I just wrote a really long post agitating about how to continue paying Paul’s barber as we are continuing paying the housecleaners, and I deleted it all because it was dull and yet stress-generating at the same time. We’ll just…figure that out somehow, no need for four lengthy paragraphs of hand-wringing.
I am also getting increasingly agitated as we get closer to the time we will need to go to the grocery store. But I don’t need to write all that out: we’re all in that boat. I’ll just say that my main concern is that I’ll wait to go, and then the store will be out of some of the things we need, which sounds like it is the case for everyone. Then I’ll have made the risky trip, and not even be able to check that risky trip off my list, and have to make an additional risky trip. It isn’t as if the virus gives out exemptions: “Oh, you couldn’t get eggs? Well, you went more than a week between grocery store visits, and it’s not your fault you couldn’t get what you needed, so here’s a pass for one additional exposure-free trip.” EVEN THE FIRST TRIP WASN’T ON A VIRUS-FREE PASS.
Anyway. Someone in my house is opening the door of the microwave to take out their item before the timer goes, but then not clearing the timer, so that the poor microwave sits there hour after hour scrolling “PRESS START” in its little message field. I live with savages.
Book recommendations feel weird right now, with limited/uncertain methods for acquiring books. But have you ever read anything by Sarah Addison Allen? I had two of her books in my last pile of library books. First I read Garden Spells, which reminded me of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, which I also liked. But then I read the sequel, First Frost, and liked it considerably less. If I were still going daily to the library, I’d check out a few more books of hers to see whether they were more like the first book or more like the second one.
We are in the weird Calm Before The Storm phase right now, and I hope that tired cliché won’t keep you from picturing all the additional clichés that make it such useful imagery: the weird oppressive feeling to the air, and the sky being the wrong color, and how it gets much darker than it should be for that time of day, and the wind starts to act weird and scary in little preview doses, and you know something is going to happen but you don’t know how bad it’s going to be. We are all going to lose people to this pandemic, and for some people that has started: they’re in the first edge of the storm, and it’s already begun for them. But right now, I don’t even know anyone who has been diagnosed with it. And my house is still in the “Oh, it’s kind of nice to BAKE again!”/“Oh, it’s nice to have the KIDS all home!” part. So it feels kind of interesting right now, with little practical/interesting considerations like how to cut hair and how to get exercise and who to keep paying and how much online shopping to do and how to stretch the groceries (and how to go to the GROCERY STORE without ending up in the HOSPITAL)—but with the looming unknown impending bad stuff right ahead of us, and the accompanying feeling of dread. I am trying to hit the right balance between “not borrowing tomorrow’s trouble” and “not being oblivious.”