We need to get back to normal now!” “Three days of antibiotics for this pneumonia is ENOUGH, and the breathing treatments are traumatic! It’s time to stop living in fear!” “We’ve been aiming a hose at this fire for hours and the fire still isn’t out but we’re tired of this! Let’s turn off the hose and give everyone a much needed rest!” “People who need continuing treatments for long-term/chronic health conditions have had enough and shouldn’t have to go through any more! They can’t get back to normal unless they stop those treatments!” Or as Becky put it: “My kid was in a car seat for the first half of this trip. They have been immobilized enough! Let the kids move and stretch! No one has been hurt! Time to let my kid move around the car unhampered.”

I have, as you know, a child with a medically-suppressed immune system. There is a new recommendation that certain groups, including his group, should get a third Covid-19 shot, in part because it seems the vaccine does not always “take” in people with compromised immune systems. This is something that happened with his chicken pox vaccine, incidentally: he received both shots, but the vaccine did not take: it is exactly as if he did not get the vaccine. So he relies on herd immunity for chicken pox. Luckily (the doctor mentioned that for him chicken pox would almost certainly result in a nice long hospitalization) there has not been a huge outbreak of chicken pox, since most parents in our area get their children the recommended vaccines—or rather they DID do that, before the Covid-19 vaccine was recommended.

It has felt as if there is no way to make a decision here, since things have been changing so rapidly—but now we are in our final days for choice-making. The national/international pandemic news is worse every day, and yet the parents in our district are ramping up their “We need to MOVE FORWARD now!!” messaging, saying that no one should have to take even the smallest, easiest, most effective precautions, and that they only good option for kids is for things to be NORMAL—as if “normal” were a valid and chooseable option that the rest of us were rejecting for no reason. And the school seems to agree with them, and also is not offering any remote-learning option, so our choices are: send him to school, knowing he might be just the same as if he were unvaccinated, except also with a compromised immune system (a sinus infection two years ago landed him in the hospital for five days and then another two days, and included two separate surgeries), where he will be surrounded by students who are unvaccinated and unmasked—or else…figure out something else, for his junior year of high school, which is the one that at least until recently has been considered one of the most important for college. …Which would of course seem trivial if he were to end up intubated in the hospital, or worse.