The kids are all back to their various remote-learning options, but after each class they will come talk to me about it—something that on one hand I treasure, but on the other hand has gone well past the treasuring point. One single class = 20 minutes of frenetic play-by-play: what the teacher said; what fellow classmates said; what misunderstandings occurred; why they don’t know what assignments are due or when; how confusing the website is; how frustrating the online meeting glitches were; how frustrating it was not to be able to be unmuted, because Dad had a meeting at the same time, and how the child was apparently unable to figure out any way to communicate that fact to the teacher, and how the child and Paul were apparently unable to figure out ahead of time that this would be the case and make other arrangements. Then Paul comes downstairs on one of his twenty daily work-breaks to go talk to his wife about what’s frustrating HIM, how HIS online meeting platform is glitching, how HIS co-workers are being dumb, and to ask whether the mail is here yet. AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE

I can’t write without being interrupted. As soon as one person stops talking to me, the next person starts; as soon as the kids are tucked back in with fresh classes, I hear Paul’s footsteps. Or else I have to leave the room because someone has a meeting. Now that meeting is over, and someone else’s meeting starts in ten minutes, so I have ten minutes to do what I want in that room, but there are two people both trying to talk to me. Or else they’re standing behind me so they can potentially see me writing about them. Even if people aren’t talking to me, they’re talking to each other in the same room as me. And if they run out of things to tell me about work/school, they start trying to make me look at the cats, or they will read Reddit posts aloud, or they will QUOTE MEMES FROM MEMORY, IN RANDOM BATCHES. OH GOD, LEAVE ME ALONE

I have had to literally interrupt, saying “Pause!” cheerfully while pressing an imaginary pause button, so that I can GO TO THE BATHROOM, or so that I can continue through the door I was about to go through to get an ingredient for dinner / take something out to the mailbox / put something into the washing machine / put something on the shopping list / plug in my phone, as I was on my way to do when someone started talking to me. I have had to jot down on a notepad what I was about to do when interrupted, so that I can stop frantically trying to remember it while someone is talking to me.

Paul will seriously come stand next to where I am busily working at my computer and say, aloud, “Now, what was it I was down here for? Hm. Hm hm. Was it something with the…no. Or maybe…no. Let’s see, where did I put my phone? Oh, urg, did I remember to email Jeff about that thing?” I have started responding by thinking aloud, too, to let him see how delightful it is; if necessary I will start taking field trips to do it while standing next to him at his work computer. He will come downstairs to make his lunch, and every 20 seconds as he is making it, he will call out some unanswerable little thing to me (“Huh, this bag of chips isn’t as broken as usual!”), and want me to reply (“Huh!”). Then just enough silence for me to go back to what I was doing, and then another remark (“Not as many cars out there today!”) (Me, making a gigantic effort:”Huh! Wonder why!”). And his phone is set for LOUD notifications, so it goes “BING BING!!” several times per minute the whole time he is in my midst.

I will sit down with my lunch, and I will pick up my book and feel all contented, and someone will come in and really SETTLE IN to start talking to me.

Obviously we need some new systems to deal with this new situation, and I know we will develop them. This won’t just go on and on like this. But for RIGHT NOW I am running out of ways to say “Huh!” and “That sounds frustrating!” I am also COMPLETELY OUT OF EAR AVAILABILITY

In our area, the only curbside pick-up option I’ve found for groceries is Wa1mart. My philosophical/moral/ethical objections to Wa1mart are not higher than all other considerations: I will buy a few things there that I can’t find anywhere else. And at some point the risk/reward ratio would reach a point that it would be worth it to shop there for groceries, but we are not there yet.

About a week ago I heard an ad on the radio that a grocery store chain in our area was going to offer curbside. It’s not a store I usually shop at: the nearest location is 20 minutes in an inconvenient direction, and it’s a noticeably smaller store than my usual, and it’s somewhat more expensive, so there’s no advantage. But I’ve been there a few times In The Beforetimes when I was looking for something hard to find, or when I happened to be on my way home along that road and just needed one or two things, so it’s not a completely unfamiliar store, which means it’s not new/scary. I got all invested in their website: made an account, added a couple hundred items to my Shopping List so I could choose from that list later—and then it turned out the store nearest to me didn’t offer curbside, even though at the start of this whole thing I had chosen it from the site menu that popped up when I clicked “Try Curbside!” Well. Perhaps they will have it later on. Or perhaps I will decide to drive to the one that is 35 minutes away.

Anyway, for today I had to go back into a store, and so I did. I did a two-cart trip, so we are all set for awhile in case there is a big back-to-school outbreak, or in case we want to pause while we wait to see if there is. There was nothing particularly interesting to report, but I will report it anyway. There were more varieties of chicken nuggets/tenders: still not up to the usual selection, but they had more than just the kid ones, including the ones I haven’t seen for ages like boneless buffalo bites. Plenty of toilet paper, but almost out of paper towels: employees were filling the paper towel shelves with toilet paper. They had some yeast in jars! Not a ton, and not the kind for bread machines, but a nice little row of jars of the regular active kind. Plenty of flour, of a nice number of brands/types, though not entirely back to normal. Still no antibacterial wipes or spritzy antibacterial cleaners, and only unfamiliar brands/shapes of hand sanitizer, including an “all-natural” one I looked at askance. They had more flavored seltzers again: for awhile they’d had only the more expensive brands.

I have rediscovered the joy of Snack Dinners. I used to do those all the time when the kids were much littler, but for some reason had stopped making them. They can end up remarkably time-consuming, but in a way I find fun. And I find it especially worth it now that I’m eating differently from everyone else again, because with Snack Dinner there can be overlap: if I make deviled eggs and coleslaw and little rolls of deli meat for my own plate, I can ALSO put those on other people’s plates (extra egg-half and no deli meat for the vegetarians). And it’s a good way to use up some of the unpopular granola bars (I cut them in as many pieces as I have kid plates), and the last of a kind of chips/crackers/pretzels that nobody seems to eating, and fruit everyone has rejected because of one small bruise. Or, if I have one potato left in the bag and it’s bothering me, I can pan-fry it and divide it up. Oh, and I have to credit Paul with thinking of the idea of popping a bag of the microwave kettle corn I bought and didn’t like very much, and using that as another Snack Dinner side dish. (Henry can’t have it, because he has braces.)

Also! Also! A long time ago, back in the spring, someone mentioned that their store was totally out of the purple box of Annie’s mac and cheese, and that that was the only kind their kids liked, and then a lot of other people chimed in, agreeing that (1) it was the best one and (2) it was hard to find. Well! We had never tried it, but I immediately want whatever everyone else likes and particularly if it is not available, and so the next time I saw it in the store I bought a box. And then it just sat there on the shelf waiting for me to remember to make it, until I realized I could make it for snack dinner! Normally the two older boys make their own dinner these days, but they’re still interested in being handed 1/5th batch of an interesting new macaroni and cheese to sample. So now I’m doing this with a bunch of other packaged noodle/rice items that look interesting to try.

Well, and also ANYTHING I want them to try. Like, I don’t want to make every single person a fluffernutter sandwich (a coveted treasure of my childhood, though not of Paul’s) and have everyone too grossed out to eat, and have all that food wasted. But I can make ONE-HALF fluffernutter sandwich, and give everyone a little piece! Or, maybe none of the kids are trying the new jam flavor because they don’t want to commit to a whole sandwich of it, but I can make a half sandwich and give them each a little piece; or I can make a slice of butter-and-jam toast and give them each one toast-finger. Or, maybe I buy a can of soup that looks interesting, and no one wants the whole can but everyone is willing to try a little snack-bowl of it. And so on! I find it quite fun. I think that’s what I’ll do for dinner tonight.

I wish there were not so much SOAP in this picture.
I am not feeding my children soap.

I had a little medical thing happen yesterday. Probably at some point I mentioned that the reason I ended up diagnosed with GERD/reflux, despite never noticing anything like heartburn except when I was pregnant, was that on several occasions I had taken a perfectly normal bite of food and it had not gone down right: I could breathe, but the food felt stuck for a couple of minutes. Which makes it sound like the kind of thing where you just need to take sip or water or something, and downplays how extremely painful it is, combined with a feeling of needing to burp and/or throw up, combined with the urgent feeling of The Body Is Having An Emergency Right Now, combined with any sip of water either refusing to go down or else increasing the pain. Really, very uncomfortable, do not recommend. Anyway, I got on a daily medication for GERD/reflux (omeprazole, if you are curious) and the swallowing thing stopped happening, and the medication also stopped my incessant light dry cough that I’d thought was a sign of my family’s pervasive asthma/allergy issues but turned out to be unnoticed heartburn also.

ANYWAY. Yesterday morning I had one of those painful “food is stuck” things, but I hadn’t had anything to eat yet, just coffee (but: acidic; also: hot, which apparently can sometimes trigger such things); and also, instead of for a couple of terrible minutes, it went on for over an hour at a “Do I need to go to the ER?” level of pain/weirdness, and then it was at a milder level for an hour or so after that, and then for the rest of the day it wasn’t happening anymore but my esophagus felt sprained, and there was discomfort every time I swallowed (new awareness: how often I swallow). I could theoretically eat and drink, but it was much too unpleasant to do it. I did try two doses of baking-soda-in-water early on in the process (thinking it might be a big acidic overreaction to the coffee), to no effect.

From online research, it seems to have been an esophageal spasm. It looks like generally it’s not dangerous, but it’s very uncomfortable, and not very treatable. Or rather: there are a lot of articles online with, like, the same three things doctors can try (including, inevitably, have the patients lose weight! and eat bland soft food! and avoid foods that seem to make it happen more often! yay medical science!!), plus a couple of medications and procedures, but then hundreds of message boards saying NOTHING WORKED AND I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS. I am going to try not to assume this will be my life, since apparently a person can also have one esophageal spasm and then no more.

The likelihood of having them is thought to be increased by stress and anxiety, isn’t that funny? Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

One thing I have learned about myself is that I will eventually take a child to the ER, because I can take being thought of as an over-fretful mother, and I can’t take wondering how I’d feel if I should have brought them but didn’t—but I will apparently never take myself to the ER unless I have broken a bone (well, not if it’s a toe bone, but anything larger), have internally acquired a bullet, or have lost, at minimum, a finger or toe. Not only can’t I believe something is Actually Happening, I can’t handle the way the medical staff make you feel bad if you’re right (“Why didn’t you come sooner??”) or bad if you’re wrong (“Yeah, next time this happens? Try having a couple of Tums and a glass of water, mmkay?”) (not to mention the way if you show up with any complaint of pain they treat you as if you’re lying to get pain medication). I will gently die first. Apparently. My hope is that if something happens to me that is life-threatening and also treatable, that I will briskly lose consciousness and someone else will be there to make the ER decision on my behalf.

I WILL, it seems, after half an hour or so of chest pains on the level of labor pains, casually and with reluctance (and only after he’s told me all about the project he’s working on) notify my husband that something medical is happening that is probably not a heart attack because it is not on the left side and not involved with my arms; and that the only way in which it is “spreading to my jaw” is that I have the barfy/tingly feeling I always have with this swallowing problem; and that I am not dizzy or short of breath or sweating; and that really it feels more like my THROAT than my HEART; and also because it’s been going on for awhile and nothing further, such as passing out / perishing, has occurred; and that the MAIN reason I’m concerned is that (1) it’s been going on so long and (2) it’s so painful and (3) I HADN’T TAKEN A BITE OF ANYTHING. (And also secret concern 4: I am picturing the ER nurse saying “And you had intense, regular chest pains? And you didn’t come to the ER…why, again?”) (And then, later on: “So, next time this happens, try an antacid mmkay? Maybe lie down, put your feet up, have a little water.”)

And in a pandemic, it’s so much more fraught. In normal times, I would at least be calling my primary doctor today to see if she wanted to take any action, or maybe want to send me back to the doctor I saw for my endoscopy. But as it is, I’m hand-wringing. I don’t want to start messing around with various medical buildings and medical staff if this was a one-time thing. It wouldn’t just be “Oh, okay, come on in and we’ll have a quick check”; it would be first to the primary doctor, then to the lab, then to a specialist, then back to the specialist for a scheduled test/procedure, etc. That is a LOT of exposure. And my endoscopy was less than a year ago, so I’m not super-worried that there’s something new in there; more like thinking this is typical of the kind of issues the doctor who did the endoscopy said people in my situation might have. (He also mentioned my STOMACH MIGHT TWIST AROUND, TYING ITSELF OFF FROM THE ESOPHAGUS.)

A boy I was briefly involved with in high school sent me a message at 1:30 this morning saying he misses me, with a little heart emoji, so I have reached that pandemic milestone.

I was talking to Paul about how I was actually feeling kind of excited about Christmas. I know it’s early for that. The reason it’s noteable is that this is going to be our first Christmas not going to my parents’ house, and I thought that might Ruin Christmas, but we’ve come up with some alternate plans that sound fun to me: my family always celebrates on Christmas Eve night, and Paul’s family always celebrated on Christmas Day afternoon, so we’re going to take this opportunity to do a Classic Christmas Morning celebration, and I’m actually looking forward to it. Pajamas! Coffee! A hearty proteiny make-ahead breakfast casserole, perhaps, to be eaten after having too much early-morning chocolate?? I may need to ask for advice/instructions, and that will be fun too! Also, I was thinking this might be a big year for Christmas cards, which I would enjoy; and maybe a big year for mailing happy holiday boxes and leaving cookie plates hanging from doorknobs and so forth. It could be pretty neat!

Paul seemed less than enthusiastic about my enthusiasm, which puzzled me, until he said “I think your feelings about Christmas are going to be very dependent on the results of the election and what happens afterward,” and I realized he is right, though perhaps we all would have been happier if he’d kept his rightness to himself awhile longer. I am wondering if it might be wise to do some shopping ahead of time. It might be a way to deal with this terrible restless time before the election. And I am remembering that after the 2016 election, I couldn’t decorate the tree. On the other hand, that ended up being okay and even Better Than Okay: I told the children we were going to decorate it with handmade ornaments only, and they were old enough to get started on that themselves while I languished miserably on a recliner, and that ended up being a very satisfying idea. So perhaps we can count on our coping mechanisms to carry us through.

I tried Target’s curbside pick-up (which they call Drive-Up) today for the first time, in an attempt to broaden my options for acquiring supplies. I hadn’t tried it before, because perishable items and many scarce items such as hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies can’t be acquired this way, and pretty much everything else could be shipped instead, so why would I drive 45 minutes AND force some store employee to shop in-store for me when I could instead stay home AND have an employee shopping more safely in a warehouse?

But, as I say, I am trying to broaden our options. And for me, the first time I do anything can feel insurmountable, so this was a trial run to make the process familiar if I turn out to need it later. (If more things become unavailable for shipping, for example, or if I need something sooner than it can be shipped.) And it went pretty smoothly: you add things to a cart using the Target app on your phone; you check out and pay; you get a little notification (phone and email) when the order is ready (within 4 hours). The app then has you click a button to say you’re on your way, and another button to say you’ve arrived. An employee comes out to your car and loads the things into your trunk. I had to roll my window down to say hello and have them scan a bar code on my phone, but it was otherwise contactless, and the employee was masked and so was I, and we were out in the nice fresh air so it felt safe.

Some huge upsides to curb-side:

1. I could get Diet Coke (for me) and Diet Mountain Dew (for Paul), which can’t be shipped and which take up a fair amount of room in the grocery cart.

2. I could get Monster Trail mix in the BINS (they’re currently only shipping the bags)—especially important because right now we have only ONE bin for making our own, and I want at least TWO bins for that, plus we may occasionally need a fresh new bin, plus it’s nice to have extra bins for trying new combinations (I am thinking of doing one with honey roasted peanuts instead of regular, caramel M&M’s instead of plain, and butterscotch chips instead of peanut butter chips). And FURTHERMORE, they were on sale with pick-up, so they were $6.99, so that’s within pennies of the cost of making it myself, so that was satisfying too.

3. I could get M&M’s, which haven’t been shippable recently, including the mini ones I haven’t been able to find even at my grocery store!

4. I could get the additional TV tray I wanted for the living room: having more people home means needing more surfaces.

5. I was able to get some chips without worrying they’d be crushed. Normally I just let them be crushed, but this was for something I particularly wanted uncrushed chips for.

6. I was able to buy some heavy things, like cat food and cat litter, without wincing at the idea of Target having to ship those to me for free.

7. The whole process of driving up and having someone else put stuff into the trunk worked very smoothly and well; and I didn’t have to phone anyone, I could just use the app to let them know first that I was on my way, and later that I had arrived. And they don’t make you sign anything: they scan a barcode on your phone, and the app walks you through that so it’s not weird or something you have to fumble to find. (I have had to hand my phone to cashiers before when I wasn’t able to figure out coupons or bar codes on my phone, to give you an idea of my ability level.)

And some downsides, which are only to be expected in this imperfect world:

1. The app. Oh my goodness, the app. I had HEARD the app was bad, but I thought it was bad the way the website was bad, and I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to the website. No: it was far, far worse. It was slow, it was laggy; when I selected an item/button, there was a pause that might be just a few seconds or might mean the app was crashing again, which it did literally every few minutes, including twice while I was trying to check out, so that I wondered if after all that fuss I would even be able to complete the order. It happened OFTEN that an item would appear to be available until I tried to add it to the cart, at which point it would inform me that it had just gone out of stock, or that it wasn’t available at the location I had supposedly already filtered for. When I tried to browse a category (like: I know they’re out of a lot of cleaning supplies, so I won’t hope for specific ones, but just want to see what they DO have), the search results were unsatisfying and baffling. Why am I seeing face wipes when I searched all-purpose cleaners? Why are we LEADING with the out-of-stock bleach-sprays and not with the out-of-stock all-purpose sprays I asked for? Anyway. Anyway. I breathed through the pain and thought of it all as part of the learning experience.

2. And you HAVE to use the app! Even though they have a perfectly good multiple-cart system on their website, AND the items you add to your cart on the app SHOW UP IN YOUR WEBSITE CART, you can’t add them on the website and have them show up in the app. I don’t LIKE doing stuff like that on my phone. I am a slow phone typist and a fast keyboard typist, and I hate seeing search results a couple at a time on the little screen.

3. One item was missing from the order. Luckily just a $2 item, which falls into my “Just let it go, for heaven’s sake it’s a pandemic” category.

4. Also, they accidentally gave us one container of Monster trail mix and one of Caramel Cashew, instead of the two bins of Monster we ordered. But (a) we LOVE Caramel Cashew, and (b) it’s FOUR DOLLARS more expensive than the Monster, which is why we usually don’t buy it. This more than compensates for the missing item (we were only charged for the Monster, because you pay when you order), which is pleasing. One thing I like about Target is that when they DO make errors, as everyone must from time to time, they seem to go either way: sometimes in their own favor, sometimes in mine. In general that lets me feel that I can just let everything balance itself: when a jar of pesto arrives in the mail with the seal broken, I can toss it out without bothering Target about it, knowing that in the future I am likely to get a container of $11.99 trail mix when I ordered the $7.99 trail mix.

5. I did feel uneasy about having someone else taking on the shopping danger for me. But it’s on the minor end of such uneasiness: this seems to be Target employees who are there ANYWAY (as opposed to someone doing it independently), which means they are in the building no matter what, and so it is safer for them to have customers outside in the parking lot rather than sharing the air inside the store. My top choice would still be the warehouse/shipping situation, which seems to maximize safety for the maximum number of participants, but this seems like a very close second.

In the balance, a good experience even considering the app, and a good addition to our supply-acquiring methods. I will probably now have a running cart in the app to which I will add the things that are not available for shipping.

It’s hard to come up with a term I can use to indicate “people I know in a non-online-only sort of way” that doesn’t accidentally communicate “non-online is real and online is not.” “In real life” is a common shorthand, but…YOU are real-life! HERE is real-life! We are all real, and alive, and this is real life! I need a term that communicates NOT here, and instead more like…the people we know away from here, in the space where we bring our kids to the same schools, and where we get together in coffee shops and for lunch, and where we see each other in the grocery store. So I would say “local people”—except I’m also including in this category people I know who don’t actually live in my same town, such as old high school and college friends, and friends we knew before we moved to this state, and friends who used to live here but moved away, and so on—some of whom I now interact with only online, so how to differentiate them from people I only know because of online? We are not going to say “in meat space” *shudder* but then what DO we say? I think this is one of those topics, like “What do we call the first decade, if we’re apparently not cool enough to pull off saying The Aughts?,” that comes up again and again because there just is no good solution.

Well. Among those people, those people I know separate from this cherished online community, I don’t know any whose college students are not going to college if in-person college is an option. (That is, I know people whose kids are attending remotely because the college has gone all-remote, but I don’t know anyone who had the option of in-person or remote and chose remote.) And I don’t know any who are choosing the remote option for their school-age children, either, if a hybrid/in-person option is available. And all the nurses at Edward’s Remicade appointment are sending their children back in-person to college and/or K-12 schools and/or pre-K/daycare.

I am feeling lonely in our pandemic choices.

I am not feeling lonely overall. There are six other people in this house with me: I am back to the days of hiding in the bathroom, locking my bedroom door, asking people to please please for the love of god stop talking to me every ten seconds, etc. Also, I have access to friends through emails, texting, IM/DM, Zoom/Hangouts, and (theoretically) phone calls, which makes us so much luckier than, say, early settlers. But I am feeling lonely in that I don’t know other families who have chosen remote-learning when they could have chosen in-person.

It could be that I have lost my mind. It really could! People who have lost their minds generally THINK they have NOT lost their minds! People who have fully crossed into tin-foil-hat category don’t think, as far as I can tell, “Oh, how funny, apparently I am now a person who has crossed the boundaries of the rational, and am now thinking irrationally!” It could very well be that other people are right, and I am wrong, and I fully concede that point! I fully concede it! Not only do I concede it, I HOPE FOR IT TO BE THE CASE! Because if I am right, THAT IS THE BAD OPTION.

Because let me tell you what I think is going to happen (not what I’m SURE will happen or KNOW will happen or CONFIDENTLY PREDICT will happen, just what I THINK), considering more than 170,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the U.S. so far, and the rest of the world pities us and is appalled at our behavior, and our country is still not doing anything in particular about any of that. I think all the college kids will be coming back home, after thoroughly mixing with their peers from other parts of the country/world. I think all the work and expense K-12 schools have put into figuring out how to do in-person learning (the scheduling! the cleaning! the equipment! the policies!) will be wasted after a few weeks, maybe less or more in some cases, and that soon they will all be remote ANYWAY, and without having used all this time to figure out how to do remote better, and without anyone having found any sort of creative solution to address the fact that many working parents rely on schools for childcare so that they can work.

Here are the plans, as they look to me: We are deliberately throwing a nationwide Covid-19 party. Every household that can spare a representative, perhaps a young child who doesn’t have a job, should send that representative to a daily location where they can spend a large chunk of hours breathing the same air as representatives from other households in the local area. If the household representative is an older child who can be away from home longer, they should be sent to share air on a more macro level, living in groups of thousands with representatives collected from other towns and other states and even other countries, and then they can be sent back in a few months to their own communities. The goal is to make sure the virus is spread as thoroughly as possible across our households, communities, and country.

At this point there may be those who feel inclined to tell me why this is the wrong way to see things, either to defend an alternate choice or in an attempt to console me / talk me down; but I hope you will understand when I say pre-emptively that I have been WIDELY and THOROUGHLY exposed to alternate and potentially-comforting points of view on this topic, to the extent that I have just said I am literally questioning my own sanity. And I have said I know of NO ONE in my non-online life who is voluntarily keeping their students at home, NO ONE, so in fact ALL I am hearing is alternate/disagreeing views. And this makes me feel as if I am alone in my own views, and that is the point of this post, and so hearing that YET ANOTHER PERSON doesn’t share my views is not…THERAPEUTIC or USEFUL here. Only time can help: either I will find to my great relief that I am completely wrong, or else I won’t.

What I HAVE found useful/therapeutic is access to the online community. The broader scope of online interaction lets me see I am not actually alone, and there are MANY other families choosing the remote option, or tentatively signing up for in-person but continuing to consider the option of switching to remote before school begins. I am not sure what I would be doing/feeling without that connection. It reminds me of how so many people, including me, found online communities when they were feeling isolated with newborns and young children.