Purgatory

We are slowly climbing out of the Valley of Covid here. Dean tested positive last Tuesday, and although my first test was negative, I got re-tested a few days ago and got the positive call yesterday (no surprise since I've had symptoms all along). I'd say I'm about three days behind him. If anybody tries to tell you that this virus is just a hoax made up by (whoever— who would make this up?), you can use us as examples. This isn't the sickest I've ever been—that would be the time in my twenties when I had the flu so bad that my temp climbed to 104 and I started hallucinating. But it is still pretty miserable. And it is definitely way worse than a cold. 

I've been thinking about the boredom of illness. When you feel ok, you can get absorbed in a book or a movie and before you know it, an hour has gone by. When you're achy and tired and have a sore throat, time crawls. It feels like I've been sick for weeks. 

Enough whining. I'm not nearly sick enough to go to the hospital so I'm grateful for that. Dean's quarantine ended at midnight last night and I hope I will be done soon. 

Wear a mask. Watch your distance. Wash your hands. (Repeat ad lib)

Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth

Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth
Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth
Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load
Trying to touch and reach you with heart and soul

That's all. Have been feeling unaccountably nostalgic for the 70s-- things probably weren't any less complicated, it just seemed that way since I was a teenager and unaware of anything that didn't involve me. Hang in there. I want to say something cheerful like Things will get better! but honestly at this point I'm not sure they will. I just know we're all here and we're all getting through however we can. And George Harrison helps. 

Also Three Dog Night.

Everyone is helpful
Everyone is kind
On the road to Shambala
Everyone is lucky
Everyone is so kind
On the road to Shambala

(youtube version of Shambala, because who doesn't need that today)
(and omg their shoes)

(also youtube version of Give me Love)

And you know what else helps? Knowing that most of my readers will totally get this post. Love you all.

ch ch ch ch changes

When I have my occasional a-ha!! moments, after they're over, they often seem so obvious that I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to figure it out. Surely everyone else already knew this.

That's how I felt about my realization that at age 59, I am no longer in the same demographic that I was at age 49 (the original posts are here and here). Well, DUH, as we used to say when I was in junior high. How could I possibly have thought that I was? 

But I've continued to read and listen to people and podcasts, and you know what? I'm not alone. I'm not the only woman in her 50s who is having trouble making this mental switch. It's not so much that we mind our encroaching age. After all, by the time we've reached this age, we've lost friends and loved ones and we know how lucky we are to make it to 60. 

It's that we don't feel old, at least not the way our youth-obsessed culture defines old. We don't feel irrelevant, and that's how our society views "old" people. And my friends who have already turned 60 don't seem like senior citizens, at least not the way I thought seniors were when I was 40. I think that is more about my misunderstanding of what a senior is like than it is about 62-year-olds being different than they used to be. Our society really is remarkably stupid about aging.

I think the key is that we have to change how we think about age. We can't do much about changing how young people think-- I can remember being that younger woman who rolled her eyes when someone in her 50s would enthusiastically tell me that "50 is the new 30." That younger me was not convinced. 

But we can change what we believe about ourselves, and about age. We've internalized this idea that if you're not at the center of making things happen, your usefulness as a human being is gone. So we keep chasing after that feeling of being in the "maker" stage, the influencer stage, the making a difference stage. I want to feel like I matter.

But you know what? We do matter. We just do. We don't have to manufacture this, or change our culture, or convince anyone, we just have to believe it ourselves. Instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to continue to shoehorn ourselves into the mid-life category, we need to change how we think about people in their 60s. Yup, I'm old. Yup, I'm no longer on the center stage of what is happening in our world. But I am still a badass.

What if we just move forward? Instead of accepting what our culture tells us--that if you're not in that cultural sweet spot of mid-thirties to mid-forties, you don't matter-- how about if we dump our own anti-age prejudice and know down to our core that american culture is wrong about aging?

Because if we don't do this, if we continue to try to pretend that are in that center stage phase, that's exactly when we become ridiculous. To be clear: Do what you want, wear what you want. Ignore the YouTube tutorials about "seven things women over fifty should never wear" and "six makeup tips for looking 35 again." That's not what I mean. 

What I mean is: recognize that the generations have shifted. The women who are in their 30s to 40s have a different cultural context than we did. They have a different set of priorities and a different set of challenges. We can't talk down to them as if the things we did at their age were important, and theirs are just window dressing. We can't tell younger women that their a-ha moments are unnecessary because our generation already did that (not kidding, I came so close to actually saying that a couple of months ago).

Every generation has to figure out certain things for themselves. Their generation is being forced to manage their kids' online education while figuring out how to organize their homes during lockdown and track their Instagram feed and monitor their kids' use of TikTok and Snapchat. It's a whole different world out there. 

Our lives currently include aching knees, unrestful sleep, chin hairs, and not understanding why anyone would want four social media apps. Own it, my friends. We got this.

****** a blog note ******

Last week we spent the entire week smothered in a thick fog that was actually smoke, blown in from forest fires on the west coast. Like many people with allergies and smoke sensitivity, it was a miserable week for me. But-- of course -- not even close to as miserable for us as it is for the people who are actually experiencing the fires.

It finally rained a bit over the weekend, which at least temporarily cleared out the smoke and let my brain start working again. And when it did, I remembered the post I accidentally published last Monday. It wasn't supposed to go up until Tuesday, but it's easier than you would expect to screw that up. I quickly figured out my mistake and "unpublished" it, and for the first time ever, I managed to delete it before it went to the RSS feed so it never appeared in my reader. But then the smoke descended and I forgot about it until yesterday, so that is why a post that is dated last week was just published yesterday, and why those of you who are email subscribed received at least two copies of it (three?). Oops.

ugliness abounds

This article in the Atlantic is one of the more interesting perspectives I've read on covid-19. On our unfortunate fixation on coming up with a single fix that will be 100% effective, he says: "Many critics of masks argued that they provide only partial protection against the virus, that they often don’t fit well, or that people wear them incorrectly. But some protection is clearly better than no protection. ...'X won’t stop COVID on its own is not an argument against doing X.' Instead, it’s an argument for doing X along with other measures." Unfortunately, the article is long and somewhat repetitive. But even if you only read the first third of it, you'll get the idea. 

NPR's discussion of the history and future of plastic recycling. Turns out, the plastics industry has always known that recycling plastic isn't viable. It's far more profitable to create new plastic products than to recycle used plastic. The plastics industry spent millions on ad campaigns to convince us that recycling was going to work, even though they knew it wouldn't. This is one of the more disturbing articles I've read recently. We really, seriously need to use less plastic. Carry those reusable bags, people. Worth reading. Thanks to my friend Marina for the link.

I was going to do seven links to interesting articles as one of my "seven things" posts, but I got so depressed while I was looking up other articles, I gave up. It just makes me want to go offline and put my head under a rug. No matter what happens in the election in November, this stuff isn't going away. Maybe we can at least get an administration that doesn't lie to us, but the problems we're facing aren't going to evaporate either way.

One thing I kept running into was our current obsession with assigning the worst possible motivation to the "other side," whichever side you're on. One example out of dozens: if someone is opposed to health-care-for-all, it can't be because they're concerned about our staggering national debt, it's because they're racist and don't care about the health of marginalized people. You get yourself into an echo chamber where you only talk to people who agree with you, so you lose touch with the idea that people on "the other side" might actually have some legitimate concerns about the issues. These issues are complicated. If they were simple, they'd be solved already.

And the solid gold elephant in the room that is not recognized nearly enough: we're being coached into paranoia and distrust by media and corporate and political entities who are consolidating their power and/or making billions in profit from our distrust. People don't click on headlines that are calming and sane. There's no money (or votes) in de-escalation. 

Here was the one thing that made me smile today: The "Couch Choir" singing the old Turtles' song "Happy Together."

Tepid water, please

I've been such a grump this week that I thought I might scratch my own eyes out. In the midst of that, I wrote the post below. Last night, almost on a whim, I decided to drive to Missoula today just to get the heck out of town before I lost my ever-lovin sh!t. I was only there a few hours but other than a weekend trip to visit PellMel back in June, it's the first time I've been out of town since February. My mental status is much improved, so now I'm feeling a little guilty about this post, which is practically a rant. But at least I'm warning you if you're not in the mood to read my whine. 

Here is a typical situation that has happened more times than I can count over the past twenty-ish years. I'm sitting in a PTA/church/community/friend meeting and we need to make a decision. I actually enjoy listening to people's ideas and opinions, but once everyone has expressed their opinion and we're getting to the point where we're re-expressing our opinions, or re-hashing something we've been over eight times, or we're spinning our wheels because nobody wants to make a decision, I get impatient. Really impatient. So I say, "I think we should do xyz." Then suddenly, that is what we are doing. 

It's never my intention to bulldoze the group into doing what I want. In fact, I rarely care what we do. I'm just trying to get us past the endless discussion phase, and into the "let's make a decision and end this meeting" phase. I want to stop meandering around and get something done.  

Then later I find out that someone's feelings were hurt or someone thought I was ignoring them, or I was supposed to defer to someone (not necessarily the group leader) who is the queen bee. 

When I figured out that was happening (which took years, I told you I was clueless about social interactions), I started trying to be more clear. Instead of saying, "I think we should do xyz," I would very carefully make it clear that it was just my opinion, "Well, my vote is xyz, what does everyone else think?" That sometimes backfires because it can lead to reopening the endless discussion, but the intent is to prod us into moving on. 

Apparently, that still is not a good solution. I tried this a few months ago at a meeting which ended not long after. A couple of weeks later, one of the other women said to a mutual friend, "Bless her heart, Barb told us what we should do." I don't think she was especially angry with me, because I was standing right there when she said it, but still it surprised me. Is that how it came across? I thought I had said it so carefully.

I kinda feel bad that she felt that way, but I could not regret getting out of that meeting, which had already gone on for an hour. Somehow I give the impression that I am stubborn and uncompromising.* I don't usually care what happens--sometimes I don't care at all-- I just hate the infinity loop of pointless discussion. And somehow, even when I am trying extra hard not to sound opinionated, it seems that way to other people.

Here's a sideways version of the same thing. We have a group of friends that we've known for years. When we get together, the women drink wine, and the guys drink beer (lots of good breweries around here). I don't drink wine very often because it gives me a headache, but I'd take a glass to be sociable and sip at it. Finally, a couple of years ago I decided it was silly to pretend I like wine when I don't, so I said something about how I really don't care for wine and I'd rather have a beer. 

The next time we got together with those friends, there was no wine. Everyone had a beer. Which was not my intent. I just want to do what I want, and have other people do what they want, and not get into this group-think thing where everybody has to do the same thing. 

I could go on and on. It makes me crazy. Don't change your opinion because of me. If you like wine, drink the damn wine. If you won't be who you are, I can't be who I am. I don't want a friendship where I can only be who I am at your expense.

Sorry. I'm starting to rant. Figure out what you think, and then own it. If you like wine, it's OK for you to drink wine even if it gives me a headache. And, going back to the previous situation, for the love of pete, it's OK for me to express an opinion without making an obeisance to the queen bee. 

That wasn't where I thought this post was going when I started. If you have any advice about how exactly one phrases an opinion without offending people, let me know. If it involves prefacing your words with, "Wellll, you know, maybe we could, I don't know, if it's OK with you, maybe we could think about possibly ...." I'll warn you in advance I'll be rolling my eyes.

Ignore me and have a great weekend.

* OK, ok, now that I'm back from my road trip, I can hear you laughing. I am opinionated and stubborn, it is true. But usually I only inflict it on Dean.

Friday deep thoughts

Mountain ash tree in our backyard

Maybe the only thing that is really true right now is that we are all alive. If I'm sitting here typing this, and you're reading it, we each have a pulse, and I can press a finger to my wrist and feel it. We're breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I can feel the keys under my fingers, I can see the cat sleeping next to me on the sofa, I can hear traffic in the distance through the open window, faintly taste the granola I had for breakfast. Maybe that's where we start. 

If you've been around for awhile, you've seen the quote below, because I think this is at least the fourth time I've posted it. It's my favorite quote from Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg, and one of my touchstones since I first read it a dozen years ago: 

"Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a deity or God, though it doesn't deny one. ...faith is not a commodity that we have or don't have-- it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.... No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again. Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair. Faith links our present-day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself."  -- Sharon Salzburg, in Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience

"The underlying pulse of life itself." 

Have a great weekend. 

The things I carry and the summer reading report

I've told you before that I have headaches that start in my neck and shoulders. So it should be obvious that I need to think about the stuff that I carry around all the time-- like my bag. But honestly, it hadn't even occurred to me until this week when I heard a podcast host mention in passing that she hated carrying a big bag because it made her shoulders hurt. 

So the next day, I got out my kitchen scale and started weighing all the stuff in my bag (enneagram 5, yup), and deciding what I could get rid of. I have always been an over-packer. I carry all kinds of stuff that I might need-- bandaids, eye-drops, migraine meds, advil, cough drops, post-it notes, a mini pad of paper, pens (several), two kinds of lip balm, flossers, 3-4 reusable shopping bags-- you get the idea. LOTS of stuff.

But it's all stuff I like having with me. I don't really want to get rid of any of it. My heaviest items were the things that are non-negotiable: wallet (11 ounces), phone (7 ounces), and checkbook (5 ounces). So I started by nixing the multiples--maybe I could get by with one shopping bag, one pen, a couple of index cards instead of a pad of paper, two bandaids instead of a dozen, etc. At first it didn't seem like it was going to make any difference, but it ended up being a couple of pounds lighter, and it's noticeable. Why didn't I think of this years ago?

It's occurring to me that under the circumstances (ie., headaches that start in my neck and shoulders), maybe I should re-think my philosophy of Personal Junk Transportation. Maybe I should keep the extra stuff in my car and just carry my phone, ID, and a couple of credit cards in one of those phone cases. Will be thinking more about this. If you have any good advice, let me know.

Hmmm. Also. Maybe I should join the 21st century and realize I don't need to carry a checkbook all the time. I only go one place that requires a check, and I always drive there so it could be one of the things I keep in my car. Hmmmm.

 Summer Reading Report:

"Fascinating" and "thought-provoking" don't always go with "couldn't put it down," but that's how I felt about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman. It's older-- I think it was written back in the 90s-- but it feels like it was written last year (other than the occasional reference to a cassette deck and the lack of cell phones). Very relevant to some things that are going on now, and highly, highly recommended. Everyone should read this book.

The rest of these are grouped by mood, but other than that they're not in any particular order.

Other books from the "fascinating" category: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (interesting but got a little long for me), The Library Book by Susan Orlean (definitely not in the "couldn't put it down" category, but still interesting).

Really fun to read: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (high schooler deals with his first real crush and coming out), The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (fastidious, rule-following inspector for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth is sent on a new assignment where none of his previous experience seems to apply), With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (teen mom who is a gifted chef works hard to make her dreams come true), Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert ("open door" interracial romance), Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner (plus-size influencer is asked by her high school nemesis to be in her wedding). 

Mystery/Dramatic/Great Reading But Not Exactly "Fun": Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves (my first Vera Stanhope mystery and I loved it), The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (dystopian sci-fi), Celine by Peter Heller (a female P.I. of a certain age tries to find a missing dad), The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (didn't especially like this at first but by the end she had won me over), Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5, really should read the series in order, and the first one is short so it's easy to figure out if you will like it)(I do, a lot). 

Not for me: Mexican Gothic which I had heard was more eerie than horror. The podcast host who recommended it compared it to Jane Eyre or Rebecca, both of which I loved, but NO. I can't say more than that without spoilers but... well, ok, I'll put a spoiler at the end and you can see what you think, see below. It's beautifully written and once I was into it I had to finish it to see what happened but good grief, I could not read it before bed, which is my main reading time.

*****SPOILER ALERT****** for Mexican Gothic

Seriously. An ancient evil being who inhabits an elderly man vomits black fungus yuckiness into the mouth of our heroine-- how is that possibly not horror?? That was the worst scene but it wasn't the only one in that vein. Sheesh. Really wish I could un-read that scene.

*********END SPOILER***************

7ToF: an update on my efforts to de-plastic and de-Amazon my life, and a brilliant travel plan

1. You remember my New Year's resolve to cut down on single-use plastic (see the end of this post)? I'd give myself a B- on this so far. I've found some replacement products that are working well, and I've found them at Target, so you know that means that the anti-plastic movement has hit the middle class mainstream. So now I can usually (not always) avoid using ziplock bags. I'm partial to these brown paper sandwich bags because I can toss them and not have to bring home a dirty bag, but MadMax likes the reusable bags better (see photo).

I'm pretty consistent about using reusable bags for shopping and carrying my own water bottle. But that's about all I've done. I need to get back to putting energy into this. I confess I bought some reusable produce bags that are still in the box.

2. I'm not doing so well on disentangling myself from Amazon (if you missed the post on why I'm trying to avoid Amazon, it is here). There are so many things that we just can't get around here even when there's not a pandemic, and the shutdown definitely made it worse. I buy local when I can, and I've ordered stuff from Target, Wal-Mart, etc. when I can't. But I've also ordered stuff from the Big A. ("A" can stand for whatever you want to insert there, depending on mood.)

3. On the other hand, I am doing much better about not buying books from Amazon. I think I've only ordered one physical book from them in the past six months. Bookshop.org is great, and they've become my go-to for ordering actual physical books. They redistribute their profits among independent booksellers. It's not as fast as Amazon, but I rarely need the books on my doorstep in 48 hours. 

4. I was so committed to cutting back on my reliance on Amazon that I bought a refurbished Nook, Barnes&Noble's e-reader, in an effort to quit buying new books for my Kindle. It works fine, but I have to tell you there is no comparison between a Nook and a Kindle. The Kindle is more thoughtfully designed, has better back-lighting, and feels about three times faster. So I'm conflicted about this. Kindle e-readers are a good product that I really enjoy and use the heck out of. I'm hoping that recent pressure from publishers and maybe even some thoughtful legislation will level the playing field so that I can keep using my Kindle without feeling guilty about it, because I do love it. It's complicated.

5. One of my Instagram friends posted a picture of a trip to Barbados that she took a couple of years ago, mourning our inability to travel. I was suddenly struck by an intensity of longing to go somewhere that was so strong it was almost physically painful. God, I miss traveling. SO. MUCH. But then I had a brilliant idea. For me, about half the fun of travel is planning the trip, so what if I go ahead and plan a trip? Maybe we'll never actually do it, but I can order the books and do internet research and make a plan. I'm so excited about this. It is actually pretty difficult to get to the Caribbean from here (as opposed to Hawaii or Mexico, which are two short plane flights away), so maybe I will even take advantage of the fantasy aspect and plan a trip to Barbados. Or Turks & Caicos. Or St. Lucia. I don't know. I'm just getting started. 

6. A friend of mine told me recently that her GI doctor told her she should be taking a probiotic. I nodded along, half-listening, because I've been taking a probiotic off and on for years. I even buy the refrigerated kind. But then she said he told her it has to be a particular brand, Culturelle. And then she said, I've been taking it for a month now and it's like my metabolism is working again. Well, enough said, because we all know what it feels like to have your metabolism slooooooooow doooooown. Good grief. So I trotted off the next day to Target (they also have it at Costco, I haven't looked anywhere else), and I've been taking it for three weeks now, and I have to agree. I have no studies, nothing but my friend's anecdotal evidence and my own. But it's definitely worth a try. Also, it doesn't have to be refrigerated, so I actually remember to take it since it's in the same place as my other meds/vitamins.

7. This week's movie worth re-watching: Galaxy Quest. If you didn't like it the first time, re-watching won't change your mind, but it's one of our family favorites and it had been too long since we'd seen it. By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings. oh lord, do I love Alan Rickman. I could go on and on about lines that have entered our family conversations, sometimes without us even remembering where they came from. Those poor people. Could you fashion some sort of rudimentary lathe? Hey, I'm just jazzed to be on the show. That was a hell of a thing. And of course, Sigourney Weaver's classic, Look, I've got one job to do on this ship. It's stupid, but I'm going to do it.

Have a great weekend.

Dentists and shaming and another book on racism (too long)(again)

1. The dentist we'd been going to for years retired a couple of years ago. The younger dentist who bought her practice seemed perfectly competent, but every time I went in for cleaning or a checkup, I left feeling demoralized and shamed. She was very good at a sort of patronizing disdain that made me feel like my lack of perfect teeth was a moral failing. I thought it was just me being hypersensitive, as usual.

But after Dean and MadMax, without prompting, reported that they were starting to dread going to the dentist because she was so negative, we finally decided to switch. We love the new place. They're positive and encouraging, and even though I haven't changed a thing about how I clean my teeth, they frequently praise me for doing a good job. Thank you for being my easiest appointment of the day, my hygienist told me after my appointment last week.

2. I know you don't care about our dentist, but I'm making another point here. Last year I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about understanding conservatives. I quit writing them--even though I could have gone on and on--mainly because I was so far out of my league, but also because I got so disgusted by some things conservatives did last year that I decided I was done defending them. But I have to say, here is another thing that drives conservatives nuts, and that their leadership is now capitalizing on: why are we (liberals) so damn negative? I have my theories about that, and maybe I'll write them out some other time. But it seems like liberals are always playing the moral outrage card, the finger-pointing card, the look! I found another way you're wrong! card. 

(For the record, this is not intended to be about the current argument about who has the most positive, hopeful convention. This was mostly written before either of the conventions, although I edited it today. Since I'm not a political junkie, I don't pay all that much attention to them, honestly.)

I am so tired of reading/listening to criticisms of our current president. I don't like him, either, but we're not changing any minds. Could we move on already. I think the lines are already drawn here. Either you think he's awesome, or you think he's ridiculous but he could be a decent president if people would just let him work, or you can't stand him (me). Continuing to harp on how horrible he is is a waste of energy when we really need to be working on other things--positive change, for one thing.

3. I read another book about race a couple of weeks ago (I'll put the title in the first comment). I have mixed feelings about it. It was recommended to me as the one book about race that people should read if they're only going to read one, so I thought I should read it, even though it wasn't (and isn't) the only book about race I've read or will read. 

But I'm not sure I would recommend it. It was the "free" book at our library's ebook site last month, and everyone I talked to that tried it said they couldn't finish it because it was so relentlessly negative. The author would say that is the fault of the reader because of tone policing and white fragility and white apathy and all the other things white people are when we're at our worst, but I think there's a difference between tone policing (when I tell you to phrase something more politely and respectfully so you don't hurt my feelings)(i.e., making it about me) and writing with some awareness of your audience and how to reach them. Knowing your audience is a basic skill of anyone who is trying to communicate with the public. And if the majority of people who pick up your book put it back down again, you've missed your mark.

But having said that, I did finish it, and now that I've had a week or two to think about it, here's what I think: if you can go in with your armor on, realize that a) the author doesn't live in the US and thus is critiquing our culture from the outside, and b) that she makes sweeping generalizations that aren't always accurate, it may be the best way to quickly get a grip on white culture from the perspective of a person of color. 

It's not very long, and in spite of her insistence that you spend time journaling deeply every day during her 28-day program, you can read it fairly quickly. Instead of reading one chapter each day, I read two or occasionally three. I'm sure she would say I missed the whole point of the program because I didn't read it the way she wanted me to, and maybe I did. But I learned a lot--about racism, about myself, and about her-- and I've never, ever been one to follow someone else's arbitrary rules for me blindly, whether they are my parents, the evangelical church, or an author I've never met before. 

So, the pros of the book are: it quickly and neatly identifies the ways that white people marginalize people of color. It avoids stories and anecdotes and just goes for the bullet point info that she wants you to know. And she is excellent on several points (her explanation of the problem of cultural appropriation clarified some things that had confused me in the past, for example). 

The negatives: She assumes that white culture is far more monolithic than it is. She doesn't recognize, even slightly, that there are differences in different regions of the US, and that there is a difference between someone who truly believes that white people are the superior race, and people who are fully committed to racial equality but have lived with blinders on and need to learn. She actually says at one point that if you find yourself arguing with her, you are participating in white supremacy. (So we're not even allowing discussion anymore? She is setting herself up as the arbiter of what's inside my head?) 

She is relentless in shutting down every "good" impulse I (as a white person) have ever had about ways I want our culture to do better-- it's white centering or faux allyship or white saviorism or, or, or. She does finally in the last pages outline a way forward--and by then you're pathetically grateful for it-- but only after she has shredded every idea that you might have had about helping out. 

And you know, maybe she's right. Maybe the only way white people can get it through our thick heads, through the layers of assumptions and ignorance and blindness, is to relentlessly beat us over the head with it. But if you find yourself despairing and discouraged as you read her book--as I did-- try switching to a different one instead of just giving up. 

There are plenty of great ones out there. I personally find the information easier to digest and comprehend when it is accompanied by stories and/or personal narrative. Try the ones I mention in this post, or Black is the Body, which was the one I read after the one I'm discussing. I have books by Ibram X Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates coming up and I'll report back.

I guess I'm glad I read it, but I came out of it exhausted and depressed (instead of feeling energized and ready to march, as I did after the manifesto at the end of Michael Eric Dyson's book What Truth Sounds Like). And she would probably say, well, people of color are exhausted and depressed all the time, so it's only fair.

Mentor in training

Another memory: about ten years ago, I was eating dinner with a group of friends, mostly my age except Liz, who is about fifteen years older. My friend Ann was struggling with how to deal with an opinionated and adversarial daughter-in-law after her son's marriage a few months earlier. (We've all heard about dealing with your mother-in-law, but more and more of us are discovering how difficult children-in-law can be, yes?) 

Liz, my older friend, had kids who had been married for years, but she listened without comment while we all commiserated with Ann over how difficult her daughter-in-law was being. We encouraged her to stand up for herself, not let the young woman manipulate her, etc. We were being supportive, because that's what you do with your friends.

Finally, Ann turned to Liz and asked her if she had any advice, since she'd been dealing with this for years longer than any of the rest of us. Liz said, a little sheepishly, "I think you should let it go. You're in this for the long haul. They've been married less than a year, and she doesn't know you or trust you yet. If you make a fuss about this now, it could be years before she gives you another chance."

Which led to dead silence because of course Liz was right. Then we all started laughing, because we were so far off base in our response. Why did I think Ann needed my opinion? My kids aren't even married!

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it keeps coming to mind when I think about being a crone/wise woman. Liz listened. She didn't jump in with her opinion. She waited until she was asked for advice. (Oh, lord, do I have a hard time with that one.) She stated her opinion and her reasoning without making it sound like she was the ultimate arbiter of the right thing to do. She was talking about a subject where she had direct experience, and she knew what she was talking about.

In other words, she was helpful instead of overbearing. I could choose a worse role model.

(as always, the names in this story have been changed)

exactly how experienced are we?

Here's a memory: my grandparents were disapproving-- in the purse-lipped, silent way their generation did so well-- when I proudly told them I often paid my own way when my boyfriend and I went out on dates. Their values for dating were completely different than mine. They couldn't imagine dating outside of courting-- looking for a potential spouse-- for one thing. And for another, when the man pays, it shows that a) he is financially stable enough to afford it, b) he will (presumably) take good care of his future spouse, and c) he knows how to toe the line in a way that shows respect for the values of his elders. 

But I had been introduced to feminism by a bunch of feisty Californians, and even though it was the 80s, I was still in 70s second wave feminist mode. I didn't need a man to pay for me. I didn't need a man to support me, and I certainly didn't need to make my decisions based on an outmoded set of rules that no longer applied. 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I think about how my feminism is different than the feminism of women 15-20 years younger than me (and yes, it does shock me to realize that someone who is 15 years younger than me is in her mid-forties). Because probably when I gently (and unforgivably) point out the errors in their thinking, they're probably having the same reaction to me that I had to my grandparents back in the 80s. 

There are a whole cascade of things that are just so different now. We refused to wear a lot of makeup or dress in provocative ways, because our mothers had to do that stuff to be attractive/acceptable to men, and we sure as hell didn't need men's approval to feel good about ourselves. We were more than happy to use convenience food products or store-bought food because we weren't going to be trapped in the kitchen the way our mothers were. 

Aside: whenever someone goes off on preservatives in food. I have the hardest time not saying do you think Lewis and Clark, or Ma Ingalls, would have been interested if you'd told them that they could stir something into their food and never have maggots or moldy food again? Because, seriously.

But what we discovered when we jettisoned all of that happy homemaker stuff is that some women--maybe even most women, and a lot of men-- are happy homemakers. There are thousands, maybe millions, of people who get a huge amount of satisfaction out of making oreos from scratch and whipping up their own homemade ketchup and knowing that their children have never had a happy meal from MacDonald's. 

Me? I thought about buying stock in MacDonald's (symbol: MCD). I could sit and read a book while my kids played for an hour and half in the germ-filled ball pit and everyone was happy. I had a hard time limiting it to once a week. And also, I don't remember them ever getting sick from it, germ-filled as it may have been. In fact, they have the impressively robust immune systems.

It's just a different world out there. So when I said a couple of weeks ago that being a crone meant being experienced, what does that even mean? What good is experience if it's completely irrelevant? Because if we're going to be wise women, we need to have something to offer, don't we? 

I think this exact dilemma is what has led a whole bunch of the people who are 10-20 years older than us to turn their backs on any kind of mentorship at all. They're headed out to their second vacation home or their monster RV, and don't call us, we'll call you. 

That's what I'm thinking about right now. More thoughts to come. 

And by the way, thank you for clicking, if you did. The tally was considerably more than I was expecting in my worst moments, but not quite as many as I was hoping for in my more extravagant dreams. So what I decided was to keep posting until I finished my current crop of ideas and then decide what's next. In other words, nothing has changed. Ha. 

a pseudo-survey

The short version is: please click here if you read this blog, either regularly or occasionally. (That's all you have to do, just click-- there's no real survey.) For more info, read on.

I'm trying to decide if I want to continue blogging, and those of you who have been around for awhile know that this happens every so often, and usually even if I think I'm going to quit, after a few weeks I start back up again. But really, having a blog--even when I'm not posting very often-- is always there in the back of my mind, and maybe it's time to free up that energy and use it for something else. I'm not sure what, but I've always liked to jump off a cliff without knowing where I'll land.

Since most of us (including me) use some kind of reader app for following blogs without actually visiting the blog itself, it's hard to get an accurate idea of how many readers I have. Blogger/Blogspot, the blogging site I've used for more than 15 years now, doesn't have the most sophisticated stats page, so I don't know if you've read something unless you click through to the actual site.

So this is kind of a pseudo-poll, because if you, just this once, click through to the website, then I'll have a more accurate idea of how many people are reading this nonsense and I can figure out what to do. It's anonymous because if the service I use (Blogger) has a way to track where pageviews come from, I don't know what it is. And if you're actually reading this at the website, then you don't need to do anything because you've already triggered a pageview.

On Feedly, there's a button at the bottom of every post that says "Visit Website" so you could click on that, or you could just click on this: To Square a Circle (Barb's blog).

Thanks.

Call me Hecate

I told you a couple of weeks ago about my newly discovered crone status, and of course I've been thinking about that quite a bit, since over-thinking is my superpower.

Like any good survivor of 90s feminist spirituality, I can't think much about being a crone without thinking of the triple goddess archetype, The Maiden-Mother-Crone. Feminist spirituality is all about The Goddess and her three eternal faces, the virgin with her sweetness and limitless potential, the mother with her creativity at full power for self and community, the crone, the embodiment of wisdom and experience.

The idea got applied everywhere-- even as a description of business cycles and the creative process: the germ of an idea (Maiden, limitless potential), the hard work of making the idea into reality (Mother, the maker), and the successful ongoing idea (Crone, wisdom and expertise that come with experience).

I've been thinking about how this might apply to me. How different is it to be in the "experienced" phase of life rather than in the "maker" phase of life? In the maker phase, you are working your butt off to get your life the way you want it, or to hang on and survive the hard work of living out the vision of the idea you had -- for a family, or a business, or a career, or all of those. And maybe the idea dies or fails (you get laid off, illness strikes, your marriage fails, bankruptcy) and you have to start again, but always the idea is to make the life you want.

When you're in the maker phase, if the vision isn't working or if it implodes, sometimes it makes sense to blow everything up and start over. Move to a new town, end your relationship, change careers. But maybe once you're a crone, the priorities are different. That's not to say re-creating doesn't happen to older people-- women way older than me have blown up their lives and started over, sometimes by their own choice, sometimes because circumstances force them to.

But maybe being a crone isn't about a specific age, it's about being smart. Instead of blowing everything up, maybe there are minor tweaks, incremental adjustments that can be made that will be just as effective. I don't want to say being a crone is about maintaining, because that sounds like stagnation. Being experienced might mean you recognize that you've already built a foundation and now it's time to be smart about how you want to preserve what's good, while moving forward into what's coming. Blowing everything up and starting over may not make sense anymore.

Hmmmm. Lots to think about. I have a houseful of company coming tonight so not sure when I'll post again.

recent events

(This is two posts mashed together, one written last fall after I read What Truth Sounds Like, one the week of June 8th, both of them edited this week. In other words, it is long. Sorry about that, but I thought it was better to get it all over with in one post. I think I've already proven that I'm not an expert on racism, so don't expect brilliance. I'm tempted to say don't read this post because honestly, white voices are not what is needed right now. Yet here I am.)

Part One

I just wrote and re-wrote and deleted and re-wrote and edited and deleted three paragraphs on the topic of racism, and I've decided to leave them deleted because nobody needs to hear about another white woman uncovering more layers of recognition of her privilege. But it's a dilemma. Sometimes you need to talk about it.

It's not like I didn't know about my privilege before--I understood the idea of white privilege the first time I heard about it thirty years ago-- but I also still have lots more to learn. And I'm discovering, after some things I posted on Instagram, that if you talk about new layers of things you're learning, the assumption is that you knew nothing before, that the whole world of white privilege was an unknown to you until this moment. I've even had people unfollow me.

Whatever you may have made of the story I told you a couple of years ago, I've been supportive of social justice work since a couple of ferociously progressive teachers in my elementary school taught us what was what back in the 60s. (I was so proud of those young men with their raised fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics.)(I was in second grade.)

I may not have been very brave about bucking the status quo, but I've never wanted people of color to suffer or to have fewer opportunities than I do. But I confess that in the past, I've believed that since I vote pro-social justice, I've done everything I needed to do. Racism had nothing to do with me, I thought, because I am not one of those ignorant, racist people. 

Clearly, that kind of passive anti-racism has not been enough to change the way things are. And that means I've had a steep learning curve about the reality of racism in our country. I keep learning more and more about how insidious racism is, and how it has continued practically unchecked without me realizing that it did.

I didn't know, but at some level I have to be honest and say I didn't want to know. I wanted to be able to keep living my untroubled life, at least untroubled by racism. I wanted to believe that the only people who were still racist in the US were a small number of uneducated yahoos that everybody knew were crazy. I was wrong.

And if we can't keep talking about what we're learning, even long after our original moment(s) of insight, we're doing a disservice to the complexity of dismantling racism in this country. It's not a one-time light bulb moment. If saying that--being honest that I'm learning about racism even as I oppose it-- means I get "canceled" because I'm a racist, what are we even doing here? Are we not allowed to learn? Am I supposed to pretend I have perfect understanding when I don't?

Part Two

Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was shot by a white man in 2012 for simply walking through his neighborhood, was the "wake up" moment for me. I have a black nephew. He walks through a white neighborhood every day. But just like I wake up bleary-eyed and foggy-brained every morning, that wake-up moment didn't mean I instantly, totally understood the complexity of systemic racism.

I've been occasionally reading and researching ever since, but a couple of years ago I started getting more serious about it-- honestly, at least partly inspired by Colin Kaepernick. He fascinated me (Dean is a moderately serious 49ers fan) even before he set off a firestorm of white outrage. When he knelt for the national anthem (do you remember that at first, he sat?), I was curious. What was he up to? Why did something so simple, so seemingly innocuous, cause such a bitterly furious response?

At first I just read stuff on the internet. And then Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. And then So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo last spring. And What Truth Sounds Like by Michael Eric Dyson last fall. And fiction by many black authors.

That probably sounds like bragging, and I suppose at some level it is, but I'm hardly a saint about this. First of all, the more I read, the more I realize how dumb I am about the experience of people of color in our country, even when I've lived and worked right alongside them. And secondly, I argue with these authors in my head. I don't always agree with them. 

But I've learned far more than I've argued. I've been shocked by some of the experiences I've read about, the statistics I've been ignorant of, the systemic oppression that happens while I've blithely looked away. And saddest of all, I'm embarrassed by the way white liberals have not been helpful at. all. (The Dyson book is especially telling on that subject.) The one thing I know for sure: the way people of color are too often treated in this country is just flat-out wrong. There is no excuse. We have to do better. 

So, not sure where I'm going here. I don't want this to be a fad, something that I get all excited about and then a couple of months from now, I've moved along to something else. For several years now, I've wanted this to be an ongoing part of how I live, and that means reading books by black authors and immigrants and Indians and Hispanics and Muslims and members of the LGBTQ community. 

I'm not sure exactly what else it means. Montana is more diverse now than it was when we moved here, but there are still only a few people of color where we live. But I can call people out for racist remarks (and I have)(I have to be honest and tell you it rarely works). I can be open to change and encourage others to do the same. And I can acknowledge that I'm still learning, still uncovering layers of ignorance in myself, hidden attitudes I'm ashamed of, and resistance to change in the places I least want it. But it's work that's worth doing, work that has to be done.

Pentecost Sunday

(written the week of May 31st)

Our church, like most, has not been meeting during the pandemic shutdown. Fortunately, we have a decades-long history of broadcasting our service on Sunday morning over a local radio station. So we didn't have to figure anything out when the pandemic shut our doors, we just kept doing what we'd been doing for years. The only change was that instead of feeding the sound from inside our sanctuary to the radio station, either live or time-delayed, our pastor and someone who was acting as liturgist would go to the radio station on Thursday to record a pseudo-service. Then the radio station spliced in recorded music and played it back on Sunday morning.

As the pandemic restrictions eased and things began to open up again, we decided to borrow an idea that many churches have been trying: a parking lot worship service. This past Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, and our pastor was all ready to set up in the parking lot with a sound system, a couple of musicians, and (we hoped) a whole bunch of people in their cars who were excited to be together again. Whatever I may believe about God (or not) on any given Sunday, there's no doubt that our church is made up of people who are happy to be together, and we have all missed that during the pandemic shutdown.

But Sunday morning, in spite of an early sparkling start, by 8:15 or so the weather had turned. Around 8:30, a massive thunderstorm rolled through, with winds up to 69 mph, toppling trees and ripping off branches and knocking out power all over the county. More than 30,000 people were without power by Sunday afternoon. Unsurprisingly, there was a remarkable lack of people showing up in our church parking lot. At 9:40, twenty minutes before the service was supposed to begin, the power at the radio station was out.

Since our plan had been to broadcast the radio program over the sound system--so that both those in the parking lot and those who had stayed home would be hearing the same thing--that put us in a tough spot. Only a few people had arrived at that point, but our pastor made the tough call to cancel the service. We turned some people away, and started texting and calling others to let them know that the service wasn't going to happen.

Then, lo and behold, about two minutes before ten o'clock, the power came back on at the radio station. At that point, there were eight of us still at the church. So one of us opened the doors to his car, cranked up the radio, and the eight of us hung out in the parking lot, sitting in camp chairs or leaning on cars, and listened to the service our pastor and a liturgist had recorded a few days before.

I had had a bad week. And by "bad," I don't mean that bad things had happened to me, I mean that I was my worst self. I had let some things slide at home that really should have been taken care of. I had hurt my sweet mom by inadvertently texting a snarky comment to her instead of to my sisters. I had not met my own expectations in accomplishing a couple of personal goals. Our country was in the midst of the response to the murders George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and I was feeling the collective burden of our national sins. How come we can't stop this? Have I been doing enough? How do we finally change this? To be precise, I was feeling like crap, and hopeless on top of it.

And then I had the experience--one that I've had many times before-- that reminds me why I go to church. The words of the confession seemed to speak right to me, and the forgiveness of sins washed over me, as if rolling away my failures and petty meanness. Forgiveness doesn't change a thing. Not on its own, anyway. I'm still the same person with all my same faults after I've been forgiven as I was before. I'm still responsible for creating change in myself and around me, and I'm still responsible for apologizing to my mom and making things right.

But it reminds me that with all my crap and all my faults and all the ways I can't solve the problems that are right there in front of me, I am still a beloved child of God. For that hour, I can lay my burdens down, the load of failure that threatens to pull me under, and breathe into it, just long enough so that when the service is over, I have the energy and the resources to keep going.

That is all.

(Edited to add 6/24/20: The original version of this has been out there on the RSS feed all along, but I deleted it while I dealt with my narcissistic white liberal guilt over being an idiot. I made a few edits so that I could live with it. It's entirely possible I should have left it in its original state as a marker of my learning curve. But I didn't.)

7ToF: changing my demographic, headaches, and my favorite Kind bar

The color of spring

1. Years ago, I realized one day that one of my best friends was the same age as my younger sister (i.e., less than two years younger than me). When my sister and I were young, twenty months seemed like a huge difference. But with my adult friends, I never think about age differences. It's always seemed like all women between mid-thirties and some unspecified older age were my peers.

2. But it has been gradually and then suddenly dawning on me that this is no longer the case. Finally at some point last week the whole idea burst into bloom in my head all at once: I'm in a different age bracket now. I think it's been evident to my younger friends for years now-- no, you are waaaay older than me, not just a little bit-- but it was news to me. After the initial shock of realization, I'm totally OK with this. I am embracing my inner crone. I envision rocking on the front porch with friends and a pitcher of vodka tonics and cackling over inappropriate jokes. I think it took me so long to figure this out because I was still a mom with a kid at home until I was 55. That's my excuse, anyway.

As you can imagine, there will be more on this topic in the future. Can this still be a blog about mid-life? Am I a senior citizen now? The AARP has been sending me stuff for years, so they certainly think so.

3. Since I may be offline for a couple of weeks, here is the headache update. I am way better, and same as the last time I tried an elimination diet, there weren't any foods that made a difference. Stretching and working with my neck and shoulders seems to be the key-- which means I need to avoid spending all day hunched over the computer or curled up with a book. DAMMIT. So I've been getting out more and reading less, and reminding myself to get up and stretch, etc etc.

4. Elimination diets are interesting. Since I've never done one unless I was desperate--three weeks of headaches will do that to you--I never do it in an organized enough way. There are so many variables, and unless you can go live in a convent somewhere, it's just impossible to shut everything down. Or at least, it is if you're me and you don't really care about it that much. I ended up going about two and a half weeks with no alcohol, sugar, or artificial sweeteners, and about one and a half weeks with no dairy and no grains (gluten or otherwise). I've slowly been adding stuff back over the past ten days or so, and since at the moment I've only been headache free for five or six days, I don't think it's any of the food items.

5. Over the last few days, I've added back corn-- I waited on that one since I was a little suspicious about it. The worst migraine I've had in a couple of years was after I had tamales for dinner the previous night. But I've had corn every day for the past three days, and I feel great, so I think that's ok. I still haven't had any peanuts or peanut butter, so that's the only thing left to add back in. But I think it's going to be fine.

6. The "no dairy" and "no gluten" evangelists, I think, would say I didn't give it long enough. And yeah, maybe they're right. But I know people who are gluten sensitive or lactose intolerant, and they can tell within hours if they've eaten something they shouldn't have. If that were me, I would totally get on board. It wouldn't take five minutes for me to sign on to that program if it made that big a difference. But if you have to avoid something for weeks, and then three days after you add it back in you still can't tell any difference, I'm not convinced it's a problem. The stretching and the activity level seem to make a much bigger, more noticeable difference for me.

The color of spring #2

7. But there are headaches, and then there's how I feel in general. And doing this did remind me how much better I feel (headaches aside) when I avoid sugar. I feel no need to become a zero sugar person, but I do feel better if I limit sugar, and if you want specifics, at the moment that means that I'm avoiding anything that has more than 6g of sugar, which I somewhat arbitrarily picked because my favorite Kind bar has 6g of sugar. I feel noticeably better when I'm not eating a sugary snack two or three times a day-- and that can happen if I'm not paying attention, because I have a definite sweet tooth.

On an entirely different topic: I've been learning a lot recently, and we've had a couple of significant life changes--like MadMax moving back home after college-- but it's not stuff I'm ready to type about yet. And also, we're headed out to our favorite lake for the holiday weekend, so I'll be out of range for at least a few days. And since I'm supposed to be spending less time at the computer, I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to be offline for awhile. So, not sure when I'll be back-- probably soon, I don't seem to be able to stay away-- but I hope you have a great weekend and a good start to your summer.

Things worth reading/listening to:
- This older post about writing and storytelling from Jenny Crusie
- Modern Mrs. Darcy's Summer Reading Guide (you have to sign up with your email address)
- Book rec: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (heavy on the profanity but sharply observed)
- Fascinating podcast episode of the week: An interview with Ezra Klein on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, episode #248. Klein dissects our polarization and what can (and can't) be done about it. I'll be thinking about this one for weeks.

Don't Make Me Come In There

So much has happened in the last two weeks. So much. But that's not why I'm typing today. Today I just want to say that I am so disgusted with our leaders for not being able to negotiate a middle way. It doesn't have to be shutdown vs. party in the USA, you know.

It would be so simple to do this in a way that isn't divisive-- to recognize that different regions of the country are at different places; that the need to reopen the economy and restore people's paychecks can go hand in hand with cautious practices like social distancing, wearing a mask, washing your hands, avoiding large public gatherings-- and being prepared to shutdown again if the virus starts to surge.

But we are so in love with being angry at each other. Apparently, we can't give it up. Of course, I blame this on our current president, who can't even be bothered to wear a mask while he's in a hospital. If you like him, you blame it on the Democrats. Whatever.

Could we just get over it already? For awhile, at the beginning of the shutdown, it looked like we had finally found something that would unite us. But now, at least around here, it's just been turned into another thing that polarizes us. The people who wear masks feel persecuted by the people that don't. The people who don't wear a mask feel bullied by the people that do. I've heard friends of mine on both sides of this issue say that they've been approached in public by someone criticizing them for their choice, and each side is convinced that they are the victim here.

*deep cleansing breath* I'm getting wound up, because I'm just so damned tired of it. I'm tired of us letting a TV news station control our minds and opinions. I'm tired of feeling bitter, angry resentment everywhere, among people I know and love on both sides. I want someone to be the mom and shout sternly go to your rooms until you can come out and be civil to each other. NOW.

Be smart, people, and be kind. And to those who say we never needed a shutdown in the first place (which is quite common around here where the virus has never really gained a foothold), I'd like to say this: our hospital is prepared now. If we'd had a surge in cases two months ago, they wouldn't have been. The shutdown did its job. Now it's up to us to make sure we don't undo it.

7ToF: we're reopening around here

This got long. Save it for when you have time.

1. The governor of Montana has started a three-phase plan for reopening the state, starting with allowing non-essential businesses to reopen, but keeping in place all of the social distancing guidelines, limiting groups to no more than 10, etc. Montana has the lowest incidence of COVID-19 of any state (per population), and most of the cases have been in Bozeman and a senior care facility in Shelby County.

2. Montanans as a group are nothing if not stubbornly opposed to anyone telling them what to do, and some have taken the lack of virus as a sign that the whole thing was just an over-reaction by the liberals who are trying to take control of our country. And, you know what? If we follow the rules of social distancing and cautious public gathering, maybe we will be able to avoid an outbreak long enough for a vaccine to be developed, and they will be able to believe that they were right.

3. Which is a really strange thing about this whole situation (among about a million other strange things). There are all these people, one is tempted to say all these idiots, who in spite of the mounting numbers of cases and deaths, are determined to believe that it's not really a crisis. That this is just another in a long string of examples of liberals over-reacting and getting hysterical about something that's really not a big deal, and that if we'd just treated it like the flu, it would have gone away-- and I wouldn't have lost my job/had to home school my kids/had to cancel my wedding/etc.

As, one is tempted to say, a more reasonable person, you're left in the strange situation of almost wanting things to get bad so that you can prove to these people that see, it really is a real thing. We're not exaggerating. It's like the classic lose-lose situation: either you're right, and hundreds of thousands more people are going to get sick and some of them die (lose); or you're wrong (lose), and those idiots are going to say they were right all along.

4. Anyway. I hate wearing a mask, I hate having anything on my face, and always have. But I'm wearing one, because Dean is one of the faces of our medical community, and I'm trying to be as supportive as I can. Sometimes I forget, but for the most part, when I'm in a building besides our house, I wear a mask. I have a bunch of oversized bandanas that I bought to use as napkins last year when I was trying to cut down on our use of paper products, so usually I wear one of those, quadruple folded. But as it is becoming more apparent that we are going to have to stay masked at least in certain situations for a long time, I finally got on Etsy and ordered half a dozen homemade masks. Yet another time I've wished I could sew.

5. I don't think I've talked all that much about my never-ending sickness, which I've had for a couple of months now. There is a fair amount of evidence that it's not COVID-- I'm pretty sure I did tell you about Mel's negative test when she went back to work after spring break, and it hasn't behaved like COVID seems to behave. But still, once antibody testing becomes widespread enough that I can justify getting tested, I am looking forward to finding out.

What I'm getting around to here is that I have had a lot more headaches than usual. In a good month, I have maybe 10-12 headache days, and about half of them will be bad enough to take migraine drugs. But recently, I've just had a headache all the time. I've had to not take migraine drugs, because I'm worried about running out. In the past month, I had maybe three or four days of feeling healthy and headache-free.

6. So I've finally decided I have to do something to make a change. And the only thing I can really try right now is changing the food I eat. I'm somewhat skeptical about this. Believe me, I tried all the things back when I was having a similar headache-intensive stretch in my 40s. I tried dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free. Sugar and caffeine made a difference, although not a huge one--my headaches decreased in frequency, but were not "cured." Dairy and gluten made no difference at all.

7. But my metabolism has changed. It changed for the first time in my late 40s/early 50s as I was dealing with pre- and post-menopause. And now it seems to be changing again. For example: I've been drinking black tea with unsweetened soymilk first thing in the morning for more than a dozen years now, but more and more often, I come downstairs in the morning and the idea of tea is not appealing. Or coffee, but that's less surprising since my stomach dictated that I quit drinking coffee long ago. I've switched to green tea for the moment, but maybe it's time to get off caffeine again.

ALL THAT LONG RAMBLING MESS was just to tell you that I'm on an elimination diet at the moment. If it was for weight loss, my inner rebel would come out with flags flying and refuse to participate, but since it is to see if I can freaking feel better for a change, I seem to have sucked it up and gotten on board with the plan. I read about Whole30, but the logical inconsistencies in their theories made me nuts (don't get me started), so I just made up my own plan. No alcohol, which is easy because I don't drink much alcohol anyway, no dairy (not too hard since my only dairy is yogurt and cheese), no gluten (harder), and low sugar (which also comes under the heading of "don't get me started" but I'll save that for another post).

Who knows how long I'll be doing it. My initial commitment to myself was to try it for a week and see how I feel and re-evaluate. I'm five days in right now and although I do feel a bit better in terms of energy and general well-being, as I'm sitting here typing this I'm trying to decide whether or not this headache is bad enough to warrant migraine drugs. Ugh.

So in spite of that downer of an ending, other than physically not feeling well, I'm actually doing fine. I seem to have figured out a rhythm for sheltering at home, and my mental status is pretty good. Headaches are status quo for me, so having them isn't necessarily a sign that things are bad.

Have a great weekend. Sorry this got so long. It's about twenty things instead of seven.

Day 25: has it really only been 25 days?

I was in a zoom meeting where the topic of the different phases of home quarantine came up, with amusement. The first week was the week of fear and hiding under a blanket. The second week was the week of being determined not to set a foot out the door. The third week was the week of boredom and insanity. And now we've moved on to the fourth week.

(Of course, none of the people in the meeting are sheltering at home with kids, so insert additional cycles of crazy if you are.)

For me, the fourth week feels like I've kind of figured out how to manage this, for me with my own needs and mental health issues--and although I do have diagnosable mental health issues, I think all of us who are sheltering in place need to be careful of our mental health, even those who don't normally have issues.

I'm feeling like a more-or-less competent adult again, which I was not last week. In hindsight, I think part of what I was dealing with was the feeling of helplessness-- not so much being helpless with fear, but feeling like there is nothing I can do to help. So maybe it's not so much helpless as it is useless. Dean, Mel, and a host of other people I know are actively doing things to help, medically and socially, but I'm just here at home, making granola, reading, and doing my bit to stay home and keep our community safe.

And that's still what I'm doing. But I did get out and do a two-hour shift at the food bank today, for the first time in almost six weeks. Everyone is required to wear masks and gloves and maintain six foot boundaries, and clients are now having their food delivered curbside rather than coming in to the pantry.

So it's different than normal, but it felt so good to be doing something. And also to see my food bank friends. So I think maybe if I do that a couple of times a week in addition to the other things I know I need to do (exercise, meditate, spend some time outside, check in with friends and family, avoid stressful/depressing TV/movies/books), I should be good.

It's also possible that the entire reason I'm feeling better is because suddenly the weather is amazing. It hit seventy today, and the sun is bright. That's not unheard of around here for mid-April, but it is a change from the last couple of weeks and I'm grateful.

Day Whatever; getting better at balance

I decided a couple of days ago that I needed to stop being online so much, so I spent the last couple of days being offline. Mostly. But that didn't work either. I've been getting a little crazy.

Then I finished a zoom meeting with some of my friends a little while ago and listening to all the online resources they're using right now, I realized that what I need is to be more judicious about where I'm spending my time. Less news, more interactive socializing. Less helpless anger, more trust in the essential goodness of the universe.

I'm a little astonished at how much that zoom meeting cheered me up. Remember a few months ago when I told you that women in groups made me crazy? Well, apparently sometimes they don't. Picture me eating major crow. This was exactly what I needed, and I am feeling so grateful for my women friends right now. We've had each other's backs for a long time now-- this group has met in some form or another for at least a dozen years now.

So I'm sorting through and figuring out what works for me. For example, I've never been a big Twitter user, but I've checked it every ten or twelve days, and it has never failed (in the past) to cheer me up. People can be so creative and funny, and since I wasn't checking in very often, I only saw the highly rated tweets--which apparently in my feed means the funny, uplifting ones.

But every time I've checked in on Twitter over the past three weeks, I've come away angry and depressed and frustrated. I'm not sure what the difference is, but no more Twitter for me. Likewise, Instagram has not really been a source of support recently. But oddly, Facebook-- which I've barely tolerated for years now-- has been great. And zoom meetings with friends have been a lifesaver.

The Ten Percent Happier app, which I've talked about before, is hosting a daily free live meditation at 3pm Eastern during the coronavirus shutdown, and although I have yet to make it to the live version, I've listened to several of them the next morning (they're recorded) and they're helpful and uplifting. My friends talked about free classes they're taking and thoughtful resources they're reading, which I'm going to check out. I need to do better at staying sane, I think.

And if my rant from a couple of days ago came across as too much, apologies about that. I should have held off for 24 hours before posting it so I could tone down the wording a little. It's certainly not the fault of these women that they're pushing my buttons about aging. My problem, entirely. When we lived in North Carolina, they had an extremely useful phrase when someone was being obnoxious-- "she really showed her ass"-- and I think I've been doing that a fair amount over the past few months (occasionally here, more often irl). I may show my ass, but I'm learning.

Have a great weekend. If you want to watch a silly, funny, not-oscar-worthy movie, we enjoyed Spies in Disguise, which I barely even knew about since we're empty nesters now. It was a slow starter for me, but then I giggled all the way through.

Day 19: in which I revisit (of all things) skin care

I told you last fall how tired I was of listening to women I admire go on and on about skincare. As I said at the time, it's not that I'm opposed to taking care of my skin. In fact, in the very next paragraph, I undercut my entire complaint by telling you about a new favorite skincare product. I did that on purpose to confess that as bored as I am with the whole topic, it's still something I think about. The hypocrisy is right there.

But it keeps happening. Last night I finally figured out why it bugs me so much--hence, this post.

I am 58, which means (obviously) I am knocking on the door of 60. And when I hear these women, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, going on and on about skincare, what I hear is an undercurrent of panic about aging. I am determined not to look old. I am not going to look like someone who doesn't take care of their skin. I am not going to be one of "those women" that people look at with pity and think, she sure hasn't aged well! 

And I get that. I can sink into that panic. I am almost sixty. But here's the thing: it's age shaming. What's wrong with looking old? What's wrong with looking your age? Is it so horrible to look like you're 58? I mean, if we're lucky, we're going to get old. Why are we looking at it with such deep-seated shame and dread?

Even if you haven't "aged well," it's not necessarily a horrible thing. If you've got wrinkles and lines and leathery skin, but the soul peering out of your eyes is vibrant and kind and compassionate, you're the woman I want to emulate.

There. I've said my piece. Apologies for the rant. I finally had to unfollow one of my all-time favorite podcasts (not one of the bookish ones), because they just couldn't leave it alone.

Day 18: in which I bore you because I am bored: Georgette Heyer, audiobooks, and free samples

After a quick scroll through bookstagram, it's obvious that almost universally, book lovers are having trouble reading anything but comfort reads. A few people are looking for thrillers or true crime to keep them sucked into a story, but most of us just want to read something that feels positive and leaves us feeling uplifted instead of despairing.

In the past few weeks, I've re-read a favorite series from childhood (Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin), Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, and a couple of romance novels (Red, White, and Royal Blue and Love Lettering) that worked for that. Also The Lager Queen of Minnesota, which isn't exactly a comfort read, but has lovable characters who have to deal with a variety of different (occasionally hilarious) life situations, and resolves in a thoroughly satisfying way.

But really, what I'm mainly doing is re-reading Georgette Heyer. You may remember my first obsession with her if you've been around for awhile. She's not a perfect writer-- you have to forgive her inordinate love of exclamation points, and you have to be able to skim over her sometimes excessive use of period slang. But once you get past those flaws, they're so much fun. Some of them I would say even qualify as romps.

Stack of books by Georgette Heyer

This time around, I started with Black Sheep, which wasn't one of my top favorites, but I remembered liking it. It worked so well that I moved on to Reluctant Widow. Now I'm reading Cotillion, which is one of my top faves of hers. Maybe my #1 favorite.

The problem with Cotillion is that there's vast cast of characters, and it takes awhile to figure out who's important and how they are related to each other. Kitty, an orphan who has lived for years with her miserly, wealthy guardian, is outraged when he more or less puts her up on the marriage auction block to his grand nephews. Since she is penniless on her own, she comes up with a plot to get at least a month in London, a last moment of freedom, before she has to accept the inevitable and figure out what she's going to do. Of course that gets more and more complicated, and then she meets other people and gets involved in their complications, and the whole thing is just a delight.

Spoiler alert: it ends happily for everyone; well, except for the people who deserve what they get.

And, bonus: the audiobooks are fabulous. The narrator of Cotillion, Phyllida Nash, is a genius. I made Dean listen to it the other night while we were working on a jigsaw puzzle, and he was so hooked that he ended up reading the whole thing. Just give it time, because it takes awhile to get oriented to all the characters, and Kitty's complicated plans.

And here is a clue for taking advantage of Amazon. Amazon has always allowed you download a free sample of a kindle ebook or an audiobook (through their subsidiary, Audible). The audiobook samples stream, and even if you don't have a kindle, you can download the kindle app and take advantage of the free samples. It usually amounts to about 20 pages of an ebook, or about five minutes of an audiobook. Why not use them?

I've had it work both ways--sometimes the five minute sample of an audiobook helps me get into a print book I'm having trouble with (for example, Gods in Alabama). Sometimes the 25 page sample of the ebook helps me get a complicated cast of characters straight when the audiobook feels like chaos (for example, And Then There Were None, which is ably read by Dan Stevens, but introduces so many characters in the first chapter that I was bewildered until I was able to read the print version).

That's it for me today. Thank you for letting me go on and on, since I am now considerably less bored than I was yesterday. Did I tell you yet that MadMax came home on Friday? Our internet may not be up to the task of his online classes, but he had had enough of living alone in an apartment during shelter in place. It's nice to have some company.

Day 17: grumpiness sets in

I'm fine. I don't want to make this sound like I need sympathy. I have it so much easier than most-- no five-year-olds are following me around the house wanting to be entertained, I am not worried that we're going to run out of food or that our heat will be shut off. But good freaking lord am I bored with my house.

That is all.

day 13: essential or not essential, that is the question

The shelter-in-place order in Montana allows for "essential" activities like grocery shopping, trips to the pharmacy or post office, and outdoor activities, as long as social distancing is maintained.

It's interesting to me how widely this gets interpreted. I have friends who literally have not left their house in weeks. I've also seen people around town who don't seem to have modified their activities at all. My own thought was that I would go out once a week, and with one exception, I've stuck with that.

But by Tuesday, I just needed to get out of the house. I've decided not to count trips where I have no contact with other human beings. That afternoon, I drove through one of those unattended car washes and then sat in the (empty) parking lot at our church to borrow the wi-fi. Earlier this week, I had another exception: Lynne, my alternative health care practitioner, is still seeing clients if you don't have symptoms, and I've been to see her once.

So, why am I telling you this? I guess because I'm trying to figure it out. I bounce back and forth between feeling guilty for how "often" I've been out of the house (when I talk to one of my fully cloistered friends), and feeling like I'm absurdly restrictive, when a friend was shocked that I hadn't been out of our house for six days (other than walking the dog).

My sister sent me a meme that said "2020 is an unusual Leap Year: there are 29 days in February, 300 days in March, and 5 years in April." And although I don't really mind staying home, I get that. I completely forgot about a meeting I had yesterday until I got an email yesterday morning canceling it. I hadn't looked at my calendar in ages. Maybe I should do that. Or maybe I should go back to reading my book.

day 12: I had to count how many days it had been

When I was in third grade, I had a favorite dress. It was cotton and long sleeved, with patch pockets, and it zipped up the front, all the way to my collarbones. Also, it was brown, red, and gold skinny-striped. I am not making this up. It was the sixties. Oh, how I loved that dress.

My mom wouldn't let me wear it two days in a row, but I wore it every time it went through the laundry. Which sometimes meant I wore it two or three times a week.

I am right back there now. Nobody sees me, so I can just wear my favorite clothes every time they're clean. My favorite t-shirt with the graphic of Brooklyn Bridge, my favorite jeans which are probably indecent from behind but are comfy-plus, and my favorite sweatshirt. Wearing my favorite clothes is #1 on the list of things that are making me happy right now. Well, that and the sunshine, which is back again today after several days of absence.

I should know after blogging as long as I have that you never make big sweeping statements like I did in that last post about lighting a candle for coronoavrius solidarity, because I promptly forgot about it that night and last night. I didn't remember until 11:30 the first night, and 10:15 last night. But I still did it, and it is oddly meaningful to me to sit in the dark for ten or fifteen minutes with a lit candle.

I tried to add a picture from last night of the full moon, but my grossly inefficient yet tried-and-true method for adding pictures to a blog post didn't work today, and I have no idea why. Moon pictures never do justice to the real thing anyway.  Hope you're hanging in there.

Day 10: candle light

My cat with a candle. Best I could do in full daylight.

The Prime Minister of India asked all Indians to turn out their electric lights and light a candle at 9pm last night for nine minutes in a show of unity. The idea is controversial among Indians who are exasperated with their PM's response to the coronavirus, but it is catching on with people who just want some way to show their solidarity with all the other human beings on planet Earth. It's a tiny way to say, this isn't about politics, and it's not about our country vs your country. This is about the candle in my window, and the candle in your window, and the candles that light up in a wave as each time zone hits 9pm. #lightacandleforcorona #wearetheworld I'm doing it.

Day 9: in which I cut my own bangs

Dean prides himself on noticing when I get my hair cut, but otherwise, he never mentions my hair at all. So yesterday, when he reached over and brushed my bangs off my face and said, you've got hair in your eyes, I decided it was time to do something about it.

Vanessa, who has been cutting my hair for at least a dozen years now, had to close down her shop, of course. I did my best to copy her method-- cut straight across, just below the line of my eyebrows, then hold the scissors vertically and make tiny, eighth-inch v-cuts so it's not so much like a bowl cut.

It takes her about 40 seconds, but ten minutes later, I wasn't sure I quite had it right. At least I don't have hair in my eyes anymore, and I don't think Zoom's picture quality is good enough for anyone else to notice.

Other self-sufficient tasks I've accomplished in the past two weeks: made yogurt in the Instant Pot (the first time I'd used my Instant Pot in over a year), and made granola from scratch. Both were acceptably successful, but the Instant Pot yogurt requires a half-gallon of milk and half a cup of yogurt to get it started, so it isn't exactly something you can do from pantry staples.

(Hence, the need for yogurt I mentioned on Friday. But if you have to buy yogurt to get it started, couldn't you just buy your yogurt? *cough* Apparently I don't have the Ma Ingalls mindset.)(yeah, I know, I used to make yogurt all the time.)

#stayhealthystayhome

Day 7: the beat goes on

Around here, there are two main types of winter weather: overcast with highs in the 30s, or sunny and clear but bitter cold. It's not that we never see the sun in the winter, it's just that when we do, it's usually seven degrees with a windchill of minus ten.

So for me, one of the surest signs of spring is when I go outside and the sun feels warm. That happened today. It's only about 42, but I took the dog down to feed our one remaining chicken, and as I stood in the field endlessly throwing her tennis ball, the sun on my back was so warm that if I'd stayed much longer I would have taken off my jacket.

Had a conversation with friends today about how our pets and the world around us are oblivious to the anxiety and fear we're experiencing. Spring is coming. There was a squirrel eating out of our bird feeder. Sadie chases her ball. The cat proudly left a mouse outside the sliding glass door yesterday. It's not enough to entirely calm my mind, but it helps.

I made it to Target and the grocery store today, to grab a few items that were running low: printer paper, toothpaste, yogurt. Fortunately, all were in stock. If you're local, the SuperOne in the middle of town still had toilet paper at 9:30 this morning. Not much, and I didn't buy any, but at least it is reappearing.