FIRST. I am placing an order for perfume samples, so if there’s anything that springs to your mind as “OH!! You should try ______!!,” then this is the moment!

SECOND. I finally read A Gentleman in Moscow (Amazon link / Target link), which many of you recommended:

(image from Target.com)

It took me awhile to get to it, because I am not reading many books by men right now, and also because I read another book by this author long ago and it left behind a little spot of Depressed Feeling. But! I very much liked this one. It was right on the line of Too Politically Stressful for me, and it pointed out to me once again that I am not good at History and learn it ONLY if it’s fictionalized (Philippa Gregory taught me everything I know about Henry VIII) (but I still wouldn’t be able to hazard a guess at what century he lived in), so now I know a little more than before about early 1900s Russia. I would say this book was a deceptively quiet read: that is, it feels like you’re reading a sort of mellow book about a man living his life, but there are some very dramatic plot elements—which are also presented in a mellow way, so that sometimes I thought, “Wait, what?” and had to go back and re-read the last couple of paragraphs. I love that kind of book. Also, the author addresses the reader in footnotes several times, in a way I found pleasing. I don’t generally want to be reminded of the author’s existence, but in my opinion this particular author pulled it off and it felt more as if THE BOOK ITSELF was talking to me.

THIRD. I have seen buzz about not buying “corporate Pride,” and also I have seen the counter-buzz which says “Hey, not everyone has the same access to things, and also let Mom be supportive by buying the Pride stuff she sees while she’s at Target”; and I am more aligned with the counter-buzz here, seeing as how I am the mom being supportive while shopping at Target. It was my first time browsing in Target since the pandemic began, and it was a fairly rapid browse as I am still a bit skittish, but being able to buy two bottles of this bubbly was a delight:

(image from Target.com)

Note that if you venture into Target to acquire some: the design VARIES. I did NOT notice, but by chance selected two different designs: one with diagonal stripes as shown above, and the other with more of a sunbeam pattern of stripes. And there may be OTHERS! I am going to have to go back to check, because I also have to buy more bottles, because if I don’t have PLENTY of them I am never going to think an occasion is special enough to open one.

I also bought this mug:

(image from Target.com)

FOURTH. I have found two skin-care items that have made a small but perceptible difference:

(image from Target.com)

(image from Target.com)

The first is CeraVe Skin Renewing Night Cream. Note that it is a very small quantity: just 1.7 ounces. But I have been using it for almost a month, and NUMEROUS TIMES have looked in the mirror and thought “Oh, my skin doesn’t look as bad as I’d thought! Actually it looks kind of nice today!,” in sharp contrast to BEFORE I started using it, when it was happening regularly that I would look in the mirror and think “BEHOLD THE RAVAGES OF TIME.” So! I recommend waiting until it’s on sale (I got mine when they were doing a “$5 gift card with $20 purchase of beauty stuff” deal), and then trying it to see if your skin likes it too.

The second is Gold Bond Crepe Corrector. It is TEN DOLLARS for that 8-ounce tube. I find it difficult to make myself use it. But I DO use it: I put it on my neck and upper chest, and on my lower arms / elbows / hands. And again, it’s not that I have seen a REVOLUTION, skin-wise, but I went from REGULARLY noticing the impending-crepe levels of my neck/arms back to the blissful days of not really noticing it (it’s still THERE, but not at levels that catch my eye as often), and to me that is a worthwhile difference. But again, I would wait for a sale and/or get it for yourself as a little Ruined Mother’s Day present.

Don’t forget to tell me if there’s a perfume sample I should try!

Our grocery store had already taken out the one-way aisle signs, and this time they had also taken down the signs requiring masks. Instead, they had signs saying that people who were unvaccinated were required to wear masks, while fully vaccinated people did not have to. As has been widely noted, doing this on the honor system is beyond ridiculous, and only means that many vaccinated people will still wear masks, while most unvaccinated people will not. I am, as you would no doubt guess from this lead-in, still wearing my mask—not just because my kids aren’t fully vaccinated and other people’s kids can’t be, and not just to protect/respect the employees who might not be cool with this new loosening of rules, but also to make it less awkward for others who still think it’s a good idea to wear masks. I felt like I was getting little Solidarity Vibes from other people wearing masks—like, we were looking at each other and thinking “Ah ha! Another voluntary mask-wearer! How nice!” and then briefly squeezing our eyes at each other.

I had wondered if I would be weirdly jumpy and startled to see people without masks, but it turns out I was not. And in fact, afterward, I had to think: WAS my cashier wearing a mask? I remembered the bagger was not. Apparently I am not going to be as flinchy about that as I’d thought I might be.

I have long understood that it is not necessary/useful to shower after grocery shopping—but I am still doing it that way, because it lets me leave the house just that little bit earlier, which generally means the grocery store is less busy. Also, now we’re getting into warmer weather, and it’s pleasant to take a shower after getting all sweaty lugging groceries, so I will just continue doing it this way for now.

It did not seem to me as if there were any remaining pandemic food/supply shortages—except, weirdly, BREAD, which is still patchy and unpredictable. I can always GET bread, it’s not like they’re totally OUT, but the selection is still poor, and they often don’t have any of our several preferred kinds (none of which are special/niche in any way).

I am switching from the Pandemic Plan of going to the grocery store as infrequently as possible, to a new Fully Vaccinated Plan of going regularly once a week; and I am adding back in the little “Whoops, we’re out of hamburger buns” just-running-in-quick trips.

I am still getting a fair number of things using Target’s curbside service, which is why I can go to the grocery store just once a week (before the pandemic, I was going regularly twice a week). At some point I suppose I will stop doing curbside. I’d actually be ready to stop NOW—but now that I am used to using it, I see the sales that are only valid on pick-up orders, and I don’t want to lose those sales! Well. This week I have to go inside to pick up a prescription, and I am planning to make it at least a PARTIAL browsing trip. My guess is that, while browsing, I will see sales that are not available on pick-up orders, and that might help ease the transition. I think it would feel nice to get Target Browsing back into my life.

It’s been a stressy-but-productive week. I’m back to work, which is making me feel exhausted and busy, and the schedule change is stressful; and the housecleaners came back, which was stressful even though it was also great; and now that I am more than two weeks past my second Covid-19 vaccine I am going to a lot of overdue appointments (pap, physical, and soon mammogram and dentist); so I am just feeling very…well, I guess “exhausted and busy” from earlier in this sentence still applies.

And ALSO: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that Rob is planning to go live with my parents for a couple of months, for fun and research: he said he wanted to spend some time with them; and he’s starting to think about where he might want to live after he graduates next spring, and one possibility is the area of the country where my parents live. And we (I am using that pronoun a little vaguely, because it was probably mostly “I” but when we talked about it he did agree) wanted him to get all caught up on appointments (doctor, dentist, optometrist) before he went—but he had let his driver’s license expire, so that was stressing me out (particularly because it turned out he never updated his address on the license, either, so that had to be done as well, but the form only seemed to allow EITHER an address change OR a renewal of an expired license), and also meant he couldn’t drive himself to his own appointments so I had to drive him and then wait out in the car, and also meant an additional appointment for the driver’s license. (One might ask why he did not book the driver’s-license-renewing appointment FIRST. Well, he just DIDN’T.)

But at least we have had unqualified success: he made all the appointments “we” wanted him to make (TONS of good adulting practice there, as it turned out, with him needing to ask me questions such as what is a PCP and who is the “subscriber” on his health insurance and what is his father’s birth year); he went in to each of them on his own; and now his driver’s license is renewed so if there are any further errands he can manage them without me.

And so far my own appointments are going well: pap normal, see you in three years; physical went well, bloodwork all looks good, I got a tetanus booster. The nurse made a big praisey deal about me losing some weight (it’s the 15 hours per week of an Active Library Job, plus the appointment was first thing in the morning, plus I was fasting for bloodwork, plus I was a little dehydrated, plus the last time I was weighed was the day after a Day Off from keto), which I hate but as a co-member of our shared society I understood she intended her remarks to be pleasing to me. My doctor once again handled the topic in a way I appreciate: she asked gently if I’d lost the weight on purpose, asked some questions about stress/anxiety/depression, added a thyroid check and vitamin D check to the bloodwork she was ordering, etc.: in short, treated it like a possible medical symptom, rather than as an Objective Good.

I feel very fortunate that my job is so low-paying, and so unconnected from other things a person/family might need (health insurance, pension, long-term career possibilities), that it was possible to leave it for over a year and then come back to it, without suffering much in the way of ill effects. These are not things a person might normally feel grateful for (“Yay, low pay and no benefits!”), but a pandemic turns some things upside down. (It helped, too, that our college kids have both been living at home, so we have not been paying the increased living costs of college room/board; we saved more on that than we lost with my missing income.)

Today was my first day back to work and I was on one level very happy to be going back (I LIKE this job; I LIKE contributing income; I am also grateful for the physical and mental activity it forces me into), and on another level I felt jittery and unsettled. Almost all of my co-workers at the library have continued to do in-person work throughout the pandemic (with several closures/quarantines when a worker was diagnosed with Covid-19, making me glad of my decision), and so everyone is more than a year ahead of me in terms of changes and new ways of doing things. I imagined myself bumbling around doing everything wrong and making everyone gasp in horror as I failed to take certain precautions that are now automatic/normal for them.

Also, I worried some of them would resent that I was able to leave for a year and then come back—though, everyone knows my job is the lowest paid, and they know it’s the grunt work, so my hope was that they’d mostly be glad to see me because I’d be picking up everyone’s least-favorite tasks again. There were several happy sighs when I went out to collect the book drop this morning: no one likes doing that, and my impression is that when I’m not there it turns into one of those tasks where some people feel like they ALWAYS end up having to do it because other people disappear or pretend to forget or pretend to be busy, and anyway I think it brings considerable relief to have a person whose JOB it is to do it. But also, I had to use this Coping Thought: if any of them DO resent me, there is nothing I can do about that; those are feelings for THEM to process/handle. And also this Coping Thought: most people don’t think very much about other people, or hold on to fleeting feelings of resentment/”Must be nice!” for long. If I just come back and do well at a job that makes everyone’s lives easier, this won’t be an ongoing issue—and if it is, then we’re back to the part about how those feelings are not mine to deal with.

One of my primary fitness goals for the pandemic was to preserve my library-job-gained ability to go down on one knee and get back up again, again and again and again and again and again throughout a shift. I am happy to say I seem to have succeeded, or at least today was not physically difficult—though perhaps we should speak again tomorrow, when the soreness might kick in. Well, I kept MOST of the strength and balance, anyway!

But my back is bothering me, which it did before the pandemic, too. I am going to lean toward doing yoga videos that address back pain/strength and core strength and see if that’s helpful over time.

It was pleasant to be back at work. I liked seeing the books/shelves/materials again. It felt good to feel useful. It felt good/reassuring to remember how to do the job. It was nice to see co-workers again, and to overhear bits of their conversations as I worked nearby.

I did feel a little bumbling and slow. There have been some changes that are obvious and co-workers knew to tell me about; but other changes are more subtle, or were done a year ago so no one even remembers until I have to ask about it or until they see me doing something wrong and have to correct me. And there have been changes to the countertops, and to storage areas, so I was constantly trying to find the pencils, trying to find the bags, trying to find the paper recycling, etc. But that will get easier each day.

There are also things that are now buried more than a year deep in my brain’s filing system: for example, all the little tricks to try when I can’t find a book where it’s supposed to be. And I couldn’t make a beeline for every correct aisle anymore. And I found I was struggling a little bit, just to the point of amusement not to the point of concern, with the alphabet. This job is so good for the aging brain!

I did not like wearing a mask while doing an active job, but I’d anticipated that I wouldn’t (it seemed safe to assume that NO ONE would like that), so that wasn’t a surprise. A few times I had to slow down my pace to make the mask less of an issue: it was starting to suck in against my mouth because I was breathing harder, and that was making me feel a little claustrophobic and queasy. But slowing down helped my breathing slow down, and mostly resolved the problem. It was still unpleasant and humid, and I was happy to get out to my car and take it off. When I got home, I used a cooling/freshening facial mist, and that felt nice. And it WAS fun to CHOOSE a mask to wear.

(A side-note: When I take Edward for his Remicade treatments, we are there for several hours, and we are double-masked the whole time. During his treatments, his vital signs are taken every 30 minutes. One of those vital signs is blood oxygen. Even while he is breathing through two masks over several hours, his oxygen level is just as high as it ever was when he didn’t have to wear masks. So that is a reassuring thought, when I am feeling a little panicky in my mask: I may be uncomfortable, but I am still getting oxygen just fine.)

Patrons are being allowed in, but only in limited numbers at limited times. My supervisor says almost everyone is being good about wearing a mask, and that the few people who are being difficult about it are the same people who were difficult about things before the pandemic, too. That is some interesting food for thought.