Tag Archives: husband

Planning the Normandy Invasion

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Hubby and I are going to take a little three-day getaway this month to celebrate our anniversary. No problem, right? You forget that I have my obsessive moments, and when I don’t, Dan takes over.

Packing for a three-day trip to a b&b/working farm should be no problem, right?

Guess again.

Clothing is not a problem. T-shirts and jeans (or shorts). Undergarments. Shoes. There, the list is done.

Not hardly.

We only signed up for one huge country breakfast, so the rest of the food planning is on us (unless we want to leave our cozy cabin and go searching for a restaurant or pay big bucks for elaborate but homey farmhouse fare – and we don’t have big bucks just now).

We decided on a picnic like the kind we used to have. Cheese. French bread. Summer sausage. Apples. Carrot sticks/celery/radishes/whatever. Crackers. Wine.

Thus began the debates. Do we really need a styrofoam cooler to transport these delicacies, or will a paper bag do for a three-hour drive? Should we bring dip for the vegetables, which would require a cooler, or just some peanut butter, which wouldn’t? Should we take the tabletop ice maker, even though the cabin has a complete refrigerator/freezer – indeed, a complete, if small, kitchen plus bowls, plates, utensils, and the like? (The ice maker was Dan’s idea.) Should we toss in a couple of cans of soup just in case we eat our way through the picnic and still have the munchies?

Now consider us planning for a trip abroad which we hope to take in the spring. Dan is much more casual about long-distance trips where any eating difficulties can be solved with money. But then there’s the rest of our kit, and my anxiety kicks into overdrive. I have already begun planning, purchasing, and, if not actually packing, deciding which things need to go in the carry-on and which in the regular suitcases. (And OMG, the weight limits! And we have two CPAP machines!)

First, there’s the issue of money. Will we change some US currency at the airport? At a bank for a better rate? Will anyone there accept US dollars? How much cash should we get for a ten-day trip? Will our credit and debit cards work overseas? Will they charge exorbitant fees, plus a rate for foreign exchange? (Our bank does. See, I’ve already begun checking these things out.)

What else will we need? Rain slickers? Check, and ordered. Power converters? Check, and ordered (the kind with USB ports so we can recharge our electronics, including my absolutely necessary e-reader so I can read myself to sleep). Road map of the entire country. Check, and ordered. Extra underwear. Check. (I have a dread of running out without a laundry handy.) Multi-compartment pill case that holds day/night and day-of-the-week drugs. Still looking for just the right-sized one. (I know that should be easy, but somehow it isn’t.)

And what other problems might we encounter? Need to make a phone call, either locally or to home? Should we buy a sim card? A burner phone? A phone card (once we get there)? Pay for an overseas plan with our regular carrier? Would it be cheaper to get the pay-as-you-go plan or sign up for unlimited service? (All that hinges on how many calls we’re likely to make, which I just don’t know. This requires much perusing of our carrier’s website, calls to them, and some tricky math on my part.) And dear God, we can’t forget to make reservations for boarding the cats! Plus, who knows what COVID restrictions will be in place then?

My hope is that I can get all these questions answered, purchases made, and Absolutely Everything Prepared For, so that, finally, we can just jump on a plane and be whisked off to the vacation of a lifetime.

I’m sure as soon as we do, I’ll realize that I’ve forgotten something. My friend Robbin always used to tell me that as long as I had underwear and my meds, I’d be okay.

Good thing we never traveled together.

That Fateful Day

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When people ask how my husband and I met, I tell them the Reader’s Digest Condensed (clean) version: At the Philadelphia Folk Festival, introduced by mutual friends. Which is true, as far as it goes. But it fails to capture the essence of the experience.

I’ll never forget my first sight of Dan. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Dr. Demento (which his coworkers at the psychiatric hospital had given him) and a patch over one eye. The patch was to cover a missing glasses lens, but it gave him a certain piratical air, and I’m known to have a weakness for pirates.

We were introduced by mutual friends, who had come with Dan to the Festival. We were all in front of the Alferd G. Packer Memorial Food Tent. (If that reference isn’t familiar to you, Packer was the leader of the Donner Party of explorers, who got lost and made a meal of one another. But I digress.)

Dan and I were on committees to help us pay our way, but we were on different ones. He was on the grounds committee, which had access to any part of the festival area and helped construct stages, booths, and the like. By the time the festival started, they had done their work and were free to enjoy themselves.

I was on the camping committee, which patrolled the tented area and its borders, making sure that no one set their tents on fire by letting their campfires burn out of control. (There was also a security committee, a tickets committee, a medical committee, and there must have been a food committee who set up the food tent, but I don’t want to think about that too much.)

I was also at the Festival with a group of friends, including Uncle Phil, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend Rex, and a good friend from college. Uncle Phil was the catalyst for all that ensued, as he was the person that nearly everyone in both groups knew. We and several other friends and acquaintances had tents around a shared, large campfire, where at night we talked, drank, made music, and sang.

That night at the campfire, Dan purposely sat next to me, though I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Later, when he had to excuse himself for a moment, he leaned over and kissed me. I clearly remember thinking, “Why is this man kissing me?” (I was a little slow, or maybe both fast and slow.)

That evening Dan invited me to take a walk with him, and his all-access Grounds pass got us into Dulcimer Grove, a small, isolated venue where small, intimate concerts and workshops were given. This time when Dan kissed me I had some idea of why. We were there a long time before we rejoined the campfire.

After that, Dan and I were inseparable (which mightily pissed off a number of the friends that we were there with). Dan even got me into the Grounds Committee compound, which had the marvelous amenity of a shower. An outdoor shower, but still. It was a luxury that existed nowhere else on the Festival site, to my knowledge. Of course, since he was so nice as to offer, I availed myself of it.

By the time the Festival was over, Dan and I were a couple. My by-then-ex boyfriend left for New Jersey with my college friend. I borrowed money from everyone I knew to get busfare back to Ithaca. Dan drove me to the bus station and gave me two gifts: an enameled necklace and a bag of banana chips. I don’t know what happened to the two people Dan had been there with, except that one of them eventually forgave us.

Dan and I saw each other again the next weekend. I had invited him to a large house party. Neither one of us attended it, which, believe me, was the better choice. Most of the same people from Philly were there, and it seemed best not to stir the pot. We had to make ourselves a little party of two, occupying a friend’s attic while the friend went to the house party.

Then we went our separate ways, he to Philly and me, soon after, back to Ohio to live. We maintained our long-distance relationship with letters, phone calls, and the occasional visit. (This was in the days before cellphones and texting.) Eventually, Dan moved out to Ohio (as I knew he would) and after a spell of actual dating, we married.

We have since been back to the Philly Folk Festival a few times, most notably on our honeymoon, but we have never made it back on any of our anniversaries, as jobs and such made it impossible to get away at the right time. Maybe for our 40th anniversary, next August.

A Doctor Who Listens

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I read a post yesterday written by a pathologist who was recounting his most alarming discovery ever. He told of a woman who went to many doctors over many years, complaining of a bloated, painful abdomen. The doctors seem all to have focused on the word “complaining” and dismissed her as mistaken, not that sick, or a “hypochondriac,” which is another way of calling her crazy. (Which happens disproportionately to women and to fat people, I believe.)

When the pathologist performed the autopsy, however, the found that the woman’s entire abdomen was virtually destroyed by endometriosis, a not uncommon “complaint” among women and one that can be detected by a simple test and then treated. It certainly need not expand to the point of death.

Fortunately, I have a doctor who listens to me. Two weeks ago, when I had an appointment with him, I started the conversation with, “I know you’re going to tell me that I’m just getting old and have to live with it.”

“You’re not getting old,” he replied. “You’re getting older.”

“But I think I’m getting older faster than I ought to,” I said. “Other people my age don’t have all these problems.” He asked me to tell him my symptoms.

“My arms and legs are weak. You know I fall sometimes. Well, sometimes I can get back up, but sometimes I can’t. My husband calls me three times a day from work to make sure I’m not on the floor with my head bashed in. If I don’t answer the phone, sometimes he rushes home from work just to see if I’m all right. I love it that he cares that much, but I wish he didn’t have to do it.

“I use a cane to walk – not around the house, but whenever I go out. Can I get a handicapped sticker for the car? My back hurts a lot, too. In addition, my knees hurt all the time. In fact, if there weren’t a vanity there to lever myself up, I most likely couldn’t get off the toilet.” (Damn it, I should have led with this. Doctor: Why are we seeing you today? Me: I can’t get off the toilet. Imaginary doctor: Then how did you get here? But I digress. )

“And my hair is thinning. I look like an old granny-woman. And I always feel cold.” He listened patiently, even to the part about the thinning hair.

“I’d like a bone scan to see if my osteopenia is getting worse, and I know I should get a colon test too,” I said. “Make it one of the poop-in-the-box kind. Colonoscopy prep is the sickest I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

“You need a mammogram, too,” he commented. Then he put me in touch with scheduling for all the tests and had my blood collected. He even gave me a prescription for the handicapped sticker. (And the nurse gave me a cool bandaid for the needle-stick, after I requested it. I guess not all of me is old.)

All the blood test came back with fine results, I thought. Then the doctor said something I hadn’t expected. “I’m going to double your thyroid medication.”

Of course, I Googled the Mayo Clinic website, which I consider pretty darn trustworthy. I was shocked to find all my symptoms listed there – muscle weakness, joint pain, sensitivity to cold. Plus fatigue, weight gain (which I had also mentioned), thinning hair, and depression. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check.

The Mayo clinic also noted that many people attributed all the symptoms to age. Mega-check.

I’m so glad that I have a doctor who listened to my “complaints” and didn’t fob me off with some lame-ass excuse. I’ve been taking the jacked-up thyroid med for a bit over a week now. I can’t swear that it’s having the effects I hope for, but I like to think there’s a little more pep in my step and that getting off the toilet is no longer the obstacle it was.

My husband still calls three times a day, but it’s my hope that, before long, he won’t have to.

Nature Red in Claw and Sting

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Yes, I know the quotation is “nature red in tooth and claw” and it refers primarily to beasts that have those appurtenances, like lions and tigers and bears. But those don’t scare me much, because I seldom run into them in my day-to-day life.

(There was the time, years ago, when a group that should have known better brought a baby lion to the mall and offered to take pictures of people holding it. I couldn’t resist. They handed me the bundle of joy, which weighed at least 50 pounds. It proceeded to lick my ear. Afraid that the lion was just testing whether I was tasty enough to eat, the handlers swooped in and grabbed the lion, but not before they took this picture. But I digress.)

I will readily admit to being afraid of bees – an apiphobe (which, despite appearances, does not mean someone afraid of apes. That would be a pithecophobe.) If a bee gets near me, I freeze and scream until someone braver shooes it away. If it lands on my drink or my person, game over. Even the gentlest of bees terrifies me. My husband swears that carpenter bees don’t sting humans, for example. But I know wasps do, and one once got into the house while Dan was away. Now whenever Dan sees a flying insect in the area, he tries to convince me it was a butterfly or a dragonfly.

In fact, some people will tell you that’s why I got married – so I would have someone who could defend me from airborne attacks. And it would be hard to deny. When he wasn’t home and a wasp got in, I had to hit it with a shoe, then scoop it into a bottle with a lid and take it outside where, if it lived through all that, it could choose a different victim.

Ironically, I took beekeeping in college, in hopes of overcoming my fear. It didn’t work. I was okay during lectures, when we looked at diagrams and tasted samples of honey. But I had to take Valium to go to lab, where we interacted with real, live bees.

But now we have new threats. First came the killer bees, also called Africanized bees, that somehow lost their way and were invading the US through Mexico, last I heard. I think a border wall would have been sensible then, not later, when human beings were the supposed threats. Somehow they never made it to Ohio – at least that I know of. (My husband may have been censoring the news.)

Then came the 17-year locusts. (I’ve had to endure these twice in my life.) I don’t know if they actually bite or sting, but they have a terrible reputation. If they can be a Biblical plague, I might as well be scared of them. As far as I can see, though, the most harm they produce (to people, not to crops) is to drop down from trees in massive numbers and make an icky squishing sound when you happen to step on one, which is unavoidable. Seventeen years ago, I knew a woman who carried an umbrella to protect herself from the falling ones, though I don’t know how she avoided the squooshing noises.

This past year came the murder hornets. I could never steel myself to even read anything about them, but I assume they tied people up, stuffed them in the trunks of cars, stung them, then rolled the bodies down the nearest ravine. At least, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

What will come next? Serial killer scorpions? Kidnapper tarantulas? Predatory lady bugs that look all cute and harmless until they attack? By now, I don’t trust any insect (or arachnid) to stay in its place, which is at least ten feet away from me. Not that I would want to touch them with a ten-foot pole.

 

There’s a Redbud in My Shower!

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I love plants and flowers. I really do. As long as they stay outdoors, where they belong, as nature intended. Or sit politely on windowsills, if indoors.

What I object to are plants and flowers that refuse to know their place.

I really shouldn’t blame the botanical specimens for this. What I object to is my husband putting them where they don’t belong. My husband brings home rescue plants.

(Both of us believe in adopting rescue animals. Adopt, don’t shop is our motto. We have adopted dogs and cats (mostly cats), all the way from Dumpster divers to pets that adopted us. But I digress.)

Dan gets these wayward plant specimens from work. No, he doesn’t work at a nursery, but a big box store. They do have a gardening section, though, and in it they have plants. And when the plants look the least bit discouraged or haven’t bloomed in a while, that’s when my husband swoops in and carries them off. Occasionally they make him pay a buck or two, but usually they were destined for the Dumpster (making Dan a Dumpster diver, too, I guess).

Sometimes the plants he brings home have little ceramic pots – often chipped or cracked. Other times, he brings home plants with tiny bare roots or ones with potting soil clinging to them. Fortunately, Dan has a robust collection of dark green plastic containers that he uses for the pot-less orphans.

It’s not the actual plants I object to. Dan has brought home some truly gorgeous ones – orchids and African violets and night-blooming jasmine and leafy green things that threaten to take over wherever they’re planted.

And unfortunately, where they’re planted is often the bathroom. When we had a regular tub, Dan used it as a potting table (or trough, really). He thereby acquired the chore of scrubbing out the tub.

Now, however, we have walk-in showers with lots of little ledges designed to hold soaps and shampoos and exfoliants and loofahs and such. They are instead filled – you guessed it – with plants, from the flourishing to the bedraggled to the defunct. (He claims he was experimenting to see whether plants would grow under the bathroom’s LED lighting. They won’t.) He waters them by the simple expedient of showering with them. (We have two walk-in showers, and so far the greenery hasn’t invaded the second one.)

They also show up in other places – in the sink or hanging from the towel bar, for instance. I swear I once almost wiped my ass with a philodendron leaf from a plant that was completely obscuring the toilet paper roll.

Nor has Dan stopped with taking over the shower and the windowsills. (I grudgingly allowed him to place one small, easily-cared-for plant on the windowsill in my study.) A number of his botanical friends seem to have taken root on the coffee table. Well, not taken root, actually, but you get the idea. This is his temporary repotting station. He claims he’s going to set up a real one in the basement. (I’ll believe it when I see it and I haven’t seen it yet.)

I shouldn’t complain too much about the rescue plants, I suppose. The seed catalogs have started to arrive and Dan will most assuredly negotiate his orders with me.

Can I spend $200?

Can you keep it down to $75?

$150?

$75 now and $25 more when we get paid again?

At least those will mostly be planted outside, unless he has to store them in the refrigerator till the ground unfreezes. Or unless they need potting in the aforementioned shower, sink, or living room. Then it’s time to offer up fervent prayers for no more freezes.

Freeze is also an issue in the fall, when Dan needs to bring in the potted plants that adorn the front stoop. I gather daily weather reports and hold the door open for him as he brings in banana trees and other large specimens, being vigilant about our rescue cat door-darter. (At least the foliage doesn’t have that bad habit.)

I must admit that the plants and flowers add a certain ambience to the house. Just not to the bathroom.

 

1,000 Books

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It goes everywhere with me. It carries over 1,000 of my books. It hands me the one I want at a moment’s notice. It keeps track of what page I’m on without a sticky note. It defines words I don’t know and tells me how to pronounce unfamiliar words. It allows me to sort my books onto different shelves for convenience’s sake and easily find books that I own or that are available in the bookstore. It’s my most faithful companion (aside from my husband) and the best tool that I own.

It’s my ereader, in my case a Nook from Barnes & Noble, though I’m sure Amazon’s Kindle and other devices do much the same things. I’ve gone through several iterations of the Nook device over the years and downloaded the Nook reading app to my iPad. When one gets low on juice, I simply switch to another while it’s recharging.

(Of course, I will need a way to convert all those ebooks to Kindle when the time comes and Barnes & Noble either collapses or stops supporting their own devices. I have a Kindle reading app on one of the readers because there was a book I dearly loved, Rift by Liza Cody, which B&N didn’t offer. But I digress.)

I usually keep two books going at once – one fiction and one nonfiction – and switch back and forth when a chapter or essay ends, or really, whenever the mood strikes me. I have a TBR stack as long as my arm, literally, but it will never collapse on me and kill me. I take my reading addiction wherever I go, never having to resort to reading the labels on ketchup bottles to satisfy my jones.

The iPad with the Nook reading app may be my favorite of all my ereaders, because it allows me to switch to other apps, check my email, messages, and Facebook timeline easily. And it has a snazzy purple case. My second favorite is my Nook tablet, which allows me to do many of the same things and also has a nifty keyboard should I ever want to answer messages, though to tell the truth, I seldom use it. I got that feature so I could blog on the go, but the WordPress app seems unable to accommodate me. The tablet has a spiffy black cover with a magnet to hold it open or closed, and a hinge so I can set it upright should I ever decide to use the keyboard. My third ereader is a basic Nook that fits in my purse.

My husband insisted I get him an ereader too, though he hardly ever uses it. He got one that fits in his back pocket and is linked to my account so he can read any of my thousand books as well. I make sure to buy ones that he enjoys, like Slaughterhouse-Five, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Fanny Hill, and I introduce him to new ones, like Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.

My one complaint about my ereader is that it does not do pictures well. Once I had a subscription to Barnes & Noble’s version of  National Geographic. The photographs that appeared there were less than impressive. You expect impressive photos from National Geographic. Even the pictures in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children did not reproduce well. And the hand-written letters – I basically had to skip them, even though they contributed a lot to the plot.

Still, I am willing to overlook those flaws. As I get older and my eyes get worse (doc says I’m in line to develop cataracts), I’m going to need my ereader, where I can bump up the point sizes, more than ever. And purses large enough to contain them. Maybe I should carry a needlepoint tote like all the craft ladies I know – containing no yarn. Just 1000 books.

 

New Year’s Sweaters I Have Known

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Christmas sweaters, both ugly and pretty, have come and gone for this year. But for me, sweaters are inevitably evocative of New Year’s. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, I worked in an office that didn’t go in for Christmas sweaters. The telemarketing department wore Christmas sweatshirts, mostly handcrafted. My department, fortunately, left the exercise to them. I’m not at my best with hot glue, sequins, and ribbon. Not to say I end up wearing the appliques, but let’s just say they adhere to something other than the sweatshirt.

Later, I did work in an office where Christmas sweaters were a Thing. (Ugly sweaters were not a Thing. Yet.) Everyone, it seemed had a closet- or drawer-full of festive holiday wear.

I had exactly one handed-down-from-a-friend Christmas vest. That was fine, as far as it went, but it didn’t go very far. Everyone else had complete wardrobes of Christmas sweaters, perhaps not one for each of the 12 Days of Christmas, but enough for the entire week before. I had a hard enough time fitting in with the work crowd, so I decided I would play the sweater game too.

Being frugal (that is to say cheap), I saw no point in paying good money for a sweater or multiple sweaters that I could wear only once a year. I had a dilemma. The answer soon came to me. I would shop on New Year’s Day, when the Christmas sweaters had all been put on the clearance sale table. I scooped up about five, including one I particularly liked. Instead of being red or green, it was dark blue, a night scene with Santa and his sleigh flying over rooftops and across the moon. I tucked them away in a drawer, anticipating how I would wow the office the next year.

Inevitably, and given my luck, I was let go before the next Christmas season. I went freelance, which meant that my usual work clothes were pajamas. My beautiful sweaters languished in a drawer and so did my snowflake and wrapped presents earrings (I picked up some of those too at the sales). One year I tried to be festive and dressed up for Christmas, but no one at the Chinese restaurant was impressed.

I did have one other adventure involving New Year’s sweaters. One year, some of my friends and I were determined to crash a fancy party in a local hotel. I did have a black sweater with gold and silver beading around the yoke. (I forget why. Maybe my friend, she of the Christmas vest, gave it to me.) At any rate, it was simple enough to buy some shiny gold fabric and ask my mother to sew it into a simple skirt. My friend had a similar outfit, and the guy accompanying us rented a tux, which I thought was overkill. But it was fun to stand next to him in my white faux fur coat and shed all over him.

We had it planned just right. We wandered into the hotel ballroom precisely at 11:30 p.m., when no one else was expected to arrive, and mingled. (We knew one of the band members and decided to claim we were with him if challenged.) Then we indulged in the open bar (this was many years ago, when I sometimes indulged in dodgy behavior) and I spent part of the evening necking with one of the waiters. (He was trying to convince me to take a hotel room. I declined.)

Afterward, we went to a nearby diner in our finery and sobered up on coffee and waffles. We tried to hold down our obnoxious glee, but I suspect we failed. 

This year for Christmas, my husband presented me with an assortment of sweaters – the kind meant to keep one warm. Not a sequin or reindeer in sight. He did also give me a pair of Christmas earrings (cats in stockings), which I made sure to wear when we went to the store to pick up a bottle of champagne for our New Year’s celebration. Maybe next year I can get him to dress up as a waiter.

Getting Into the Movies

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While I admit it would be terrific if my mystery novel finds an agent, and then a publisher, and then becomes a wildly popular best-seller, and then gets made into a big Hollywood movie, that’s not what I’m here to write about today.

In one of the Facebook groups I belong to, someone posed the question, what thing in a movie is a deal-breaker for you? There were all kinds of answers. One of the most interesting was someone who said the “10% of your brainpower” film, in which one person suddenly gains the use of all 100% and acquires superpowers. (That whole thing about using only 10% of your brainpower is a crock anyway. Have you ever heard anyone say, “He was shot in the head, but fortunately the bullet only hit the 90% he wasn’t using”? But I digress.)

I had two and a half dealbreakers. The first one was any movie with Sylvester Stallone. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger seems to have a sense of humor about himself. 

Another thing that keeps me from being able to enter into a movie is when the POV (point of view) character is a pre-teen or teenage boy. This puts “A Christmas Story” out of the running, as well as “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.” I understand that both of those movies are wildly popular, but I just can’t get into them the way I can “All That Jazz,” “Contact,” or anything with Kris Kristofferson in it.

The half a deal-breaker was superhero movies or anything based on a comic book. It’s only half a deal-breaker because I have to admit that I like the Deadpool movies. But they’re sort of outside the typical superhero movie. Breaking the fourth wall much?

The other thing that keeps me “outside” a movie, I hate to admit, is my husband. He has a habit of leaning over to me and whispering softly in my ear, “I think I know how those space ships work,” or “Do you know a guy named Elliot?” or “I think I have a pimple on my back. Can you look?” There’s no coming back from a mood-killer like one of those.

I’ve been working on him, though, and I’ve almost convinced him that when I’m staring in rapture at the screen, eyes glazed over, barely breathing, is not the right time to tell or ask me anything other than “The theater (or livingroom) is on fire,” and then only if it really is.

Then he slips. I’m watching an engrossing DVD that I haven’t seen in years, and he sits down beside me and asks, “Did you hear what Trump just did?” And then looks offended when I shush him.

One time when he did get the hint was when we were watching the third “Lord of the Rings” movie in the theater, and when the ending came, I was curled up a ball in my seat, with tears cascading my face. Even if he did have a comment to make about what kinds of swords everyone had used or how much he liked the actress who played Galadriel (who, since he can’t remember the character’s name, he always refers to as “the elf witch,” which is not even close, but by now I know who he means), he restrained himself. 

And he does know not to talk to me when I’m watching a film I sing along with, like “The Mikado” or “Pirates of Penzance” or “The Wizard of Oz” or “Cabaret.”

So what are films I enter into? In addition to the aforementioned, “An American in Paris,” “The Three (and Four) Musketeers,” “The Goodbye Girl,” “The Big Chill,” and “The Commitments,” among others.

I’m sometimes tempted to wait until he’s watching  “My Favorite Year” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” and ask him “Who’s that guy playing Potter? What else have I seen him in?” But I don’t. Because I’m a good wife.

 

How the Pandemic Changed My Life

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The pandemic has changed lots of peoples’ lives. They’ve taken up new hobbies, learned new skills, and bonded more closely with family and friends. They’ve learned what things mean the most to them and what they miss the most. Some have lived in fear and others have found new strength.

Post-Pandemic

As for me, since the pandemic struck last spring, I have been working from home, on my Macintosh. Because of that I can – and do – spend most days as well as nights in my pajamas. I have not had my hair or nails done since March.

I no longer go out, except for vital appointments like visits to doctors. I have a mask (actually I have two – one leopard print and one camo) and I wear one or the other religiously whenever I do go out. In general, when I do go out or want to look even semi-respectable, I pull my hair back into the fortunate ‘do known as a messy bun – my favorite of all the recent fashion styles.

My husband takes care of most of the errands, such as grocery shopping. He’s not able to work from home, so most days are very quiet, allowing me to do my work and my writing.

Speaking of writing, I have had time to work on my mystery novel. It’s now in shape to where I can send queries to agents and start collecting rejection slips. (I’ve done this before and am used to them.) I haven’t taken up any other hobbies. I have resisted the allure of homemade bread and jam and homemade Christmas decorations as well.

I don’t really have pandemic panic. First of all, I have a third-degree black belt in social distancing. I have no aesthetic, medical, or political objection to masks. And I’ve mastered the art of creative procrastination.

My philosophy has for a long time been not to worry about things I can’t do anything about, and to postpone worrying until the looming whatever-it-is actually hits. So far the pandemic has not invaded our house (not to put a kinnehara on it). Since I have been taking all necessary precautions, I won’t worry about it until it does.

That said, I can’t really say that I miss my life before the pandemic. You see, it has changed almost not at all.

Pre-Pandemic

I’ve worked from home for a number of years, so that’s no challenge for me. And I can just sit down at my computer and work on my novel as I always have. My typical uniform has always been pajamas, or a nightshirt when the weather is pleasant. I never had much of a social life anyway, mostly conducted by phone and computer. For “formal” Zoom meetings, I could half-dress, which is still true.

I not only haven’t had my hair and nails done since March, I haven’t had them done in years. (Unless you count clipping my nails, which I do regularly, or biting them, which I do occasionally.) 

Also, pre-pandemic, it was rare for me to leave the house, except for doctor’s appointments. And when I did this before the pandemic, I didn’t wear a mask, of course, not even for Halloween or when robbing banks. (I wonder how bank personnel feel about having masked people coming into the branches that are open. It must be at least a little unnerving. But I digress.)

My husband has always done the grocery and most other shopping, as he works in a big box store that has a grocery section. He has worked third shift for years, so it’s always been quiet, both during the morning when he sleeps and at night when he works.

I still have all the things that are important to me – my husband, my home, my work, my novel, my cats, enough food, and my medications (which can be picked up at a drive-through). The pandemic so far has taken none of them away. There is almost nothing I miss.

Except going out for lunch. We’ve done take-out, but it’s just not the same. At home, the cats bug us shamelessly for little nibbles of whatever we’re having. Even if they don’t like the food, they can’t resist sticking their little noses in. At least in proper restaurants, there are no intrusive noses.

 

Happy Pandemic Birthday to Me

etc., family, food, funny things, holidays, , , , , ,

Today is my birthday, and we are in the middle of a pandemic. How does this affect my celebration? Hardly at all. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with birthdays and am perfectly happy celebrating them with as little fuss as possible. In fact, my idea of a really good present is for my husband to tell the waitstaff not to sing when they bring my birthday cupcake or sundae. I rather imagine that they enjoy the singing as little as I do.

This year, it’s even more minimalist than that. Since we no longer go out to eat, I am expecting to get a surprise bag of Taco Bell takeout, with maybe a candle in the quesadilla, or, if I’m really lucky, Long John Silver’s chicken planks with a candle in the cole slaw.

Of course, my husband still gets me presents. He buys them in July or so and hides them till December, then gives them to me – if he can remember where he hid them. For this Pandemic Birthday, he hasn’t had the advantage of following me around stores to see what I like, then sneaking back later to buy it. He does work in a department store, so I’m pretty sure he’s gotten me something and hidden it in the back of his car.

Since the store he works at also has a day-old baked goods table, I can reliably expect some form of leftover cake or pie, sometimes with whipped cream, but hardly ever with a candle. And when there is a candle, just one is fine, thank you very much. I may also, of course, receive the proverbial bowling ball named Homer.

In my teens, I tried to disown my birthday altogether. In my dysfunctional way, I told people that it was on March 1, rather than in December. This was a stupid coping mechanism, not unlike the time prescription Ibuprofen caused me stomach trouble in college and I sat by the door in my classes, hoping that the burping would be less noticeable there. Don’t ask me why. My birthday didn’t go away (the burping didn’t either), my family still baked me cakes, and I still got presents or cards.

Eventually, I reclaimed my actual birthday. As the years went by, I barely celebrated at all. Then Facebook came along and now I have the opportunity to count the number of people who wish me happy birthday. As excitement goes, it’s not much.

There’s likely to be even less excitement this year. A surprise party would be out of the question, even if I liked them, which I don’t. First of all, I almost never leave the house, so it would be difficult to sneak people in without my noticing. Also, having masked people jump out from behind furniture and yell at me would resemble a home invasion more than a party. Besides, a good many of my friends live out of state and even the ones here in town are social distancing, which is part of why they’re my friends.

I’m content these days just to let my birthday slide by with an emotion that ranges from meh to Bah, Humbug, depending on the year. I have a feeling this is going to be a meh year.