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.

Tiffanie suggested I show the Easter purchases I mentioned, and I do not have to be asked twice about such things.

(image from Target.com)

Cute-bunny-butt plate. This is salad/lunch sized. It’s surprisingly THICK plastic—like, as if it were ceramic, but it’s plastic. This is the item I was either MOST or SECOND-most worried would sell out before my account could be unlocked. (There is a matching mug but I DO NOT NEED MORE MUGS.)

(image from Target.com)

Spring floral lunch plate. From the same seasonal line as the bunny plate. Salad/lunch size, surprisingly thick plastic. (There is a matching mug but etc.)

(image from Target.com)

Spring floral dinner plate. Same seasonal line again, surprisingly thick plastic again, but this is the dinner-sized plate. On its own, I don’t like it as much as the bunny and the smaller plate, but I love it WITH those other two plates.

(image from Target.com)

Lindt mini eggs. I like Lindt chocolate, and these look like the delightful crispy-shelled Cadbury mini eggs, so I bought a bag to taste. I found them Disappointing. The chocolate was Fine. The shells had a flat flavor I found unpleasant. I think that’s because I’m used to the Cadbury kind, which have a strong vanilla flavor. Anyway, I would not buy these again, but the Fun of Trying Something New was worth it.

(image from Target.com)

Bunny & Farm Easter Eggs. Every year a certain number of our plastic eggs get broken or lost, so most years I like to buy one new set, just to keep supplies level. Normally I would wait and buy a set on clearance, but NOT IN A PANDEMIC YEAR. In a pandemic year, I pay $5 to buy it not even on sale, and I buy its friend too:

(image from Target.com)

Spring Patterns Easter Eggs. FIVE dollars for a set of just EIGHT only slightly-oversized Easter eggs, when normally I would get them for $2.50 or even $1.50 on clearance? YES. IT IS A PANDEMIC, PLEASE JUST TAKE MY MONEY AND WE WILL RESUME NORMAL OPERATIONS NEXT YEAR. (ONE HOPES.) These (two sets of) eggs were the item I was either MOST or SECOND-most worried would sell out.

(image from Target.com)

Paper floral Easter basket shred. Normally I do not buy Easter basket grass(/shred?), because we do an Egg Hunt and not Easter baskets. But IN A PANDEMIC I have been having a lot of fun sending little seasonal boxes through the mail to my niece and nephew whom I miss, and this stuff would be perfect in the Easter box, so THIS YEAR WE BUY EASTER GRASS(/SHRED).

(image from Target.com)

M&Ms Easter Mystery Mix. Life of a Doctor’s Wife recommended these, saying: “There is only so much time left until Easter, so I advise trying them right away to determine how many bags you need.” Wise advice, and I heeded it. I am going to put them out in a bowl this afternoon as today’s Attempt To Put a Little Joy in Our Lives.

My slump of the other day is gone, replaced by near full-capacity joie de vivre, a swing that is absolutely typical and must be absolutely exhausting to live with—something I think we should all keep in mind when I am complaining about how Paul cleans bathroom floors (unnecessarily thick wad of paper towels attached to Swiffer, using a method that shoves all the dirt on the floor up against the edges; skips area around toilet; skips molding).

The other day when I was feeling so thwarted, I thought that what I should do to shake myself out of it is try to Accomplish Some Things—ANY things, even if they weren’t Top Priority Things. But also that what I should try to do if possible is accomplish some of the Most Oppressive Things. So yesterday I organized the tax paperwork which, as those of you who organize your tax paperwork know, can be about 75% of doing taxes. But our taxes have become challenging to the point where that percentage no longer holds, and I was enormously stressed every year and didn’t feel I could accurately do them anymore, and so now I take great satisfaction that my years of doing them myself mean that I Know How To Organize Our Tax Paperwork Nicely—but then I drop it off for someone with knowledge and expertise to take it from there. And I DID that. It’s DONE. And I wish I’d done it EVEN SOONER (I feel like tax customers who drop off their forms in February are the ones who get the biggest gold stars), but I did not, and March 2nd is better than March 3rd or March 4th or March 5th or March 31st, so I will try not to fret. And I emailed the tax accountant to tell her I’d dropped off the packet, so that she’d know to look for it and would tell me if it wasn’t there, so that I wouldn’t get into a Worry Loop about not having heard from her about it and start concocting ridiculous ideas of how it could have gone astray, like maybe RACCOONS could have squeezed through the mail slot and gotten it.

I also made a fresh batch of coleslaw, and I know that doesn’t sound like much, but for some reason it’s a hurdle, and having a new batch in the fridge is restorative and happy.

And I wrapped gifts for a birthday. I don’t even MIND wrapping gifts, and I LIKE choosing wrapping paper (I have Too Many, which is just the right number), so I don’t know why I was putting it off.

And I have started a new book I really like, which is not on the subject of accomplishments/tasks, but is contributing to the overall joie de vivre. Laura recommended it on the books worth buying post: it’s Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld (Target) (Amazon), a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice, which is a book I’ve read several times, and have watched several movie/miniseries versions of, and have read the annotated version (Target) (Amazon) of (fun/interesting, and I think it would make a good gift idea for an Austen fan), and I’m not at all sure about my grammar/structure in this paragraph, but my gist is that I was a little nervous going into a modern retelling of it (especially by Sittenfeld, whose books are hit-and-miss for Laura and me), but so far I love it and am enjoying reading it, knowing what comes next but not how on earth she’ll do it. It is the kind of book I am thinking about when I am not reading it, which is a gift.

And I have an interesting thing to look into today: Paul is reading me an Agatha Christie book (he reads to me every night, which is another thing we should keep in mind when I am complaining about how he fixed the sliding shower door but while he was working on it he put it ONTO OUR BED, so that there is a rip in the quilt now and also several black streaks I can’t get out, and WHY WOULD HE THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT IT ON THE BED???), and there was a mention of “Queen Anne and Georgian houses,” and I have no idea what kind of houses those would be, so I am going to look them up!

And I feel so hopeful about the vaccine news! Maybe we’ll all have access to it by MAY?? Maybe I will be back to my library job THIS SUMMER?? Maybe we will be able to see friends again within a matter of MONTHS?? Maybe Paul and the children will be OUT OF MY HOUSE BY FALL??? MAYBE THE HOUSECLEANERS CAN RETURN???????

But most of all, more than any other thing, is that the Target situation is fixed. Lisa Ann found me a corporate email address to try, which is not something I had found on my own, and I tried it, and I got a response, and they fixed it. THEY FIXED IT. IT IS FIXED. I placed THREE Target orders yesterday: two Galentine’s Day packages plus one Drive Up order for myself, and I was just FLYING mood-wise. I forgot allllll my feelings that it was Basically Too Late to even DO Galentine’s Day packages, and instead felt fully bolstered by all the comments mentioning how lovely and refreshing SPRING things are at this time of year, even if all the hearts merchandise is sold out.

Also, I was able to pick up a bunch of Easter stuff I wanted, which, after the hearts mugs drama, I’d been hand-wringingly certain would sell out before I could get to it. BUT IT IS SAFELY IN MY GRASP.

And the person I talked to from corporate was so delightful and friendly and easy to talk to, and I did not ask her if she wanted to be friends but it crossed my mind. Instead I asked her what would happen if I went back to ordering the care packages: would my account lock up again? She said, “Hm…..how MANY packages?,” and I said “Like…twenty,” and she said “Hm……maybe,” but that if it DID, I could call/email her and she would unlock it for me again. She advised ordering just one or two packages a day, and interspersing those orders with orders for myself, which is what I am going to try: not only might that keep the account from getting locked again, but also it feels really fun to stretch it out like that. It can be a whole Galentine’s MONTH! I can wake up each morning and think about the two packages I’ll send that day; and I have a TON of stuff I still want to order for myself (exciting things such as Grape-Nuts, which are available again, and also just keeping-my-grocery-store-trips-lighter-and-less-frequent things such as peanut butter and rice and canned fruit) so I can parcel that into smaller orders in between, and this is just going to be FINE, it’s going to be FINE, it’s going to be BETTER than fine!

I am having another slump. I see a lot of people having a slump in response to it being March again, but I don’t think that’s it for me: this year March seems full of hope, and it feels to me like winter was shorter than usual and spring is already inevitable, and some people I know are already getting vaccinated, and there is a pretty good end in sight for all this. I expect I’ll be sending the kids back to school in the fall, and going back to work myself sometime between now and then. It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen friends, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be too much longer now until we’re all vaccinated and can go back to something that we’re going to appreciate the way we appreciate the washer/dryer/dishwasher after it breaks and we don’t have one for two weeks, except probably more than that and for longer than that.

My current slump is, I think, because I have been Thwarted by too many things all at once. There is the locked Target account situation, which still has not resolved, and I feel like it never will be. I hate seeing disputes with companies put publicly on Twitter, but I even tried THAT (because part of the reason I hate seeing it is because of the way it often WORKS, when companies OUGHT to handle things WITHOUT public shaming)—and all the Target Twitter account did was tell me to call the same number I’d already told them I’d called twice; when I said (AGAIN) that I had ALREADY CALLED THE NUMBER, TWICE, and that THAT WAS WHY I WAS CONTACTING THEM IN THIS NEW WAY, they said oh, okay, DM them my email address so they could look into it—and I did that, and they responded by telling me they were sorry I was having an issue, and they once again referred me to the number I’ve already called (TWICE).

So that is probably The Primary Thwart. I feel like Galentine’s Day is not just Belated but Ruined at this point: it’s MARCH. There is no sense in which the care packages can feel like a Valentine’s/Galentine’s thing at this point. A lot of the stuff I was including in the packages (Valentine’s Hershey Kisses, heart dish towels, heart stickers, heart socks, heart plates, cute mugs) has now sold out. And my own household pandemic-supply-acquisition system has had a serious disruption: I buy a LOT of stuff from Target, and I’m having to find other sources for those items, and THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC is NOT A GREAT TIME FOR THAT. The whole situation has taken something that was EXTREMELY FUN (as well as just a HUGE hit of Isn’t Humanity Lovely Sometimes??) and turned it into something discouraging and disheartening and frustrating that will permanently damage the joy I got from shopping at Target.

(Several people have suggested making a new account on Target. But I have the Target credit card, which gets me various discounts including free shipping and is presumably linked to my account; and also, if I got a new account, and started sending care packages again, presumably the new account would be automatically locked in the same way as the first one.)

The Secondary Thwart has to do with spider webs. This house has a large unheated/unliveable area, which makes the house LOOK impressive from the outside but is actually pretty useless: it can only be used for certain kinds of storage, because some stuff doesn’t do well in alternating temperature extremes; and since the areas are uninsulated with lots of cracks, bugs and mice and dirt/leaves and so forth can be issues. ANYWAY. My goal for while the weather was still nice and cold was to get rid of a lot of the spider webs/eggs that were getting out of control, and which I don’t want to try to handle when it’s warm and there are Live Spiders. This was not an appealing project to tackle, but I FINALLY made myself get out the shop vac.

And it was just an utter failure. Multiple outlets in the barn/loft were discovered to be non-functioning. The ones that did work were not located near the areas I particularly wanted to vacuum. And, worst of all, it just didn’t WORK: the vacuum cleaner got almost immediately clogged with the sticky webs. All I was really doing was using the end of it to swoop up masses of web, like a cotton candy machine. I’m sorry for the gross imagery, but it’s part of explaining the resulting levels of despair. I’d hoped that the vacuum just needed emptying or something, so I emptied it, and the dust and the tiny fragments of metal (Paul had used it in his workshop, as one might expect) just went EVERYWHERE, and stuck to my coat and my gloves; and the filter popped off and landed in the bottom of the deep garage trash can and I had to fish it out, and then I had significant trouble getting it to go back ON. And now I don’t know WHAT to do about the spider webs: I’d thought “shop vac” was the answer, but if it’s not, then what IS? I could just use an empty wrapping paper tube and have the same effect as the shop vac, so maybe I should literally do that—except I’d liked the idea of vacuuming up dirt and dust and leaf fragments and wood splinters at the same time.

Tertiary Thwart is the housework. I just can’t keep up with it. And Paul cheerfully/willingly does some, but he does such a poor job (not Differently than I do it, but literally WRONG, so that things are STILL DIRTY, and he doesn’t realize it and can’t seem to see it, and it’s been over twenty years and I’m done trying to parent him); and so then I still have to do that cleaning but I have to do it SECRETLY, like it’s a TREAT I’m sneaking, so that he doesn’t think I’m a bossy overcontrolling never-satisfied person who has to have everything done My Way! GAH.

And then I just feel like such a giant baby. I’m not even being thwarted in any kind of LARGE way. My rights of free speech haven’t been restricted. I am not unable to acquire food and essential supplies. My children have not been taken from me by a government. I just can’t currently shop at one (1) store I’d like to shop at; I am a LITTLE afflicted with spider webs; and I have to clean my own house—and here I am, listlessly reclining on my Desolation Couch.