I feel very fortunate that my job is so low-paying, and so unconnected from other things a person/family might need (health insurance, pension, long-term career possibilities), that it was possible to leave it for over a year and then come back to it, without suffering much in the way of ill effects. These are not things a person might normally feel grateful for (“Yay, low pay and no benefits!”), but a pandemic turns some things upside down. (It helped, too, that our college kids have both been living at home, so we have not been paying the increased living costs of college room/board; we saved more on that than we lost with my missing income.)

Today was my first day back to work and I was on one level very happy to be going back (I LIKE this job; I LIKE contributing income; I am also grateful for the physical and mental activity it forces me into), and on another level I felt jittery and unsettled. Almost all of my co-workers at the library have continued to do in-person work throughout the pandemic (with several closures/quarantines when a worker was diagnosed with Covid-19, making me glad of my decision), and so everyone is more than a year ahead of me in terms of changes and new ways of doing things. I imagined myself bumbling around doing everything wrong and making everyone gasp in horror as I failed to take certain precautions that are now automatic/normal for them.

Also, I worried some of them would resent that I was able to leave for a year and then come back—though, everyone knows my job is the lowest paid, and they know it’s the grunt work, so my hope was that they’d mostly be glad to see me because I’d be picking up everyone’s least-favorite tasks again. There were several happy sighs when I went out to collect the book drop this morning: no one likes doing that, and my impression is that when I’m not there it turns into one of those tasks where some people feel like they ALWAYS end up having to do it because other people disappear or pretend to forget or pretend to be busy, and anyway I think it brings considerable relief to have a person whose JOB it is to do it. But also, I had to use this Coping Thought: if any of them DO resent me, there is nothing I can do about that; those are feelings for THEM to process/handle. And also this Coping Thought: most people don’t think very much about other people, or hold on to fleeting feelings of resentment/”Must be nice!” for long. If I just come back and do well at a job that makes everyone’s lives easier, this won’t be an ongoing issue—and if it is, then we’re back to the part about how those feelings are not mine to deal with.

One of my primary fitness goals for the pandemic was to preserve my library-job-gained ability to go down on one knee and get back up again, again and again and again and again and again throughout a shift. I am happy to say I seem to have succeeded, or at least today was not physically difficult—though perhaps we should speak again tomorrow, when the soreness might kick in. Well, I kept MOST of the strength and balance, anyway!

But my back is bothering me, which it did before the pandemic, too. I am going to lean toward doing yoga videos that address back pain/strength and core strength and see if that’s helpful over time.

It was pleasant to be back at work. I liked seeing the books/shelves/materials again. It felt good to feel useful. It felt good/reassuring to remember how to do the job. It was nice to see co-workers again, and to overhear bits of their conversations as I worked nearby.

I did feel a little bumbling and slow. There have been some changes that are obvious and co-workers knew to tell me about; but other changes are more subtle, or were done a year ago so no one even remembers until I have to ask about it or until they see me doing something wrong and have to correct me. And there have been changes to the countertops, and to storage areas, so I was constantly trying to find the pencils, trying to find the bags, trying to find the paper recycling, etc. But that will get easier each day.

There are also things that are now buried more than a year deep in my brain’s filing system: for example, all the little tricks to try when I can’t find a book where it’s supposed to be. And I couldn’t make a beeline for every correct aisle anymore. And I found I was struggling a little bit, just to the point of amusement not to the point of concern, with the alphabet. This job is so good for the aging brain!

I did not like wearing a mask while doing an active job, but I’d anticipated that I wouldn’t (it seemed safe to assume that NO ONE would like that), so that wasn’t a surprise. A few times I had to slow down my pace to make the mask less of an issue: it was starting to suck in against my mouth because I was breathing harder, and that was making me feel a little claustrophobic and queasy. But slowing down helped my breathing slow down, and mostly resolved the problem. It was still unpleasant and humid, and I was happy to get out to my car and take it off. When I got home, I used a cooling/freshening facial mist, and that felt nice. And it WAS fun to CHOOSE a mask to wear.

(A side-note: When I take Edward for his Remicade treatments, we are there for several hours, and we are double-masked the whole time. During his treatments, his vital signs are taken every 30 minutes. One of those vital signs is blood oxygen. Even while he is breathing through two masks over several hours, his oxygen level is just as high as it ever was when he didn’t have to wear masks. So that is a reassuring thought, when I am feeling a little panicky in my mask: I may be uncomfortable, but I am still getting oxygen just fine.)

Patrons are being allowed in, but only in limited numbers at limited times. My supervisor says almost everyone is being good about wearing a mask, and that the few people who are being difficult about it are the same people who were difficult about things before the pandemic, too. That is some interesting food for thought.

I thought I had something interesting to tell you, and then I got here with my coffee and spent some time checking email and Facebook and Twitter, and now my mind is just blank.

(Sort-of spoilers for the movie Frozen in this paragraph.) This wasn’t the thing I was thinking of, but Paul watched Frozen for the first time and he is fully shook. “THIS MAKES NO SENSE AS A WAY TO HANDLE THESE POWERS.” “EVEN IF IT DID MAKE SENSE: WHY WOULD ANNA HAVE TO BE ISOLATED TOO?” “OKAY BUT THEN WHAT IS THE METAPHOR HERE.” “YOU CAN’T JUST HAND OVER ROYAL COMMAND LIKE THAT; IT ISN’T EVEN HERS TO HAND.” “WHY IS ELSA THE ONE EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT, ANNA IS CLEARLY THE MAIN CHARACTER, ELSA JUST HAS ONE GOOD POWER BALLAD.” He also keeps singing “And I’ll be doing whatever snow does in summmmmmmer!”

Oh, I remember what I was thinking I was going to tell you, but I hope this won’t be disappointing, since I’d said it was something interesting and it’s just another grocery shopping report. (Which I am still finding interesting, but I realize that may not be true of us all.) This most recent time, I went back to my old familiar grocery store: I’ve been shopping at another store 20 minutes away because it’s newer and much more spacious, and because they were being more careful with Covid-19 precautions. It was nice feeling comfortable going to the closer one again. The extra travel time to the further one made the whole thing more of an ordeal.

Grocery shopping in general is fading into something far less stressful, especially now that I’ve been vaccinated. I still gladly wear a mask, and I still keep my distance from other people, in part because vaccines DO SOMETIMES FAIL, and in part because no one can tell I’m vaccinated, and in part because I would like everyone else to keep following masking/distancing guidelines. But I don’t feel as STRESSED about it anymore. I feel LIKELY to be protected.

And supplies seem pretty normal now. I am casting my mind around trying to remember if there were any weirdnesses or shortages, and I can’t think of any.

OH!! You know what’s coming back, in my stores?? DIET SODA VARIETY. There was diet root beer, diet orange, diet 7-up, diet ginger ale! And CHERRY COKE ZERO!!—which isn’t, as you might conclude from the ALL-CAPS, a passionate favorite of mine, but it’s something I enjoy having on hand, and maybe soon there will be ORANGE VANILLA as well! Again, not as passionate a favorite as the caps would indicate, but the scarcity had come to represent the shortages of the pandemic. And I have not given up on ginger lime diet Coke; if you know it’s been discontinued, maybe don’t tell me yet, just let me come to that realization naturally.

Rob asked for some vegetarian frozen burritos, and I got a few of those, and then I spent some time looking at other vegetarian frozen meals, and I bought a few for him to try: some Healthy Choice Power Bowls and a Sweet Earth curry. If you have experience in this area, do you have any you’d recommend? I wasn’t sure which ones were worth spending a little more on. And it was a little tricky because some of them seemed to be co-marketed as vegetarian AND low-calorie, and he doesn’t need low-calorie, and in fact it would be good for him to get a few more calories.

I have a story to share with you / inflict upon you, and I was going to lead by saying I had a horrifying story to share with you, but you know what, this is not the time in our lives to use words such as “horrifying” without making it clear what KIND of horrifying we are talking about. And anyway, “horrifying” is an exaggeration and what I really mean to say is that I have a MORTIFYING story to share with you. And even so, everything was okay, everything IS okay, everything was/is deep-down fine—but MORTIFYING still applies, in my opinion. Here we go.

So today I had my first pap test in, as the receptionist pointed out TWICE, four years. To my mind, this was not odd: at my last one, in spring of 2017, the nurse-practitioner said to come back in three years for the next one, so that would have been spring of 2020, and perhaps you noticed we had a little pandemic right around then, so I put it off until now, and I’m not saying I felt None Nervous about that, but three years already seemed kind of arbitrary and four years didn’t seem TONS different than three—and, REGARDLESS, that is what I DID, and a receptionist gasping about it (TWICE) does not make it possible for me to go back into time and do things differently, so what is the point of it? JUST MAKE ME THE APPOINTMENT

(A side note: I COULD have my pap done at my usual annual appointment with my regular doctor. And I DID do that once. And her office accidentally mis-stored the samples so they were no good, and so I had to have it RE-DONE, and after that I felt a certain loss of confidence.)

Anyway, what was nice is that my OB/GYN’s office has, since my last appointment, opened up another office in my town, so I don’t have to drive 35-40 minutes like I used to. Everything was a little unfamiliar, because of the new location and because of Covid-19 precautions, and I was a little on edge ANYWAY expecting to have to deal with MORE gasps about why it had been so long, and also I don’t think anyone feels utterly comfy with a pap. I feel a LOT more comfy than I USED to (pregnancy/labor/childbirth cured me of a lot of nudity/exam issues), but it’s still just an uncomfy thing to have done.

Finally we are at the mortifying part: the nurse-practioner came into the room to do the exam. AND I KNEW HER. I’ve known her since her eldest daughter and my eldest son were in preschool together. Her secondborn and my secondborn went to preschool together. Her youngest and my twins are in school together. We have encountered each other at many, many parent events. We have chatted many, many times. I will continue to see her at school events for the next couple of years, and around town for who knows how many years after that.

Well. Well. What is to be done, in such circumstances? I suppose I could have said “Oh hey wow, I didn’t realize this was with someone I knew, I’m going to have to get dressed and reschedule.” And knowing I truly did have that option was helpful, I guess, except that it’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which I would actually do that.

Instead, as we chatted about our kids and updated my medical records (GAH, she is seeing my history of anxiety and all my other personal stuff!), I talked myself through it. “This must happen to her ALL THE TIME,” I told myself. “This is FAR MORE AWKWARD for me than it is for her—and much of HER awkwardness might be empathetic: feeling that this might be awkward for me, wondering if I knew that it would be her, etc.” And I thought back to when I was an in-home elder caregiver, and I’d wondered ahead of time if helping someone shower would be too awkward to manage, and then I did it one single time and was like “Oh! This is just another human body! This is no big deal at all! It’s not NUDITY-nudity!”—and after that I was ONLY worried that the OTHER person would feel awkward, since for THEM it was being naked in front of a clothed stranger, while for me it was just normal work and no big deal.

Still. STILL! This wasn’t even just a regular doctor appointment, this was a PAP. And a BREAST EXAM. And QUESTIONS ABOUT SEX AND CONTINENCE. And a KEGEL TEST. WITH SOMEONE I KNEW.

I WILLED myself through it. Like, “Welp, here we are, this is happening. Being all awkward/embarrassed about it, and/or apologizing for perspiring, and/or acting self-conscious, will make it WORSE. Being cheery/chatty and pretending to be unself-conscious and totally fine with it (this is my strategy even when I DON’T know the person) will HELP. So let’s get this show on the road and then I can GO HOME, AND PERISH LATER IF NECESSARY.”

And so I did. And it’s fine. It IS fine. It’s fine. This is her JOB. This must happen to her FAIRLY OFTEN, if she’s working in the same town where she lives and has children. It’s FINE. (NEVER AGAIN.)

First: I have a report on my second Covid-19 shot. Paul and I got it on Monday; it was the Pfizer. This time went MUCH more smoothly than our first dose, when we waited in line for two hours; this time we joined a line that looked long but moved briskly, and I doubt in all we were there for as long as half an hour, even including the 15-minute wait afterward (which was specifically recommended but not enforced). The whole production was better-organized, with better instructions and with some careful overlap in people checking to see how we were feeling and if we needed another appointment.

We had heard that the side effects tend to be more/worse for the second shot than for the first, so we were prepared. We’d heard that hydration was important for mitigating those effects—nothing about WHY, but it’s not like it was difficult or risky or bad-for-us to drink a little extra water, so we did it just in case it would help. We drank extra water all morning, until a couple hours before our appointment (we were remembering that two-hour wait from last time), and brought water with us to drink on the way home, and we kept drinking extra water the rest of the day and the next day. I have no idea if it did a dang thing.

After my first shot, I felt a little spacey and tired that same day, but fine by the next day. After my second shot, on the same day as the shot, I felt more spacey and more tired than the first time. I declared a Make Your Own Dinner night. I felt myself counting down until bedtime, and I fell asleep far more easily than usual, and I didn’t wake up in the 3:00-5:00 a.m. range to have upsetting thoughts for awhile as I often do.

The next day, Tuesday, I felt A Little Off and then Definitely Off, like when you think “Uh oh—am I coming down with something?” and then “Yep, I am definitely coming down with something.” My eyes felt a little droopy/saggy; my nose felt a little weird; I had a little headache; my throat ranged from “a little weird” to “a little sore”; I had an occasional weary cough; my arm was sore. I skipped exercise; I floated the idea of “Maybe I would feel a little better if I did some GENTLE/MILD exercise?,” and my entire system was united in slapping down that idea. I didn’t have any appetite, just a light queasy feeling reminding me I’d better eat. I felt a little achy overall, enough to try ibuprofen mid-afternoon, but that didn’t make enough difference for me to try another dose later. If I’d had to go to work, I would have been able to do so, and wouldn’t have called in sick—but I would have WISHED I had taken the day off. But I didn’t feel bad enough to go back to bed or anything like that. I felt kind of low and sad and easily-discouraged all day; when I realized I hadn’t dealt with my own dishes or gotten the coffee pot set up for the next day, I considered having a quiet little weep. At bedtime, I went to bed and fell asleep easily again, and didn’t wake up except to pee.

When I woke up the NEXT day, today, Wednesday, I felt pretty much back to normal. Maybe a little tired/low, but not outside the normal range of how I might feel IN A PANDEMIC. My arm is still a little sore, but not enough to affect my life. I skipped my vigorous morning walk, but I did do a yoga session (I tried this one after several of you recommended Jessamyn Stanley, and I really liked it), and it went fine. My appetite is mostly back. I would say it was the perfect amount of side effect: enough to feel like Something Is Definitely Happening with My Immune System, but not enough to be truly miserable or have to spend the day in bed or fret about a fever or anything like that.

Second: I have a recommendation for an inexpensive but appealing and useful little purchase: pleasing little bowls.

(images from Target.com)

I did not think at first that I particularly liked the look of them; also, they are bamboo, which has a non-glossy look/feel I don’t always enjoy. But the children kept breaking my similarly-sized bowls from pottery class, and I thought these might make good replacements, and they were inexpensive enough ($3 for a 2-pack) to be an easy experiment. I couldn’t decide between my top two favorite designs (oranges / orange dots, multi flowers / green dots), so ordered both—and they were such an immediate success that I rushed to order the third set (palm leaves / blue dots) as well.

And I may need to buy MORE. Every time I run the dishwasher, most or all of them are in there. They are just right for dip (ketchup, mustard, salad dressing), or a side of something you want to keep separate from the rest of your food (sweet pickles, coleslaw, a hard-boiled egg), or a tidy little snack (marcona almonds, cheese cubes, one of a long series of Thoughtful Portions of M&Ms). The decoration of them is not my usual style, but I have enjoyed the look of them in spite of / because of this (like appreciating / enjoying someone else’s dishes even though / especially because you wouldn’t have chosen them), and I like the way the outsides of the bowls are solid-colored. They look very sweet in a little stack in the cupboard. It is fun to choose which one I will use for my sweet pickles / marcona almonds / M&Ms.

Two newsy things. ONE: I am going back to work at the library in mid-May, two weeks after my second Covid-19 shot. The three younger children will not be vaccinated yet, but here was my thought process (I find it useful to see other people’s thought processes, if only to say to myself “Oh, yeah, no, we differ on that premise; that explains why we went different ways on this”): for me to get infected at work, (1) a contagious person would have to come into the library AND (2) the virus would have to get past their mask AND past my mask AND past the vaccine, AND (3) because of how much moving I do at work, the virus would have to be transmissible from over 6 feet away and in a few seconds, which so far does not seem to fit our understanding of how even the scarier variants are transmitted. And, as far as we know (and I appreciate scientists not assuming, but waiting to see), successfully-vaccinated people don’t transmit the virus to others; and the virus is not transmitted by people carrying it home on their clothes or hands. And so the risk seems very, very low at this point, and within the range of it’s time for me to be earning money for college/retirement again. I am still anxious about it. But also excited to get back. But also anxious.

TWO: I am trying yoga. It is too early to make a report, except to say that I expect to be recommending it (while also of course complaining about it, which I assume you enjoy because otherwise there’s no way you’d still be here). But I will say this: if a genie granted me wishes, I might consider using one of them to make it so that fitness instructors could inhabit a student’s body long enough to see what the routine felt like to that person. I feel like the entire exercise system would be UTTERLY TRANSFORMED. A teacher could try on the body and say, “Oh! Huh! That exercise really DOESN’T work for you, does it! Let me see if I can play around a bit while I’m here and find something that works that same area, but is possible for your body!” Because, like, if a person has thicker calves/thighs than the yoga instructor does, and sits on those calves/thighs as the yoga instructor has instructed, that person’s hands are more distant from the floor than the yoga instructor’s are (and also, there is more weight on the calves/feet, making the position less easy/comfortable/casual). So then I sit there, with my hands dangling above the floor I’m supposed to be touching, and no idea what I’m supposed to do instead. (This seems like a good reason to take a class in-person, but that is not something I want to do right now.) (Also, I’ve only watched like four videos so far, so I might find more adaptive suggestions later on in other videos.)

Also: I can’t really sit cross-legged in a comfortable way, in part because of aging knees, and in part because of the aforementioned padding. I’m sure I can expect SOME improvement with practice, but there is still an element of…I mean, when there is a thicker layer of calf/thigh involved, the leg CANNOT bend as far in, do you see what I mean? The padding is IN THE WAY of the bend! Or when I lean forward, there is some stomach padding in the way of that lean! It’s not about flexibility, it’s about the space taken up by a body. And I am pretty happy with the size my body is now, and I feel like Myself at this weight: at this point I am trying to be stronger and less anxious and more flexible, not thinner, so I want to do the exercises AS I AM. I’m not thinking, “Well, this will get easier as I get thinner,” because I am not planning to get thinner.

Well, for the time being I am doing what I can to modify things for myself; and I am trying for approximations and improvements-over-time, rather than exact and immediate imitations of what a thinner/younger body can do. And I really like the instructor (Adriene, recommended by Sundry) for this: she doesn’t seem to know what it’s like to have padding, or aging knees, but she is very “Do what feels good to your body”/”Make the changes you need to make”/”You should be WORKING but not SUFFERING” about the whole thing. (I mean, she is also “Just fling your legs up over your head, have a little fun with it!,” but that’s the sort of thing where I am trying for improvements over time rather than immediate imitations.)

I mentioned awhile ago that the skin on my face seems to be rapidly losing significant portions of its youthful smoothness. I have finally started USING all the little samples of eye cream and toner and face creams and skin treatments and so forth that build up in my bathroom cabinet, and my counter is now littered with them. And you know what, I don’t think a single one of them does A Single Damn Thing. I had samples of some very expensive Olay aging-skin day cream and night cream, and I was excited to try them because I am a fan of the (cheap, normal) Olay moisturizers, and I REALLY PEERED at my skin after using them, and I saw NO DIFFERENCE.

I was especially disappointed in all the eye creams: I’d had those tucked away in an “I am not left-handed either!” sort of way—like, I COULD have better-looking skin around my eyes, I just haven’t yet found it worthwhile to make the effort. But then I made the effort, and nothing improved. The only thing I think makes it a LITTLE better is if I put a little plainish ointmenty kind of substance (Vaseline or Bag Balm) around my eyes before I go to bed. Just a little bit, just sort of swiping along the undereye and then up around the crows-feet corners and then whatever’s left over onto the lids, nothing very close to the eyes themselves. If it ISN’T improving the look of the skin, it’s at least soothing, and it makes me feel as if I’m doing something kind for my poor eye area.

I have also increased my use of facial mists throughout the day, and those too seem to make a slight difference, or at least feel soothing and like I’m doing something kind for my skin. I have a whole bunch of them and I like them all, but my favorites are a Botanics toning spritz Target no longer carries, and any of the Thayers I’ve tried (right now I’m using lavender, a rose that’s a nice smaller size if you want to try a mist but don’t want to commit to the expense of the large bottle, and a cranberry orange one they had near Christmas), but that’s mostly because they go on nice and decisively, which is more about the spritzing mechanism than about the product itself; if it’s something you wanted to try, I would think you could buy just about any old one that looked good to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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