I have just over a dozen pages left before the end of A Prayer for Owen Meany and I have put it down. I feel the need for Emotional Preparedness, which may never occur. At the very least, I am going to need a room containing no one who will make fun of me for crying.

I need to mention, by the way, that the book was published in 1989 and makes use of the R-word. [Edited to add: plus at least one instance of a person described as “Oriental.”] Also, it is a men’s book: it is about men, and things that happen to men. All the female characters are there only as accessories to the men: a man’s grandmother, a man’s girlfriend, a man’s cousin, a man’s teacher, a man’s mother. They are only there to help tell the men’s stories. I am not really reading books like that anymore, so I thought I should give you a little content warning so you won’t be surprised. This book is getting grandmothered in because I THOUGHT I HAD read it, so this is more like going back in time to keep me from being a liar. (Spellcheck knows the word grandfathered but not the word grandmothered. Click “Add to dictionary”/”Gradually reduce automatic patriarchy”—there, that’s better.)

And I have to skim a lot of the stuff about the Vietnam War and the political things that were going on at the time. It’s depressing to see how similar politics are now, and to realize that it’s not just that things got abruptly worse with the election of our 45th president (though they did), it’s also that I didn’t tune in until it got that bad—but it had been Pretty Darn Bad at many times earlier. Well, a lot of us are paying attention NOW, so good strategy, politicians! Fun idea, to see just how far you could push it!

I went grocery shopping today. We were getting low on a lot of things so I went in twice: first for things that don’t care about temperature, and then for everything else. That kind of trip is satisfying, because I can get EVERYTHING, and also have room in the cart for Bonus Items such as an impulse pack of bakery cinnamon rolls, and a box of unnecessary-but-the-kids-enjoy-them fruit snacks; but also stressful, because I do different aisles each trip, and I’m always worry that doing so will undermine the part of my list that is only in my mind and is triggered by walking past the items. That is, no one has to put milk on the list, because I remember it when I walk past it. But if I alter my route, who KNOWS what I might not walk past!!

Well.

This was my third grocery trip with the updated advice to double-mask (I wear a KN-95 first, with a cloth mask over it), and I really hate it, but also it does make me feel a little safer. But it’s so uncomfortable and humid. And I hadn’t realized how comfy my cloth masks were until I wore a disposable, though that’s unfair to the disposable: it’s against my face so it’s getting most of the blame for the issues caused by two masks. Still. Now I’m looking forward to wearing just one mask, a cloth one, after I’m vaccinated! HOW FAR WE HAVE COME.

Oh! A note: if your store has been weirdly out of horseradish sauce, as mine has been, it’s worth checking with the cocktail items (maraschino cherries, cocktail olives, grenadine, margarita/daiquiri mixers): I walked past that section today and there was horseradish sauce just sitting there! Although there was ALSO that one same kind of horseradish sauce in the regular section this time, so maybe it wouldn’t have been with the cocktail stuff before, either.

They were out of the little cocktail hot dogs again. They were out of those for AGES at the beginning of the pandemic, then suddenly had them in stock again Awhile Ago, and now haven’t had them for the past two trips.

Still no Lemon Pop Tarts, but that’s a new item so I might be missing a display, or my store might just not have them yet.

You know the BIG containers of spices? Like, not the usual cylindrical jar of cinnamon, but a big rectangular container? We needed a new Big Basil, and I have checked three trips in a row now, and they haven’t had it. The whole Big Spices section has been all spread out, with maybe three Big Spices taking up allllll the Big Spice slots. This time they did have Big Crushed Red Pepper, which they didn’t have last time.

Canned beans are still weird. They had the big cans of black beans and pinto beans, and those were spread out over two shelves of the missing other varieties.

Canned fruit is still weird. Cranberry sauce or pineapple or Weird Stuff, those are your choices. I’ve been ordering from Target.

Last time they were out of lemon juice; this time they had it, but just the store brand. (Which is fine, but notable.)

Almond milk was VERY LOW. I had to buy coconut-almond milk (which is fine, but notable).

The vegetarian meat-substitutes are still patchy, but at least they had some chicken nuggets and chicken patties, which we were getting perilously low on. No Gardein beefless ground, for the third trip in a row (that is the ONLY vegetarian ground beef we like; it’s that or nothing).

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED MARCONA ALMONDS. The deli section had a big display of them on sale, so I bought some just to try them. I can’t stop eating them. I told Paul to please take them away from me and put them somewhere I wouldn’t see them for awhile, because I was getting worried I would actually make myself sick before I’d stop. They’re skinless almonds, fried in oil, and then salted like they love you and want you to be happy.

I’d been seeing ads for Super Coffee (a keto thing), and thought I’d check to see if my grocery store had that brand, and they had two kinds of the refrigerated liquid creamer, so I bought the sweet cream one. It’s…okay. Very artificial-sweetener-flavored (which is fine/expected, but notable). I’m glad I didn’t order a case of it or something. I forget to check for the bottled flavored coffees when I was in that part of the store, but I’ll check next time.

Do you have a peanut-butter cereal you’d recommend? I have been eating a keto one that has put me very in the mood to have a NON keto version on my Days Off. I bought a box of Reese’s cereal, thinking that would be top tier stuff, and I ate one bowl of it and don’t want any more: hardly any peanut butter flavor at all. I know I can add actual peanut butter to cereal, but I’m checking first for options that don’t involve doing that.

I had a sudden craving for Sugar Babies, and checked the grocery store for them, but they didn’t have any. I don’t know if that’s a pandemic thing or if those are now an Old Person Candy and will have to be ordered from a special catalog that also carries the perfumes and toiletries of my distant youth. That, by the way, is how I will KNOW my peers and I are truly Old as opposed to “ha ha we’re so old!”: when the Vermont Country Store catalog starts carrying the things we love/remember. That’s the next level up from hearing your high school Top 40 played as elevator music, which is an achievement we have already unlocked.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but as vaccinations/hope loom on the horizon, this is how Sara and I are feeling:

I mean, feeling a lot of hope and happiness ALSO! But. We cancelled so many things. And in my household, there are seven of us, multiplied times all those well visits, dental appointments, optometrist appointments, allergy appointments, etc. Well, not seven times ALL of them: Henry had to keep going with his orthodontist appointments, which means he also kept going with his dentist appointments. And Paul didn’t want to stop his dentist appointments, which is probably wise because HE DOES NOT FLOSS, so he has also been seeing the dentist. And only two of us see an allergist, though I am going to have to see about those stress hives. And I am the only one who postponed a pap and a mammogram. BUT YOU GET THE GIST. IT IS STILL A LOT OF CATCHING UP.

Here is what I am thinking. You know how when you’ve just had a baby, people say “Nine months on, nine months off”? This catchy little phrase presumes that it is imperative for you to get back to your pre-baby size/body, and we hate that, but stay with me: the basic idea is that you should not expect to be back to your usual self immediately when there has been a lengthy disruption to the normal state of things, and that it is reasonable to assume that getting back to normal would take approximately as long as the disruption lasted.

In the case of the pandemic, I think we are going to lose what is left of our minds if we try to get immediately caught up on everything. (Plus, then in future years, ALLLLL the appointments are going to come due the same month.) Let’s say that by the time we are vaccinated and ready to face the world again, it has been an average of 15 months since we began isolating/cancelling. Then I think we should plan on giving ourselves roughly 15 months after that to get caught up on all the dentist appointments, paps, mammograms, well visits, optometrist appointments, etc. We may be caught up sooner than that! in which case we get cake! But let’s give ourselves a little slack.

I went grocery shopping this morning, and I don’t know if I just lucked out or if it’s always that deserted at 7:30 on a Friday morning, but anyway there were many entire aisles that were completely empty, or just an employee stocking shelves.

My preferred frozen broccoli florets were back in stock, which is SUCH a spoiled-sounding sentence and I know it, but I cannot hide this aspect of myself from you: I am picky about broccoli. I like (1) florets, and furthermore I like (2) a particular BRAND of florets, and further-furthermore I like (3) a particular PACKAGE SIZE of that brand. It is the store brand, and their smaller bags of florets come in an opaque bag and are sometimes disappointing/terrible; the larger/family size is not a better deal per ounce, but is packaged in a clear bag and is consistently good. That was more than I intended to write about frozen broccoli.

Chicken nuggets were still kind of low on selection, but better than before. Canned beans were low on selection, but they had the kinds I wanted. Mustard was weirdly low on selection, probably just a non-pandemic-related glitch. Plenty of paper towels and toilet paper. I did not even visit the cleaning supplies aisle, because I have enough and didn’t want to be tempted. (Gosh.)

They did not have the new lemon Pop-Tarts, but they did have a crisp apple flavor, which I bought because I want to know if it’s good or if it’s terrible.

In keto grocery news, they had tons of Rebel ice cream (lots of varieties, and plenty of each variety in stock), and they also had one flavor (peanut butter fudge) of the Enlightened keto ice cream I’d wanted to try, but still not the new Enlightened keto cheesecakes, unless I am looking in the wrong place, which is entirely possible. And they had the unsweet vanilla almond milk I wanted to try. (I was very hesitant to try almond milk at all, but did so at the encouragement of my sister-in-law, and I REALLY LIKE IT and to my surprise find it a completely acceptable substitute for milk. I get the Silk brand, BECAUSE OF THEIR CUTE COMMERCIALS, and I am not kidding.)

Probably we don’t even NEED grocery shopping reports anymore, now that everything seems pretty much back to normal, but I am finding it hard to stop. Also, I am still so interested anytime anyone says anything about their grocery-shopping experience, and perhaps I am not the only one. I leaned forward in my chair, chin on hand, to read Life of a Doctor’s Wife’s recent post on the topic, and was still thinking about it when I was at the store, and checked on my way past to see if my store had the frozen pancakes her store has been out of (they did), and then wondered about that for awhile, and with considerable interest. WHY these weird localized outages? And I almost BOUGHT SOME, not because I needed any but because SHE couldn’t get any, which made me feel like frozen pancakes were something to be SNATCHED UP.

Well. As she says, this sort of interest/agitation may be a FOREVER sort of issue for those of us who handled the grocery-shopping during the pandemic. I think I will feel SOMEWHAT better/calmer when it feels Permissible to go shopping more often: right now, part of my agitation is that if the store is out of something, I feel like I can’t check again for at least another week. Once we are vaccinated, I will feel much more comfortable running into the store in between the bigger trips.

I had Mask Stress Dreams last night, but they were lighter/cheerier than usual. In one, a clerk reprimanded me for not wearing a mask, and first I panicked and scrambled—but then I noticed something and said, “Wait, YOU’RE not wearing a mask!!,” and he said, with absolutely undaunted snoot, “Perhaps I would have remembered if I’d seen customers wearing them!!” In another dream, Paul and I were talking about a risk we’d taken in accidentally seeing friends (in the dream), and he said “When this is over, we should have them sleep over!” and I said happily “YES! Why should they EVER GO HOME!”

I have seen people mentioning that in some ways the lockdown has become HARDER with the end in sight. A lot of us had finally settled into a sort of Indefinite Stasis, no longer saying “ANOTHER week??”/”Another MONTH??”/”THE REST OF THE SCHOOL YEAR??” as we did at the beginning, but just sort of long-hauling it as The New Normal without thinking about it much. (And I don’t know about you, but until relatively recently I was more than half preparing for another four years of the former administration, so my hopes for the end were very far away.)

But now the hope is near enough to count in months! Near enough to write things several pages away on the calendar! Near enough to think of Actual Plans! Near enough to say things like “Well, but by then I’ll probably be back to work—so better make it afternoon.” Near enough to think with amazement about HALLOWEEN and THANKSGIVING and CHRISTMAS. And that shift makes me IMPATIENT in a way I haven’t been for awhile. While also making me MORE patient in other ways: We’re so close to safety now, it feels even more foolish to take unnecessary risks—like trying to merge into traffic between two tightly-spaced cars, when behind the second car is a long stretch of empty lane. This is one reason I was astonished to see photos on Facebook of yet another in-person maskless wedding. MY DEARS. In JUST A FEW MORE MONTHS it will be possible to do that WITHOUT the strong possibility of having your Joyous Occasion forever associated with a friend or family member’s illness/death! (Also, I cannot believe people are resisting the lure of Fancy Formalwear masks, and the kind of pandemic-affected wedding pictures people will actually want to look at later, and/or use in stories/series/books about the pandemic. But no: everything just boring as well as reckless.)

I am feeling very low about parenting lately. It feels to me that I am failing at even the small things. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, AGGRIEVED PERSONAL ANECDOTES, and A SIGN, the boys don’t change the position of the toilet ring before/after peeing. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, TEARFUL RANTING, and a SIGN, there are dirty dishes on the counter above the dirty dishwasher when I come downstairs in the morning. Even with rational/cheerful discussion, clear communication, a helpful list of suggestions, specific reminders, occasional shrieking meltdowns, and THE PURE INHERENT JUSTICE OF IT, hardly anyone except me is doing a small daily chore to keep up with the housework. (To add to the outrage: the person in second place, chores-wise, is the only other female person in the household.)

I started this post by calling these “small things,” but these actually feel to me like the kinds of things that add up to the point where later the grown child’s spouse asks the heavens why their in-laws bothered to send a half-trained child into the world to cause other people grief and frustration. Like, these are the “small things” that cause actual suffering in an adult household. And even with my STRONG FEELINGS on these sorts of things, and putting in a LOT of work over MANY years, my training does not seem to be TAKING. I have raised a household of thoughtless inconsiderate beasts—like the world needed more of those.

This doesn’t even get into the issues we’re having with remote schooling. Some of the kids are absolutely handling it. Two of them (Edward, 15, a 10th grader; Henry, 13, an 8th grader) are absolutely not, and I feel like we are DRAGGING them through this school year and it is taking BOTH parents to do it, and they are STILL going to be VERY LUCKY to end up with PASSING GRADES.

Originally (like, LAST spring) I thought cheerily, “Well, it’s actually good that I can’t do my library job right now: it leaves me available in case I’m needed for remote school!” Well. I did not realize how much work Paul and I would BOTH be putting in for this STILL, after a YEAR, and have them still “forgetting” to do homework, “forgetting” to check for assignments, “forgetting” to click the submit button on assignments, “forgetting” to make corrections on things that are marked literally F, and even FORGETTING TO GO TO CLASS.

I don’t understand it. I get that this is a pandemic. Things are weird! Things are stressful! OMG YOU HAVE SO MUCH EXTRA FREE TIME, JUST DO YOUR STUPID HOMEWORK. I know schools are suffering, teachers are suffering, everything is impossible—but our particular school has absolutely dropped the ball on remote schooling (a LOT of blame goes to the loud, vocal parents who are insisting on prioritizing in-person school—but the school also deserves their share of the blame for caving to that; the teachers do NOT deserve any of the blame, they’re just as stuck as we are), and it is such a small amount of work the kids are asked to do, and such a low number of online classes they can attend, and two of my kids are STILL not doing that SMALL amount without having their hands held / collars gripped. I don’t worry as MUCH about Henry, because 8th grade is still not transcript time—but it matters because with these grades and this performance he is not going to get into the college-prep classes in high school (NOR SHOULD HE), and that DOES affect transcripts. And I do worry about Edward, not just because this will affect his transcript but because it SHOULD affect his transcript: colleges SHOULD worry about a high school student who can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum, a high school student who doesn’t wake up to his alarm and only gets up when his mother comes running into the room yelling “WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING IN BED?? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN CLASS!!” And I know this is a weird year and colleges are going to have to deal en masse with this terrible school year, but it is still NOT GREAT BOB, especially when our school’s in-person students have access to classes not available to the remote learners, and so the remote learners will look relatively worse EVEN IN LIGHT OF this year.

And, like, last night I was lying in bed and I kept hearing odd sounds, and finally I got up to investigate, and I found Henry up and about in his room with the light on, an hour and a half after he was supposed to be lights-out-in-bed, and Edward was NOT IN THE ROOM, and I found him DOWNSTAIRS PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES. I have been almost WEEPY as I contemplated telling the doctor at his next Remicade appointment that his health has been slipping to the point that he’s taking naps every afternoon—but it’s apparently that he’s UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES??? And then this morning I came downstairs and there were dirty dishes on the counter surrounding the “Dishwasher is DIRTY / You should put your dishes into it” sign, and a pan in the sink. And yesterday when I was calmly talking with Henry about his grades and how tired I was of nagging, he implied that it was the NAGGING causing his grades to be low, and it just feels like this whole parenting idea has been a complete failure.

Normally I am kind of shruggy about such things. All parents have strengths and weaknesses in their parenting, and I think most people turn out pretty okay and end up making their own corrections to adjust for the gaps. And I think people, even people who are children, have a responsibility to handle their share of the situation: it’s my job to train/instruct/correct/etc., but it’s the children’s job to take on those responsibilities for themselves as they’re able. And I think there are a lot of things kids DON’T do when they don’t have to, but that they pick up later on, which is probably why one’s twenties seem to be such a forgiving decade in terms of diet and sleep. But right now, RIGHT NOW, I’m thinking that my children-in-law are going to be blaming me for these children.