It’s a bad idea to brightside/silverlining other people’s woes, I KNOW that, and I want to avoid it. And I think it’s way too soon to be talking about the good stuff on the other side of this. But on the other hand I have had a brightside/silverlining thought about other people’s woes, and it’s about the good stuff on the other side of this, so you can see the bind I am in. And it’s more like I thought of a specific example of something that I think is going to apply across the board to many, many situations, but I really think this one example that doesn’t apply to me is the best way to talk about it. So I am going to attempt to say it without sounding like the jerk telling you your problem has an upside when you are still in the throes of mourning the downsides, or like someone rhapsodizing naively about good stuff as if oblivious to the fact that the bad stuff has barely begun to happen, or as if unaware that not all of us are going to be there to appreciate the good stuff. But I have been posting some anxious stuff, and I am going to continue to post anxious stuff, and I don’t want a Nothing But Anxious Stuff rule.

Here is the more general thing, and it’s a little long but I’ve got time and you know how to skim: There is something my wider-scope peer group of humans (like, not just my specific generation but including at least half a generation up and basically everyone after) is really good at, and it’s Compensating For Perceived Losses. You know how there is a sad cultural story about how children with December birthdays get skimped/cheated? Their birthday gifts are wrapped in Christmas paper and are clearly just a couple of their Christmas presents set aside at the last minute because everyone forgot! Maybe they don’t even get a cake because there are so many treats already, and they don’t get a party because their parents are too flustered and busy with Christmas prep! Yes, it’s a great and pitiable story, and we can probably picture some of those Greatest Generation types doing that sort of thing to their kids, with their dear old “Oh, suck it up. You know what I got for my birthday when I was your age? AN ORANGE AND A SPANKING” attitudes.

But at this point it’s a legend, part of our human mythology just like That One House That Gives Out Full-Size Candy Bars on Halloween, where now MANY of us who grew up with that legend want to be That One House, so the kids come home with a dozen full-size candy bars. I’m sure there are still people who have sad stories about their December birthdays, because there are always people who have sad stories about any topic you can think of. But the overall culture is no longer there, and MOST of the current December children benefit from The Legend of Sad December Birthdays. Giant half-birthday celebrations to make up for the tragedy of a December birthday! Deliberately oversized December celebrations! One of my friends with a December baby won’t put up her tree or any decorations or even DISCUSS Christmas until after her daughter’s birthday, just so that there is NO overlap whatsoever and the birthday remains FULLY SPECIAL. Kids with non-December birthdays might start to feel a little jealous of all that fuss and attention.

Here is my point: I think we are going to end up feeling a little jealous of the 2020 high school graduates. Not in all ways, and I want to make it clear I know there are some very serious ways in which things will be irreparably ruined, without leading us to dwell right this minute on some of the things that are going to happen between NOW (when we are feeling sad about their lost proms and graduation ceremonies) and LATER (when my theory is that we will feel a little jealous). The Jewel lyric that has gone through my head a thousand times: “Not to worry ’cause worry is wasteful and useless in times like these.” So I want to skip to the part where human beings are clever and creative and good at coming up with compensations. I don’t know what it’ll look like, but I can picture some options. Imagine the 5-year high school reunions with the theme: “PROM AT LAST!” and everyone coming to it instead of avoiding it, and dressing up and renting limos and having a wonderful time. Imagine Class of 2021 inviting Class of 2020 to a combined prom, and combining their funds to get a fun venue. Imagine a delayed graduation ceremony, or a combined 2020/2021 graduation ceremony, with the screaming and cheering and rejoicing.

The thing is, I have been to four high school graduations: my own, my brother’s, Rob’s, and William’s. And they are SO BORING. And it’s usually HOT, except sometimes it RAINS, and the seating is so uncomfortable and the whole thing goes on forever. And the speeches are wincingly trite and boring, and you’re not allowed to laugh. And then they read alllllll the names, and so slowly, and there are so many of them, and there are only a few you’re interested in.

But not Class of 2020’s graduation, when it finally happens. That is going to be AMAZING. The principal and the valedictorian are not going to be sitting there beforehand struggling with their speeches, trying and failing to find a way to make something that happens every year seem fresh. We are going to cry and hug and scream and cheer, and we are going to really appreciate being together instead of resenting being packed in so tightly, and we are going to do that human thing where we catch sight of each other and our hands fly straight up with joy, and the newspapers will all be there taking pictures and writing stories about the Class of 2020 finally getting their graduation ceremony, and the whole thing is going to turn into a giant symbolic celebration of coming through tribulation.

Same with prom. I went to prom in high school, and I do consider it a landmark worth visiting, and I wished my two older boys had wanted to attend, and I hope at least one of my younger kids wants to. But we all fought with our boyfriends/girlfriends in the weeks before, and some of us broke up right after, and some people didn’t get to go because they only wanted to go if they could go with a date, and it was a lot of money and anticipation for what turned out to be a Hotel Conference Meal followed by the same school dance we could have had in the gym for free, and it was fun to see everyone dressed up but overall it was a letdown.

But not Class of 2020’s prom. That is going to be AMAZING. They are going to play all the songs they would have played if it could have happened on time. Depending on how delayed it is, some people are going to wear the dresses they would have worn, and it’s going to be hilarious. Possibly they will be over 21, which is going to make for a very different party. And whether it’s delayed months or years, they are going to really appreciate being together, and they are going to scream and cheer and DANCE, and they are not going to be shy about it, and the newspapers will all be there taking pictures and writing stories about the Class of 2020 finally getting their prom, and it is going to turn into a giant symbolic celebration of coming through tribulations.

We may be a little jealous. And won’t we be so GLAD!

I felt sad and weird yesterday. I have not been doing any of the useful productive things on my list, even when I am bored. I keep seeing people sharing fun things to do with the kids at home, and the ideas look fun and cool, and I am not doing any of that. I wonder if that will come later, or if some people are active! fun! productive! shelterers-in-place and others are not.

I did go to the grocery store, after saying I wouldn’t. It was distressing to be in the store: I felt jumpy about being near other people, and I was overwhelmed and less able than usual to make decisions. It is nice to have those groceries, but I felt like I broke the seal on our house—which is exactly what I DID DO. It’s not like the virus is saying, “Hmm, let’s see, this is officially considered a LEGITIMATE reason to leave your house, so you’re okay, you can pass unscathed.” I realize that doesn’t mean we can just stop acquiring food: there is a certain level of seal-breaking that has to happen no matter what. But I still felt squirrelly and unhappy for the rest of the day.

We received some deliveries and I felt similarly about those: everything felt contaminated.

Yesterday’s cleaning tasks: none. Well, except wiping down steering wheel, door handles, etc., after my trip out. But those don’t count because they’re not in my Housecleaning Tasks I Am Trying To Keep Up With. I will see if I can make myself do twice as many tasks today. Or it might have to be I do lots of tasks on nights I have something to drink, and no tasks on the days I have no drinks and instead eat a pint of ice cream.

I am trying to think of a safe, easy way a local friend group could help each other with shortages. Like for example: if you live near me and you need almonds, I have so many almonds. I was on an almond kick recently; during that kick, I found several good sales and a good online deal, and I thought “I eat so many almonds, I’ll go through these no trouble!” Then I got kind of tired of almonds, and also Paul ate way too many in one sitting and felt really sick and now won’t eat them, and none of the kids like them. So if I had a local friend who was thinking wistfully, “I sure wish I had some ALMONDS right now!” or “I could make that really good granola/pastry/whatever if only I had ALMONDS,” I would want to know about it. I could put on gloves, put the unopened bag of almonds in a disposable bag (perhaps spraying a cloud of Lysol into the bag before briskly tying it closed), and drop it off in the friend’s driveway.

One of the barriers, I think, is a reluctance to ask. Another issue is that if someone asks, but it’s not something anyone has extra of, it seems like that could lead to an uncomfortable feeling: the asker might regret asking, and the askees might feel guilty about not sharing. Another issue is that some people might need to ask more than others, and some might be able to give more than others, and that might lead to feelings; it would be nice if there was a way it could be made a little more private. Like if people could make the request anonymously somehow, and the recipient would be revealed only if someone clicked “Yes, I can give some of this!”—and then the giver was kept anonymous? I don’t know, this is getting kind of complicated. Probably we just need to get to that stage where all of this is so familiar that our usual social things (not asking for things we need, feeling awkward about giving things, etc.) breaks down on its own.

I’m stressed because tomorrow we are driving into the big city to get Edward his Remicade infusion. Speaking of breaking seals, this just feels like a very bad one to break. Driving to a hospital! in a big city! with an immunocompromised child! during a pandemic! But I called and left a message for the doctor asking what we should do, and the nurse called me back and said this qualifies as urgent medical care and that we should still come in; she says they have canceled nearly all other appointments, but not Remicade appointments. I will be talking with the doctor at the appointment about whether there is LITERALLY ANY OTHER WAY WE COULD DO THIS. I remember when the doctor was getting this medication approved through our insurance, he mentioned that some insurance companies preferred to pay for a method given by daily shots at home, instead of IV infusions at a hospital. THAT SEEMS IDEAL FOR A PANDEMIC.

Normally we take a commuter bus into the city, and then walk the rest of the way; this time we will drive directly to the parking garage, even though driving in the city makes me cry. I suspect the traffic will be significantly less weepy than usual. I don’t know if we should wear gloves/masks. I have seen such conflicting things, from “DON’T wear them unless you have been trained or it’s WORSE THAN NOTHING” to “The reason this wasn’t so bad in Other Country is because they are quick to wear gloves/masks.” I also worry about looking like someone who is taking medical supplies that should be reserved for healthcare employees. (These are not the N95 masks, just the little paper ones that allegedly help protect others from the wearer, rather than the wearer from others.)

HI! This country’s administration currently recommends you live as if there is no pandemic, because they are concerned about how their stocks/businesses will decrease in value if you don’t work/shop as usual. They are not doing the entire equation: if they did the math to the end, they’d see that your illness/death (and/or the illness/deaths of people you love) would ALSO cause you to work/shop less. So ignore them and listen to the girl with the math medal AND the business/economics degree who DOES care if you live or die.

I am having some trouble not wanting to just sit and refresh Twitter for hours. I don’t need any advice about this, I just wanted to say it in case others are having the same trouble. I’m going to finish this post, and then I’m going to go into a different room from my computer, because as long as I’m sitting at my computer I keep going over to the Twitter tab.

Yesterday’s cleaning task: washed the other half of the kitchen floor. That’s it. Some days we exceed expectations, some days we barely meet them.

Speaking of math, we are trying to figure out when would be a good day/time to go to the grocery store. I’m trying to imagine us snowed into a prairie cabin or whatever: we wouldn’t have to worry yet about starving, it’s just that it would be NICE to have ground beef and bananas. Or you know all those books about families living in terrible poverty, where they’re scraping together little pitiful scraps to eat: we are nowhere near that point. We don’t have to go to the store yet. But what if it would be better/safer to go now and worse to go later? Is it better to let the groceries supplies go back to normal a little—or will they get worse before they get better? Will contagion be more or less of an issues as more people show symptoms? Well, this is one of those useless fret cycles: we don’t have any of the information we need to make the decision, so we just go around and around. For now we’re making this decision: We don’t have to go yet, so we won’t.

A good hearty cookie/snack recipe for a time when you want to balance resources with nutrition: No-Bakes. Oatmeal! Peanut butter! Also butter and milk, so maybe it’s too late to make them if you’re running low on those—but if you still DO have butter and milk you might feel they’re well-spent. Nice little calorie/nutrition-packed bundles of deliciousness! I made a batch last night, then added oats to our ever-growing grocery list.

If you’re on Facebook, are you noticing a shift in the tone of the posts? A week or so ago it seemed like I was seeing a lot of shared posts about “Idiots panicking/hoarding for no reason!” and “More people have died from the flu so far this year and no one is freaking out about THAT!,” and now I’m seeing…much, much less of that. I’m seeing more photos of families putting together puzzles and cooking/baking and attending virtual church in sweatpants and so forth, and more shared posts about what social distancing means and about what the government should/could be doing to alleviate the crisis.

Yesterday’s cleaning tasks: wiped the tops of the washer and dryer; spritzed and wiped the kitchen sink/faucet; put the toothbrush jars through the dishwasher; wiped bathroom mirrors but not very thoroughly because I was acting on a cleaning impulse and I didn’t want to go find the Windex.

In an effort to reduce the number of times we go to the store, and also to reduce our own consumption of some of the things grocery stores are having trouble keeping in stock right now, we have been experimenting with using starches to stretch the more-limited items. For example, we added a bunch of rice to the seasoned taco meat, and no one could even really tell the difference. Another night, I made less than half the usual quantity of chicken nuggets, then chopped them up and added them to a big pan of rice along with two finely-scrambled eggs and some cooked corn (and kind of a lot of salt), and I expected everyone to reject it but even my picky eaters ate all of it. (I really feel that the key was leaning hard into the salt.)

We’re aiming for a family walk each day. Yesterday we went on a nice hiking trail near our house. There was a little argument at one point about which direction to go, and I pointed out that we were going to have PLENTY OF DAYS to try EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE DIRECTION, so let’s go my way this time.

I’m so glad I bought Easter candy when we were still feeling like it was normal to be shopping in stores and paranoid to be buying Easter candy so far in advance. Because now I have Easter candy. I was sorry I didn’t buy more Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, and I found them available at Target.com—and several hours later, before I’d gotten around to ordering (because I felt secure in my findings and so I was not panicking), they were no longer available for shipping. But it is okay. I can survive this era of deprivation. Some people have NO PEANUT BUTTER EGGS WHATSOEVER. (And I do think there will be plenty of chances to buy more. My gladness to have bought ahead is in the “because otherwise I would be pointlessly worrying about it” sense, not in the “because otherwise WE WOULD HAVE NONE AND EASTER WOULD BE RUINED!!” sense.) [I checked again just now, hours after posting this, and the Reese’s eggs are once again listed as available for shipping, along with a lot of other candy.]

Things I did order from Target, additionally motivated by the change in availability of the Reese’s eggs:

• Flonase Sensimist – Edward (who had a terrible sinus infection that required two hospital stays and two surgeries) uses this on the advice of his ENT surgeon, and he ran out of it last night. Henry, whose allergy shots have not led to the hoped-for improvement and WHOSE SNIFFING WILL DRIVE ME MAD! MAD! MAD, I TELL YOU!, also uses this, and he started his container shortly after Edward started his, so I’d say that qualifies as an emergency.

• Socks and underwear. Let me assure you that when Rob went back to college in January after winter break, I URGED him to tell me about ANYTHING he needed more of—and I SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED socks and underwear. And yet it is now, one week into A PANDEMIC QUARANTINE, that he says “Oh, by the way, Mom—I need more socks and underwear.”

• Snack cakes. When last we talked on this topic, I was feeling like it wasn’t worth it to burden/reward the online system by ordering snack cakes–especially since the lack of snack cakes was inspiring the children to bake. I have since had a change in heart, prompted in part by my temporary inability to order them, and in part by the children baking and eating two full batches of cookies in four days, and so I ordered Hostess Birthday cupcakes and Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies and Hostess chocolate cupcakes and Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. They were available when I ordered them—but then when I regretted ordering so few and tried to order more, they were once again unavailable. So if you look and they are not available, try again later. Things seem to be shifting wildly in online stores right now, understandably. (Amazon Prime is estimating deliveries in late April, which seems…well, let’s just see if those end up actually being the real delivery dates.)

Yesterday’s cleaning tasks occurred after two (2) gins, so I was suffused with the pleasant house-elfy willingness to do more than the minimum. I scrubbed all the toilet bowls, and spritzed/wiped the bowls of three sinks. I spritzed bleachy stuff on a shower curtain and on everything that looked mildewy or potentially mildewy in one (1) bathtub/shower. I cleaned the flat stovetop, and wiped the teakettle, and washed the little mat that goes under the dish soap and various kitchen scrubbies.

Things we have run out of:

• pepperoni
• snack cakes
• fresh fruit
• ground beef
• tortilla chips

Things in peril:

• fruit cups
• fresh vegetables (just baby carrots left)
• cream for coffee
• Kraft macaroni and cheese
• eggs
• pasta
• pasta sauce
• yogurt
• cheese sticks

Things I am very glad I ordered online (but the prices may have changed dramatically since then):

• 4 pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries (FRUIT!)
• Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge is one of my favorite books and I had the sequel on my wish list but the price dropped and I impulse-bought)
• a 24-pack of Ensure Plus (Edward drinks one each day in an effort to maintain or increase his weight)

Pretty soon we will risk the grocery store, but we are trying to go as long as we sensibly can, and we are still in the stage of “It is perfectly reasonable to live a life where one does not have EVERY SINGLE grocery item one prefers to have.” Many, many generations of human beings lived in a world where fresh, varied produce was not a year-round thing, and where Tostitos didn’t even EXIST.

If you are finding yourself in need of an at-home work desk, but you hope to not ALWAYS need an at-home work desk, so you don’t want to invest a lot of money or get a piece of furniture that then you have to get rid of later, I recommend the desk we got Rob for his college apartment:

(image from Amazon.com)

It is not the desk of anyone’s dreams, but it fit our needs exactly: it had to pack up fairly small to fit in our minivan along with a mattress and other things, and it had to be easy to assemble, and it had to come apart again to be brought back home. It’s a folding desk, so it is flat in the box and then you take it out and fold the hinged sides out and there you go. When you’re done with it (at the end of the semester or pandemic), you fold it flat again and shove it under a bed or against the back wall of a closet. And it was under $100. And although it looks a little 1990s Pale Oak in the photos, it is not as bad as I’d expected.

For years I have resisted culling books (though I DO sometimes cull SOME), and part of my inner rationale has been a paranoid imagining of how I’d feel if we were Trapped Indoors Somehow And Couldn’t Get More Books For Some Reason. So this isolation/quarantine situation is basically the fulfillment of that EXACT PARANOID IMAGINING.

Except I suppose I could be ordering books online. But I keep going online to check the price of doing that, and feeling fresh appreciation for libraries. I found three books I wanted on Amazon, and all of them were reasonably priced, and one of them was a bargain book, and it was still $35 for three books. Three books I might not even LIKE! And it was WAY MORE THAN THAT on my local bookstore’s website: SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS for three books to support my local bookstore!! I can’t face it. I can’t face it! I am too accustomed to bringing home a big pile of books on a whim, and rejecting them one after another if I don’t like them in the first 30 pages or so. I can’t handle the pressure of a $10-25 investment before even starting to read.

Besides, after all those years of saving books with that quarantine/blizzard reasoning, it seems I should at least give that a shot. But first I need to do some work. Did I ever tell you that, when we moved, I packed all our books carefully in boxes according to type and according to how we had them shelved at the old house; and that when we arrived in the new house, Paul opened all the boxes and sorted the books onto shelves in random handfuls based on nothing more than size and whim? So now on a single shelf we have, for example, three of the couple dozen books on the game of Go, and then one of many books on chess, and then five of my literature paperbacks from college, and then half a dozen Bloom County books, and then half a dozen of Paul’s sci-fi paperbacks from college, and then four books about physics, and then an annotated Bible, and then five of the seven Narnia books, and then two of the three medical manuals, and then two survival manuals, and so on.

He could not have discouraged me more if he had set out to do so. We’ve been here 1.25 years, and I have not been able to tackle the books. Really the only way to do it is to take every book off every shelf, make organized piles on the floor, and then put them all back. I can’t face it! I can’t face it! HOW COULD HE DO THIS TERRIBLE THING.

But now that I’m working at the library, there is some appeal to organizing things in roughly library order. Like, not going so far as to put decimal labels on all the non-fiction and have them in a precise order, but putting computer books first, and then self-help, and then religion, and then politics, so forth. And that would be a good quarantine project. So we’ll see.

And once all the fiction is in the same place, I’ll have an orderly way to work on my re-reading, if I want an orderly way. Or at least it’ll be all together so I can see what I have.

One week ago yesterday was what turned out to be my last day of work for who knows how long. I wish I’d brought home more library books.

This weird suspended animation is getting me fully back into blogging. Can we all get back into blogging? OLD-SCHOOL BLOGGING RESURGENCE/REUNION??

Now that we are at least temporarily canceling our housecleaners, I am trying to clean one extra thing/area per day, plus maybe another extra thing if I feel up to it. I know that’s not a lofty goal, but that’s what I’ve got. The day before yesterday, I cleaned a bathroom sink. Yesterday I cleaned half the kitchen floor. Today I used a dustbuster to vacuum the stairs, and I cleaned our tiniest bathroom floor (it’s not even 4’x4′ and takes about six spritzes of 409 plus two paper towels). My goal is to make everyone else in the family participate in this, too, but right now that concept requires more energy than I have.

Things that have made me weepy recently:

1. That thing they’re doing in some countries where at a certain time each day everyone opens a window / goes out on a balcony and claps/cheers/whistles for healthcare workers, or sings a song together, or whatever.

2. Reading that our town is temporarily stopping recycling because of all this.

3. My friend’s daughter was doing a semester overseas, and with much scrambling / canceled flights / just trying to get her to ANY airport in the U.S., they got her a ticket to an airport only an 8-hour drive from home, and her flight went as scheduled, and she is back in the country, and her parents have picked her up.

4. While out on a walk, exchanging a “This is really weird, right??” smile/wave with someone else out on a walk.

5. An email sent by the middle school principal to all the middle schoolers, saying how the school misses them and isn’t the same without them, and how he is learning some new things during this unexpected time apart and he hopes they are too.

6. Healthcare workers not having enough masks. Obviously our government should be taking care of this, but they are not, so We The People have to do what we can to stand in for them. If you have masks you bought in advance of this crisis, would you consider donating them to a facility where people just like us are living through this just the same as we are except that they are also directly caring for people who have Covid-19? Like, I had masks in an online shopping cart; I didn’t buy them, but if I HAD—what a great way to contribute to a situation where mostly it’s other people making the real valuable contributions while I sit here playing Candy Crush and waiting for it to be over. Maybe take out a mask or two for yourself, for grocery-shopping, and then donate the rest. What a huge impact! If we’d KNOWN there would be such a shortage, we could have bought the masks ON PURPOSE in order to donate them!

7. Some of the kids’ teachers being so upbeat online, like “Let’s deal with this new adventure together!” and so forth.

8. An email from TJMaxx saying they’re relaxing their return policy so that the 30 days doesn’t start until after stores re-open.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I had a bit of a slump, feeling exhausted and listless. I feel better after some dinner and some sleep and some coffee in that order, but this whole thing is bound to be a moody rollercoaster for awhile and that seems entirely situationally appropriate.

I know from previous discussions that a lot of us have that hobby where we fill an online shopping cart and then never check out. It’s not like we go into it thinking that’s the end-goal; we think we’re likely to buy. It wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t think we might actually buy. But then we don’t buy. Anyway, last night I filled a cart with See’s, because they sent me an email that they’re doing a free/flat-rate shipping deal way later into spring than I remember them doing it before. I don’t know if I will actually buy a giant box of candy, but it felt therapeutic to browse and choose as if everything isn’t like jumping on a waterbed floating on the ocean. Ooo, a Rocky Road egg, that sounds good! Ooo, non-pareil jellybeans—would those be delicious or terrible?

This morning I put cream in my coffee mug before the coffee was ready, and I left the mug on the counter like a cat-owning newbie, and a cat tried to drink the cream and in doing so knocked the mug off the counter and broke it. It was a favorite, and I have way too many mugs so I should be grateful for this culling of the herd but instead I spent some happy distracted time browsing the Roy Kirkham site hoping to be able to buy replacement (no luck).

What I found is that (1) I have several Roy Kirkham mugs already (one of his bird mugs made it into my favorite mugs post) and (2) there are a lot more I have seen and NEARLY bought but then thought “I have way too many mugs.” I particularly like two of his shapes: this shape and this shape. Oh, and this shape.

This morning’s other “perhaps browsing candy/mugs is a better way to spend the time than endlessly refreshing Twitter to see which senators knew Covid-19 would be serious and so sold their stock while failing to make any preparations for their constituents” task is dessert spoons. I have six small 5.75-inch rainbow spoons shown in this post; I tend to give them to the children with yogurt. Especially if I give them those little Activia cups, which tip with a bigger spoon; they don’t tip with the smaller spoon. Anyway, I have six little spoons (plus these teensy 5-inch flower spoons, which are delightful to look at but less pleasing to eat yogurt with), and they are always in the dishwasher (especially with five children now at home), and so I am browsing more. Maybe these:

(image from Amazon.com)

But this has turned into a bit of a dead end for recreational shopping, because it turns out (1) I am very picky about little spoons and (2) I like the treasure-hunt feeling of maybe finding them again any time I go to Marshalls/TJMaxx/HomeGoods where I found my first set. Not that we will be going that kind of shopping for awhile.

I sent a note to our next door neighbor, giving her our contact information in case she needed the kids to run over and leave a cup of sugar / couple of eggs / fresh book on her stoop. This is not my usual thing. I don’t really like to know my neighbors. I like to wave from a distance AT MOST. But I’ve seen enough things about how neighbors can help each other right now, and I’m game if everyone else is.

I haven’t been doing Postcrossing for awhile, but have put it on my list of ideas of possible things to do in These Odd Times; it seems like it might be comforting to do the “This is surreal, right??” thing in a global way. But apparently mail is starting to get dicey, so I am braced for that not working out much longer.

Paul, yesterday, drying his hands after washing them at the kitchen sink: “Do we all just share this one gross dishtowel?”

My dude. Do you see a line of seven labeled dish towels? Have you EVER seen such a thing, in all our years of living in the same apartment/house together? Then you have your answer without needing to bring me into it. Also: please feel free to take the dish towel and toss it into the laundry and replace it with a fresh one from the giant stack of freshly-laundered dish towels ANY TIME YOU WANT. I am so pleased to see others suddenly wanting to help with one of my million invisible tasks! That “one gross dishtowel” was replaced by me a mere hour ago, when it seemed like it was getting too damp!

I want to talk about one of our household’s pandemic dilemmas, but it involves a service we are lucky and privileged to have, and I think that makes it a little tricky. Like, people have been laid off / are dealing with the problem of working from home while caring for young children / have jobs in healthcare and are quarantined from their families, and here I am wringing my hands over what to do about our housecleaning service—a problem many people would perhaps love to have instead of the problems they do have. Well, but here we are. We all have our own batch of issues to deal with and this is one of mine, and here is the question: What do we do?

Actually, here is our temporary answer: We tell them not to come next week, and we pay them anyway. I found that one of my first reactive feelings to this idea was that we couldn’t afford to pay for a service we weren’t receiving—but the fact is, at this point we are in very nearly the same financial situation as before, and so we are nearly identically able to afford the money. It only FEELS like we can’t afford it, because it feels weird to pay money and get nothing in exchange. But buying a cleaning service isn’t like buying a product: it’s not like buying groceries or a car repair, where a person might not be able to afford to pay for food they can’t consume or a repair that didn’t fix their otherwise unusable car. In the case of housecleaning, whether we pay for it or not, we’re not getting something that was consumable/”usable” anyway. Do you see what I mean? I feel like I’m not putting this well.

The upshot is that at least in the short term, paying for housecleaning we don’t receive is exactly as affordable as paying for housecleaning we do receive. The only difference is in how much housecleaning we then need to do ourselves, and we are able-bodied and there are seven of us and we have some time on our hands. Meanwhile, for our housecleaners, this is an urgent crisis. Their situation (losing clients means enormous financial peril) outweighs ours (it’s uncomfortable and feels odd/wrong to pay for something you don’t get).

Furthermore, we pay for things we don’t get ALL THE TIME. We just got our 20-year certificate from our car insurance company: we pay thousands a year for insurance we have been fortunate never to have had to use. That’s a little different because we ARE getting something: we’re getting protection that’s there if we DO need it. But we’ve never used it. It’s like if we paid the housecleaners in case we wanted to call them to come clean, but then didn’t call them to come clean.

Or to reach a little further: it’s a little like when we buy something we then never use. Clothing we thought would work but it doesn’t, or a hair-straightening device that yanks our hair too hard, or jewelry we never end up wearing. We paid for something we then didn’t get value out of.

I know those aren’t great/comparable examples, but I’m trying to grasp all the threads of how I’m making it easier for myself to do what I think is the right thing in our case, where our income has not changed, but where it still feels a little painful to pay for something we’re not getting.

Furthermore, this is an excellent opportunity for a liberal/progressive to put her money where her mouth is. Do I think people should have enough money to survive on, even if they are unable to work for some reason (elderly, temporarily/permanently disabled, laid off, single parent of small children deserted by the other parent, global pandemic, etc.)? Why, yes I do! I am not in charge, and I don’t get to make those big decisions, but I can decide to personally pay the housecleaning service I personally use, even when we are experiencing an unexpected global pandemic and it is unwise for them/us to interact in our usual way. If Paul had lost his job and we really couldn’t pay the housecleaners anymore (which would be true whatever reason he lost his job), we’d have to stop paying them, and we would feel terrible, and we would wish our society was different, and we would continue to vote for legislation that works for us all. But Paul has not lost his job. We can still pay the housecleaners.

Long-term, I don’t know what this will look like: would we really just keep writing a check every two weeks for months/years? And what if our financial situation DOES change?? But this is one of those situations I was talking about yesterday, where I can get all worked up about something, and then I realize I don’t have to (and in fact can’t) make a decision right now. I can tell the housecleaners not to come next week, and I can tell them they will be paid anyway for next week; I don’t have to make long-term plans about that, or tell them what the long-term plans are. I can just make this immediate decision, and then wait and see.

Also, I have heard buzz that the U.S. government may be cutting checks to citizens, to alleviate the current financial burden of Covid-19. I saw a tweet saying that to help with the issue of “What about people who don’t need the checks?,” there should be a huge campaign suggesting that if you yourself are not currently financially affected by the pandemic, you can pick someone else to give your check to:

That idea instantly appealed to me. Since we are so far not much currently financially affected (I am sorry for that tangley phrase, I will see what I can do in future proofreads), we could use our checks to continue to pay our housecleaners to not clean our house.

Boy, it is going to take some time to adjust to the new way things are, isn’t it, especially when we don’t even know what the new way is yet because the new way keeps changing. I have found I keep getting my anxiety ramped up about some issue (“How is this online schooling supposed to work??” “What are we supposed to do about grocery shopping when our supplies run out??” “What about orthodontics??” “Is it safe to work in the closed library if they ask me to or is that still not worth the risk?? and if not, am I going to lose all the thigh strength I gained by getting down to the floor and back up again hundreds of times every shift??”) and then thinking that actually we can just let this unfold for awhile without trying to figure out every little future thing RIGHT NOW. Various people are working on things like how will graduation work and what will we do about funeral attendance and will there be normal school again by autumn (and what if not) and how will this whole thing affect when kids get their braces off and what about the airlines, and for MOST of these things there is nothing I need to figure out; all I have to do is wait and see. It’s a big mess and we all know it, and it’s going to take some time for the systems to figure out how to cope, and I suspect some of our current concerns are later going to seem naive/cute, but there’s no benefit to imagining that right now.

Here is one of my more minor fret traps, if you are interested, and you can tell me your minor fret traps if you want to:

1. I fret that we will run low on something like, say, Little Debbie cakes, or yeast.
2. I look online to see if we can order it there, and find that we can.
3. I remember the poor overwhelmed online stores / delivery people, and decide not to order now, because we don’t need the yeast yet, and in fact wouldn’t yet have even put it on the shopping list in ordinary times. We can wait.
4. But…what if by the time we DO need it, it’s no longer available, and I wish I’d ordered it now??
5. But reports from other countries indicate that grocery stores will stay open, and in fact soon we will be able to shop again fairly normally, and our local stores will need our support.
6. And we don’t NEED the yeast yet. There is no need to increase the burden/profit for online stores.
7. But what if when we DO need it, we can’t get it??
8. That would be okay: we don’t HAVE to have yeast.
9. I fretfully go online again, just to LOOK at the yeast, and find it is NOW SOLD OUT.
10. OH NO OH NO OH NO OH NO
11. But there is every reason to believe that it is sold out only because of people like me who are fretful and/or thinking ahead, and that soon it will be widely and easily available again.
12. BUT WHAT IF NOT

And so on.

I find another type of fretting can be dealt with by remembering we are all in this together. This is not just happening to my personal household or your personal household, it is ALL of us—each in our own personal combination of ways based on our own set-ups, but still we are all in this same world where this is happening. Everyone’s schooling is getting messed up. Everyone’s work is getting messed up. Everyone’s orthodontic/surgical/therapy schedule is getting messed up. All of us are missing appointments. All of us are having plans ruined. All of us are going to have to figure out groceries. None of us know what things are going to look like in the upcoming months, and so all of us are having trouble making decisions. And some of this stuff is changing from day to day, and so we Really Can’t figure it out right now. In the best case scenario, we are all going to enjoy telling our Pandemic stories as much as we enjoy telling our Where Were You When Kennedy/Challenger stories and our Pregnancy/Labor/Delivery stories.

Rob was freaking out a little about the deposit we put down for his fall college housing, and that is something I am not really fretting about at all: it’s not that MY FAMILY put down a college deposit and now the future is uncertain; ALL ACROSS THE WORLD families have put down college deposits and now the future is uncertain. The college will have to figure that out, and the college KNOWS it will have to figure that out, and no one has the information to make a decision yet, and so we don’t have to (and in fact should not) contact the college RIGHT NOW and ask what the plan is (which is what Rob wants to do). We can instead safely fret about the theoretical future need for yeast.

My library finally closed, to my huge relief. I am relatively new there, and also the very lowest level of employee, and also if I’m not there my work MUST be done by someone else, so I have no standing to say that I am not coming to work because I am choosing to isolate/distance/quarantine. I can call in sick, or I can quit; and I couldn’t do the former indefinitely, and I didn’t want to do the latter. But it was also pretty clear to me that the library, which rightly thinks of itself as an important community resource, needed to switch to thinking of itself as an important community virus-transmission hub. Especially when the public schools closed. Some teachers were sending emails urging students to go to the library to get study materials and even just fresh books for free-reading time, and in normal times teachers ABSOLUTELY should be encouraging library visitation, but these are not normal times.

The children are starting online schooling, and it is so overwhelming to me. I am trying to just be chill and not worry about it, which with my temperament exhibits as avoidance and denial and letting the children figure it out. I am spinning this as being good for the children’s independence and self-reliance, which has the ring of truth to it as well as being justification for me to keep playing games on my phone in another room.

Paul’s workplace is still getting set up for him to work from home, so he is using a vacation day today while they finish that up. He should only have to go back once more, to pick up the equipment. After that we will be staying in.

Meanwhile Paul’s sister is still posting scoffing, mocking, eye-rolly things on Facebook about how “idiots” are “panicking for no reason.” That’s heartening. Yesterday she reposted something making fun of parents for worrying about their children missing school, which then went on to suggest parents spend the time teaching their children to cook, clean, check the oil, balance a checkbook, “treat others with respect,” etc. Okay, honorary boomer.

I ordered four pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries and have no regrets.

Did I tell you that our last grocery store trip was done by Paul, because I was heading to Rob’s college to get his things? So I made a very careful list, with explanations. One of the things on that list was, and I quote, “SNACK CAKES!!” Reader, he came home without the snack cakes. WITHOUT. THE SNACK CAKES. I am respecting social distancing so I will not be consulting an attorney at this time.

I see that I can order various snack cakes from Target (Little Debbie strawberry rolls, which I used to find revolting but somehow in middle age have come to treasure! Hostess chocolate cupcakes! I assume given two examples you can find the rest yourself!), but the upside of an empty snack-cakes cupboard is that the prowling-for-snack-cakes children are now planning to bake cookies and that seems like one of the most perfect isolation activities ever.