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.

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.