Full Week

31 Replies

This week has so many interesting/momentous/significant things in it, and I am so much less equipped to deal with such weeks after having a year or so of not going anywhere or doing anything.

• Elizabeth applied at my same library to be a library page. She’s been waiting YEARS to do this. I really hope they have paging hours available and that she gets them! I know they LIKE to hire the children of staff. And William worked there, too, so it’s getting to be a bit of a family thing. One thing that was convenient when William and I were both there is that we could sometimes cover each other’s shifts, which is handy for the library and also comfier for people who don’t like to have to ask for time off when they don’t work many hours to begin with.

• Rob has left to go live with my parents for a couple of months. I felt surprisingly bereft after dropping him off at the airport, considering we hardly ever see him, and also he’s 22 years old and if there hadn’t been a pandemic he wouldn’t have been here. But still: I remember there was a cozy feeling when we brought both college kids home back in March 2020 and then closed the doors. And while I don’t think anyone is going to say “Gosh, I miss lockdown!,” it was comforting to have all the chicks home, and feels odd to have them start going out again.

• Elizabeth and Henry both got their second doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. Both of them have experienced headaches: Henry had one in the evening of the afternoon he got the shot; Elizabeth woke up the next morning with one.

• I have a mammogram tomorrow. I know it’s not a big deal, and I’m not even particularly modest about it now that I’m used to what to expect, but I just always dread that whole thing. And you know what, I think mostly it’s the no-deodorant thing! Which feels a little silly, but it’s something that registers as being a little stressful to deal with: remembering not to wear it, using a wet wipe or something right before the mammogram, remembering to bring deodorant to put on afterward (though they do have an aerosol available for anyone who forgets).

• The twins turn 16. Double the cakes to make, double the presents to acquire/wrap. It’s a fun kind of busyness, but it’s still kind of busy. And it’s become clearer to me over recent years just how little Paul does for birthdays/holidays, except sit happily in a chair enjoying the party, and that might need to be adjusted.

• Edward has a Remicade treatment. When I donated blood recently, they tested it for Covid-19 antibodies (and found them, indicating the vaccine Took). I’m going to ask if Edward’s blood can be tested similarly as part of his usual bloodwork, to make sure his vaccine Took, too; I would feel so much better knowing it had.

• Henry is having a final exam that has to be in-person at the school. We don’t know the whole story, but I’d say the clues point to some other remote-student parent doing the good work of bringing the school from its initial position of “This test has to be indoors and in-person, that’s the rule we’ve always followed, your other option is to let the student fail the class and take it again next year, *SHRUG*,” to “Hey, can we offer you individual outdoor testing at a time that works for you, with a fully-vaccinated test moderator?”—a shift that occurred while I was still fretfully working on the tone of my email response to the first position.

• School is wrapping up for all three youngest. I am so glad. I have never been happier to see the end of a school year.

Perfume Samples; Book: A Gentleman in Moscow; Pride Bubbly/Mug; Two Skincare Products

39 Replies

FIRST. I am placing an order for perfume samples, so if there’s anything that springs to your mind as “OH!! You should try ______!!,” then this is the moment!

SECOND. I finally read A Gentleman in Moscow (Amazon link / Target link), which many of you recommended:

(image from Target.com)

It took me awhile to get to it, because I am not reading many books by men right now, and also because I read another book by this author long ago and it left behind a little spot of Depressed Feeling. But! I very much liked this one. It was right on the line of Too Politically Stressful for me, and it pointed out to me once again that I am not good at History and learn it ONLY if it’s fictionalized (Philippa Gregory taught me everything I know about Henry VIII) (but I still wouldn’t be able to hazard a guess at what century he lived in), so now I know a little more than before about early 1900s Russia. I would say this book was a deceptively quiet read: that is, it feels like you’re reading a sort of mellow book about a man living his life, but there are some very dramatic plot elements—which are also presented in a mellow way, so that sometimes I thought, “Wait, what?” and had to go back and re-read the last couple of paragraphs. I love that kind of book. Also, the author addresses the reader in footnotes several times, in a way I found pleasing. I don’t generally want to be reminded of the author’s existence, but in my opinion this particular author pulled it off and it felt more as if THE BOOK ITSELF was talking to me.

THIRD. I have seen buzz about not buying “corporate Pride,” and also I have seen the counter-buzz which says “Hey, not everyone has the same access to things, and also let Mom be supportive by buying the Pride stuff she sees while she’s at Target”; and I am more aligned with the counter-buzz here, seeing as how I am the mom being supportive while shopping at Target. It was my first time browsing in Target since the pandemic began, and it was a fairly rapid browse as I am still a bit skittish, but being able to buy two bottles of this bubbly was a delight:

(image from Target.com)

Note that if you venture into Target to acquire some: the design VARIES. I did NOT notice, but by chance selected two different designs: one with diagonal stripes as shown above, and the other with more of a sunbeam pattern of stripes. And there may be OTHERS! I am going to have to go back to check, because I also have to buy more bottles, because if I don’t have PLENTY of them I am never going to think an occasion is special enough to open one.

I also bought this mug:

(image from Target.com)

FOURTH. I have found two skin-care items that have made a small but perceptible difference:

(image from Target.com)

The first is CeraVe Skin Renewing Night Cream. Note that it is a very small quantity: just 1.7 ounces. But I have been using it for almost a month, and NUMEROUS TIMES have looked in the mirror and thought “Oh, my skin doesn’t look as bad as I’d thought! Actually it looks kind of nice today!,” in sharp contrast to BEFORE I started using it, when it was happening regularly that I would look in the mirror and think “BEHOLD THE RAVAGES OF TIME.” So! I recommend waiting until it’s on sale (I got mine when they were doing a “$5 gift card with $20 purchase of beauty stuff” deal), and then trying it to see if your skin likes it too.

The second is Gold Bond Crepe Corrector. It is TEN DOLLARS for that 8-ounce tube. I find it difficult to make myself use it. But I DO use it: I put it on my neck and upper chest, and on my lower arms / elbows / hands. And again, it’s not that I have seen a REVOLUTION, skin-wise, but I went from REGULARLY noticing the impending-crepe levels of my neck/arms back to the blissful days of not really noticing it (it’s still THERE, but not at levels that catch my eye as often), and to me that is a worthwhile difference. But again, I would wait for a sale and/or get it for yourself as a little Ruined Mother’s Day present.

Don’t forget to tell me if there’s a perfume sample I should try!

Grocery Shopping Report

16 Replies

Our grocery store had already taken out the one-way aisle signs, and this time they had also taken down the signs requiring masks. Instead, they had signs saying that people who were unvaccinated were required to wear masks, while fully vaccinated people did not have to. As has been widely noted, doing this on the honor system is beyond ridiculous, and only means that many vaccinated people will still wear masks, while most unvaccinated people will not. I am, as you would no doubt guess from this lead-in, still wearing my mask—not just because my kids aren’t fully vaccinated and other people’s kids can’t be, and not just to protect/respect the employees who might not be cool with this new loosening of rules, but also to make it less awkward for others who still think it’s a good idea to wear masks. I felt like I was getting little Solidarity Vibes from other people wearing masks—like, we were looking at each other and thinking “Ah ha! Another voluntary mask-wearer! How nice!” and then briefly squeezing our eyes at each other.

I had wondered if I would be weirdly jumpy and startled to see people without masks, but it turns out I was not. And in fact, afterward, I had to think: WAS my cashier wearing a mask? I remembered the bagger was not. Apparently I am not going to be as flinchy about that as I’d thought I might be.

I have long understood that it is not necessary/useful to shower after grocery shopping—but I am still doing it that way, because it lets me leave the house just that little bit earlier, which generally means the grocery store is less busy. Also, now we’re getting into warmer weather, and it’s pleasant to take a shower after getting all sweaty lugging groceries, so I will just continue doing it this way for now.

It did not seem to me as if there were any remaining pandemic food/supply shortages—except, weirdly, BREAD, which is still patchy and unpredictable. I can always GET bread, it’s not like they’re totally OUT, but the selection is still poor, and they often don’t have any of our several preferred kinds (none of which are special/niche in any way).

I am switching from the Pandemic Plan of going to the grocery store as infrequently as possible, to a new Fully Vaccinated Plan of going regularly once a week; and I am adding back in the little “Whoops, we’re out of hamburger buns” just-running-in-quick trips.

I am still getting a fair number of things using Target’s curbside service, which is why I can go to the grocery store just once a week (before the pandemic, I was going regularly twice a week). At some point I suppose I will stop doing curbside. I’d actually be ready to stop NOW—but now that I am used to using it, I see the sales that are only valid on pick-up orders, and I don’t want to lose those sales! Well. This week I have to go inside to pick up a prescription, and I am planning to make it at least a PARTIAL browsing trip. My guess is that, while browsing, I will see sales that are not available on pick-up orders, and that might help ease the transition. I think it would feel nice to get Target Browsing back into my life.

Shelf-Shifting

37 Replies

One of the many things I am enjoying about being back at my library paging job is that EVEN THOUGH I like the job, I STILL get to experience that delightful “Oh, yay, it’s Friday!”/”Oh, yay, a day off on Monday!” feeling. This happens even when I spend my day off wondering if I should text my supervisor and see if I can come in anyway because I am just itching to get back to my shelf-shifting project and am jealously wondering if my supervisor might have put one of the OTHER LIBRARY PAGES to work on it, NO, LEAVE IT FOR MEEEEEEEEEEE, IT IS MYYYYYYYYYYY PROJECT!!! (There is a sense in which Swistle is an excellent team-player, and another sense in which she the hell is not.)

Shelf-shifting is, as you might expect, when you shift books on the shelves. Sometimes it means moving them to an entirely new place; but more often, it means distributing them more evenly/sensibly among the shelves where they already reside. In a sense, shelf-shifting happens continually as we’re re-shelving: maybe this week’s new James Patterson book won’t fit on the twenty shelves his books are currently inhabiting, so I have to move another James Patterson book either one shelf back or one shelf forward to make room. But usually the term is used for a larger project, such as when an ENTIRE SECTION (e.g., all the large-print books) has gotten to the point where it no longer makes sense to do the little everyday shifts: you’d try to move one book to the next shelf, but in order to do that you’d have to move a book from that shelf to the next shelf, which would require moving one book from THAT shelf to the next shelf, and so on for ten shelves, just to make room for one book. SO THEN: my supervisor might ask me to shelf-shift an entire section. (Or, if I am at loose ends and have noticed an issue, I might shelf-shift a smaller area without being told.)

When I was presented with this type of task for the first time, I thought I wouldn’t like it: it seemed like boring manual labor. But I LOVE it. It’s so satisfying. You start by looking at all the shelves in the section, and estimating how many blank shelves there are total: like, that shelf is about 1/10th empty, that one’s about 1/10th empty, that one’s 1/4th empty, that one’s 1/2 empty, there are three entirely empty shelves at the end of the section, and so on. Then you divide that among how many shelves are allotted to the section: okay, I have approximately five full empty shelves total, and there are forty shelves in this section; so when I’m done shifting, each shelf should be about 1/8th empty.

But! As you’re shifting, there are some Things You Know. For example, you know you should leave more than 1/8th shelf available in the Patterson section. You know it’s likely Berg and King will need more room over the years, but Grafton and Binchy will not. You know you always have a lot of Baldacci and Hilderbrand and Hannah to reshelve, so leave them space because some of their books are for sure checked out right now, and they’ll need shelf to sit on when they come back. And so on!

And you can make the whole area tidier while you’re at it, which I guess doesn’t sound like fun when I type it out, but remember you are being PAID to do this. And: it happens satisfyingly often that, as I am working, I find a misplaced book: maybe every few shelves, I find one mildly out of place, a book I could easily have found if I were looking for it, but it’s still pleasing to move it a few books to the left or right where it belongs; but maybe once per section, I find one WILDLY out of place, a book that was impossibly lost (a 700s book in the 900s! a non-large-print book among the large-print!), and it’s EXTREMELY pleasing to walk it over to where it belongs and feel it clicking into place—as if a little tracking light has lit up on a book-location map, now that the unfindable book is findable again.

(Are you still reading this??? You may want to consider a job at a library.)

Energy

42 Replies

Friends, if you are feeling low on energy, may I recommend EATING MORE FOOD? I know decades of women’s magazines have encouraged us to increase our energy levels by EXPENDING energy via exercise (while, interestingly, we simultaneously use that exact same method to DECREASE energy in children and pets), but consider that another idea is to ADD energy, via calories. Like, literally put energy into your body, by eating food, which is the energy humans use.

The weather has been hot, and my job is very physical, and when I am hot and tired I am not hungry. And I have definitely absorbed the message from this culture that if you’re not hungry, don’t eat, because fewer calories is always better than more calories: if you’re not hungry it’s, like, bonus, Free Dieting! But today I was feeling just absolutely sapped, and I was wondering if I needed more vitamins or more yoga or more sleep or what, and then I mentally went over what I’d eaten the last few days, and it seemed like there was an important clue to be found there.

Today I am going to eat even if I am not hungry, and see if that helps. And I don’t mean I am going to add some of the very low-calorie foods we’ve been trained to view as “””healthy”””; I mean I am going to add CALORIES, which is literally the way we measure the energy in food: more calories = more energy. I am going to take ENERGY, and I am going to PUT IT INTO MY BODY, and I am going to see if that INCREASES ENERGY LEVELS IN MY BODY.

Grocery Store Report

31 Replies

The difference between my last trip to the grocery store and this morning’s was MARKED, and I don’t know how to account for it. The store had taken out all the one-way-aisle signs, and perhaps that contributed. Or perhaps it’s all the news items about mask mandates being removed. Or I don’t KNOW what, but what it was LIKE was as if everyone went back to pre-pandemic grocery-store crowding. All of a sudden, the deli section was packed with people standing close to each other. All of a sudden, I was waiting my turn for the milk section, and someone just went around me and went to the milk section, standing RIGHT NEXT TO the person who was already there. As I was waiting my turn for the eggs section, THREE people went around me and got eggs—no social distancing AT ALL. People were acting as if they didn’t even remember that they USED to wait; they were acting as if they couldn’t understand why I was just standing there.

It was nice not to have to go up an aisle I didn’t need just because I needed to go down an aisle in the other direction—but the two-way traffic was difficult not to be jumpy about, after all this time. And it seemed almost as if people had forgotten how to do it: I had to do a fair amount of dodging left and right to get around people, and it seemed as if many people weren’t looking where they were going.

When I was in line and had loaded my items onto the belt and was standing on the 6-foot marker to be appropriately distant from the cashiers (they’ve stopped spacing the lanes, so the cashier for the next lane is standing within 2 feet of where I need to stand to use the credit-card machine, with no barrier between us as there is between me and the cashier of my own lane), the woman behind me in line came RIGHT UP BEHIND ME and started loading her things onto the belt. Like, I was standing AT the end of the belt, and she was RIGHT THERE, within 12-18 inches. I turned and said apologetically (because she seemed like she thought I should get out of her way) “I just don’t want to get within 6 feet of anyone” (indicating distance between me and the cashiers and between me and her), and she looked at me without saying anything and then continued loading her items.

Every section felt full of people who being deliberately and pointedly uncareful. It was so unpleasant, I got only about 3/4ths of what I’d intended to buy: there were a number of sections that were just too swarmed with people. I wasn’t particularly worried about getting sick, but I AM worried about society-in-general giving up SIGNIFICANT safety measures for INSIGNIFICANT gains in comfort/convenience. Like, is it really SO WORTH IT to crowd around the eggs, or can we wait for TEN SECONDS? Is it SO IMPORTANT to start loading things onto the belt RIGHT AWAY, or can it wait for another half-minute?

Stressy but Productive Week

18 Replies

It’s been a stressy-but-productive week. I’m back to work, which is making me feel exhausted and busy, and the schedule change is stressful; and the housecleaners came back, which was stressful even though it was also great; and now that I am more than two weeks past my second Covid-19 vaccine I am going to a lot of overdue appointments (pap, physical, and soon mammogram and dentist); so I am just feeling very…well, I guess “exhausted and busy” from earlier in this sentence still applies.

And ALSO: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Rob is planning to go live with my parents for a couple of months, for fun and research: he said he wanted to spend some time with them; and he’s starting to think about where he might want to live after he graduates next spring, and one possibility is the area of the country where my parents live. And we (I am using that pronoun a little vaguely, because it was probably mostly “I” but when we talked about it he did agree) wanted him to get all caught up on appointments (doctor, dentist, optometrist) before he went—but he had let his driver’s license expire, so that was stressing me out (particularly because it turned out he never updated his address on the license, either, so that had to be done as well, but the form only seemed to allow EITHER an address change OR a renewal of an expired license), and also meant he couldn’t drive himself to his own appointments so I had to drive him and then wait out in the car, and also meant an additional appointment for the driver’s license. (One might ask why he did not book the driver’s-license-renewing appointment FIRST. Well, he just DIDN’T.)

But at least we have had unqualified success: he made all the appointments “we” wanted him to make (TONS of good adulting practice there, as it turned out, with him needing to ask me questions such as what is a PCP and who is the “subscriber” on his health insurance and what is his father’s birth year); he went in to each of them on his own; and now his driver’s license is renewed so if there are any further errands he can manage them without me.

And so far my own appointments are going well: pap normal, see you in three years; physical went well, bloodwork all looks good, I got a tetanus booster. The nurse made a big praisey deal about me losing some weight (it’s the 15 hours per week of an Active Library Job, plus the appointment was first thing in the morning, plus I was fasting for bloodwork, plus I was a little dehydrated, plus the last time I was weighed was the day after a Day Off from keto), which I hate but as a co-member of our shared society I understood she intended her remarks to be pleasing to me. My doctor once again handled the topic in a way I appreciate: she asked gently if I’d lost the weight on purpose, asked some questions about stress/anxiety/depression, added a thyroid check and vitamin D check to the bloodwork she was ordering, etc.: in short, treated it like a possible medical symptom, rather than as an Objective Good.

Housecleaners Are Back!

52 Replies

Thoughts on the first housecleaner visit after a year of “doing it ourselves”:

• I do it better

• but that would mean I’d have to do it

• which I don’t entirely mind doing! some of it is kind of satisfying, actually!

• but I do mind doing everyone else’s share for them, while they don’t do anything and/or have to be constantly directed/nagged to do anything

I’d been thinking of hiring housecleaners as something that we do for ME, something in MY favor, something that was a bargaining chip for ME—but actually it turns out we are hiring the housecleaners so that my husband and children don’t have to do their share.

Housecleaner Stress

24 Replies

Imagine you have a friend, and you see that she is sad and stressed and upset, and you say “Oh dear, why are you so sad and stressed and upset??,” and she looks at you, her tear-filled eyes full of suffering as well as the aforementioned tears, and says in a quavering, about-to-fall-apart voice, “Because people are coming tomorrow to clean my house for me!! so that I won’t have to do it myself!!,” and collapses into fresh sorrow and distress. How ridiculous. It is I: your ridiculous friend Swistle.

This evening I wondered if honestly I don’t prefer to just clean the house myself. Is it SO BAD? especially now that it’s been over a year and I have a bit of a system going? Which would I rather do right now: go through the rest of this evening fretting senselessly about tomorrow morning, and then go through tomorrow morning—or clean three toilets and be at peace? I’d rather clean three toilets. But ask me again tomorrow mid-day, when the cleaners will be gone and my house will be clean, and it will be the longest possible time before going through all this again. And when I will be looking ahead to day after day of not having to clean three toilets or three bathroom floors, not having to vacuum or damp-mop, not having to move everything off the kitchen counters to wipe them thoroughly, not having to deeply resent everyone I married and everyone I gave birth to. Someone else will have taken care of all of that / partially prevented some of that.

Mother’s Day 2021 Report

95 Replies

OH OKAY LET’S TALK ABOUT MOTHER’S DAY!

I would say that, for me, the absolute KEY was to shift to the approach of making some arrangements so that I’d have a nice day even if no one else did a single thing. (This is also the approach I now use for Valentine’s Day.) I don’t LIKE that this is the way it has to be, but I also don’t like feeling sad and resentful (and as if maybe I am a terrible mother and that’s why my children don’t love me), so I take what power for change is available to me. I aimed for arrangements that, instead of seeming like “I am celebrating myself!,” would hopefully seem more like “Mother’s Day is a fun day full of treats!”

I can’t remember which arrangements I’d already told you about, but here they are:

• I ordered pastries for us all to have for breakfast

• I ordered some nice chocolates to put out for all-day partaking (you’d think with five children the chocolates would be gone in a FLASH, but they are all very Suspicious about chocolate-box chocolates)

• I bought a few small/medium things (another kind of fruit jellies I wanted to try; a bottle of nail polish; a new moisturizer) that caught my attention in the week or two before Mother’s Day, without mentioning those items to anyone else as “Mother’s Day things”—just, I saw each thing and I thought “Ooo, I’d like to have that. Oh! It could be a little Mother’s Day thing!,” and I ordered it

• I said that I wanted to watch a movie of my choice (at home) and have snacks again, like we did last year; attendance was not mandatory, it was just on offer for anyone who wanted to join me

• I brought up the topic of what-dinner-should-I-not-have-to-cook-on-Mother’s-Day, and I suggested pizza (easy and we all like it), and Paul counter-offered that he could instead expend vast time and energy making lasagna and rustic rolls, and I accepted his counter-offer

• I presumed as if it were A Given that we would be going for “our usual” (i.e., we did it for the first time last year) Mother’s Day trail walk, so that we could have a pretty background and rosy cheeks for the annual Mother’s Day picture of me with the kids; I said that if anyone didn’t want to go on the walk, we could do a photo in the yard first, and then anyone who wanted to go on the walk could go from there—but everyone opted to go on the walk)

And I had a nice day, all day long. I woke up feeling happy and excited about the treats stretching ahead of me throughout the day. I did no cleaning all day long. Some of the children DID do Mother’s Day things; Paul had privately prompted/reminded them several times over the last few weeks. (Though one unvaccinated-and-non-driver’s-license-possessing child handed me cash and a printed-out photo of what he’d wanted to buy me, saying he hadn’t been able to figure out any way to obtain the item—so Paul could perhaps have been a little more clear on his availability to ASSIST.) One child had the good idea of baking a kind of cookie (oatmeal scotchies) that is widely known to be a kind MOTHER particularly likes even though everyone else is meh about them, and I felt that was a stellar idea, and showed some encouraging empathy development, as well as demonstrating to all concerned that a financial outlay is not required.

I would be very interested to hear stories (good and/or bad and/or mediocre) of how YOUR day went, if applicable, and/or if there is anything you want to change for next year.