As this country continues to re-open during a pandemic despite not having taken any of the steps necessary for safely doing so, I am noticing huge confusion between “permitted” and “safe.” It’s understandable. It’s what we’re used to, to a certain extent: unsafe things are illegal or regulated. We have speed limits, licenses, seatbelt requirements; we’re not allowed to drive in certain reckless ways. We’re not allowed to buy cocaine. Smoking and drinking are allowed only after a certain age, and even after that age there are rules about when and where we’re allowed to do them, and what we are and aren’t allowed to do at the same time. We have to get official permits for certain activities such as lighting fires or doing construction.

And in countries where the officials care about the health and safety of their citizens as well as about the economy and profit, we are seeing a certain correlation between permitted and safe: the officials listen to scientists and medical experts, take steps needed to fight against the pandemic; and then, as those steps take effect, they carefully and slowly and advisedly re-open: the people are kept as safe as possible, the economy is preserved as much as possible. The United States, which has a current administration that ignores scientists, ignores medical experts, and thinks that bluster is the same as actually knowing what it’s doing, seems to think they can follow the same pattern of closing/re-opening WITHOUT doing all the things necessary to deal with the little issue of the disease. And so, since we have been very good and have stayed in our rooms for the entire time-out, it MUST be time for us to come out again, just like those other countries!

Some people have no choice. The companies they work for are re-opening, and if they don’t go back to work, they can’t pay their bills or buy food. I’m not talking about those situations. Those deserve our pity.

I am not talking about outings to acquire necessary items: food, prescriptions, urgent medical care. Those are not safe, but there is not much choice there, either: our country is not doing what it needs to do to make it safe, so we must do certain necessary activities unsafely. Other countries pity us.

I am not talking about the protests. Some things are morally necessary even when they are unsafe.

I am talking about things we don’t need to do, but that, because they are gradually permitted again, or because the words “socially distanced!” are used, are being mistaken for safe. Or restrictions, such as “No more than 10 people in a gathering,” making people think 9 or fewer must therefore be safe. It is making my throat tight to think of all the people who think that because something is allowed, it must be okay. We are going to lose so many more people we didn’t need to lose.

[Edited to add: The comments section is showing me I need to make a further clarification. I am not talking about people who CHOOSE to do unsafe things, knowing those things are unsafe. I am talking about people who are starting to do things because they THINK THOSE THINGS ARE NOW SAFE, because those things are once again permitted—when in fact those things are not safe.]

Our water heater broke, and someone came out to fix it, and he was not wearing a mask, and he shook Paul’s hand, and he stood at a normal distance to talk, and it was like having a visitor from another dimension. I’ve marked it on the calendar.

It was especially odd because it seems like all the service ads on the radio are hurrying to reassure us that they are taking ALL necessary Covid-19 precautions. One ad for a charity mentions that if you want to put your donation items on your lawn, they will pick them up and they “won’t even come to your door.” A kitchen design company mentions that the consultations can take place over video call. A plumbing company says not to worry: their plumbers wear masks, use hand sanitizer before entering your home, and will fully disinfect their work area before leaving—and you can pay over the phone. And then Mr. Water Heater Repairman just goes from house to house as if nothing special is happening. My good sir have you managed to catch the news lately by any chance.

I am pleased to hear that I am not the only one who does not get sick of grocery store reports. And Paul has gotten noticeably less interested as the weeks go by: at first he was very nearly as interested in listening as I was in reporting, and would come eagerly to hear of triumphs and failures; after my most recent trip, he came to the kitchen only when I’d already put half of the things away, and then after a few minutes actually CHANGED THE SUBJECT. So perhaps this can be our place to discuss it with others who share the interest.

There was no line to get into the grocery store; this is the second time in a row with no line. I don’t know if I happened to pick good times to go or if they’ve increased the number of people allowed in the store. The meat supplies were still somewhat lower than usual, but all the signs limiting two packages per customer were gone. I still only bought two packs. I had this same problem last time with toilet paper: it was no longer limited to one package, but I still FELT as if I could only buy one, or as if maybe I was missing a posted sign the way I once missed a one-way floor sign, and would be embarrassingly rebuked at the register.

There were TWO kinds of white flour AND one kind of whole-wheat flour! I haven’t seen whole-wheat flour since this began! Still a limit of two flours per customer. Sugar was limited to two per customer again, after not being limited on my previous trip. Chicken nugget variety continued to be very reduced, but they still had the dinos.

Frozen fruit was the lowest I’ve ever seen it, though they had a good supply of the much more expensive kinds, which was soothing even though I didn’t buy any (“I MAY have frozen strawberries, I am just CHOOSING not to pay so much for them”). They had Ramen soup, the kind where it’s 12 packs of noodle bricks for $2.50! I got a pack of those right before lockdown and hadn’t seen them since! And they had store-brand grated parmesan again, and still had tons of pasta options. No brown rice, but plenty of white. Only canned pizza sauce, nothing in jars; this is starting to seem like it must be on purpose. But pasta sauce is still available in jars, so perhaps not.

There was one single bottle of Clorox Clean-up, the spray cleaner with bleach I like to use in the kitchen after doing anything with raw meat, and I examined it all over wondering what was wrong with it that it had been passed over, and could find nothing wrong at all, but continued eyeing it suspiciously as it rode in the cart. My old bottle was on its very last weak half-spritzes, so this felt providential.

I did not notice ANYONE not wearing a mask. But there were still several Older Men wandering around with their hands in their pockets, blocking the aisles while their wives did the shopping. One gentleman stood just sort of admiring the salsas, and he stood there so long (even with me standing right there, getting increasingly obvious in my body/cart language), I gave up and looped around to the next aisle. You know, if our husbands need fresh air and exercise, perhaps they could be put out into the yard instead of taken along to the grocery store where they get in the way.

Henry’s orthodontist office called and made him an appointment for next week. He hasn’t been in months: he had an appointment in mid January, and then his next appointment was supposed to be at the end of March, but that was canceled. I am a little skittish about this, but I am also skittish about having something go wrong with his braces/teeth, so he’s going. It sounds like they have things pretty well set up, with a one-way path through the office, and patients waiting in their cars until the office calls, and parents not going in, and no toothbrushing station, and all staff wearing face shields, and a hand-washing/sanitizing station they make the patients use on their way out.

I got the calendar down to look up when his last appointment was, and it was odd to see how different it looked. Coffee with a friend! Many, many orthodontist/dentist/doctor/allergy/eye appointments! Elizabeth was canvassing—remember when the election was the main thing in the news? Kid extracurriculars, kid friend get-togethers, housecleaners, shopping trips with my mom. An art show, with CROWDS. A Galentine’s Day party with friends! who came to my house! and we ate out of communal dishes! and hugged hello and goodbye!

I went grocery-shopping on Sunday and they had flour! And for the first time since this started, they had YEAST: just those little strips of three envelopes, and a limit of one little strip per customer, but they HAD them! Sugar products no longer had a purchasing limit of two per customer. Meat was still limited; they’d filled in the big empty spaces with other things so it looked less alarming, but they were bringing out just one tray of ground beef at a time. They were out of a whole bunch of the frozen chicken-nugget/strip type products, and almost the whole case was filled with the few kinds they did have (I was sentimentally glad to see they had plenty of dino-nuggets, which I would have been VERY RELIEVED TO SEE when my kids were younger). Still no hand sanitizer or sanitizing wipes, and they were out of rubbing alcohol completely again. Much better selection of pasta, but rice was low again. Almost zero crunchy taco shells (two boxes that looked smashed, that’s it), but plenty of tortillas and tortilla chips. They had SOME Ramen, but mostly the less common flavors (lime chili shrimp, soy sauce); I did get four individual packs of Roasted Chicken flavor.

A few times, I noticed my eye had been fooled by other things filling in for what should have been there. For example, in the microwave popcorn section, among a limited supply of red boxes of popcorn, the store had stocked a bunch of red boxes of Cheez-its, so the shelves looked full if you were just walking past, even though there was apparently not much of that kind of popcorn. It’s interesting to think of stores figuring out the whole psychology of keeping customers calm. I DID feel a surge of panic last time, when there was a giant empty white meat case; I DID feel somewhat less panic this time, even though I could see the space was filled in with things that wouldn’t usually be there.

Henry’s birthday is next week, and this will be our first family birthday in quarantine. I was glad to be able to get all the ingredients for the cake he wants, but also got two cake mixes Just In Case.

I am feeling more relaxed about grocery shopping, now that I’ve gotten more used to the new ways. It also helped that this time I didn’t see ANYONE not wearing a mask. (I did see two people with their masks below their noses, but progress! Progress!) I still have trouble thinking clearly or making any kind of quick decision, especially if I feel the pressure of other customers waiting; but I’ve got my main coping mechanism in place, and having a system helps considerably: I continue up the aisle, then loop around the previous aisle and come back for another chance.

I had two thinking failures on the most recent trip. One was that I saw the packets of yeast and rejoiced to see them, and I was stuck for a couple of minutes behind another customer so I had time to realize that I personally had enough yeast and did not need to buy any, and I decided not to buy any. It wasn’t until I got home that I found I had put a packet into my cart anyway, and in fact when I saw it I remembered thinking as I passed the yeast “Oh!! Waiting for that other customer almost made me forget to get a packet of that!!”

The other failure was in the toilet paper aisle. The supply has been non-existent or very low, as you know, and limited to one package per customer, and often the shelves will be filled with just one option, so I’ve become accustomed to thinking that I should get a packet of WHATEVER they have, don’t agitate about brand/size, just take one package of whatever it is. But this time they had quite a few different brands and quite a few different package sizes, and only individual rolls of our usual kind, and there were no signs up about limits but there WERE signs that said “Due to shortages, this item is out of stock,” in front of shelves that had product on them, and my brain just got completely shorted out by that whole situation, and couldn’t come up with a good plan even after I looped back around. I ended up buying two individual rolls of our usual kind, which is better than nothing, but was a weird decision. It’s like I applied “there’s still a limit even though it no longer says so” with “there are lots of choices so I can get my usual brand.”

Are you finding you’re measuring quarantine time in shopping-related ways? and/or noticing things you last bought Before Lockdown, now that you’re having to buy them again? For example, the last time I went to Target before lockdown, when school hadn’t even closed yet and we weren’t sure when it would, I bought two boxes of omeprazole, a medication I take daily; the boxes have 42 pills each, and I still had part of a box at home, so it seemed like 84 extra pills was being a LITTLE silly. BUT NO. I have opened the last box.

Or: I take evening primrose oil each night before bed. There are 75 in a bottle, and I was nearly out when I went to Target the last time, but then the Target store was also out of them. I ordered a bottle from Target online as part of my very first order, and now THAT bottle is almost gone, so I have just ordered another. We have had one bottle of evening primrose oil’s worth of lockdown.

Last night I dreamed I was close friends with Dan Levy. He was like a modern Laurie-from-Little-Women: being all lovey and goofy; stealing my phone and making funny little voice recordings for me to hear later; lying on the couch with his legs over my lap bothering me while I was trying to work; etc. It was such a pleasant dream! Which I then ruined by confessing a little crush (whomst among us does not have a little crush on Dan Levy), to which he was like ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh. It seems like IN OUR DREAMS we should not get embarrassingly rejected.

Maybe you are already doing this, but if you have a wall calendar or day-planner currently hanging around being almost empty, I suggest using it for potential future Covid-19 contact-tracing. You’d think that with literally two outings in my life (grocery shopping and taking Edward for his Remicade infusions) I’d be able to remember when I went, but I find I forget almost immediately. We’re also writing down whenever Paul has to go in to the office, and any other times we go anywhere or have any contact with other people that we might easily forget, like when Paul when to the hardware store to get a replacement part for a leaking sink. The information may never be needed, but if it WERE needed I would be so grateful to have it already collected. (If you don’t have a wall calendar, a notebook or scratch pad would work fine. It’s just nice to have a use for my poor calendar.)

I am going to recommend a product I feel silly recommending, because it is sold at a TREMENDOUS mark-up when you get a piercing, and it is just salt-water! But after submitting to the pressure to pay $6 for a tiny (an ounce or maybe an ounce and a half) can of it when I got my cartilage piercing, I tried substituting the saline sold for people who have contact lenses, and I tried mixing salt and water myself, and I can say that at least for my own ears, nothing works remotely as well. I can’t explain it, I won’t even TRY to explain it, I don’t even totally believe it could be true—but I will keep spending $12 per four-ounce can of this stuff for as long as I have my piercings. I use it whenever my piercings start feeling itchy and warm and like they might be working up to an infection, and I also use it just periodically to clean the piercings and prevent them from even STARTING to get itchy and warm.

It’s called H2Ocean, and I used to buy it on Amazon, but I’m reducing how much I buy from them, which led me to discover I could buy it directly from the maker. The shipping for one canister was pretty high, but they have free shipping over $25, and they also had a deal where if you bought three canisters they were only $10 each, so since I KNOW I like this stuff I bought three canisters, saved $6, and got free shipping too, which was nice. They also have tattoo-care products, so you might be able to get to free shipping without having to buy multiple cans. Or here’s the Amazon link, where it’s the same price for the can but free prime shipping, because if this were my first can I know I wouldn’t want to pay the shipping or buy three cans of it.

A note: I have found that if I use a canister for a few days (like to fight off some swelling/irritation) and then go a long time without using it again, something breaks and it won’t work anymore. The first time, I assumed it was a fluke—but the second time I’d spent TWELVE DOLLARS for SALT-WATER and then COULDN’T USE IT, I started making sure I was using it at least once a week or so to keep it working. The most recent can I had, I used it at least once a week, and nothing broke, and I was able to use it until it was empty.

I was glum and droopy all yesterday afternoon and evening (except during dinner: Paul baked delicious little chewy crusty dinner rolls, and those briefly revived the spirits), and I slept just fine, and then I had a lot of trouble making myself get out of bed. I finally managed it only when it was 20 minutes before the kids had to start online school and I hadn’t heard a peep out of any of them. But I didn’t take a shower or get dressed or eat breakfast except for coffee. And I didn’t go to my computer and check email/Twitter/Facebook. Instead I sat in a recliner and played phone games for three hours.

Maybe you never take a shower and get dressed first thing, and you love starting the day in pjs; maybe you’re never hungry for breakfast and always just have coffee; maybe you never check email until later in the day. In that case you will need to translate this story into language that makes more sense to you. For example, in the evening do you have a cup of hot tea and then take a shower and put on fresh pjs every night before bed, and it would feel bizarre and bad if you didn’t? Then imagine the level of glum droopiness it would take for you to say “Hell with it” and skip that tea and shower and just climb into bed in your daytime clothes. Do you get up and go for a run first thing every morning, and then do guided meditation, and then have a particular favorite breakfast, and it sets your whole day off right? Then imagine the level of glum droopiness it would take for you to say “Hell with it” and skip that run/meditation/breakfast. That is how it is when I skip shower/dressed/breakfast/computer.

Maybe it’s because I wrote about dieting/weight yesterday, and that just never feels good even when it all goes fine. I had that draft for a month and kept messing with it (several times needing to change the weight number, sigh), and maybe that should have been a sign to delete it. But it did feel good to see that others were in similar situations and having similar feelings about it.

Maybe it’s that last week I went grocery shopping AND spent several hours in a hospital room with another patient, another parent, and a nurse who said she thought the current regulations (such as wiping the blood pressure cuff after using it for Edward and before using it immediately on the other child) were “borderline neurotic.” Maybe it’s because I wrote a letter about the experience to the department head, and now I am going to have to deal with whatever the consequences are of that. Or maybe it’s because I did catch something, and now I’m feeling the first edges of illness and exhaustion.

Maybe it was hearing about a family very similar to mine, where one parent is the primary wage-earner and the carrier of the health insurance—and that parent has lost their job, and also their health insurance, in the middle of a pandemic. I will never complain again. I will never complain again. I will never complain again. …I will complain all the time as usual, but you will know it is with the awareness that I should never complain again.

Or it could be just the general feeling of knowing we’re getting close to the 100,000 mark of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. (and that only includes the ones we KNOW are from Covid-19), and yet people are still demanding the right (“the right”) to act as if we are not in a pandemic, some of them because they don’t LIKE how we have to act when we are in a pandemic. There is a petition circulating on our town website demanding that the high school have a normal, non-socially-distanced graduation, because it’s “not fair” that they don’t get to have one, when other classes DID get to. Not FAIR. It’s not FAIR that there is a pandemic right now, so let’s do a normal graduation. There are more signatures than I’d expect. I know having an altered graduation is sad (though actually it looks to me from Facebook photos as if each graduate is getting far more personal compensatory fuss made over them than they normally would); but much, much sadder is thinking of some of those kids or their families getting sick at their normal, non-socially-distanced graduation, and some of them dying. JUST HAVE A SPECIAL SOCIALLY-DISTANCED GRADUATION AND LIVE TO GET TO TELL THE STORY OF THAT TERRIBLE LIFE TRAGEDY OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Well. I am going to have soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, and then a cup of coffee and a snack-cake, and see if that helps anything.

I’m seeing a lot of jokes and memes about gaining weight in quarantine, but not many actual reports. I’ve wondered if some of the jokes/memes are Nervous Fishing to see if others identify with the anxiety behind the jokes/memes, and if people would like to talk about it a little.

Here is a post I wrote where I talk a bit about why I don’t generally like to talk about diets and weight. The gist is that I think the diet industry sucks; that society is terrible about thinness and what they think it means (attractiveness, health, goodness, moral protection from illness/death); that praise for weight loss is a bad idea for so many reasons; that talking about diets makes everyone feel bad feelings of one kind or another; and that no one including me seems to be able to talk about it in a way that doesn’t make me want to scream, cry, and/or despair that our culture will ever be able to figure this out.

Well. Onward anyway. Here is what I wanted to say, in case it is something you wanted to hear from someone. I stopped dieting a couple of weeks into the lockdown, toward the end of March. I have gained nearly 20 pounds so far, and I don’t see any reason to think the upward progress will stop until I start dieting again. I have wondered, over the past few years, if it would be possible for me to stop eating keto and go back to eating “normally,” and the answer appears to be no. I have two main reasons for not saying “Welp, now that I have my answer, time to go back on keto permanently”:

First reason, part one: Right now food acquisition is a huge and challenging task. When I was trying to eat Only Specific Things, the stress was making the task exponentially more difficult and stressful. I was worried all the time about whether or not I’d be able to maintain supplies of my few usual foods. When the store didn’t have one or more of them, it was almost impossible to figure out how to manage that.

First reason, part two: I have seen several references to how the lockdown and food shortages are causing upticks in disordered eating—and I was starting to experience signs of that. It was feeling as if The Right Thing To Do was to not eat (or eat much less of) the meat and the eggs and the cheese, so that we’d have enough for the family / so that we’d have enough for me to eat later. And so I would skip meals or eat very small amounts, feeling as if the motivation was stress/necessity/control, and also feeling physically unwell as a result—but meanwhile secretly hoping to see a difference on the scale. Those are Not Good Signs.

Second reason: I don’t want to right now. To get dramatic for a minute: imagine briefly that you KNEW you were going to get very sick starting today and die in three weeks. I know a lot of people would think “Oh no, I never went to Paris!” or “I should have spent more time with friends!” or “I wish I’d spent more time in nature and less time on my phone!” or whatever, but I would think “Oh no, I can’t believe I deprived myself of so many yummy foods when I still had the chance to eat them!!” If I knew I had six months to live, I would definitely want to spend time with friends/family, and maybe I would think of some other standard Bucket List items such as travel and events, but frankly the first list I find myself composing is All the Foods I Want To Eat Before I Die.

So one reason boils down to “Keto isn’t working out for me in lockdown” and the other reason boils down to “Eating freely turns out to be one of my top priorities/joys.” In more normal times, I feel like Being Thinner is fun enough that I can whittle Eating Freely down to once day per week and maintain good levels of overall well-being and happiness; but in THIS VERY NON-NORMAL TIME, that balance completely shifts. I would not, on my deathbed, think “Oh, I am SO GLAD I kept dieting during the pandemic so that I could die thinner!”; but I can easily imagine thinking “Oh, I am so sad I wasted so many of my last opportunities to eat spaghetti and herb bread!” I’m getting a little sad right now, thinking about it. I think I’ll make it for dinner tomorrow night.

It’s not possible, however, to ignore the results, or the accompanying thoughts/feelings. I am trying to ignore them, or to pay them only practical attention, such as making sure I am not wearing uncomfortable clothing or punishing myself by looking in the mirror unnecessarily. I’d saved all the too-big clothes I liked, because I believe the high-profit diet industry uses bad-faith arguments to encourage us to waste perfectly good clothes we’re statistically likely to need again; and because I think it can be fun to need to buy smaller clothes and not fun at all to need to buy larger clothes; and because one of the saddest diet-related things, in my experience, is feeling regret over the loss of the few good larger clothes that were so hard to find. So I have clothes to wear, and I also ordered myself a few new pairs of jeans because some of the saved jeans turned out to be less good than I’d remembered.