Author Archives: Swistle

Stress

I am in one of those little interludes where it seems every person in my household is enmeshed in at least one stressful situation, and where most of those situations include a high level of uncertainty. I sometimes have dreams where I am driving a car but there is no friction, so the car is on the road but gliding along disconcertingly smoothly, as if on ice. Usually in the dream I don’t do much scary sliding; the scariness is more from feeling like the sliding could/will start at any moment, especially if I were to attempt to use the brakes in any way, and oh dear now we’re going down a steep hill, and maybe it will be fine or maybe I will plunge smoothly off that cliff to the right. I keep being reminded of the feeling of that dream.

I was going to list all the stressful things, but that’s already how I’m spending my 3:00 a.m.; and also, I know it would cause some of you to experience uncomfortable empathetic stress. Still, I’m going to list SOME of them. I’m going to try to do it BRIEFLY [proofreading note: why do I even attempt such a thing?], and I’m going to lean heavily on the ones that have mostly been resolved and are therefore now down to the final little stress tendrils.

1. William needed college housing for one semester. (He’ll be doing an internship second semester. This is another source of stress, since we don’t know what/where it will be, or what kind of housing he’ll need.) The college did not have enough housing to go around, and William did not even make it onto the waiting list. His college is in a big city. He had to somehow find housing for (1) just four months (2) and in a pandemic (3) and in a housing crisis (4) and in a big city. Time grew shorter and shorter, and many options were truly terrible (e.g., he found a place, but he’d have to take on a 12-month lease, and pay for the 8 extra months if he couldn’t find someone to take over the lease), and we didn’t know what he’d do if he COULDN’T find housing, and it seemed amazing that he might have to literally drop out of college for a semester because of not being able to find a place to live, but that also seemed to be the direction we were headed. Anyway he DID find a place. Now we’re down to the smaller stressors, like how are we going to get some furniture and kitchen stuff to that unfurnished apartment in a big city with no parking, and what furniture / kitchen stuff should that be, and what day should he go, and GAH how can a windowless basement bedroom with four other people sharing the bathroom/kitchen be the same price as our MORTGAGE payment (okay our mortgage payment from 20 years ago BUT STILL) but it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s only for four months, and this is a pandemic housing crisis and things cost what they cost, and at least we are not paying for TWELVE months.

2. Rob is back home, and would prefer not to be, and is also having trouble finding housing—but at least in this case he CAN do his semester remotely, it would just be BETTER if he could get nearer to it and do some of it in person—so we’re not working with a time deadline, or with the collapse of his plans. But there have still been a lot of stressy conversations/plans/attempts: he’s mostly handling it himself, but he wants to vent to me about it, and also there are things he wants/needs to run past me, and so on. BUT: today he got a very encouraging update that looks as if he may actually be able to get actual college housing and maybe everything is going to work out great. (After seeing what was involved in acquiring non-college housing for William, I have freshly and fervently renewed appreciation for the relative ease of college housing.) It’s not a done deal yet, so we are not counting on it, but it is an encouraging development. I was SO HOPING that what made sense to me (i.e., that there might be some little empty slots in college housing for various reasons, and that the college would be very motivated to fill those slots with paying students, and that after the start of the semester there might not be very many students competing for those slots) seems to be the case for Rob’s college. AND: if this DOES work out, I get a nice little road trip, which I would LOVE. (You might think I’d be too stressed about pandemic stuff to enjoy it, but I feel I can decrease risks pretty substantially while still having a nice time.)

3. There was a whole huge thing involving work needing to be done on our car, and Paul trying to handle that for me because I was so stressed about everything else—and instead he inadvertently made things so much worse, and in such a bizarre/nonsensical/ridiculous way as if we were in some sort of clown sitcom, that I involuntarily near-shouted “ARE! YOU! KIDDING! ME!” with incredulous dismay and then sat in silent incredulous overwhelming despair for half an hour, wondering if there was any way at all to fix it other than going out and impulse-buying a new car. But then all of it self-resolved as if by divine intervention: the main issue he had solved in such an unworkable way ended up no longer being an issue, so then everything else untangled itself.

4. Edward needed an MRI. It’s been such an ordeal each time; and last time he managed to get most of the gross prep fluid down and then he threw it up; and getting medical procedures done is so much more stressful in a pandemic. Also, it meant a long drive to a big city. But it’s done now, and also he got a technician who remembered him from last time, and who corrected the receptionist when she said he had to drink one bottle of prep fluid in 15 minutes and then two cups of water in the next 15 minutes and then a second bottle of prep fluid in the 15 minutes after that, so instead he was instructed to drink one bottle in 30 minutes, then have just a little bit of water, only as much as he wanted to drink, and then to “just do what you can” with the second bottle—which he found so encouraging/comforting that he ended up drinking more than half of it, when I would have predicted he would interpret “just do what you can” as permission to drink two sips and be done. And he was NOT queasy and did NOT throw up.

5. Elizabeth realized she is not willing to do gym class in a mask when everyone is breathing hard and no one else is wearing masks including the teacher, so she needs to drop the class. (She signed up for it on the assumption that everyone would be masked, as they were last year, but our school system has buckled under pressure from parents and is not requiring masks even for staff.) She further realized that her required math class is somehow not on her schedule. And the guidance office recently sent a weary email to all parents/students saying schedule changes are pretty much not happening this year, so please don’t email asking about changes, and that is a real hurdle for rule-following people-pleasers, but Elizabeth is going to have to attempt it. There are numerous other issues/complications here, and I have no idea how they’re going to pan out. But she wrote a good email, and now we wait.

6. While helping Elizabeth deal with her scheduling situation, I realized that FOR SURE Edward would need to drop gym because it is not safe for HIM to be around people who are unvaccinated and breathing hard and not wearing masks—which is when we discovered it is somehow not on his schedule. It is a required class, so there is no reason it would not be on his schedule. On one hand, this is convenient: I don’t have to deal with it right now. On the other hand, the school’s errors are piling up in a way that feels alarming. Their guidance counselor is new as of spring 2021 when the school system required all staff to be personally in the school building again even if not necessary for their jobs, and 30% of the staff quit.

7. The three younger kids started school. I am still prepared/preparing to yank them out. Approximately 10% of students are wearing masks, and 50% of their teachers are wearing them at least part of the time (some teachers take them off when they’re up at the front of the room, but put them on if they’re going to circulate among the students); the principal and vice principal were not wearing masks. Lunch is indoors and normal: not distanced in any way, no outdoors option. The administration sent out an email informing parents that large fans will be provided to every classroom to “increase air circulation.” THAT IS EXACTLY THE WRONG KIND OF AIR CIRCULATION. Also they are still talking about washing hands and disinfecting surfaces as if it is spring of 2020 and we don’t yet know the problem is the AIR. I mean, hand-washing and surface-disinfecting are good! Let’s for sure keep doing those for many OTHER reasons! But that is not the “addressing the Covid-19 issue” they seem to think it is. On the VERY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL we got an email alerting us to a positive case, with the reassuring information that they would clean and disinfect the school as usual. Wow great!

8. I needed new glasses. I was very fretful about the entire thing, especially since one of the pandemic adjustments our eye-doctor has made is “guided browsing”—i.e., they bring you a selection of glasses, and you are not allowed to search on your own. (They will keep bringing you more and more glasses if you want them to, but I knew my own personal ability to ask them to do that would be low.) And you must wear a mask, so how would I even be able to tell if I liked the glasses or not? And glasses are SO EXPENSIVE, and the pricing is so exploitive. (I do like/use Zenni Optical! But I am finding it overwhelming to think of dealing with that right now, and wanted to get at least one pair at the eye-doctor’s office.) So I was very stressed. But now it is over and I have chosen/ordered glasses, and I also asked how much it would be to replace the lenses in my current well-loved frames, so if I hate the new glasses I will just clench my teeth at the wasted money and wear the new glasses while waiting for new lenses to be put in my old frames.

9. Paul is experiencing kidney stones. And I AM very sympathetic: it sounds like it’s pretty dreadful. But is not possible for you to overestimate how often I am receiving Kidney Stone Updates from him, nor how often he says “oof” and “phwoo” and “ow ow ow.” At one point I actually had to leave the house for a little while.

Pandemic School Decisions, Again

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Our school district starts later than many, so I have been watching as other school districts open up and then bad things happen with Covid-19. I keep hoping our school system will watch this too, and make changes, but no. In fact, our school district has recently released their Final Version Covid-19 plan, which is to wait for the horse to get out, and then to start closing the barn door afterward (but only in increments). There’s a whole color-coded chart. We will start in Stage One, which is leaving the barn door open: vaccination will be optional for everyone including staff, mask-wearing will optional for everyone including staff, and there will be no distancing at all, and no precautions of any kind. The next step up, Stage Two, is “When the horse gets out”: at that point, we will have vaccinations/masks optional for everyone, and no distancing or precautions—but the stripe on the chart will be a DIFFERENT COLOR. The next step up from that, Stage Three, is “Horse is trampling more than x% of the population,” at which point vaccines/masks will be optional for everyone, and we will make sure people “social-distance” to 3+ feet apart. When the horse is trampling an even larger part of the population (Stage Four), vaccines/masks will still be optional for everyone, and we will distance to 6+ feet apart you guys!!!—which they told us last year was impossible to do, given the space limitations of our school building, so I am not sure how they plan to do this. The next step up from that is Stage Five: full remote learning. The stripe is PINK!! to show the danger!! There is no stage at which masks will be required for anyone.

You will not be surprised to hear that our school district has a large/active/vocal group of parents campaigning against ALL preventative measures, arguing that “Our kids have gone through enough!”—as if that type of argument is relevant in any way to this sort of situation. “Stop preventing kids from swapping hats in the lice outbreak! This outbreak has gone on too long, and our kids have been through enough! We need to get back to normal now!” “Three days of antibiotics for this pneumonia is ENOUGH, and the breathing treatments are traumatic! It’s time to stop living in fear!” “We’ve been aiming a hose at this fire for hours and the fire still isn’t out but we’re tired of this! Let’s turn off the hose and give everyone a much needed rest!” “People who need continuing treatments for long-term/chronic health conditions have had enough and shouldn’t have to go through any more! They can’t get back to normal unless they stop those treatments!” Or as Becky put it: “My kid was in a car seat for the first half of this trip. They have been immobilized enough! Let the kids move and stretch! No one has been hurt! Time to let my kid move around the car unhampered.”

I have, as you know, a child with a medically-suppressed immune system. There is a new recommendation that certain groups, including his group, should get a third Covid-19 shot, in part because it seems the vaccine does not always “take” in people with compromised immune systems. This is something that happened with his chicken pox vaccine, incidentally: he received both shots, but the vaccine did not take: it is exactly as if he did not get the vaccine. So he relies on herd immunity for chicken pox. Luckily (the doctor mentioned that for him chicken pox would almost certainly result in a nice long hospitalization) there has not been a huge outbreak of chicken pox, since most parents in our area get their children the recommended vaccines—or rather they DID do that, before the Covid-19 vaccine was recommended.

It has felt as if there is no way to make a decision here, since things have been changing so rapidly—but now we are in our final days for choice-making. The national/international pandemic news is worse every day, and yet the parents in our district are ramping up their “We need to MOVE FORWARD now!!” messaging, saying that no one should have to take even the smallest, easiest, most effective precautions, and that they only good option for kids is for things to be NORMAL—as if “normal” were a valid and chooseable option that the rest of us were rejecting for no reason. And the school seems to agree with them, and also is not offering any remote-learning option, so our choices are: send him to school, knowing he might be just the same as if he were unvaccinated, except also with a compromised immune system (a sinus infection two years ago landed him in the hospital for five days and then another two days, and included two separate surgeries), where he will be surrounded by students who are unvaccinated and unmasked—or else…figure out something else, for his junior year of high school, which is the one that at least until recently has been considered one of the most important for college. …Which would of course seem trivial if he were to end up intubated in the hospital, or worse.

Vacation; Housecleaners; Buzz Cut

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We went on vacation and I had my usual insight about how different vacation (and all of life) is for Paul. Some of you will not identify, and good for you and your inarguably better life/marriage, and may the next generation make choices that have more in common with yours than with mine. But I will tell this one anecdote. At one point, we decided to take the kids swimming. Just before we all got into the water, Paul announced that actually he thought he’d prefer to go kayaking instead. He departed, alone. I supervised all of our children in the water—which meant very little swimming/enjoying and quite a bit of counting repeatedly to five to make sure no one had disappeared beneath the surface. Right after this swimming session, there was another excursion planned—again, with supervision of children needed. (Our children don’t need anywhere near the level of supervision they needed when they were small, but a certain level of attendance is still needed in dangerous/unfamiliar/learning situations, and also there is a certain level of “not dumping them on other adults who are also trying to enjoy vacation.”) I went indoors to pee and apply more sunscreen etc.—and found Paul asleep. So he had gone off to do something by himself, leaving me with the children; and then had felt free to just…return from that solo excursion and take a nap. Without checking in or anything. Without worrying or even wondering if the children were being supervised, or if I would like a turn to do something on my own, or if it was okay with me to be indefinitely in charge. Just, doing whatever he felt like doing, without regard for anyone else, and this is the person I apparently deliberately married and apparently deliberately chose to have children with. (And you might say, “Well, why don’t YOU go off and do something on YOUR own??” and the answer is “Because he would have left the children alone in the water.”) I am not telling this story for “Oh SAME girl!” high-fives (though misery does as always love company) OR for “WHAT???” reactions, but more as a measure/check-in of how things are and how they continue to be over the years. For balance, I will say that on this same vacation Paul cheerfully/happily organized (including extensive preparation/packing of ingredients and equipment) and then cooked dinner (with two different appetizers) for fourteen people, while I did no such thing. (But back to the other side of the scale, perhaps we could discuss OVERALL trip-shopping/preparation/packing/unpacking, and how in all of life it seems that Paul gets to choose whether he does chores/childcare or not—and anything he chooses not to do is mine by default.)

***

When we first hired the cleaners, I had never cleaned this house. That was the deal: we could move to the house Paul wanted to move to, but I had seen how things had gone for the last 20 years in our smaller/simpler house, so the deal was that I was not going to be similarly in charge of cleaning the new house just because he preferred that house and had no concept of the associated increase in chores. So we moved, and we hired cleaners (Paul found/contacted/hired the cleaners, because that was another part of the deal), and I was satisfied with their work. Then there was a pandemic, and for well over a year I cleaned the house myself (with half-assed assistance from the rest of the family who were theoretically equally responsible for the substitute cleaning). And now, unfortunately, my eyes are tuned in to what things look like when they are cleaned well. You might have gotten the impression over the years that I am not a good housecleaner, because I hate to do it and often decline to do it—but when I DO clean, I do a Very Good Job (unless I commit ahead of time to doing a Half-Assed Job, which can be necessary for sanity and/or getting anything at all done). This is a curse, as it turns out, because it means I know what the bathroom faucets look like when someone cleans all the little crevices with an old toothbrush and baking soda, and that I notice when someone instead wiped them with a paper towel and didn’t get the crevices and didn’t attend to that part around the back of the faucet/sink that’s hard to see but nevertheless develops build-up if not attended to.

Let’s not suggest I choose new housecleaners. Not only do we all know I would rather sell the house and/or perish than do that, but also I doubt a different set of cleaners would be better: I don’t EXPECT the housecleaners to use a toothbrush on all the little crevices. They are not hired to do it THE SAME AS I WOULD HAVE DONE IT; they are hired so that I don’t have Primary Responsibility for doing the cleaning, and so that the most important cleaning gets done steadily and without the ball being dropped when I despair and/or go on an absolutely justified strike. It’s just that I wish my eyes weren’t tuned into it now. I also wish that, during the pandemic, I had paid myself the same money we paid/pay the cleaners, since I certainly earned it.

***

Elizabeth got a buzz cut. Over the years I have considered myself a pretty laid-back parent about hair, with a “It’s only hair / It’s their hair / They can do what they want” attitude about it—but I had not understood that “buzz cut for a girl” was on the table so I had some rapid catching-up to do. One of my primary fears was that she would have a picture in her mind of what it would look like, and the reality would be dramatically different, and then there would be a crying teenaged girl refusing to go to school or see friends or whatever—but none of that came to pass. She is happy with how it looks, and keeps talking about how quick and easy it is to deal with, and she has sent many pictures to friends and has changed her Bitmoji to match it and so forth. She also bought some painter pants and has been exclaiming about how many/deep the pockets are, so Elizabeth is really living her best life right now. I don’t like the buzz cut, but I can APPRECIATE the buzz cut, if you follow me, as well as the CONCEPT and UPSIDES of the buzz cut; and also I have snapped back around to my “It’s only hair / It’s her hair / It doesn’t matter what I think of it” attitude.

Comparing/Contrasting Musicals: Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar

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Comparing/contrasting the musicals Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar:

• Both Jesuses are white and blond. Godspell Jesus has a blond afro. [It was hard to know how to write that. Normally “Afro” is capitalized. But this is a fake afro, on a white person. So I left it lowercase, to indicate that it was non-real? But I don’t know if that is right.] Jesus-Christ-Superstar Jesus has Brad-Pitt-dating-Jennifer-Aniston-and-copying-her-Rachel-hairdo highlighted blond wingy sections.

• Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus is miserable suffering sulky moody flopping Jesus. Godspell Jesus is happy dippy skipping clown Jesus.

• Godspell covers a lot of the New Testament parables/lessons: the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, you should treat the poor/sick how you would treat Jesus himself and you will be judged by God using that method, blessed are the meek, turn the other cheek, etc. Jesus Christ Superstar focuses on Jesus criticizing his followers, Jesus defending the use of expensive ointment on himself when poor people are starving, Jesus needing a good night’s sleep for the love of god, Jesus being beaten, and sick people asking too much of Jesus until he screams.

• Jesus Christ Superstar makes it weird with Mary Magdalene by having her in hot romantic love with Jesus. Godspell makes it weird by having John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot be the same person, and also having him personally crucify Jesus.

• Godspell does dumb clowny voices/antics/faces. Jesus Christ Superstar has dumb priest hats/chests and SO MUCH SAND/DUST EVERYWHERE.

• Godspell features the Twin Towers at one point (among other New York backdrops), in case it turns out you would appreciate some time to brace yourself for that. Jesus Christ Superstar is all sand/dust/rocks, no traumatic New York scenery.

• Godspell has some male and some female disciples. Jesus Christ Superstar has all boy disciples.

• Both films skip the resurrection, which is an interesting choice.

• We have been listening to the Godspell soundtrack all week, even the ridiculous druggy ’70s song about talking to a pebble in your shoe (though we skip the oddly formally-sung operatic one about plowing the fields and scattering the good seed). We have not been inclined to listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack yet.

Bra-Shopping with Teenagers

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I beg of you, can we please talk about bra-shopping for teenagers? I don’t want to embarrass anyone in particular, but I went shopping with SOMEONE in the age-16 range, and I about went slap out of my mind, and we came home with nothing.

SOMEONE is slim and small-chested, and until recently has been able to get away with pull-over training bras from the Girls department, but has finally outgrown the largest size. (She actually could have used something different a year or so ago, but changing rooms were still closed at that time for the pandemic, and after ordering several batches online and returning them, I gave up.) I THINK a large part of the issue is that she is therefore unaccustomed to what a regular bra feels like. Because I doubt she is much more than a 32A, but she was claiming today that 34B was way too small/tight for her to be willing to wear it. But also: bras fit VERY DIFFERENTLY from brand to brand, so I don’t want to force her into buying some that are uncomfortable for her. But also: they DO take some getting used to, and I don’t want to buy her a bunch of too-big bras, either.

And also: she was getting pretty frustrated and wasn’t super open to the idea of trying on more. (If it is helpful: someone’s rib measurement is 28 inches, which as I understand it means we start with a band size of 32 and see how things go from there.) And also: SOMEONE is the personality type that gets kind of uncommunicative-bordering-on-mute when discouraged/frustrated; it can be very hard to find out what the Real Problem is. For example: today she had already tried on quite a few bras before she revealed that she did not know how to do the hooks. (This was communicated as “And the STUPID hooks are IMPOSSIBLE TO USE.”)

I don’t know what to do NEXT. I THINK the only thing is for her to just keep going back and trying on bras until she gets used to how they’re supposed to fit and finds some tolerable ones? But she, I mean SOMEONE, is so RESISTANT to this idea. (Though perhaps she will feel better after getting over today’s discouragement.) I wondered if those of us who were and/or have bra-wearing teenagers might have some advice.

Here are some suggestions we have already been through and/or are working on:

• What about having a clerk help her / a professional fitting? She was an absolutely Hard Pass on this. I don’t blame her—and also, I had a professional fitting once, and it was WRONG and led to a long time period of wearing uncomfortable bras before I realized I could flout that fitting and wear what felt comfy/right.

• What about sports bras? They might be more like what she’s used to, while having more support/padding than the little-girl ones. This is an option I am still working on with her. She looked at a bunch of them and rejected them, but I think there is still hope. One problem was that the store we were at had mostly the kind of sports bras that are supposed to be worn on their own with no shirt over them—more like a bra-shaped top you don’t have to wear a bra under. Another problem is that the one thing she doesn’t like about her current bralette option is that they have a sports-bra type of criss-crossed back that often pokes out of necklines, and the sports bras looked like they mostly had that kind of strappage too.

• What about [type that is comfier/plainer/softer/simpler]? You may be surprised, as I was, to find that she was most drawn toward lacy-looking ones in vibrant colors like teal and purple. In fact, I had to say no to a HEAVILY-bulked-up push-up bra. (That is the kind of thing she can buy with her own money while shopping with her friends.)

• Maybe try whatever bra you like, but in her size? I totally WOULD, but it doesn’t seem to come in her size. (It seems to have a million different listings and name variations, but I like the Playtex Balconette Underwire, which varies from about $17 to $40+ depending on color/size, which seem to mostly be out of stock. I like the fit best of the ones with an all-over pattern, rather than the ones with a different solid/patterned/lace stripe across the top.)

I am not even really sure what I am asking here! I don’t think I have specific questions, I think what I want is to be sitting around with coffee and treats, discussing it generally with other people, having people say lots of thoughts about bras and bra-shopping and their own teenaged/teenager experiences, and maybe saying what worked for them / their kids, and/or maybe saying “GAH I KNOW RIGHT??? IMPOSSIBLE” or whatever.

High School Friend

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Yesterday I realized it had been awhile since I’d seen anything on Facebook from my old high school friend Dave. I went to his Facebook page to see if there were any clues, and to see just how long it had been since he’d posted anything so I could consider if it was worth messaging him to check in—and it was a “Remembering” Facebook page because he died four months ago. I don’t know of what. Covid? Heart attack? Suicide? I wish it were considered more normal to say the cause of death. It feels helpful to the whole processing of it. It is just a DIFFERENT THING if he died one way versus another.

I am feeling a little stunned. We weren’t super close, but we were closer in high school, and in fact tried a couple of dates. We realized pretty quickly that we were Flirty Friends and not people with Genuine Romantic Possibility—but still, he is in the small elite group of People I Have Kissed. Since high school we’ve just exchanged friendly emails now and then, and we were friends on Facebook, and that’s about it. He came into town once for a class reunion and asked if I wanted to get together, and I didn’t think it seemed like a good idea, and now I kind of wish I’d said yes—but if he were still alive right now, I wouldn’t be regretting my decision, so.

I would like to send a card to his family (he had a wife and two children), but it is hard to know what to say. I would not mention the kissing part. But maybe this is a situation where a card from me is not valuable. I wasn’t a close friend. I don’t know if “stories from high school” are particularly appealing to the widow. I keep thinking that I should err on the side of Doing Something, but then mentally composing a draft for the card and getting stuck. I feel like it’s even more awkward since literally MONTHS passed before I knew.

RRRRRZIP; Baseball; Toilet Paper Shrinkage Continues

29 Replies

You will not, I think, be surprised to hear that I lay awake last night trying to go back in time and redo the interaction with my supervisor about a co-worker’s lack of a mask. “It’s just…Andrea doesn’t wear a mask. And I don’t know if she’s vaccinated or not, and of course I know not to ask about that. So with Edward’s immunosuppressed….” RRRRRZIP. “It’s just…Andrea doesn’t wear a mask. *MEANINGFUL LOOK, TRUSTING SUPERVISOR TO UNDERSTAND*” RRRRRZIP. “Oh! I wanted to talk to you about that. It’s a little bit tricky, because Andrea doesn’t wear a mask, so of course I…” RRRRRZIP. “Oh! I wanted to talk to you about that. It’s a bit tricky to figure out how to do the newspapers safely—but what if I left an hour or so early on a day we weren’t busy, and then I could come in and do them on Saturday morning when Andrea isn’t here? Because why should ANDREA be even SLIGHTLY inconvenienced by having to follow THE RULES SET BY OUR GOVERNING BOARD, when I could instead rearrange MY whole….” RRRRRZIP.

Sigh.

Well! We have continued watching baseball, and here is the thing about baseball: it is more hours per week than a half-time job—and that’s just following one single MLB team. I am interested to know if people who follow baseball tend to watch ALL the games played by their chosen team, or if it’s more of a “tuning in when I’m in the mood”/”watching the important games” sort of hobby. Well, that’s a silly question, since of course the answer is yes: some people watch all the games by a certain team; some people watch even more games than that; and some people just tune in to some of them, using various ways of deciding which ones (in the mood, have the time, like the team, game is important, etc.).

In other news: toilet paper rolls have narrowed again, just since I last bought toilet paper:

Just how long do they think they can keep doing this, when the spindle provides an easy way to measure how much shrinking has happened?

So much room on the spindle!

Little Spiral

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I had a bit of a spiral at work today, and on the plus side I was fairly aware that it was a spiral, and on the other hand I also felt like NO IT IS REAL, I AM RIGHT TO BE UPSET AND CRINGING, and either way I wanted to make it feel less bad, and this is how it went:

The first thing that happened was that I was working with someone I don’t usually work with (she works evenings/weekends and as a sub); she used to be a page, but now she works the desk; and when she comes into work, she’s been doing some of my tasks. Which, I can see how that could be perceived as helpful (and even necessary, on days when she’s there and I’m not), but (1) I like to do my job my way, and (2) I often don’t have enough work to fill my shift, and (3) I LIKE TO DO MY JOB MY WAY. So when I AM there, I want her NOT to do my work.

And also: desk people get, like, 2/3rds again the pay of a page, so the LIBRARY does not want to pay a desk person to do paging work at times when there is a page on duty. And also: paging work is seen as bottom-of-the-ladder grunt work, and that’s why we HAVE a page: so that the desk people don’t have to do that work. There is only a page about 20 hours a week, and when there is no page, the desk people fight about who has to do the page work. So I thought I could address it successfully from that angle, and so this morning I said in what I hoped was a friendly and appreciate way, “Oh, hey—you don’t have to do that! When there’s a page, use the page!” But she clutched the work in question, and started saying nervous things to me and to ANOTHER co-worker, about how she’d already started it, and she was almost done, and something else I couldn’t follow. It was extremely awkward and left me feeling like I had handled it badly: it can be difficult with a mask on to make oneself understood, and I wondered if I’d come across completely differently than I’d intended. And also: I felt as if I’d used my ONLY idea and it had been a failure, which led to me feeling as if I can’t handle even the smallest interpersonal conflict, which led to me feeling that I am a prickly and difficult person who can’t get along with others, and that it is impossible to be understood in this life/world.

So that’s how I started off the day, first thing. Then, later on, my supervisor asked me to please manage the newspapers, which is a once-a-month thing. It is considered a fairly undesirable task, but I am not sure why, and I find it satisfying and don’t mind doing it at all. Except: the area where the older newspapers are stored (and where the newspaper-managing job needs to be done each month) is where one of my co-workers works, and she appears to be refusing to wear a mask, and her reaction (a silent tight tiny pained smile) to a mention of vaccinations brought me pretty quickly to the conclusion that she is likely not vaccinated (but I don’t KNOW that to be the case), and I was out for a large part of the pandemic so I don’t know what the story is on the mask (all staff are required to wear masks, so I don’t know if she has an exemption or if no one is addressing it or what), and haven’t felt as if I could ask—but in any case, I don’t want to work in that small room with her.

Last month it coincidentally worked out well: I had to take another day off for an appointment, so I said I could swap those hours and come in on a Saturday instead (the unmasked co-worker doesn’t work Saturdays), and I did the newspapers that day. But today my supervisor asked me to do the newspapers, and I did not know what to do to express myself clearly and succinctly on this complicated issue and while wearing a mask, and so I stammered out something like, “Okay! It’s just…I was…is Andrea vaccinated?” My supervisor blinked, then said she’d check something with the director, then I heard them talking, and then I heard the director say “I’d really like to err on the safe side with that,” which I first took to mean that she wouldn’t make an employee work with someone unmasked, but later realized it was more likely from tone and context that she meant she would rather not divulge one employee’s vaccination status to another employee; and then my supervisor came out and said don’t worry about it, they’d figure something else out with the newspapers.

And I was just CRINGING, because the newspapers are considered an undesirable task so I worried it looked as if I was trying to find an excuse not to do them, BUT ALSO because I did not successfully address my concern and now there was no way to do it over! Especially since my supervisor might not even KNOW that Andrea is not wearing a mask at work! So I was thinking that what I SHOULD have said was something more like, “Okay! It’s just…Andrea does not wear a mask. So if she is not vaccinated, I would rather not work in the same room.” And that this would have clearly laid out the source of my concern, WITHOUT asking any question I then had to be denied the answer to: I just would have been giving my supervisor the information she needed, and SHE could have decided what to do from there. Instead, I felt like both my supervisor AND the director would think I was being inappropriate and nosy and judgey. And that both of them would see me as being Difficult. And that maybe I WAS being difficult, and should have just taken care of the stupid newspapers, which would have taken under an hour. And that I couldn’t believed I’d ASKED IT AS A QUESTION CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE EVERYTHING IS SO IMPOSSIBLE

These two exchanges together had me all but falling apart, and then feeling ridiculous for nearly falling apart over such small things, and then wondering if maybe I should just quit since obviously I can’t cope with anything in the workplace, not even small normal everyday things. Fortunately I CAN recognize this as (probably) over-reacting—but that doesn’t stop the over-reacting from continuing to happen. I wondered if there was anything I could do to fix any part of it, or if there were any Coping Thoughts that would help stop the over-reaction.

There was no way to go back and try again with my supervisor, but I did manage to think that one through. First, that she was likely focused ONLY on HER part of the conversation (“Uh oh, what am I allowed to say here?”) and not really at all on MINE: a supervisor/boss is going to be thinking of the ramifications of the ANSWER to a question like that, and not so much about the existence of the question itself. Second, my alternate idea isn’t, upon further reflection, much better: in that format, I’d have worried afterward that I appeared to be tattling on Andrea, and also that I was coming across as Taking a Dramatic Stand and still just as judgey. The real issue here was that there was no good way for me to say what my concern was; and in my supervisor’s shoes, I would be thinking “GAH, I forgot all about Andrea!! I can’t believe I asked someone to work in there!! And I guess we’re going to have to deal with that Andrea problem, or else I’m going to need to figure out some other way of dealing with the newspapers because we can’t ask someone else to work in there.” I don’t think my supervisor is anxious like I am, but I still think she is likely thinking more along the lines of “Oh, shoot, the Andrea Thing” and not “Wow, Swistle was really inappropriate”; I think she is likely thinking about what SHE needs to do here and what HER next steps should be, and almost certainly NOT AT ALL about how her employee could/should have better approached the issue.

So that was one part mostly dealt with. I couldn’t FIX it, but I could stop thinking “Oh if ONLY I had said X instead!!,” and I could feel as if my supervisor and the director were very unlikely to be giving ME any thought at all, and I could convince myself that if anything, they were thinking of ANDREA and the issue SHE was causing—not SWISTLE and the cringiness of her QUESTION.

But what about the former page? It was especially hard to address because I wasn’t sure what she had said, AND I didn’t know what she thought I’D said. So many levels of uncertainty to imagine and dramatize and fret about, possibly for NO REASON WHATSOEVER! Here’s what I concluded: When there is an awkward/uncertain interaction with a person you’ve hardly ever interacted with, a really good way to at least MITIGATE the situation is to GIVE THEM MORE DATA TO WORK WITH. When you know someone pretty well and they handle something awkwardly/badly, there is an easy benefit of the doubt: you think, “They probably didn’t mean it that way” or “That wasn’t like them; I wonder if something else is going on.” The interaction gets watered down by all the OTHER interactions—even if you have a temperament that might normally be inclined to go straight for “OH GOD ARE THEY MAD AT ME?? DID I DO/SAY SOMETHING WRONG WITHOUT REALIZING??” And if you have a slightly weird interaction with someone and you don’t know how to interpret it, it can make it a lot better if you run into them later and they’re acting completely normal and friendly.

So what I did was, I on purpose stopped by the desk to chat with the OTHER person working at the desk, and then gradually included the former page in the conversation as well, so that all three of us were chatting in a friendly way. And that went very well. So now if she feels like I was weird or unfriendly this morning, she has more data to water that down with. And if she keeps doing my tasks when she arrives at work—well, it won’t be often, and I will just not make an issue out of it, because she is probably just doing the tasks the way she does them on days I’m not there, and no one else will thank me for breaking her of that habit.

Three Things I Am Fretful/Peevish About Today

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Three things I am fretful/peevish about today:

• “Friendly reminders,” which is a wording that makes a reminder come across as not only unfriendly but also extremely irritating. Do the people who WRITE “friendly reminder” not feel that same way when they RECEIVE a friendly reminder? Are they perhaps AIMING FOR that effect? The particular one bothering me today is a renewal notice from our city, for something that needs to be renewed in September. They sent me a renewal notice in JUNE, which I had to put aside because it is not even POSSIBLE to do the renewal more than a month before it’s due; and today they have sent me a “friendly reminder” that I haven’t yet renewed it.

• A co-worker keeps suggesting ways I could spend my time. She is not in charge of me in any way. I have not shown any evidence of needing to have tasks suggested to me. The tasks she suggests are not tasks I have neglected, but rather tasks I do automatically as part of my daily routine without being asked/told. She is not suggesting things that are MORE important than what I’m working on (not that it would be her job to evaluate that), or things that are time-sensitive, or things where she can’t do a particular part of her job until I do that particular part of mine. This is not happening at times when I am at loose ends: she interrupts me doing my job to tell me (or worse: HAND to me) a different part of my job I could be doing. It’s hard to respond without sounding defensive: e.g., “I was GOING TO do that.” But…I WAS going to. As I ALWAYS DO, without being prompted by her. Until now, I’ve been just…taking care of the thing she hands me, because the task always IS something that’s part of my job, and because I wondered if I was missing something (I wouldn’t want to Take A Stand and then find out I hadn’t understood a situation and DID need to handle that thing right away), but she is starting to escalate it so I am going to have to escalate, too—to a cheery “Oh, sure, just put that aside and I’ll get to it!,” which is a level of fierce throw-down confrontation it has taken me a couple of weeks to steel myself for. DON’T WANT TROUBLE, DON’T START TROUBLE, CO-WORKER

• Elizabeth is taking an online class over the summer. Twice now, we have readied ourselves for a “student/parent check-in” Zoom meeting with her teacher, and her teacher has not appeared. Both times, I have panicked: maybe it’s something on our end, and the teacher thinks WE are not showing up! And yet—the first time, as we were restarting the computer and re-attempting the link and making sure we’d followed the right link and other assorted trouble-shooting tasks I am sure you are well familiar with by this stage of the pandemic, Elizabeth emailed the teacher about the situation, adding that we didn’t know if the problem was on our end or what but we couldn’t seem to get into the meeting, and the teacher never responded: not at the time, and not later. So when it happened again today, I did still panic, but my panic was tempered by that perplexing detail. Because if I were the teacher, and I HAD shown up for a meeting (especially WITH A PARENT), and the student/parent had seemed not to show up, and then the student had emailed me five minutes after the meeting was supposed to begin, saying that she and her parent were there but the meeting just kept saying it wasn’t starting yet, and that she didn’t know if the problem was on her end, I would certainly have responded—if only to prove that I had been there, and that I wasn’t the one missing the meeting!

Do feel free to add your own peevish frets / fretful peeves.

Pandemic Continues Endlessly

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I found your comments on the last post exceedingly reassuring and helpful—and I hope others in similarly financially-dependent situations found the comments section similarly reassuring. I found it helpful on so many levels. The reminder that there WOULD BE some money, and some time to figure things out. The stories about others who were financially dependent, and then had to and/or wanted to change that, and were able to. The specific ideas for classes/careers that might be good options. The reminder that there are quite a few of us in this situation, and HAVE BEEN quite a few of us in this situation, and that we, like so many before us, would figure something out, and that we don’t necessarily have to figure something out PREVENTATIVELY (though it wouldn’t be weird to do so, either, if we wanted to for other reasons).

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a pandemic-themed post. I’ve stopped marking the number of weeks of pandemic lockdown on the calendar, because we are no longer locked down: we are going to routine medical/dental appointments; we are going to work; we are seeing vaccinated friends and family. (Elizabeth’s sleepover went well!) I’m gradually using up the extra groceries and seeing space open up again in the cabinets and freezer. My intention is to send the children to in-person school in the fall, though at least one friend has chosen to homeschool for the stability of not having to wonder what might happen, and I wonder if later this will seem prescient.

I don’t have any kind of “the pandemic is over” feeling, only a feeling of “this is at least a temporary respite, and we should make a good effort to get caught up on things while we can”: routine appointments, new glasses, dental work, an updated MRI for Edward. I’m still wearing a mask into stores, though very few other people are; I avoid making eye contact with them, so that they won’t think I am thinking they should be wearing masks (I am thinking they should be wearing masks) and get confrontational about it.

I have seen others saying that they feel the way they felt in February/March of 2020, as things were starting to Look Scary, and that is roughly how I feel, though of course with differences all over the place: there is a vaccine now; we have some experience in what lockdown is like; we know how to use Zoom; we own masks; we know that a certain percentage of our community thinks pandemics are nothing to worry about, which is why this one is not over and can’t be over. I am trying not to overindulge in news, but I listen to the NPR briefing each morning, and the news about the Delta variant is not cheery. They had someone on the other day who said we can expect things to get pretty bad again this fall/winter. “Mostly for unvaccinated people,” these stories often add, as if we don’t all know and love some unvaccinated people. As if we have forgotten that people under 12 years old are unvacccinated people. As if schools and daycares, under pressure to go back to normal this fall, are not full of unvaccinated people.