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.

There is so much to say, I almost don’t know where to start! Part of the backlog is because I was planning to say some of it yesterday, but had forgotten it was Edward’s Remicade day. Those appointments have gotten a LOT shorter (our hospital has switched from the standard infusion, which took two hours and ten minutes, to a rapid one that takes one hour); but with the driving (an hour and a half each way) and the waiting for the pharmacy to send over the medication (usually about an hour, sometimes as long as two), it’s a fairly all-day thing, or at least an all-day-FEELING thing. By the time we get home, I just want to play phone games and perhaps sip something nice.

So let’s see, the FIRST thing I wanted to do was update on the family charity-choosing project, since several of you asked for a follow-up. Elizabeth was the very first to choose a charity, as she’d apparently had one all set to go back when we had a family meeting (via whiteboard, since our schedules are so varied) to decide how to spend some of the stimulus money, since we are in the small and privileged segment of the population that does not need to spend it on survival. (Other options suggested: one big check to a local food pantry; new pet; secret room behind a bookcase; restaurants once it’s safe to go; just chucking it into the FIVE COLLEGE EDUCATIONS fund.) She chose the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Rob too had a charity all set to go: he chose the Against Malaria Foundation. (He is a fan of Give Well, and interested in the whole concept of Effective Altruism.)

The other three kids had more trouble choosing. Henry first narrowed it down to his two most important issues: environmental concerns and world hunger. From there he chose the National Resources Defense Council.

Edward chose polio vaccines, but procrastinated on looking into where he could donate for that. With some prodding, he chose UNICEF, and we did the “choosing a gift” feature that let him say he wanted the money put specifically toward polio vaccines. (We discussed ahead of time how the money still doesn’t necessarily go for exactly what you choose, which on one hand is disappointing but on the other hand is GOOD: if they are FULL UP on polio vaccines, you don’t want them WASTING your money on vaccines they can’t use.)

William was the very last. He got stuck on something I’m familiar with as a sticking point, which is feeling as if no one charity is The Very Best One to give money to, and that that makes it hard to choose among the others: how can a person donate to environmental causes, when people are starving? How can a person donate to vaccinations, when our habitat is in such crisis? How can a person donate to U.S. poverty when there is world poverty? How can a person donate to malaria/polio when there are SO MANY OTHER DISEASES?? Etc.

I’d said on the whiteboard that it was fine to just choose a CATEGORY rather than a particular charity, and William finally chose “United States homelessness,” which I asked for your help researching, and that was EXTREMELY HELPFUL, not only for the specific charities suggested but also in giving a better picture of the TYPES of charities. I was then able to go back to him and say that the primary choice seemed to be between NATIONAL (advocacy/laws/policy) and LOCAL (food/blankets/shelter). I also specifically mentioned Covenant House to him, since it seems to have both national and local impact, and since they specifically help youth, and I thought that might appeal. If I’d had to GUESS, I would have guessed he’d choose Covenant House, and that his second pick would be local/shelter/food—but instead he chose national/advocacy/policy. So we donated to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. (Coincidentally, one of my acquaintances recently participated in a Covenant House Sleep Out fundraiser, so we’d ALSO ended up donating there, separate from this project.)

It was a very satisfying project, and I recommend it. It was fun for me to see what the kids chose, and to discuss options with them, and to show them how to use Charity Navigator, and so on.

Okay, that seems like it’s long enough for a post to be, so I will save the other topics for other days!

Rob and William have had their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine! Pfizer, if you are interested! (I find I am very interested, despite, as someone mentioned their nurse pointed out to them, never giving one moment’s thought to the maker of my flu shot.) They got them in the afternoon; that same evening/night, William had a little fever, a pretty bad headache, a pretty bad sore throat—but felt better by morning, and completely well by mid-day. Rob had no side effects.

On a completely unrelated topic, I am dealing with a bout of Possession Oppression. It crept up on me gradually, then in a rush, and I think part of the recent surge is because we’ve been talking about when we’re going to bring our housecleaners back, so I am seeing my house through their eyes.

Another part is that there has been this long pandemic time period when certain things were in short supply and other things needed to be stocked up on to reduce shopping trips, and we are still IN that time though it feels like it is lessening, but in the meantime there is a backlog, and also a bit of a problem of me failing to prevent myself from continuing to add to the problem. We WILL go through all the hand soap eventually, so this is not a matter of donating it or whatever, it’s more a matter of I need to stop buying more of it every time I see it even though it still falsely triggers a “HAND SOAP = PRECIOUS ITEM!!! PURCHASE!!!!!!!!” This may take time.

In this same category: my parents moved across the country, and they did not want to pack/move all of their cleaning supplies and laundry supplies and foil/baggies/wrap and so forth, and I WANTED those things and am GLAD to have those things and we WILL use them all eventually, but Right At This Moment they are a little oppressive in their multiple boxes of partially-used items when we already have a full supply of partially-used items as well as pandemic-level supplies of back-ups for those items. (I mention “partially-used” specifically to prevent the suggestion of donating these things to a local pantry. And anyway: we will use them! I consider them Riches! It’s just that RIGHT NOW and COMBINED WITH OTHER THINGS they are adding to the OVERALL feeling of oppression, and also to the feeling that our housecleaners are going to be side-eyeing the situation.)

Another element is that I’ve been feeling inclined toward certain Little Indulgences because of the pandemic. If I am at the grocery store and there is room in the cart, I am more likely to buy snack cakes for the children, or the weird new Oreo flavor. If I am shopping online, I am more likely to buy fun little things, too: a new conditioner! a new skin care product! a new nail polish! a pretty mug! some festive string lights! Combine this with the feeling of needing to Stock Up, and I am ending up with TOO MANY new conditioners, TOO MANY new skin care products, TOO MANY little pretty things and product samples and fun things to try.

And THIS leads a category of items I find very difficult to know what to do with, which is “Fun New Things I Tried and Didn’t Like, But Now They’re Partially-Used and Can’t Be Donated.” It’s the sort of thing where maybe I could ask friends if they wanted the things? But that feels a little wearying. And when I picture it reversed, and friends asking if others want their partially-used conditioners/lotions/etc., I don’t find myself thinking “Ooo! Yes! Fun!” Maybe if everyone brought their stuff and laid it all out and people could take what they wanted? But even that feels sort of…tiring…and also, we’re not yet getting together in person.

Another element is one I feel a little shy to talk about because it involves food/dieting. You may know that generally I follow a keto diet; now that I am maintaining my current weight, I take one day off from that a week, and on that day I eat EVERYTHING I WANT. This has led to something I consider a USEFUL DIET TOOL, which is that I never have to think “I can’t have that” but instead I think “I can have that on my next Day Off.” I will see something fun and anti-keto while shopping (new Pop-Tart flavor! weird appealing cereal! yummy-looking Spring Edition cookie!), and I don’t have to pine/suffer: I can buy it and put it aside and have it pretty soon. But partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many hand soaps and other necessities, and partly due to the same pandemic shopping practices that lead to too many conditioners and nail polishes and other indulgences, and partly that sometimes I want to try something that is only sold in a 2-pound pack, and partly that my Day Off eyes are much bigger than my Day Off stomach, I have ended up with embarrassing piles of candies and cookies and snack cakes. “Well, give the extras to the children!,” you might suggest, which is where I am forced to reveal that it has recently gone beyond that in scope. Like, it’s too much to give to the children. Clearly the main thing I need to do is stop buying SO MANY TREATS. And I WILL! I WILL! But also: what to do with a bunch of opened, partially-used treats that can’t be donated? Well. Part of this will be resolved naturally: I will stop buying so many; the levels will recede; the children will do their share; and soon perhaps I will be able to bring out the extras at get-togethers, or Paul and I will be able to leave things in the break rooms at work.

But last night it was all oppressing me so much it felt like I was on the edge of panic. Some of that was Night Sadness, and the only cure was to go to sleep; but then this morning I also tried to CHIP AWAY AT IT a little. This isn’t something where I can just go through and Fix It: there has to be the Buying Less element, and the Gradually Using It Up element, and so forth, and that will take time. But I’ve noticed that sometimes, even doing a relatively small amount of work, even an amount of work that might FEEL like it’s not worth doing because it would make AT BEST such a tiny insignificant dent, is enough to shift the line from TIME TO PANIC back to Okay, Okay, This Is Going To Be All Right.

Such was the case this morning. My OVERALL goal was “make even a small difference; don’t try to solve the whole problem right now.” Here were my more specific goals, all of which I accomplished:

• Go through the Treats Heap and see if anything is unopened and CAN be donated (sometimes I buy multiples of an item); put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store. Move SOME treats to the Kids’ Treat Shelf; put some other treats aside to refill that shelf later. Throw away some treats. Sort the rest of the treats neatly into the mostly-unused cabinets in my little sunporch room, where it reduces the embarrassment I feel about the housecleaners seeing it, but also I can easily see what I have. Resolve to CONSULT THESE SUPPLIES before buying MORE.

• Glance into the bathroom medicine cabinet and throw out even just a few things: the beard oil I gave Paul for Christmas many years ago, which he didn’t like the idea of and never uses; the half-used sample of hand lotion I didn’t like the smell of; the once-used pot of a face treatment that maybe caused my weeks of itchy eyelids so I’m too nervous to try it again; a lipstick I never use. Gather up any unopened beauty samples I don’t want and put them in the gift drawer in case they’d work to put in with a care package sometime. Resolve to keep more on top of this in the future: it is worth it to toss just one item.

• Go through the bathroom-supplies cupboard and see if there are unopened things we don’t want, and put those in a bag for the donation bin at the grocery store.

• Take that conditioner I used twice but didn’t like and yet kept in my shower because it was more than I usually spend on a conditioner and I’d thought it was a treat and that I would love it, and put it into the kids’ shower where perhaps someone will use it.

• Commit to using up the six little sample bottles of shampoo/conditioner and three little sample bottles of body wash, because then they can be GONE OUT OF THE SHOWER and stop making it feel so cluttery.

THEN: I am going to TRY to avoid what is apparently a common United States Consumer Cycle, which is to buy too much, and then have the relief of DECLUTTERING and GETTING RID OF THINGS; but then the cupboards/closets feel so blissfully empty/available, and also we accidentally got rid of things we were actually using, so then we buy too much again. (Businesses LOVE this and encourage it: it is a very high-profit for them if we keep throwing away perfectly good things and then re-buying.) I will not expect to fully succeed (I am aiming for an ADJUSTMENT rather than a revolution), but I will attempt to bring some awareness back into my shopping, and I will try to think of it as a waste issue as well as a financial one. Fun purchases are fine!—but I will space them out a little more so that I appreciate them and don’t waste them. Treats for Days Off are great!—but I will space them out a little more so the supplies don’t get oppressive rather than delightful, and when possible I will buy them in smaller packages. Happy Fun Things Coming in the Mail is an utterly understandable desire during a pandemic!—but I will imagine where those things will have to be stored in the house, and make sure I want to do that; and I will try not to buy things just because they’re on sale or just for the satisfaction of having Things On Their Way. Getting rid of things is fine!—but I will try to make sure I’m not just alleviating panic by getting rid of things I will then re-buy. And I will continue to work, as ever, on not caring what the housecleaners think, since they likely couldn’t care less, though they would very likely appreciate a reduction in clutter even more than I would.