oh but you, you remain ageless

We are supposed to wear masks whenever we are out and there's a chance we'll come within six feet of another person. So... always. Tiny children are exempt from this rule, I think officially because of suffocation risks or something but probably it has more to do with the fact that no force - no virus, no government- is a match for the will of a small child who doesn't want to do or wear something.

As any learned doctor will tell you, movement is very important for good poops and good moods. (Can't really have a good mood without a good poop either, am I right?) (I reserve the right to discuss poop as much as I want to because I have been quarantined with a toddler for almost a month now (?) and the only adults I see are through a computer screen because Diego works eighteen-hour days seven days a week.) Making sure we get outside at least once a day - even if it's just to walk around the block - is obviously a part of our "STEER CLEAR OF PITS OF DESPAIR" routine. But something about wearing a mask while my tiny daughter doesn't feels weird, and I won't lie, it's one of the main reasons we usually don't venture much further than our block. 

Most of the time Diego brings home things like milk or eggs when we run out of them, and I started getting Hello Fresh meals delivered because it's impossible to get a slot with any of the regular grocery services right now. (That's actually been working out great because Zo ë only eats a fraction of whatever I make, so I usually squeeze dinner for the two of us plus lunch for me out of each meal. If you're also having a hard time sourcing groceries, look into the different meal kit delivery services. The expense might be worth it for your family; I know for me even though it's slightly more than I'd maybe pay for regular groceries, it's nice to know that I'm not wasting a bunch of produce because they give you exactly enough. Shh, now. I've forgotten what I was talking about. Let me go back up and see.) We have had to go into the actual grocery store a couple of times, and when we did I just popped a rain cover over the stroller and that seemed to work fine as a little safety bubble. 

One thing I do like about the mask is that it's a good way to tell for sure if you have stinky breath. 

I'm on my second glass of rose, and I just did a bunch of work so that I wouldn't be so stressed out tomorrow. (I still will be stressed out tomorrow but it's cute that I tried.) I don't know what I'm doing here. 

Last week I ordered quilting supplies (LOL WHAT WHY) and the only thing left to get delivered is the batting. The plan was to make blankets out of some tapestries I don't use anymore, and maybe try my hand at a little doll quilt with some of Joe's old stained baby clothes. Then last night I dusted off the Switch we got two years ago and never touched, and I downloaded Diablo III so. We'll see about that quilt. 

We don't always wear matching shirts, but when we do, they reference TV shows she doesn't understand.

Occasionally when my childless peers are discussing, say, Netflix series they've watched or something, I'll have a moment of, I don't know, envy? Because being told to stay home by myself is literally my life's dream. And I think of all the books I could read, all the shows I could watch, all the writing I'd do, etc, if I hadn't gone and given birth to the world's cutest little girl.

And then I remember I'm me, and that my actual activities would be right out of "The Phantom Tollbooth":

"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend 

"From 8 to 9 daydreaming. 

"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap. 

"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay. 

"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap. 

"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch. 

"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter. 

"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap. 

"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today. 

"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap. 

"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner. 

"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally. 

"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time."

And of all the not-quite-two-year-olds in all the lands, I could not be happier to be quarantined with this particular one. 

"How many boxes of wine have you gone through?"

Other things that help the days not suck:

• Putting on makeup (it's the ritual more than the result)
• Opening the curtains and making the bed
• Drinking enough water
• Weekly Zoom happy hours 
• Savoring this surprise alone time with my daughter
• Cat naps

Some days I pack six hours of work into Joe's two-hour nap, and on other days I need to use that time to lie down with the cat. 

~

All of the rooms we live inside of have stayed clean and more or less tidy, even though some days the amount of work involved in that really does feel unreasonable to expect of a person who just would like to please lie down on the floor for a while with her eyes closed.

We (me, I) usually stick to vinegar type solutions for cleaning toilets and stoves and things except when it seems absolutely necessary to use harsher chemicals, mainly because I like the smells better and it's all just easier on the nose and hands and various surfaces. Also vinegar is very cheap, if you didn't know. (Put some orange oil drops in, it's fine.)

The thing is that a pandemic is one of the times when it seems absolutely necessary to have some Clorox wipes and bleach around so I bought some, and I don't know what it is about the smell of bleach but it did something to me. This morning I went to mix a little solution in a spray bottle to keep at the top of the stairs where we come inside and then - I'm guessing this next part about my pupils, there weren't any mirrors around so I don't know what my face looked like - my pupils dilated and I grabbed the mop and bleached the holy heck out of the walls in the hallway (it's just walls around the staircase, is that a hallway?) until my arms got tired and I calmed down enough to be aware of my surroundings again and remembered I had a daughter I was supposed to be making breakfast for.

Anyway I can't reach most of the walls, since they are built around a staircase and I am not ten feet tall. So now I don't know what to do. How do people clean tall walls above staircases? I guess when the walls get dirty you just knock the house down and build a new one, probably. I'd better go speak to the landlords.

Also today I cleaned underneath the radiator in our bathroom and I just am really so pleased with myself.

a path to the rainbow's end

It's hard not to write just about single days. "Tomorrow is Friday, and today is Thursday," I said into my computer screen a few hours ago. "Yes," the faces there said back at me, using their fingers to make sure. "Yes, and yesterday was Wednesday." 

Today a journalist interviewed Diego about His Life As An Essential Worker. Then he went back to putting tape on the floor so that the nurses and doctors (because no one else is out) (because there are so many staying at neighborhood hotels) know how far apart to stand while they wait for their breakfasts. (We're shipping them in. I don't know how to talk about it so I'll just tell you about the tape on the floor.) (One foot in front of the other.) Meanwhile back at the farm, Joe and I taped cardboard tubes to the wall and dropped pom poms through them. We updated lists of purchase orders and strung some wooden beads and sent approximately fifteen hundred emails. We organized toys and smashed Play-Doh. We snuggled a lot. We had a Fleetwood Mac dance party. I cried more than a little to "Sara" which hopefully signals the start of my menses because I cannot fucking imagine being pregnant right now. 

I forgot to feed Papi Choo Choo this morning because his tiny little baby meow isn't nearly as abrasive as Griffon's. (Too sad, can't.) Don't worry, I eventually remembered. We're all doing our best. 

(Joe is super good at stringing beads. Please let me know if you'd like a necklace and I'll ask her if she has time to make you one.)

Yesterday I made vegan macaroni and cheese for lunch and we didn't turn the tv on until right before bath time. We took a walk around the block, said hello to all the neighborhood birds and watched a cement truck for a while. I finished all the reports I needed to finish for the job that pays me, and we had a photo shoot to capture our matching messy ponytails and how much fun it is to use chopsticks to eat corn on the cob.

these days

Our company told everybody to go home a few days ahead of the governor shutting down all non-essential businesses, and a few days before that I had my wisdom tooth removal. They were supposed to take out two but only ended up doing one because as it turns out my wisdom teeth are extra enormous and were really stuck in there and getting the one out was a real pain in the you know what. (It's been two weeks and it still really fucking hurts. Thank you for asking, you're honestly so considerate.) 

So anyway I had the benefit of prescription painkillers to take the initial edge off the weirdness of social distancing. Then daycare was still open for a few days (there were only two other kids there besides mine and it's approximately one minute away from where we live, otherwise I might have pulled her out sooner), so really I've only been home trying to simultaneously work and mom a toddler since Monday. 

Of course I'm concerned for my family's physical and emotional and financial wellbeing, but that's not what's keeping me awake at night - yet - because we are extremely fortunate to still have both of our incomes for now. It will be a real blow if that changes, which it almost certainly will, but I think we'll be okay. 

What hurts my whole heart, as I sip my coffee and listen to my healthy daughter talk to Peppa Pig and to the sounds of my partner leaving the house to go to the job that he still has while I comb through the websites of multiple online retailers who aren't shipping diapers right now, is how many people there are who are not okay, either because they weren't okay before all of this or because they're suddenly not okay as a direct result of this, or some combination of both of those things plus all of the other things. 

And as much as I would like to believe that maybe this whole thing will bring about some meaningful social revolution, I am more immediately concerned about the fact that there are so many people who just got cut off at the knees, have no experience navigating public services that are impossible to navigate right now anyway, and have no cash to feed themselves. (If you are one of those people, please reach out to me. I can't do much, but if I can help you get groceries or soap or formula or wine or whatever small thing will help make this the slightest bit easier, I really want to. My email address is lindsaylineberry@gmail.com and if you know me in real life and have my phone number GO FOR IT. Even if I've ignored you in the past or you think I'm mad at you, just do it anyway. Maybe you can help me too.)

At this moment I don't have it in me to come up with smarter or nicer words to express a lot of what I'm thinking, but: I just never cease to be perplexed at how poorly prepared we are to handle any emergency situation. ("Who's 'we'?" you ask. I don't know. Everyone. Residents of the universe.) 

I just deleted an entire paragraph because I'd rather celebrate the good parts of humanity right now, so here are two of mine:

+ Joe got an ear infection a couple of weeks ago, right when all of this was getting real for everybody around here. I couldn't get through to her pediatrician's office, which I expected since they'd probably been fielding frantic virus-related phone calls for days. So we popped over to urgent care, where we were asked to wait outside on the sidewalk because they couldn't have people gathered in the waiting room. And I won't lie to you - standing outside of urgent care in the cold with my sick baby and being really unsure of whether or not anyone would see her (they were having to turn people away who hadn't checked in online and then their website crashed) I started to really panic for the first time. 

But the receptionist came outside, probably breaking many rules, and took time I'm sure she didn't have to explain what was going on. It was the smallest thing but the human contact calmed us down enough to think clearly and we went across the street to wait inside a warm restaurant (that was still allowed, then) and eat mozzarella sticks. And she was seen, and everyone was wonderful, and she's all better now. 

+ Yesterday morning we had to put Griffon to sleep. He was sick in December, and when our [amazing, love him forever] veterinarian told us what he suspected, heart disease was one of the things he thought might be wrong. But since almost immediately after that Griffon's appetite came back and it seemed like he was back to normal, we assumed that he'd just eaten something that made him sick and it had passed (one of the other things the vet suggested.) But in the past few weeks I noticed his breathing seemed labored, and then when I started to be home all day it was really obvious that he wasn't acting like himself so I took him to The Animal Medical Center. 

Let me tell you something: My heart is broken. Diego and I are both devastated. But the fact that there are people in the world working this hard to keep taking care of animals, and working just as hard to protect the people doing it, makes me feel so much better about everything. Their setup was as close to perfect as I think you can get - it involved heated outside waiting areas for humans, couriers taking the animals in and out of the hospital, and cell phone conversations with the veterinarians -  and every single person was so, so kind. 

Griffon had heart disease. He wasn't a fellow who enjoyed strangers, or being handled, or touched, or carried, and so even if I could afford to pay the thousands of dollars it would have cost to keep him in the hospital I wouldn't have put him through the medical procedures and then the multiple daily medicines he'd need after that. 

We met him when we were still grieving Arwen, and we said goodbye during a literal pandemic. I can't help but think that there's some poetry in that, but in honor of Griffon's love of quiet I won't talk much more about it.

currently clogging cleverly

Watching Kath & Kim. May the baby Jesus bless whatever algorithm made this show pop up on Netflix, because it is everything I’ve been wanting in a show that I didn’t know I wanted. Early 2000s fashion, dated celebrity references, Australian accents, stupid jokes, smart jokes, just everything, I just love it all so much. 

Reading N.K. Jemisin. After barely reading anything at all for well over a year – nothing I picked up was really grabbing me, which very likely had a lot less to do with the quality of reading material available than with the fact that nothing in the world is more interesting than sleep to a person who isn’t getting any – I found “The Fifth Season” last month by randomly clicking around on Amazon. And holy cow. I bought the second and third books in the trilogy before finishing the first and read them all one after another. Turns out that N.K. Jemisin is kind of a huge deal! She’s already won lots of awards et cetera et cetera and so she probably doesn’t care that she has a new fan in me (five years after everyone else already knew about her… I’m nothing if I’m not a trendsetter) BUT IF YOU’RE READING THIS, HI! I LOVE YOU THANK YOU FOR REKINDLING MY LOVE OF READING IF YOU WANT TO COME OVER YOU TOTALLY CAN.

Last night I finished reading “The Art of Inheriting Secrets,” by Barbara O’Neal because I needed a palette cleanser before starting another Jemisin trilogy. Sometimes you need a little romance in an English countryside in between fantasy worlds, you know? Anyway it was fine! Worth every one of the zero dollars I paid for it.

Worrying about getting my wisdom teeth out next week. I finally sucked it up and found a new dentist that I actually like, who referred me to an oral surgeon who is just delightful and seems perfectly competent. Still, I should have had this done years ago and in addition to this particular procedure costing me a small fortune I am also concerned about what other work I’m going to need to have done. I am twenty-nine hundred times more apprehensive about this than I was about giving birth. (I said that to the woman I share an office with, who responded “Make sure someone is waiting for you so that nobody molests you while you’re drugged” so there’s absolutely no need to worry about me nope no sir I am surrounded by positive, reassuring individuals.)

Baking some kind of banana bread pudding concoction this weekend, because last night I thought "Oh why don't I bake a nice chocolate chip banana bread" to bring to a Ted Bundy viewing I'm going to tonight and then I thought, "Well there will be other food there so why don't I use some of this batter to make mini muffins for daycare" and of course burnt the ever-loving crap out of the mini muffins. (I was in the other room watching Kath & Kim and lost track of time if you must know.) Then this morning I couldn't fit the whole loaf into a container AND SO now I have all these sort of burnt tiny muffins and a couple of stray crumbly squares that will probably good with some pudding dumped over the top.

Zoodle Margaret hugs for real now, and her little arms around my neck are worth every single moment she insists that we sit in the dark while eating dinner because she likes to flick the light switch off but not back on again and so help you if you try to do it. Also she now says both "love you!" and "amo!" and it's honestly, truly just too much. 

We didn't take any "Christmas photos" this year but Joe sat in this basket this morning, so.

My office doesn't technically close for the holidays until Christmas Day and I sure as sugar plum fairies wasn't going to use vacation time on a day that is mostly just free lunch, champagne chugging, and leaving at two o'clock because who cares. So here I am. And here I will stay until Baby Joe wakes up from her nap, watching everyone else who didn't bring their baby to work walk out the door.

Here are some things I want to remember about this Christmas:

Zoë loves Christmas lights almost as much as the people in our neighborhood like stringing them up. There are some houses that go nuts and have dozens - literal dozens - of blow-up Christmas characters and light-up reindeer and music playing. There's also my personal favorite house, which has a single strand of lights hung halfheartedly over the top of a shrub. There's nothing to suggest that they did this in celebration of Christmas except that it didn't appear until December. I don't know who lives there but I love them. ANYWAY, our evening walk home from daycare is so delightful because Zoë says "OooooOOOH!" and points at things and scream laughs. Her very most favorite are the projector things that make red and green dots go everywhere. I don't know, like this:

Those are a very popular choice for some reason, and she could not be more pleased. 

The St. Nicholas Project. I wanted to participate in one of those programs where you choose a child's name from a tree or something and then you get them Christmas presents, but I didn't have a lot of extra money this year. (You know, as opposed to all the other years where I've had to flush money down the toilet because I just ran out of things to do with it.) So at the very last minute I reached out to my coworkers and asked if anyone would want to do it together, and between everyone's personal contributions and my very generous bosses' donations we were able to get toys and gifts and warm winter coats for three families. The whole process reminded me of how important it is to be involved and to be informed and to help when and where you can; for the last few years I've been extraordinarily preoccupied with myself and - to make this all about me - I needed a reminder.

I want to remember more things, like the salt dough ornaments we made and the baby angel Christmas tree decoration that doodle bug runs around with screaming "BABY!" but I also really want to leave because there aren't any mimosas left. So bye, Merry Christmas, I love you probably.



Edit, after Christmas actually happened: Every time Baby Joe opened a gift she said "Woww!" or "Ooh!" and something that sounded like it could be "Let's play!" One of the gifts was a teddy bear from a couple I know through work and the tag said "To Kira, Love Great Aunt Lynn XOXO." She also got a play broom and dustpan from her Grandma that I wound up sweeping our kitchen floor with because she still just wanted to walk around with the real one.