Mother’s Day, Fraught As Per Usual

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Mother’s Day is over for another year, and I am glad. I wish to get rid of that holiday. It can be so fraught and complicated, for so many reasons.

And it feels impossible to complain about. Any complaint at all sounds like being ungrateful, or being demanding, or wanting the princess treatment, or not letting people choose their own way to show love, or not appreciating that I get to be a mother when so many people want to but can’t, or making too big a deal out of a holiday I don’t even like. And I feel like the potential for misunderstandings is just ENORMOUS—especially since everyone sees things through their OWN set of circumstances.

But I want to talk about it anyway. I saw a lot of conversations on Twitter yesterday that showed me that, among the MANY ways to have a fraught Mother’s Day, a lot of you are having similar experiences and similar feelings to mine, and I found those conversations very comforting to read: like, I am not the only one who cannot figure this out, and I am not the only one with a family like mine, and I am not the only one having these feelings about it. So I will tell you how it went for me, and I will tell you what I thought/felt about that, and I will also tell you what I have been doing in a (partly successful, partly not) attempt to mitigate all that.

I feel like I have very low standards for what constitutes a successful Mother’s Day. I don’t WANT people to spend money on me; I don’t WANT a big deal made over me; I CRINGE at the idea of being the center of attention at a brunch or other celebration. The only year I kicked up any fuss was the year my family did literally less than nothing: one of the kids asked Paul if they should make plans, and Paul shrugged that off, so not only did they do nothing, they DECIDED to do nothing, and furthermore Paul effectively PREVENTED there from being something. And then all that day I was seeing pictures on Facebook of other people’s families doing Mother’s Day things, and everywhere I went in my house there were messes left for me to handle, and I felt terrible and like a drudge and completely unloved, and I wanted to leave all those terrible ingrates in their self-made squalor and go away by myself, possibly permanently. That was the one year I made any complaint to the family, and I don’t feel I was out of line, or acting spoiled, or being demanding, or not letting people show love in their own way. I had set up an easy laid-back situation where the bare minimum would be plenty, and they had said “Eh, too much effort.”

Here are the ways it can make a mother feel, when Mother’s Day is apparently too hard for anyone to do anything about:

• Like maybe the reason no one is doing anything is that she is a bad mother. Near Mother’s Day, the internet is FULL of grown-ups talking about how Mother’s Day is hard for them because they had a terrible mother, and how they have to find alternate ways to appreciate / cope with the holiday. How many of those bad mothers don’t even KNOW they were bad mothers? Maybe SHE is a bad mother and doesn’t know it, and so asking for Mother’s Day to be celebrated just adds a new breathtaking layer of badness to her mothering.

• Like maybe she is not a BAD-bad mother, but definitely a mediocre/sub-par mother. And so then can’t you just picture this absolutely mediocre mother preening and waiting to be praised for her spectacular mothering on Her Whole Special Day? It’s embarrassing! Does she think she’s a mother like in the commercials and in all the online tributes, where her family loves her and WANTS to celebrate the day? CRINGE! Who’s going to tell her she is not that kind of mother?? I mean YIKES, this is AWKWARD.

• Like maybe she’s a perfectly fine mother as a person, and her intentions have been good, but her parental efforts are clearly ineffective, and all her years of lessons about gift-giving, thinking of what others might want, being considerate, having empathy—those have all completely failed. She’s a terrible teacher, obviously, and also no one wants to model their behavior after hers, obviously—and oh no, what OTHER of her teachings have the children completely failed to learn??

• Like maybe she is a perfectly fine mother as person, but her family doesn’t love her or care about her. And they never will. For whatever reason. She just doesn’t have that kind of family, that’s all.

Anyway. After the truly tanked Mother’s Day a few years ago, I came up with a three-part plan, and that’s what I’ve been doing since:

1. Set an example on Father’s Day. I was ALREADY doing this, but now I make A Big Pointed Point Of It. It’s too bad Father’s Day doesn’t come first: 11 months is a long time for a lesson to percolate. But it’s what we’ve got, so anyway on Father’s Day I go very heavy-handed about how we need to think about what Dad would like, and how we should think throughout the day of little things that might make the day feel a little more special for him. I talk about how some of the best gifts on such a day are gifts of SERVICE: let’s take his car to the car wash and use the fun super-powerful coin-operated vacuum cleaner there! let’s clean off the coffee table without being asked, since we know that’s a particular preference of his! And I talk about how some of the best gifts are gifts of DEFERENCE: let’s think about what HE might like best for dinner! let’s let HIM choose what we watch on TV! And I talk about how it’s not about spending a lot of money or buying big gifts or doing huge difficult things, but more about Thinking Of The Other Person, and Making The Day A Little Special: maybe while at the grocery store, pick up a bag of those lemon drops he likes; maybe bake some cookies or some other dessert we know he likes; maybe do some little task he usually does, so that he doesn’t have to do it. I then say to the children, “Okay, so what sort of thing appeals to each of you? Let’s each pick a thing we’re going to do for Dad.”

2. Make it clear ahead of time what I would like. I hate this. I hate having to do this. I feel like this can so easily be spun as filling out an order form, or like “My mother was so controlling and had to have things Exactly Her Way. She even TOLD US what to do for Mother’s Day!” But my family does not seem to be able to handle it on their own. And Paul does not seem able to take his one day per year to train the children in thoughtfulness and empathy, though Paul has many other fine qualities that may mean the decision to marry him was not a stupid one: for example he will spend dozens of hours patiently and cheerfully working with a child on a science project or a math assignment, tasks that after 30 seconds make me want to literally scream and cry. So he is able to teach, but apparently unable to teach THIS, so I will teach this and he will help with science projects.

3. Find ways to celebrate it myself. Put cream and hot-chocolate mix in my coffee. Deliberately skip all skippable chores: no laundry, no bathroom-cleaning, no wiping kitchen counters. Skip anything I don’t want to do and don’t have to do, even if it means I’ll just have to do those things the next day. Do more things I do want to do, like reading and napping and playing phone games and snacking and browsing online stores. Definitely have a treat with afternoon coffee. Wine with dinner. Etc.

I waited a bit this year to see if they would take the job on themselves so I could skip the second part of that plan, but it got close to Mother’s Day and I sensed no Secret Consults, so a few days ahead of time I said to Paul, “I don’t want to Fill Out An Order Form or whatever [that’s his family’s take on making wish lists, which is one of my family’s practices, so this is familiar shorthand], and if people already have their own plans, that’s great! it’s perfect! I love it!—but if people are TENSE about it, or think they have to BUY things (and especially in quarantine when that’s more difficult than usual), I can tell you some things I would very much enjoy that would not take money or much effort.” And Paul paused in a way that communicated “OhGodMother’sDay” and then said, very casually, “Why don’t you tell me?”

So I told him that what I would like was to have those canned Pillsbury orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast (in my family growing up, we had those for Special Occasions like birthdays and Mother’s/Father’s Day), and that I had already acquired a tube of them. That I would like us at some point during the day to go outside and take a photo of me with the kids. And that all day long I wanted to not have to nag anyone to do their chores, or remind them to put their dishes in the dishwasher. And that if, for example, the cat threw up, I wanted everyone to think, “Well, MOM shouldn’t have to handle that, not on MOTHER’S DAY!” Ditto for if the toilet paper roll ran out. And Paul cooks on Sunday nights anyway, but I wanted to get to choose which of his three rotating meals we would have, and I wanted to add a side of that garlic-herb bread-machine bread, but that I would make that. And then after dinner I wanted us to watch the movie Knives Out and eat popcorn. And as a BONUS item, but by no means would my happiness rest on it, it would be very pleasing to me if someone would make cookies.

Okay, please pause and evaluate that list of requests and tell me if you think it is demanding or princessy. I have not asked anyone to buy me anything. There is almost no extra effort, almost no additional chores; for the most part I am asking people ONLY to do the chores they were supposed to do ANYWAY, but without ME having to do the thing I ALREADY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO, which is nag them. I am mostly asking for things we ALL enjoy: the orange rolls, the movie, the popcorn, the cookies (the kids LIKE to bake cookies, and often ask to). I am asking for two gifts of deference: I want to get to choose the dinner among the three options, I want to get to choose the movie. I am also, by requesting that I not have to clean up cat barf, asking that the day be treated as if it is special for me.

Think about what each person has to do differently, to make me happy. VERY VERY LITTLE. Think of how many of the things I want are treats for them as well. ALMOST ALL.

Well. I had a fine Mother’s Day. I felt like I set a pretty low bar, and some of those things were still not met, but other things surpassed it; and the things that were not met are things I can address at Father’s Day and in the way I handle Mother’s Day next year. But here is what I found: for me, the reason Mother’s Day is such a fraught holiday is that it puts a spotlight on things that are usually just simmering on the back burner, or even simmering way off the stove, maybe in some back corner of the kitchen. As Mother’s Day approaches, I start noticing those things more because I am anticipating what might be about to happen on Mother’s Day and how I’m going to feel about those various possibilities; on Mother’s Day, I notice them a HUGE AMOUNT; and after Mother’s Day, it takes awhile to stop noticing them so much.

I am not discussing here what portion of the problem belongs to society and which parts to the participants; nor how those problems ought to be dealt with in society/households/individuals; nor how my own household could have been set up a different way to avoid any of them, nor how I could go back in time to change any of those things, nor how others would never allow such a situation to exist in their own, different households; nor how these issues might also affect, say, FATHERS, or OTHER HOLIDAYS, or whatever; I am talking here only about how Mother’s Day for me in my household (and for similar others in similar households) can bring certain things to my attention in a way that, for me, temporarily but dramatically increases unhappiness, making the holiday unpleasant. Here are some of those things, which of course will not apply in every household/family:

• The way communal/household tasks (changing the toilet paper roll, cleaning up cat barf) can fall disproportionately to us—with, in fact, other family members not even considering doing them, but just leaving them without even thinking about it, walking right past the same obvious-to-solve issue (such as something that has fallen to the floor but obviously does not belong there) again and again. So that on One Special Day per year, we might ask AS A SPECIAL TREAT for other people to change the toilet paper roll or clean up cat barf. What a very, very low bar.

• The way family members, when thinking of Nice Things They Could Do For Us, might choose chores that are not even our chores to do (e.g., a kid deciding to clean the Kid Bathroom, which is already the kids’ job to keep clean), leaving us to further unhappily ponder the way communal chores and in fact ALL chores seem to be seen as our domain, and that despite fairly rigorous teaching on this topic, chores assigned to other family members may have been misunderstood as “helping us with OUR chores” rather than rightfully pitching in with work that belongs to us all.

• The way it might happen in some households, for example mine, that the child who does think about Mother’s Day well in advance without being reminded, and who comes up with a thoughtful gift that is not “doing their own chore they had to do anyway,” is a girl. And while we know this will not be the case across the board, and that there are many thoughtful/considerate sons and many thoughtless/inconsiderate daughters, we might spend time thinking about gender roles in our society, and resenting them.

• The way we might trundle along automatically taking care of others in the household as well as ourselves, and do it as part of our role in the family (just as we might earn money for the whole family and not just for ourselves)—until the one day a year we have Opposite Day, or “Mother’s Day,” and find that EVEN ON THAT ONE DAY the other family members won’t take care of us: that our treat is that they will take SOME care of THEMSELVES. Our treat is that we get some time to take care of our own selves, and we get to take somewhat less care of them.

• The way family members might pat themselves mightily on the back, and expect vast praise from others, for doing on one single day per year the things they ought to be doing regularly.

• The way it turns out SO MANY THINGS work well ONLY because we are reminding or pre-planning—so that, for example, if we deliberately stay out of a task to let others handle it for a day, it can be like one of those stupid “a MAN tries to be the MOM!!” movies, or a Family Circus comic. Perhaps we say that we would love to have garlic-herb bread-machine bread with dinner, and that we will make it ourselves; but the others say “Ah-ah-ah, it’s Mother’s day, so WE will make the bread!!”—but then the time to start the bread machine comes and goes, and we are not nagging/interfering and so we say nothing, and so at dinner there is no garlic-herb bread-machine bread.

• The way we might communicate clearly and reasonably, and not be listened to.

• The way we might have small wants and low expectations, smaller and lower than anyone else’s in the family, and still not have those met.

• The scalding outrage of the crumbs, the CRUMBS, that we might gratefully accept as symbols of appreciation and love. Things that are routine, normal, daily, thoughtful things for us to do for our family members, are special treats for us one day a year, and that’s something we might write glowing reports of for others to read. The fact of this situation. The fact that it is not rare.

I feel like Mother’s Day can be an Exception Proves the Rule sort of day, making many mothers feel much worse, and highlighting the ways in which our usual efforts go generally unappreciated, and the ways in which our culture still kind of sucks. And I had a perfectly fine Mother’s Day for it being Mother’s Day, but it’s Mother’s Day itself I don’t like and don’t know how to cope with but can’t opt out of it either.

Grocery Store Shelves Report

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I am tirelessly interested in Grocery Store Shelves Updates, and so I will just jump to assuming you are TOO, and tell you what my most recent trip was like:

• Raw meat was limited to two of each type per customer: i.e., two beef items per customer, two pork items per customer, two poultry items per customer. This made me feel a little stressed, especially because the meat sections had been consolidated, leaving a vast white empty unit. Also, I was not totally sure I understood the rules, because it looked as if ground beef might be counted as different than non-ground beef, but I couldn’t tell if that was just a signage issue.

• They had flour again! Only one kind but a fair amount of it on the shelves and another pallet in the aisle. Limited to two bags per customer.

• Still no yeast.

• Sugar products limited to two per customer, but they seemed to be in good supply.

• They had rice, several different kinds in several different sizes, encouraging amounts though nowhere near full.

• They had a lot more pasta brand/type variety than before. There’s been only store-brand elbow macaroni and store-brand spaghetti for awhile, but this time there was Prince, there was Barilla, there were shapes other than elbow/spaghetti. The shelf still looked very gappy, but so much better than before.

• Still very low on pizza sauce. Almost no canisters of Parmesan cheese.

• They had some tortillas and taco shells again—not many, but some.

• They had somewhat more soup brand/type variety than before. It still looked very empty, but instead of having nothing except, like, 99% Fat-Free Cream of Onion, they had some family-size cans of cream of chicken, even some cans of chicken noodle and tomato, some cans of other reasonable flavors. Still no packets of Ramen, just a few of the microwave cups of it, and only in the odder flavors.

• Plenty of beans, canned and dried. Those have been well-stocked for weeks, but I’m still jumpy because of earlier shortages.

• Plenty of eggs, plenty of butter, plenty of cream, plenty of milk. Those have been well-stocked for weeks, but again I’m still jumpy because of earlier shortages.

• Yogurt was curiously depleted, with a bunch of kinds missing.

• Plenty of bread but, interestingly to me, still not the kind we usually buy, which is just the store brand whole-wheat. It’s been absent for weeks and weeks. I have chosen a new kind of whole-wheat, and that’s been in stock each time.

• Still no SmartFood kettle corn. It’s such an oddly specific thing to be out of. They do have a couple of other brands of kettle corn in a different aisle, so I’ve been buying those.

• No limes. Perhaps we are not the only ones eyeing our dwindling bar supplies and thinking if we had some limes we could use up that tequila.

• They had RUBBING ALCOHOL and HYDROGEN PEROXIDE for the first time since well before lockdown. Limited to one of each per customer.

• After weeks of zero toilet paper, and then two or so weeks of just 4-packs of toilet paper, they had quite a few 20-packs of the store-brand. Limited to one pack of any size per customer.

• After weeks of NO bleachy/disinfecting cleaning products, they had several different bleachy/disinfecting cleaning products. Not tons of them, and the shelves were still pretty bare-looking.

• No disinfecting wipes, no hand sanitizer. A better supply of hand soap than before, but still pretty diminished.

I am very interested to hear what things are like at your store: things that are hard to find; things that used to be hard to find but seem to be back; things that are rationed; odd little shortages of a specific type of thing.

Mess

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Every morning I wake up and think “The debauchery cannot continue: there must be less eating and more walking! less Candy Crush and more cleaning out sock drawers!” Those goals are apparently too high. Yesterday I had freezing feet for four hours because I felt like if I went upstairs for warmer socks I should really clean out the sock drawer, which currently cannot be closed. Finally I just got the warmer socks.

Paul told me yesterday evening that he had ordered the 50-pound bag of flour we’d discussed a couple of weeks ago and then casually decided not to order. He said he hadn’t wanted to say anything until it actually shipped, because it appeared he’d basically ordered the very last 50-pound bag of flour available from a company that may not have realized it was still offered on their site. Normally I would say I am not keen on situations where a couple makes a decision together and then one of them goes ahead and does a different thing. But in this case I was so happy to hear the flour was on its way, I cried a little. (And am half-imagining it will be a Downton Abbey situation and the bag will be full of plaster dust.)

I am very, very worried about the country starting to re-open.

Our government was supposed to be doing things while we were closed: we all got out of the pool so they could clean up the toxic spill. But then they didn’t do those things: we all got out of the pool, and nothing happened. We can all see that what was supposed to happen didn’t happen, but apparently those things are not going to happen, and that’s the plan: to just not do those things. The first people back in, the ones who say “Oh thank goodness, they’re letting us back in the pool so it must be safe to swim again!,” and the ones who are shoved into the pool by the re-opening, are going to show us whether this was a good plan or not. Not that it will keep the rest of us from having to get into the pool eventually too. What a mess. What a stupid, avoidable, wasteful, fatal mess.

Pictures of the Cats

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States are starting to re-open, which is freaking me out considering our government has done little during the shutdown to justify reopening. The radio DJs were talking this morning about how they already had haircut appointments scheduled. I think there is going to be an unfortunate confusion of “permitted” and “safe”: like, if haircuts are allowed, then I have a haircut pass I can show to the virus, and the virus cannot infect me! I am feeling very unhappy about all the additional people who will be forced to go back to work in these conditions.

Paul and I were talking about the effects the partial re-open will have on our household. We are extremely, extremely fortunate that we can continue to stay home until we find out if the re-open is as bad an idea as we think it is. Originally I wrote the rest of this paragraph as a list of all the ways we were fortunate, but when I proof-read it I thought it sounded like boasting rather than the Acknowledging Privilege I was going for. It reminded me of the Christmas letters we get from Paul’s aunt: it is clear she is attempting through heavy use of the word “blessed” to communicate that they know how lucky they are and that they consider the luck unearned—and yet she manages to make it sound as if God has singled out their family for these blessings, and that she really couldn’t tell you why God didn’t do the same for your family when he clearly had that option but evidently decided not to bother for some reason, *shrug*.

Anyway, I think we’re about to go into a Very Bad Time, virus-wise, so let’s not talk about it anymore, let’s instead fulfill a request for pictures of the cats. You’re going to raise your eyebrows at my concealing their names, but “cat names” is EXACTLY the sort of dumb little thing that gets a Secret Blog discovered.

Here is Cat #1, a boy, age 9, all orange with pretty fur patterns, long and slim like a ferret:

He is a sweetie-pie and suuuuuuuuper dumb. We have a downstairs floor-plan of the sort that would let children run endlessly from room to room in a big circle, and we don’t think this cat has figured out what’s going on yet: we often see him pass through the living room, looking all around him, and then after awhile he comes all the way around again and you can just see him thinking “Oh, ANOTHER living room! With MORE people in it! Wow!! I wonder how many MORE rooms there are??” He sleeps on Edward’s bed almost every night, and we’re surprised he manages to find it so consistently. During the day he likes to sit behind me on my computer chair, so that I have to perch on the edge.

Here he is on the windowsill where he likes to watch Chipmunk TV:

That chair is there specifically for his convenience and comfort, but he often balances uncomfortably on the sill instead. With him is Cat #2, a boy, age 9. Cat #2 is a large-framed cat, a polydactyl, with extremely soft plush fur, grey-brown tabby and white. He is a Giant Baby. We have treated him with persistently gentle love for 7 years, and he still frequently winces and flinches and runs from us. If you talk to him, he will meow back. He lovvvvves Elizabeth and is usually in her room or sitting near her. He likes me, too, as long as no one else is in the room with me: after Paul gets up in the morning, he’ll sleep in Paul’s place, and then he likes to come into the bathroom and sit on the carpet while I take a shower. Here he is again, with Elizabeth:

And again, looking pensively out the window:

Here is Cat #3, a girl, age 7, orange with white tum, white knee socks, and white gloves:

She is a bossy little queen, small and fat. She bullies and menaces the polydactyl, who is much larger and stronger and could easily beat her up if he’d only realize it instead of running away from her. She is very affectionate with people in a possessive/claiming way, and will make the rounds from lap to lap. She follows us around the house, supervising and judging. She is my favorite cat we’ve ever had.

Here’s a rare photo of all three cats together (normally you’d see the two oranges together, or the two boys together, but never the girl-orange and the polydactyl unless they’re about to fight); this was possible only because they were having Wet!! Food!! which blows out their circuits:

The polydactyl looks smaller than he is, partly because of the weird perspective and partly because he is hunched in as small as he can make himself. The girl-orange is mad because she can’t eat out of all the bowls at once. The boy-orange is oblivious to all drama.

Pantsless Sleepwalking

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In the middle of the night I got up to use the bathroom and it was quickly apparent to me that I was not wearing pants. In chilly weather I sleep in flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt, and I was wearing the t-shirt and my underwear, but I was not wearing my pants. I came back to bed, and Paul was awake so I informed him of this development, and he was intrigued by the mystery but apparently didn’t at first believe me, because there was some fact-checking. When he was satisfied that I was indeed not wearing any pants, he added another piece of the mystery: earlier in the night, he had awakened to the sound of a lightly-slammed door, and had seen me walking back to bed. He said he asked me what was going on, and that I had refused to answer. Ah. Sleepwalking.

In the morning, I hoped to find my pants hanging on their usual hook in the closet (maybe that was the door I slammed), but they were not there. I thought maybe they would be in the drawer, but no. In the bathroom? No. Well, that was concerning: if my pants were not in my room or bathroom, that meant I had gone walking around the house with no pants on, and we have two kids who are up most of the night. Perhaps I had walked pantsless right past them. I wondered nervously if there was anywhere else the pants might be, anywhere else that might indicate I did NOT (necessarily) walk through the house in my underwear. In the kids’ bathroom? Sometimes when I sleepwalk I use their bathroom. And that’s just right outside our bedroom door, so maybe I would have been pantsless but unseen. I got in the shower, still worrying.

After my shower, I opened the bathroom cupboard—and there were my pants. It is not clear why I put them there, but the discovery of them on the immediate premises is a hopeful sign that I did not walk around the house without pants on, but instead stayed local.

Two Cooking Questions: Unsweetened Coconut Milk and Tater Tot Casserole/Hotdish

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I have two cooking questions. The first involves the two 13.5-ounce cans of unsweetened coconut milk I received instead of the two cans of soup I ordered. I am not going to trouble Target with such an error at a time like this, when they are no doubt very busy. So what do I do with unsweetened coconut milk? And does anyone know if unsweetened is the default? Like, if a recipe calls for “coconut milk,” is it assuming unsweetened? or is it assuming sweetened, and has to specify if unsweetened?

The second question involves the thing I have heard of called Tater Tot Casserole/Hotdish. I have never had it or made it, but I feel instinctively that now is the time. I have a bag of tater tots, but I need a tried-and-true recipe.

Online Concert; Dreams (Brief); Cemetery Walk

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I had a whole list of things I jotted down to remember to write about, but looking over them now they seem to justify the theory that if I don’t remember it later, it probably wasn’t worth remembering. Still, here we are. I have no better ideas.

I attended a Facebook Live concert, an hour of piano by my cousin who is a music teacher and performer. This would not normally have been my thing, and in fact I’d never done anything with Facebook Live before, and it took me until almost the end of the concert to figure out how to make little thumbs-ups and hearts go floating up the screen in response to things she was playing/saying, but I DID figure it out. And the reason I jotted down the idea is because I wanted to recommend trying something like that, if you have the opportunity, because I was surprised to find it replenished my Social Buckets considerably even though I was not really interacting socially per se. But even just seeing my cousin on the screen, and seeing the little marker that indicated the hundred or so other people who were there watching with me, and seeing them leaving comments and hearts and thumbs-ups—well, I found it worth doing, is what I am saying, and also curiously touching, and perhaps you would find you had a similar reaction to such things, even if in pre-pandemic times you would not have been interested.

This next thing is about dreams; I will keep it brief. I’ve read that a lot of people are having particularly vivid dreams, and that it is in part from stress and in part from isolation. I keep having dreams that I’m adopting children, or considering adopting children, or assisting in the adoption of children. They are so far, luckily, always happy dreams, even though I am sure they stem from a news article I saw about countries very affected by the pandemic. One night I dreamed we were adopting a toddler and an infant, and I thought how nice it was that everyone in our family was home right now so we could get to know the new members together. Last night I dreamed I was holding a baby girl and trying to figure out how old she was based on how much talking she could do, so that I could add her approximate age to her adoption profile. I was holding her on my hip and carrying her around and pointing to things and asking what the things were, and she was pointing and saying “bahbah!” for bottle and so forth, and I was trying to remember what the corresponding age range was for that ability, but also I was thinking how nice it might be to keep her myself.

Also last night I dreamed a cute guy wanted me to marry him and move into his house, and he showed me his house which was exactly my style of house plus some bonus stuff I hadn’t thought to want until I saw it, and I very much liked both the guy and the house but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to switch.

We are in an area where it is relatively easy and safe and in fact encouraged to go outside, and we are taking advantage of that and doing family walks. While acknowledging that this is something many people CAN’T do and are PINING to do, I will also say that I find walks very, very boring, and even more so now that we’ve gone all the directions many times in many ways. Upside: we sure know our new neighborhood well now! Downside: on one boring walk we impulsively diverted into a town cemetery, which anyone would have known was a dicey idea during a pandemic. There were all these families where someone age 2 died in December and then someone age 9 died that same month, and someone age 7 and someone age 4 died the following month—and then the same thing for another family a little further down. I wondered aloud what had happened, since all of these deaths seemed to have happened in the same winter, and speculated idly that perhaps it was some sort of virus. Then we walked straight home.

Coffee; Two More Mother’s Day Gift Ideas; Grocery Shopping; Giving to Panhandlers in a Pandemic

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I think frequently of my sister-in-law saying that one of the upsides of a coffee habit is that it gives her something happy to look forward to every single morning. It is very common for me to wake up feeling a little grim—and then the sudden happy remembering: “Oh! Coffee!!”

Or in the afternoon, when things are feeling a little grim again and it is starting to sink in that I am going to have to make dinner again. When we would visit my grandparents, my mom would turn to my grandmother and say, “How about a fresh pot of coffee and a Little Something?,” and my grandmother would Fully Brighten and say “YES!” It’s a question I ask of myself now, when it is about 2:00 in the afternoon: “How about a [microwaved] cup of coffee and a Little Something?” YES. Yesterday I had a slice of banana nut bread with my coffee. Today it’s going to be toast with Nutella.

I have had two more Mother’s Day gift ideas (previous idea: custom care package). Both are more expensive than I would normally suggest, but I know a lot of us are accustomed to relying on quality time and meals out and acts of service as gifts for Mother’s Day, and now we are looking for material items that can be shipped, and I don’t know how that translates dollar-wise. Anyway, something that keeps catching MY eye (and I am a mom) is the tiny Keurig, which I thought of because I WOULD like a fresh-brewed cup of coffee in the afternoon but I’m not going to brew another pot [Edited to add: Ohhhhh nooooooo see Amy’s comment below, though, for a heads-up that this particular Keurig may have put all its eggs into the cuteness basket while neglecting to reserve any for the quality basket]:

(image from Target.com)

One of the things I didn’t like about my one-cup coffee maker when I had one is that I also have a regular coffee maker, and there was not room on the counter for both. This one takes up almost no room. If I could make up my mind between the blue and the pink I might have already put it on my wish list. (It also comes in grey and black; those tempt me ONLY because they have been cutely styled in the photos with a bright yellow mug.)

Another perhaps mommish thing I want is a set of Chrissy Teigen’s frying pans, and I want them about 50% because of the green color and about 50% because I follow her on Twitter and love her.

(image from Target.com)

I have had those on my wish list for ages and Paul keeps not buying them because he says it’s too boring of a gift idea, which is something we can discuss another time, but long story short I have these in the back of my mind as the thing I will buy for myself if my family skips Mother’s Day again this year.

I went to the grocery store yesterday and, because I have been so stressed at having to leave stuff behind when I run out of room in the cart, and also stressed that people will see me taking what I need for seven people and think I am taking too much, I tried the system of going in and getting all the stuff that would be perfectly fine sitting in the car for awhile (cat litter, cereal, canned stuff) plus half of the amount of some of the things I feel self-conscious about appearing to take too much of (meat, cheese, butter, eggs), and then going back for a second trip to get the more perishable stuff and the other half of the self-conscious stuff. This worked well (I easily filled two entire carts to what I’d consider comfortable-not-stressy levels) but wow, that is a long time to spend grocery shopping. Still, it was satisfying to get home with all the available stuff on the list, instead of coming home and immediately making a new list of all the things there weren’t room for, plus already being stressed again about running out of meat and cheese and butter and eggs.

My store had flour the last two times I went shopping before this one, but with restrictions: one bag per customer two trips ago, two bags per customer on my last trip. I was hoping that meant everyone had gotten well stocked up on flour and wouldn’t need to buy much more (especially since there’s been no yeast for weeks and weeks) and soon supplies would be back to normal—but this time the store had no flour at all. That kind of thing makes me fretful and a little panicky, especially with so long between shopping trips. But I did find a canister of Clorox wipes, which felt like some kind of miracle: the first time I walked down that aisle, that whole section was completely empty; the second time I walked down it, there were two containers of wipes just sitting there. An employee was stocking the aisle, and I looked to see if he had a whole bunch of the wipes, but no: he was working on unpacking air fresheners and furniture polish.

I will put this other whole fret in one big paragraph to make it easier to skip if you don’t like to read hand-wringing (though in that case what on earth would you be doing HERE). There is a guy near the entrance to that shopping plaza, and in Olden Times I liked to pull over and give him money if he was there and I was passing by, but I have been unsure how to do it safely during a pandemic. Here is what I did do: I took a plastic baggie and put in a disposable water bottle (for weight, but also for the water), a granola bar (because it seemed weird to do just water), and an envelope with the cash in it. Then, instead of leaning out my car window as usual, I parked the car nearby, walked over to the median where he stands, and put the bag down about ten feet away from him. I fretted ahead of time that ANY of the ways that didn’t involve just handing it out the window as usual (throwing it to/near him, putting it on the ground for him to have to pick up, etc.) were a bad look for one human being giving something to another human being. I also fretted that ANYTHING I did would give off “I think you are diseased!” vibes rather than the “I’m protecting us both as recommended!” I was going for. I had to give up both those frets because I couldn’t think of a good way that would avoid those issues entirely, and “just don’t give him the money, then” didn’t feel like a good solution. I also fretted that it would make him nervous to see someone approaching on foot, and I still fret about that. Paul dismissed that concern, saying that I don’t look dangerous to anyone, especially approaching with a clear plastic bag obviously containing food and water. Still, I suspect people who are panhandling get approached in a number of ways by people who don’t look dangerous per se but either ARE dangerous or else want to do other things the person doesn’t like (including things like giving advice or evangelizing, probably by people who look very much like me), so I didn’t like making him wonder. I also didn’t originally like Paul’s idea of using a extendable robot arm (like this) to extend the envelope out the window, but maybe that would be a better idea for next time, I don’t know.

Mother’s Day Care Package Gift Idea

20 Replies

Some of you asked about Mother’s Day gift ideas, and thank goodness you DID, because I did not realize Mother’s Day was May 10th already. I mean, it is on the calendar, but I wouldn’t have seen it until I turned the page and it was only ten days away; and, as some of you noted, SHIPPING DELAYS.

My primary suggestion is the same care package idea I’m using for birthdays. This is an especially fun time to send assortment gifts like that, because there are so many things that are unexpectedly exciting right now (tissues! hand soap! store-brand pasta!). And when the act of acquiring things can be so fraught, it makes Receiving Things Without Having To Go Out And Acquire Them that much more gratifying.

I suggest having one box shipped as a gift for your mom (or for another mom you know), and having a second box shipped to yourself and not opening it until Mother’s Day when you may or may not have anything else to open. (If you order yours right away, you might have time to forget some of what’s in it.) The things I’ve been ordering from Target have been taking 3-10 days to arrive, so there should be plenty of time still. Downside: it’s common for things to arrive in many, many boxes, which makes it less like Here Is Your Gift and more like The Twelve Days of Mother’s Day. I like to send things like this with “GIFT” as a fake middle name (like “Swistle GIFT Thistle”), so the recipient knows that those boxes go together and should be put aside for the birthday/holiday.

Here is a list of general ideas I use to start making a custom assortment for somebody—but another idea is to pick one or two things from the list and do the whole box on that theme. One each of a bunch of different hand soaps or facial mists! A box of just face masks and lip balms! A whole box of K-Cups!

• These days I always begin with a box of tissues, a brand-name if available, but I’m finding the store brand more often available for shipping. If toilet paper is ever available again, I would definitely put in a 4-pack of that. For the rest of our lives, toilet paper is going to be a welcome and appreciated gift. The grandchildren will bring us a pack whenever they visit, knowing it’s always a surefire hit without really understanding how we can be clasping our hands in genuine delight when we already have an entire closet filled with it.

• And then I always put in a hand soap. I like Everspring lavender & bergamot, J.R. Watkins lavender, and many of the Mrs. Meyer’s.

• Something sweet: Lindt truffles and/or Ferrero Rocher and/or M&M’s and/or snack cakes, whatever they/you like.

• Something snacky/salty: kettle corn and/or Smartfood and/or Sunchips and/or Pringles, whatever they/you like.

• Something snacky/hearty, such as weird experimental granola bars, or apparently everyone’s favorite trail mix (also available in a smaller pouch, or in a batch of 10 individual snack packs). Two separate strangers have told me about this same specific trail mix while I was shopping. (It’s Archer Farms Caramel Cashew, in case you are reading this in the future and the links don’t work anymore.) One fellow customer was a nurse and she said at work they tried all the trail mixes and the whole department agreed that was the best one; the other fellow customer told me she gets in trouble with her kids because she sneaks out all the caramels. I don’t know how these conversations get started, but I am HERE FOR IT.

• Something from the category of beauty/care: lip balm, tinted lip balm (I like Red Dahlia and Sweet Violet), cutest tiniest wee Vaseline, face mist, hand lotion, moisturizer, nail polish, face mask, eye mask, hair masque, that kind of thing.

• Something you know/think is hard to acquire in the stores right now: tortillas, pasta, beans, Kraft Mac and Cheese, I’ve heard about people looking for the purple box of Annie’s mac and cheese, baking chocolate, dish soap, etc.

• Coffee (K cups version if they/you have a Keurig) and/or a fun tea, maybe some slightly special sugar, maybe a cute sugar bowl, maybe a mug if they/you are not already taking over a second shelf with their/your abundant mug collection.

• BEAUTY BOX.

• Best scrubby sponge—unless that seems like “Happy Mother’s Day, have some more drudgery!”

Birthday Gift Care Packages in a Pandemic

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I woke up in the mood to do some cooking, specifically the kind where I have to patiently cut up a bunch of things, so I seized that flicker of motivation. First I made another batch of baked oatmeal, which I love but it’s a lot of cutting and mashing and measuring; I put some dried cherries in it, because I remember I tried that long ago and it worked out well, and I cut those up a little too.

I was planning to eat that for breakfast, but while it was cooking I found I was more in the mood for savory/salty, so I made vegetable-heap breakfast instead. That’s another recipe that involves some fussing around with cutting boards: I had a new red bell pepper to process, and the grocery store didn’t have shredded carrot last time so I cut up some baby carrots.

I feel like I was going somewhere with this, but then I stopped and wrote an email to my mom, and now I can’t remember what I might have been about to say next, if anything.

Oh! I do remember! It’s not related to the cooking stuff, it’s about an online order. I hope you will not get (too) sick of me rhapsodizing about Target orders. I make Paul listen, too, and sometimes I make him listen to the same shopping story twice, saying “I know I already told you this but I just have to talk about it some more.” Supply-acquisition is just such a huge part of my life right now.

And I’m particularly wound up about it because I’ve had a really happy success, which was in figuring out how to send a friend a birthday present. In normal times I shop pretty regularly at TJMaxx/Marshalls/HomeGoods, and so in the month or so before her birthday I’d just keep an eye out for something (or several smaller somethings) I’d think she might like—but of course I can’t do that right now. When I was thinking about what I was going to do this year, it was shortly after we’d received our first Target shipment and I’d practically wept with happiness over it, so I wondered if for her birthday she might like a similar shipment. I didn’t fret too long about what specific things to send: I don’t KNOW what things she might be out of or have trouble finding or weep with joy at seeing, so I just aimed for the same kinds of things I’d ordered for my house, and I tried for a mix of useful/practical and treat/morale-boost, figuring that nothing was so expensive it would really matter if she didn’t need it, and also that she is a grown woman who is well able to find a use for (or donate) things she doesn’t need. Here’s what I chose:

(image from Target.com)

Hand soap. That seems to be low everywhere I shop, and it’s a basic supply that’s nice to have extra of anyway. I picked my own newfound favorite (Everspring Lavender & Bergamot) plus a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s honeysuckle because at the time I was shopping the lilac was not available for shipping.

(image from Target.com)

Facial tissues. Again, seems low or non-existent everywhere I shop, and the site is limiting it to one box per order which makes it feel even more precious. Store-brand tissues are not something I would have thought to give as a birthday gift BEFORE this pandemic, I’ll say that.

(image from Target.com)

Hostess chocolate cupcakes. I don’t know what the birthday cake situation is going to be at her house. I thought about sending her a cake mix, but I don’t know her egg/oil situation, and it was dismaying to imagine her having a cake mix but not being able to make it into cake.

(image from Target.com)

Fancy birthday candles! To go in the cupcakes if necessary.

(image from Target.com)

Brownie mix. If she DOES have oil/eggs, she can make it. If she doesn’t, it’s not painful like a birthday-cake mix could be; she can just put it aside for another time.

(image from Target.com)

Kettle corn. I have had such a hankering for kettle corn these last few weeks. Fortunately I had several bags on hand when this began, but I went through those and have been looking for other ways to acquire it. My grocery store is out of the bags of it (and has been out of it for weeks—is everyone else craving it too?), so I ordered myself a box of microwave kettle corn to try it, and I got a box for my friend too so we can both try it.

(image from Target.com)

Beauty box. Target puts out one or more of these sample boxes per month and I often order one for myself. (If you think ahead, you can order an extra one each month for a number of months and make a nice gift out of that. I did that for Mother’s Day one year.)

(image from Target.com)

Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer. Not very expensive, so if she doesn’t like it, it’s fine. I got it in Plum, which is my own favorite. (It’s not as dark as it looks.)

(image from Target.com)

Tortillas. This has the highest potential for making her wonder what on earth I was thinking—but they are totally sold out at my grocery store and have been for WEEKS! And it was one of the things I was happiest to see in my first shipment. We are very fond of tacos.

(image from Target.com)

Pasta. This item, too, may make her blink. Store-brand pasta, what a special birthday treat. But again: sold out for weeks! and hard to get even online! For 99 cents, it was worth the possible outcome that she can’t find it either and will have that extremely happy feeling when she sees it. And if not: a box of pasta is not hard to use or donate.

I made Paul come over and look at the order right after I’d placed it, and admire each item. Then the next day I told him I was sorry but he was going to have to listen to more on that topic, and I told him more about how happy and satisfied I felt with the whole thing. Now I am telling you. Perhaps next I will email my mom about it.