Reading Report 2020, part one: to read, or to watch? that is the question

Reading at the laundromat (RIP dryer)

(This post is about my reading year, a topic that sounds boring to me before I even start, and the next one will be actual book recommendations. You've been warned.)

One good thing about 2020--I read a lot more books than usual. The previous two years I'd been right at a hundred books; in 2020, I read 120. That might sound like a lot, but I've heard plenty from people who read two to three hundred during lockdown. That doesn't include the many that I started and didn't finish (was I the only one who couldn't settle on what I wanted to read? I feel like I bailed on two for every one I finished, but I don't know for sure since I don't usually track DNFs). 

During the spring, Doug was working longer hours than ever. He and the pandemic team at our hospital spent 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week, figuring out how our hospital would respond to COVID-19. Which meant that I was home alone, like a gazillion other people, for weeks on end. So I read.

I'm not sure I can explain why I prefer to read than watch TV. Since it's what I like, of course I think it's "better," but objectively, there's no reason for that. Plenty of people who are way smarter than me have said that the best writing and creative work of the past dozen years have been in television-- more than in movies (taken over by blockbusters and superheroes) or print (because serious literary fiction has become so dense and impenetrable that nobody wants to read it). 

TV feels like too much to me. It might even be a neurological thing. The way my brain is wired, the combination of visual stimuli and music and characters coming to life on the screen feels overwhelming, especially if those characters are being bullied or tortured or oppressed. It feels like I'm handing control of my brain over to someone else, opening the door and inviting in images of devastation and despair. It's too much. Things inside my brain are dark enough without inviting that stuff in.

So I'd rather sit with a book, preferably not one of the dense/miserable/despairing types. And anyway, it seems to me that there's been a movement away from literary despair in the past year or two. I read a handful of books this year that were intelligent, self-aware in literary terms, and fun to read. Ten or fifteen years ago, you couldn't claim to be a serious writer if your book ended in anything other than hopelessness. I think that's starting to change.

Of course, that has never been true of romance novels, and it's one of the reasons romance has been derided as frivolous and negligible. (It's also a typical strategy of the traditional patriarchy-- restrict women to the world of home and relationships, and then define any art that deals with home and relationships as unimportant or silly.) 

I've told you before that I am an ardent defender of people's right to read whatever the hell they want, whether that is a steady diet of romance novels or anything else. But I haven't been entirely forthcoming with my own reading of romance novels, because tbh I haven't read a romance published in the last few years that I liked. Readers of romance get enough criticism without me piling on, and if it's what you like, then it makes no difference what I think. So I just didn't say anything.

It seems to me that the current trends in romance are either to concentrate on the sexual attraction between the two characters almost to the exclusion of anything else (like a plot), or to use a strange type of narrative that irritates me no end-- there will be one line of dialog, then several paragraphs of interior monologue, then another line of dialog and a page and a half of interior monologue, and then another line of dialog.... etc. 

The first time I read one, I thought it was kind of odd, but okay, I can go along with this. But now it seems like every one I pick up is that way, and I am so done with it. Sometimes it feels like you've read a dozen pages for a five-minute conversation. Yawn. Other than the occasional novella that bucks the trend (for example), until recently it had been years since I read a currently published romance novel all the way through. It's really disappointing to me, because it used to be a reliable way to cheer me up-- a fun rom-com about people figuring out their relationship, with a happy ending. What's not to like? 

That seems to be changing, though. I read several romance novels I liked this year, and three that I loved. Two of them were by British authors (is that relevant?) and two of them were LGBTQ romances (is that relevant?). Titles to come. Stay tuned.

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.

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.)

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 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 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.

Day 6: checking in

I have not been a deny-er about this virus, from the very first moment we heard it was coming to the US. But I will admit to not getting it-- I understood it in my head, but not really. It's so sad and horrifying to see pictures of lost loved ones, exhausted doctors, and projections of how much worse it's probably going to get.

I told Dean the other night that I thought Montana had started the shelter-in-place directive too soon, because really we don't have much COVID-19 here compared to the rest of the country, and people are going to get tired of it and start going back out again. But he shook his head and said that we got it exactly right. If we're lucky, we will avoid getting into a situation like New York, which became dire before anybody fully realized what was happening.

Since the incubation period seems to be anywhere from 5 to 14 days, it's not even really anyone's fault, none of us knew what we were up against when it first started. It makes me so angry when I hear politicians trying to politicize this and make it about the other party screwing it up. It's a virus, a freaking pandemic, and it's the first time any of us has been through this, and could we just cut each other some slack for once. Stop arguing about whose fault it is, get our butts in gear, and problem solve.

OK, that's my rant for the day, which is a little ridiculous since I am in no position to problem solve. Dean and his colleagues are the heroes right now.

Other than walking the dog and driving out to the letterbox yesterday to mail some cards--I never even got out of the car-- I haven't left the house since Friday.  That is not really a problem for introverted me, but even introverts need variety and human interaction. I'm lucky I have Dean home in the evenings. I'm going to start posting more often and (I hope) shorter posts. Not because I think any of you need to read what I'm thinking, but because I need it--I'm doing my best to stay sane. My #1 best change so far is to stop checking the news so often. Once in the morning and once at night is plenty.

Attention span strategies: things to listen to

Presumably, we're all at home, and looking for things to do. (And if you have an essential job, and you're not at home, thank you. I hope the people you're helping are grateful, too.) I have plenty of things that I could be doing around the house, but there's my ADD problem. I work hard on a task for about ten or fifteen minutes, then I get distracted and drift off to check on (fill in the blank), and then I pick up my phone because someone texted me, and an hour later I remember I was working on that task, which is now a glaring reminder of how I supposedly never finish anything.

I will tell you my one life lesson for dealing with this. And if you're not ADD, this won't apply, so you can skip down a couple of paragraphs. In the past, before I knew about adult ADD, I would go through this cycle (start a task--drift away--cringe), and I would feel like a failure. I would compare myself with someone who could sit down and work with focus until they were finished, and I would--just below the level of conscious thought--start to berate myself. You're so dumb. You didn't even finish that task. You can't finish anything. You're a mess. You FAIL at everything. And I would feel bad, and the unfinished project would remind me that I felt bad, so I would quit.

But now that I understand how this works, the plan is to dump the judgment, remind myself that this is just the way my brain works, and go back to the unfinished project. I can't claim I'm 100% at this. Sometimes I still get into the failure mindset. But I'm way better.

Now I even build it into my plans--OK, I've got about 20-30 minutes of attention time here that I can split it up into two or three tasks. Ten minutes to unload the dishwasher. Ten minutes to start a load of laundry. Ten minutes to straighten up the living room. Then I get a break-- twenty minutes of reading, or instagram, or whatever. If you're the type that can blast through things without faltering, that will sound like such a waste of time. But if you're like me, you can get a whole hell of a lot done by breaking your work into 10-15 minute intervals, and circling back to complete things that take longer than that.

And also, make lists. That way you can keep track of what you're supposed to be doing.

OK, so no surprise here, that was a tangent. This post is supposed to be about things to listen to while you're doing mindless chores, another great strategy for staying on task. Things like folding laundry, or standing six feet apart from people in line at the post office, or walking the dog, are considerably less boring if you're listening to something. And if I'm not bored, I have an easier time staying with what I'm doing.

I have these bluetooth earphones which I bought before I was avoiding amazon, and they work great. You can tap the button on the right earbud to pause what you're listening to so when you get to the front of the line at the post office, you don't have to dig out your phone.

Audiobooks work sometimes for me, but honestly, I mainly listen to audiobooks on road trips--and again, it's that attention span thing. Listening to an audiobook requires more of an investment in keeping up with a plot and characters, whereas listening to a podcast can be a lot like eavesdropping on the people behind you in line, or next to you at the coffee shop.

I just did a search to see when was the last time I talked about this, and I was a little embarrassed to see how many times I've told you about my favorite podcasts. So I will skip that this time, because for the most part I'm still listening to the same ones. But I have listened to some individual episodes of podcasts that aren't on my usual rotation that were super interesting to me. Here you go:

Ten Things to Tell You, episode #57, Is it anxiety or intuition?    (not usually a fan of this podcast, but someone recommended this episode and it is good)
Without Fail, Feb 17 2020, The Church of John Green (starts slowly)
Reply All podcast, episode #158, The Case of the Missing Hit
Throughline podcast, "Apocalypse Now" 6/12/19
    (fascinating history of evangelicalism in the US)
Without Fail, Oct 7 2019 "The Cyclist Who Blew the Whistle on Doping"

And in case you haven't heard, Brené Brown has just started a podcast called Unlocking Us. I've only listened to the first episode so far, but it was good.

Stay healthy, stay safe, and as much as you can, stay home. And pass along any podcast recommendations you have.

Alone Again, Naturally Happily. (Apologies to those of you who are old enough to remember that song.)

I was born in 1961, right at the end of the era where the entire culture was pretty much in agreement that you should conform to what was expected of you. The Culture of Conformity, I've heard it called. Things started to change as the 60s went on, and blew wide open in the 70s, but when I was a kid, everybody went to church on Sunday. Divorce was a stigma you'd never live down. Gay? Bi? Trans? Multi-racial? Anything other than being what you were supposed to be was not just frowned on but capital-W Wrong.

One of the things that was frowned on was being an introvert. Obviously it wasn't nearly as traumatic as being gay or trans or any number of other things, but it was still a problem. It was seen as something that was wrong, and you needed to be coached and trained and bullied into being cheerful and perky, chatty and social. My mom just didn't understand how I could enjoy being by myself. Her life was a closely interconnected web of family and friends, and she was (and is) happiest when all her people know each other and keep up with what's happening in each other's lives. To her, that's the way life should be.

And honestly, I'm pretty grateful to her. That I have any social skills at all is because she worked so hard to make sure that I did. But it also set up this constant feeling of being wrong. What I wanted to do was sit on the sidelines, wherever we were, and observe. People watch. Think big thoughts. Daydream. Or even better, read a book. But that was not allowed in our social circle. If the group was doing something, you were supposed to be participating-- kickball, sock hops, ice breaker games.

Oh, Lord, can we just pause for a minute and consider the horror of ice breaker games. *shudders*

Anyway. I wanted to be loved and approved and accepted, so I tried. I tried really hard. But it set up this dynamic where I became convinced that what I wanted to do wasn't what I was supposed to be doing, and what I should be doing was never anything I wanted to do. Life as Continuous Chore.

This is all stuff that I've been vaguely aware of for years, especially after reading Susan Cain's terrific book Quiet. But it has resurfaced again this week, as more and more of the things that I do have been canceled due to COVID-19. I can just stay at home, without feeling guilty. There is nothing else I'm supposed to be doing. In fact, what I'm supposed to be doing is staying home, and since Dean's job is essential and he is working harder than ever, most of the time I'm home alone.

It's.... weird. I mean, I know it's weird for everybody, I'm just explaining my particular version of weird. I can't quite relax into it. It seems so wrong to be doing what I want to do with no guilt or resentment or fear of disapproval. It's kind of amazingly cool.

Hope everyone is holding up at your house. And if you're home with kids, I..... well, you have my deep sympathy. I'm praying blanket prayers for all parents sheltering in place with their kids. I'd have murdered mine by now.

dispatch from home

1. We had plenty of time to talk about pandemics last week as we self-quarantined here in our house on our Not-a-Vacation. Here is my Not-an-Expert takeaway. Among the many complex factors involved in pandemics, two of them are the rate of complications/mortality, and the rate of contagion--how easily you can catch the disease as you, say, walk through an airport. AIDS and Ebola had high percentages of complications and mortality, but they were difficult to catch. In fact, it wasn't possible to catch them while walking through an airport.

COVID-19, on the other hand, appears to be pretty contagious, but thankfully has a relatively low rate of complications/mortality. If an otherwise healthy adult comes down with COVID-19, the great risk isn't that you'll die from it--although that is possible, as are complications-- but that you'll pass it on to someone who is not so healthy and thus is at much higher risk. You probably already know this, unless you've been living under a rock. And if you have, good idea! Stay there.

2. Anyway. All of that was to say, we are lucky that we're having this as our massive wake-up call. Because if something comes along that is both highly contagious and also deadly, we're in for it. We can look at COVID-19 like a practice round. Sadly it's a practice round with dire consequences for 2-5% of our population. Be safe, people. Stay home.

3. I knew that. I know that. But it's so hard to take it seriously. I'm not a person who has ever been afraid of viruses, head colds, or the winter crud that everyone around here gets and can't shake for weeks. I keep catching myself thinking, I could just run out and get a few more things. We're almost out of yogurt. I forgot to get hamburger buns. Maybe I should pick up some batteries.  And since there weren't any confirmed COVID-19 cases at our hospital before Friday, I probably did more running around than I should have. Not a lot, but you know, some.

4. Then today I woke up with a dry throat and some muscle aches and now I am panicking. If I have it, it's probably not going to do anything other than make me feel sick for a few days. But if I have it, I've probably had it for 4-5 days before the symptoms showed up, and there was that last-minute running around. What if I am Typhoid Mary? What if our town suddenly turns into a COVID-19 hotspot, and I'm the one responsible for spreading it around?

5. So, yeah, I hope you are rolling your eyes at my ability to make everything all about me. Because if I have it, I almost certainly got it here locally, and that means it's well on its way around our town and couldn't possibly all my fault. But that paranoid fear has been strong enough that I am now committed to staying home. As I probably should have been all along.

6. There will be an easy way to find out if I have it, because we were packed in this house like sardines last week on our Not-a-Vacation, and PellMel was required to be tested today before she could go back to the hospital where she works. She left before there were any warnings against travel within the US and nobody had any idea how quickly things would change. Now they are requiring anyone who has been out of state to be tested before they can return to work. She'll have her results tomorrow, and then we'll know. Because if she's got it, we've all got it. Lemmings in shiny metal boxes and all that. Although we may have done more running around than we should have, we really didn't do much.

In fact, I'll wait to post this until I can tell you her results. (IT WAS NEGATIVE. PHEW.)

7. Back in the first week of March, when there was something dire on the horizon, I did some stocking up--not hoarding, but enough so that we could stay home for 3-4 weeks. I might have bought a 12-pack of toilet paper instead of the usual 9-pack, but that was about as extreme as I got. Of course, I didn't buy any perishables, because we were going on vacation, right?

Then we didn't leave town, and three people with young-person appetites came and stayed with us for a week, and just about all of my carefully stocked food was eaten. (Fortunately, we still have a fair amount of toilet paper. *she says drily*)(ha. did not intend that pun, but it made me smile.)

*shrugs* I'm still glad they came. We're not going to starve, although we may eat some strange meals. So here I am. I've got plenty to keep me busy: our taxes, for starters, which we decided to go ahead and get done even though the deadline has been extended. Hope you are able to stay home, too, and if you have some kind of essential job, thank you for being out there.