I'm ready for the long pause that is menopause

I had two glasses of wine earlier and tipsy-texted a friend to bitch about work-related people things, so I'm in an oversharing mood. The buzz is gone, but I read an article in The Washington Post about the changes that one's brain undergoes during the years before, during, and after menopause and felt a need to write about all the hormonal nonsense that I've been undergoing for the past....hmmmm....six years. 

While I wouldn't say perimenopause is too much trouble, it is just enough trouble to have me wondering the following:

                                                Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Could I be dying of colon cancer? (due to bowel changes that started around age 44, which were followed soon after by a colonoscopy which found my colon to be a perfect specimen.)

Could I be dying of colon cancer? (because I can no longer drink coffee because it brings on full-blown um....unhappy bowels. Started two years ago--age 48. It is the only food/drink that I have an issue with.)

I don't worry about these too much because most women around their periods have bowel changes, so whenever my GAD starts to fly straight off the handle, I remind myself that it probably isn't a terminal diagnosis. 

Could I be in the early stages of dementia? (because I cannot remember anything, cannot remember the names of things, cannot remember why I walked upstairs/downstairs/into a room, call things by the wrong name even when my brain tells me I'm saying the correct word.)

The only reason the aforementioned one doesn't worry me too much is because of what happened to my brain when I was pregnant, age 30. I told a classroom of 6th grade students that if one particular boy didn't do well on the spelling test I was going to kick his butt, except I DIDN'T SAY BUTT. When they looked at me stunned, I said it AGAIN, EXCEPT I DIDN'T SAY BUTT. 

It was then that I realized I had not once, but twice, told a room full of kids that I was gonna kick a kid's ass. While this might be par for the course in 2024, it was not the usual in 2003. 

This anecdote is my personal experience with hormones fucking with my brain at a young age, and therefore, anything is possible now. 

Do I have a fever? (because I get hot for no apparent reason or for exerting myself in only the slightest possible way that would not make anyone under normal circumstances hot.)

Did I tinkle a little in the bed? (because I wake up and am lightly damp. I don't have full-blown hot flashes that douse me in wetness but dampness that wakes me up. Sticking one foot outside the bed cools me down.)

Why the hell do I want to have sex so much? (I'm confused; my husband is WAY confused. This hasn't occurred since 2006 when I desperately wanted to have a second child and D complained we were having sex too much. What dude complains about this? I have yet to let him live this down 17 years later.)

Why am I completely wide-the-fuck awake right now? (I walked 18,000 steps today, didn't have any caffeine, and took a Unisom, but I'm wide awake and have read 9 chapters in my Kindle at 3:00 am.)

How many days has it been since I took my antidepressant? (Oh, wait. I did take it. Today and everyday. Right on time.  I'm just on the verge of running away to the woods so I only have to deal with my own shit...not everyone else's. It's hormones....right.)

So all this....no big deal really....but I think I thought it would start later, like around age 50. Six years or so in and I'm sort of ready to be done. Turn the spigot off now. 

I feel like everyone talks nonstop about periods and pregnancy, and then that's it. Radio silence. So maybe that's why I'm writing this, to let someone know what this perimenopausal stuff is like for me. Maybe they won't feel like they are constantly, maybe on the verge of cancer or dementia or fever or generally falling apart. 

Musings on the year

Today, after five or six days of only walking in our neighborhood (and being cooped up happily in our house otherwise), I told D I had to see something else. And so beasts of burden it was. It felt appropriate....this cow giving me the side-eye. I feel a little bloated and bovine after slubbing around for days on end and eating entirely too much dairy. 

It is New Year's Eve or Arbitrary Time Delineation Day Eve as I like to call it. Where most people toast in the falseness of a new year, but more importantly, an all new and improved possibility of themselves, a them it is probably not possible to be at least within the mere span of 12 months and certainly not on day two or even the first 30 days of January. 

As much as I dislike all the rubbish around this day and tomorrow, I find myself reflecting on this past calendar year because it has continued what has been several years of milestone-ish events and nausea-inducing whirlwinds (if I think too much about it). 

My dad's open heart surgery in 2019 followed by mom's second breast cancer thereafter (or maybe hers was right before...who can remember). 

COVID in March 2020, followed that summer by Dad's cancer, chemo, radiation, and more surgery and radiation in 2021. 

N turning 18 in early 2022, the two of us going to the Galapagos two months later and that trip followed by her graduation from high school. 

G starting high school.

Our family trip to Scotland this past summer as a celebration of 25 years of marriage (as of late 2022) and me turning 50 (in 2023). 

And now M has applied to the same high school where G attends, so I'm apprehensive about that and anticipating the strangeness of my baby being in 9th grade. 

Around Christmas 2020, I really thought we were going to lose Dad and so I told myself that anything beyond that moment was gravy. Time with him beyond that instant was something unexpected and so I should pay special attention to it. 

As much as I do not like to use terminology like this, the realization felt holy to me and still does. It centered around my dad at that time, but it has expanded to include most everything I do. (Of course, things like earning money have to be done when and how they have to be done.)

I've always been reflective, even since childhood. I was one of those "mature beyond her years" kids, which I think mostly means you're well on your way to needing therapy and a solid antidepressant regimen. But that reflective moment felt deeper than others. 

As much as 2020 was a complete shitshow in so many ways, every year since then has been an effort in me considering time and what I do with mine. Do I want to be busy? Do I want to sit with my thoughts? Do I want to have a relationship with this person or that person? Who gets my valuable and limited time?

Although her poem is tiled The Summer Day, Mary Oliver's line, "what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" has been on my mind almost always since that Christmas 2020. 

Even in the bleak early winter as I roamed through the woods today, on the new year's eve, I found myself thinking how right Oliver's poetic lines have been for me these past years:

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Reasons why I don't ever want to become a vampire

I recently finished John Polidori's The Vampyre and am now on to a different kind of vampire tale, but even if I wasn't, I've long believed that being a vampire would be the worst fate imaginable. 

It's not the blood or the taking of life. Those aren't my issues with vampirehood.

The problem is the fucking monotony and the absolute ennui that would ensue after living for hundreds and hundreds or, dear god, thousands of years.

Humans keep humaning in their pathetic and/or atrocious ways.

Like their insistence on measuring girls' clothing lengths. Word on the street is that N's former high school was checking girls shorts today, and this news has put me in the foulest of foul moods. 

(Because didn't we just go through this in the before times which weren't that long ago?)

Unless I'm seeing a penis, testicles, nipples, a vulva, gluteal cleft or extensive mammary action, I don't care what a person wears, and I cannot wrap my head around why seeing shoulders and thighs is such a problem for so many people. 

But guess what being a vampire would mean? 

I WOULD NEVER ESCAPE THE BULLSHIT THAT IS DRESS CODES FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS.

I would never escape buses dropping my kid off on the wrong side of a 5-lane parkway again.

I would never escape having to call and find out if this can be remedied.

I would never escape being interrupted by texts or by my children who don't see me busily working at my desk in what used to be the living room. 

I would never escape hormonal mood swings that may cause me hurt someone (or them to hurt me) before menopause is here. 

I would never escape the depression that is shopping at Walmart. 

I would never escape doing work that doesn't actually get utilized in a purposeful way.

I would never escape litter that tracks itself all over the house and is especially irritating in summer when I have bare feet.

I would never escape the hellscape that we're managing to turn the Earth into. 

Despite how funny Laszlo, Nandor, and Colin Robinson make it seem, being a vampire and having my life extended only to witness humanity effing things up sounds unbearable. 

Second-guessing life choices...sort of/not really

It's that time of year again--the time when teachers post their "back-to-school" photos or comments stating that this is their 18th year in the classroom or their 12th year at School X and 24th year teaching in general.

This is also the time of year when I think to myself, "This MIGHT HAVE BEEN my ____ year."

[For the record, had I not taken an extended break from full-time work, I would be starting my 23rd year.]

Mostly, seeing these posts makes me feel bad because it means that in 4 years I could RETIRE from teaching, and that probably isn't the best attitude to have, especially since I haven't worked full-time as a teacher in 19 years. The only reason I have regret is because I would want to be almost done with a job that I haven't wanted to do full-time in the first place. 

And this just seems....dumb (in addition to confusing). 

So it is also at this time of year when I have to do what a lot of people do: I have to give myself a good talking to in response to stuff I see on social media. 

The talking to goes like this:

First, you didn't want to try to be the mom you wanted to be and the teacher you wanted to be because you felt pretty certain it would drive you crazy to not give yourself fully to either one. That is water LONG under the bridge so would you puhlease get over it. 

Second, you created this weird life of sorta teaching, sorta writing, sorta editing and have a bunch of hobbies and interests and you would have to give ALL of that up if you went back full-time. You spent time with your kids while they were growing up, and now you're spending time with your parents who are growing old. 

[To soothe your ego, here is a reminder of the things you've done: 13 years as a freelance writer, 11 years at the cottage school, 7 years as a substitute teacher, edited several books for people who have been published, editor at online literary magazine, soon-to-be published in an anthology. There do you feel better now?]

Third, you ABHOR meetings. The best part of the teaching you do is that you can avoid these. Same with your writing work. Minimal meetings is key. 

After the lecture I feel better and am able to go about my life doing what I have chosen to do. 

Until next August when we do this again.

If someone did to our free time what we do to kids' free time

Imagine an adult working a job. Maybe this job is 25 hours a week, maybe 40. It doesn't really matter. When this adult is not at work, she or he is experiencing what is called "free time," the time they can use however they wish. 

Most adults, because they are adults and have responsibilities, must spend part of that time doing stuff that keeps them alive: cooking, shopping, cleaning. 

But the rest of the time is theirs to read, play video games, sleep on the couch, watch Golden Girls, play sports, smoke pot, whatever. 

Now imagine if someone said to this adult:

"You must do something productive with your free time even if you don't want to. You have to join a rotary club or a politically-minded group. You have to go to book club three nights a week. You can no longer just enjoy your free time as you want. You have to engage in something that will 'improve' you in some way."

How pissed would you be?

I expect most adults would be furious. How dare someone tell them what to do with their free time?

And yet, it seems to me that parents often do this with their own kids. 

I think the reasons for this are complicated:

First, it can be hard for parents to understand that their children are not smaller/younger mockups of them: "I played football and love football, and therefore I want my child to play and love football." And maybe the parent encourages (pushes) the child into something that the child maybe feels meh about. 

Parents have also bought into this notion that if their kid hasn't set the world on fire by the time they are 17, it's over for them. Like kids have to pack in all these experiences before they go off to college (or to get into college), and if they don't....god help them. If our kids aren't little mockups of us, they are moldable blobs of clay that we are shaping into the next big success or the next awesome scholarship recipient. (The media, colleges, and high schools promote this and feed on the anxiety.)

[Personally, I think if you peak at 17 you're in for a rather disappointing life. I had a good high school experience but FFS, it wasn't the be-all and end-all.]

Of course, there are some kids who legit want to be involved in everything. I was that kid in high school. The paragraph next to my senior photograph is probably six inches long with all the stuff I was involved in. But by the time I got into college, I didn't want to join shit because I was freaking tired from the previous four years. It just wore me out rather than making me a bigger, stronger, faster version of myself (like the Six Million Dollar Woman). 

I'm so much more than I was in college, and I want to scream it from the rooftops to quit putting unnecessary pressure on young people. 

It seems pretty important to let kids be kids, even if it means they don't join stuff, if all they do is go to school, pass their classes, and come home (like my sons do). If G and M wanted to join something, I would encourage them, and sometimes I ask if they'd be interested in something I may hear about at their school, but when they say "no," I don't insist. 

D was never a joiner in school and sometimes I think he regrets it. And maybe one day my sons will regret it, but it is THEIR LIFE and, honestly, their problem. I would rather them be mad at themselves one day because they didn't get involved than be resentful of me because I made them do stuff they didn't want to do. And, lord knows, I don't need a fight. 

It's hard enough to get them to do the basic stuff like wash their hair and wear deodorant and reply back to their grandparents' text messages. If they don't want to do judo or be in the chess club or play with the orchestra, that's fine. 

The kids who are joiners will join, and you won't have to twist their arms to do it. The kids who don't want to join may not want to join now (on your time table), but they may do it one day when they are inclined. And then there are some who will never join anything and will be perfectly fine with it, even if it makes their parent's eye twitch. 

Where are you going? Where have you been?

This is the title of a Joyce Carol Oates' book that I haven't read, but it's a title I've always liked. I think it is a nice way I think about one's life and especially Dec 31.

On the New Year, I always post this: Happy Arbitrary Time Delineation Day! Not that the Gregorian calendar is arbitrary, but there are like 12 30+ others, including the Hebrew calendar and the Chinese calendar. Time is a construct we make so while I own calendars and follow calendars, I also believe they are bogus. 

How do I exist in this world being such a fucking buzzkill, you ask? 

I don't even know.

Time is weird. It can fly by; it can crawl by. Sometimes time feels like a fever-dream. When I reflect back on the past year, it doesn't feel real to me. I can't believe it hasn't been a year since my trip to Ecuador because it feels like 1,000 years. Although maybe by April, the year anniversary of the trip, it will feel like just the blink of an eye.

Because of the weirdness of time, it can make it difficult to reflect on it on a specific designated day, like today/tonight/tomorrow. Maybe I'm not feeling reflective? Maybe I'm just ornery and don't want to reflect when society tells me I need to?

There is a lot of pressure with the new year, just as there is with Christmas holidays. There is a pressure to create (or recreate) magic at Christmas, and there is a pressure to be resolute, to make changes, to become a new and better, stronger, more powerful version of YOU with the minute hand ticking. 

And I reject this completely, mostly because I'm allowed to since my kids don't care if I make resolutions or strive to be a better me. (They would have a shitfit, however, if I tried to not do Christmas.)

For the moment, I'm ok with who I am now. I went through my big workout and try to ward off middle-age phase after my third child was born 13 years ago. I long ago decided that getting a PhD probably isn't something I aspire to. I recently wrote a literary essay for publication that drove me insane to complete and made me question what my "writing life" is and what I want it to be. None of this required me to make a decision on Dec 31 or Jan 1. 

I don't need this day or tomorrow to be reflective. I guess some people do, and since I'm a fan of reflecting and metacognating, then kudos to those who do it tonight or tomorrow. But if you're not one of those folks, and you feel like a slug or a loser because you aren't motivated to extol your great PLANS for 2023, let it go. Just as time is a social construct, so is this expectation of growth, of change, of great personal fulfillment decided in one 24-hour period. 

You don't have to buy into it. 

As we approach graduation

We have several weeks until N graduates from high school. While she may be counting down, I am neither counting down nor wishing time to stop and keep us frozen in amber to avoid seeing her move onto the next stage of her life. I am going about the days as I always have.

In general, I have a difficult time stomaching sentimentalism and cliches. I have a difficult time with the public proclaiming of how wonderful kids are and how proud we are of them. Primarily, this is because it is all curated. It is all, in its own way, lies. Or if not lies, then abstentions. 

But this is the season of that sort of thing, I guess. 

People have begun asking me "How are you?" in relation to having a senior so close to graduation, and I emphatically say, "I am fine."

Because I am.

Maybe I would be a little sad if I didn't have six more years of middle and high school with her two younger brothers, but by the time they get through, I will be oh-so-ready to be the fuck done with all this. 

Maybe I would be a little sad if I hadn't savored the time with her when she was young. 

But I blogged about it and I journaled about it and I took photos of it and I took videos of it, and I was there for all of it. 

Why would I need or want to stay there forever?

If I put on the rose-colored glasses of sentimentality, I would forget that those times when she was young were not all wonderful.

The times of having to help do projects in elementary school. Ugh.

The times of being woken up in the middle of the night. 

The times I got puked on.

The times I had to go to so many freaking preschool birthday parties. Geez Louise.

The times I played Barbies until I thought my brain would pop out of my ears from sheer boredom. 

Maybe I've read too many Buddhism books, but all, including my children's childhoods and teenage years, is impermanence. 

And I am far more comfortable embracing this fact than feeling the sticky fingers of sentimentalism encroach on me. 

I think for many parents their overwhelming feelings about watching their child graduate have almost nothing to do with the child; it is about the parent. About losing control (as if they had it to begin with). It is about their own death looking them in the face for a moment. They are often sandwiched, as I am now, between parents who are aging, either planting feet into their 80s or already knee-deep, and children who are no longer under our thumbs. 

It is a strange and uncomfortable place.

Well, this got dark.

But that darkness is why sentimentality is allowed to swoop in. It feels better, I suppose. It is warm and fuzzy and maybe makes people feel better temporarily. 

I don't like its texture, though, any more than I like the uncomfortable of knowing the circle of life keeps turning. The clock hands have moved me to a position I remember my parents being at when I was 18. The hands for them are closer to midnight. The seconds continue to tick by.

The most comfortable place is the here and now. This day. This moment. Not the countdown of days until graduation. Not the wallow of time gone past. 

Apparently, I am intimidating (according to my family)

It has come to my attention that I am intimidating. 

While I don't know that this is a fact, it is an opinion that several members of my family---like all of them who live with me---agree on.

And it took me by surprise. 

I guess if I get out of my own head for a minute, I can see how they might be right. 

I am not intimidating to myself. And I don't think I'm intimidating to people once they talk to me a little bit, although maybe that's entirely wrong. I hope that my humor breaks any ice.

But I can see how a person who doesn't know me might be a little taken aback by my inability to not express an opinion. I'm very "out there" with what I think. As a general rule, I'm not going to just sit back and take it from anyone. 

I usually think I'm pretty self-aware, but my family's recent discussion of my intimidating personality threw me for a loop. How much else do I not perceive about myself?

I suppose that my ability to be intimidating (or to come off that way) is something I need to be a little more aware of, although I think my family gets the "unabridged version" of me that other people don't get. 

Do most people who meet me cower in fear or feel threatened by me? I don't think so.

Does my husband? Yes, that might be accurate. 

Does he expect me to bend him to my will? Of course. He's been letting me do that for almost 25 married years. 

And my two oldest kids have been scared to tell me they have boyfriends/girlfriends when I have been pretty open about "I don't care who you date. Race, religion, gender, whatever. As long as the person treats you with respect, I'm good." 

I think my family's view of me being intimidating is because I lose my absolute shit when they don't do something I've asked them to do 800 times. 

And what woman out there doesn't know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. 

Like all people who need outside input, I called on the hive mind of Facebook to ask people who know me. Some know me only online or knew me way back when or work with me or still talk to me every week or month. 

And I think the general consensus is that MY FAMILY IS WRONG.

Really, that's all I needed confirmation of. 

In all seriousness, it did do me good to step outside of what I thought I knew about myself and actually try to be objective. And getting feedback from others was helpful in that it helps me understand what aspects of who I am may come off as intimidating. 

I have always taken pride in being smart. Making sure I know what I'm talking about. Being well-read and prepared. I have always had high expectations of myself but this can, I'm sure, make others feel a little uncertain about what I will be like. Will I be judgmental? Am I exacting to the point of being unbearable?

I do have high expectations, but I have also learned to be much less judgmental over the years. I strive to put myself in other people's shoes and see the other side. 

Expect my family's side. They don't know what they're talking about.

Just kidding.

So much upper middle class complaining

Complaining is the human condition. I, myself, could win an Olympic gold medal in complaining. 

But even when I complain, I am almost always well aware that I have it far, far better than lots of other people. I make an intentional point to remind myself of this as soon as I notice myself complaining. 

I think part of this is because I read widely, and that helps put me in other people's shoes. I also think being a substitute teacher and working with every kind of kid in this city--the riches, the poorest, the smartest, the dumbest, the most motivated and the least--helps keep it real. 

When I complained today to a friend because I had an interview scheduled for a magazine article and the person didn't answer when I called at our scheduled time, I said while complaining, "And I know this is minor because I can clean my bathrooms while I wait for this person to return my call. This is a cushy job I can do from home that pays well." 

Social media is the worst when it comes to complaining, and I admit I'm just as bad as anyone else about using it as my personal venting arena. When I do complain, I try to at least make it funny and acknowledge my own bullshit ridiculousness. 

Like how I hate it when people complain about teachers and act like kids are teachers' problems from 9-3 but then when I have to take my cats to the vet for their shots, I'm all, "THESE FUCKING CATS ARE YA'LLS PROBLEM NOW."

What sticks in my craw is when people, mostly in my neighborhood, use our neighborhood FB page to bitch about the dumbest stuff. While I can see their point, it just gets excessive and makes me think some of these people need to get hobbies.

Like the older gentleman who updates regularly on how late the mail is. One week, I think he posted every day about the mail not coming. This was a couple weeks ago when everyone and their grandma was sick with Omicron. On about day 4, he said he had finally gotten through to someone at the local PO and that our periodicals wouldn't be delivered for awhile.

And my response to this is YOU ARE BITCHING EVERY DAY BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR TIME MAGAZINE????

I mean, I get it. Yes, it is lowercase frustrating. And it would be uppercase frustrating if you are waiting on a Social Security check or medication. But a magazine? 

C'mon, man. 

I went to our HOA meeting on Monday that lasted from 6:30-9:00 (which is bullshit), and lots of people were complaining about their water and sewer bill. 

Our family's most recent bill was $222. This is for two months and covers WATER and SEWER. If I divide this amount by 60 days, it comes to $3.74 per day to have clean water and no raw sewage in our house or yard. Per person that is 75 cents a day.

I AM FUCKING THRILLED TO PAY UNDER $4 A DAY FOR CLEAN WATER AND NO POOP OR URINE IN MY HOUSE, thank you very much. 

For $4 a day, my family is avoiding cholera and dysentery and typhoid and god knows what else. 

That is a freaking bargain in my book. 

And the thing about people in my neighborhood complaining is that some of them spend more than $4 a day on coffee. (Or their Time magazine)

They live in houses that cost upwards of $350,000. 

And they are complaining about spending 75 cents a day for clean running water and no raw sewage. 

I'm reading a book right now about a boy and his brother who spent something like 15 years living in a refugee camp in Kenya because of nonstop war in their home of Somalia. 

And that is all I need to do to thank heavens that I am able to pay under $4 a day for clean running water and no raw sewage. 

Where I am on COVID

Here we are...21 months into the pandemic. 

It occurred to me that life since probably May has been a series of emotional fits and starts. My parents and MIL were vaccinated in winter, so that took an edge off, and then I got vaccinated in February and March due to working for the school district. But still, I was on pins and needles until D, and then N, and then G could get their shots.

And then I was holding out until October when M turned 12 and could be vaccinated. 

In June, I was hopeful that things would return to "normal" and made our vacation plans for December 18; M would be fully vaccinated by that point. 

And then Delta.

And then M got COVID.

And then I worried about my parents and MIL getting boosted.

And then I worried about myself and D getting boosted.

Somewhere in between those worries, Omicron came into the mix, so then I was worried about flying because N hadn't had a chance to be boosted when we left. 

And now, I'm still concerned about skyrocketing rates of COVID and what that could mean for my parents and MIL because they are vulnerable (since it sounds like the vaccines keep you from being hospitalized but not sick from Omicron and older people have to be more careful in general with even "minor" illnesses).

We got back from our trip in the wee hours of December 24. 

I had spent $75 for six rapid at-home tests. We tested N and G a half-hour before Christmas Eve family events, and again on Christmas Day a half-hour before going to my parents. (N got boosted two days ago, so she was more vulnerable then). 

Today, I tested a half-hour before visiting my parents through the school district's drive-through site. 

And then someone I know who works in health care said the company that does the testing for the district doesn't always swab as well as they should (which I know because I've been tested more than several times.)

So here is where I'm at now with COVID and vaccines and testing:

I AM DOING THE BEST I CAN POSSIBLY FUCKING DO. 

I'VE BEEN VACCINATED THREE TIMES. 

MY PARENTS AND HUSBAND AND OLDEST CHILD HAVE BEEN VACCINATED THREE TIMES. 

I BOUGHT THE FUCKING KN95 MASKS FOR THE PLANE AND HAVE BEEN WEARING THEM LOCALLY SINCE WE GOT BACK.

I GET PREEMPTIVELY TESTED HOWEVER THE FUCK I CAN TO TRY TO PROTECT MY PARENTS.

AND I'm fucking tired.

I'm tired of trying to do what is best and thoughtful and most careful when millions of fucking boneheads don't. 

I spent the day with my parents visiting historic cemeteries near where my dad's maternal family had a farm. He wanted to take me and my mom for lunch at a restaurant in this town where he has wanted to go for awhile now. And so we went.

We wore our masks in and kept them on until our food came and the entire time I'm thinking:

THIS IS SO PROFOUNDLY STUPID BECAUSE HOW MANY PEOPLE IN THIS RESTAURANT WALKED IN WITHOUT MASKS (a lot of them cause I watched 'em)? AND THEN WE TAKE OFF OUR MASKS TO EAT, AND IT'S NOT LIKE THE VIRUS SAYS....

"Wait, I realize you're eating so I won't infect you right this second."

Everything seems pointless or absurd most of the time. Whatever I do or don't do, I second guess whether it is wise or responsible or worth it. 

I know I'm not alone in feeling all these things. I know there are others like me who are so mentally exhausted from all of it. 

And I know I can either continue to do what I've been doing because I'm generally a conscientious person who doesn't do dumbshit stuff or join the fucking boneheads. 

My choices are limited; everyone's choices are limited. I'm tired of doing the best I can and still feeling like I'm not doing enough. 

Letting traditions go

Last year, when my dad was going through his cancer and chemotherapy/radiation, I reached out to a former boyfriend who is now a chaplain and asked him to recommend some books to help me deal with my feelings. 

My medication keeps me on an even emotional keel, for the most part, but intense stress gums up the works. With the pandemic, my keel was wonky anyway; dad's diagnosis and treatment left me feeling way unmoored.

I read several books he suggested, including No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh and When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron. 

Between my own therapy and going through therapy with G, I've learned a lot about how anxiety and OCD work, and so I've tried to get better and more mindful about my acts of "letting go." I've tried to remind myself to feel whatever unpleasant feeling I'm having, hold it and sit with it until it doesn't hurt anymore (or not as much), and then let the desire to control the situation dissipate. 

I've also tried, in these past 20 months since COVID appeared here, to really not force myself to do things I don't want to do. 

Now, this doesn't mean I'm not working or doing the mom thing because those are things I need to do. Those are the tending to the tree work so that in the future of 10 or 20 years, I have shade in my garden.

But what I'm letting go of, and I've always been pretty good at this, is letting go of the stuff that really hasn't ever been necessary except that everyone else does it, and so we feel that it is required. 

I compare this to cutting back all the dead stalks in my garden each fall and throwing away all the dead leaves that fall on my grass. Someone, somewhere, decided this is what you do, and so everyone with a yard followed suit (in the same way that we all bought into the yard to begin with). In truth, cutting back stalks and removing every shred of leaves is detrimental to the health of the landscape. Birds and insects use those dead stalks and dead leaves to overwinter. The dead leaves decompose and provide nutrients to my flower beds. 

Essentially, going along with whatever every other homeowner does is extra work for me that harms my yard. 

We are going about our normal Thanksgiving which has always been okay with me because I've only ever had to make two dishes. When the day/time come when my MIL doesn't want to or can't do Thanksgiving, I do not necessarily think I will adopt the practice of bringing everyone together. I cannot say for certain. That could be next year or 15 years from now. 

But I hate entertaining. I really don't like to cook. And so I would have to find a way to do it that would not make me miserable. I know too many people, friends of mine and family, who do Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) and stress about it. 

And yet, it is a holiday that we all do because someone, somewhere told us we had to. Did any of us ever formally decide, "Yes, I want to celebrate this holiday in this particular way?" Or have we all just done it because we've always done it. 

I have decided this year that our Christmas is changing. I am doing a long-term sub job until the district's winter break, and I am going to be tired. Subbing wears me the heck out. Plus, at the best of times, I hate shopping. So I have decided that I am not buying gifts for anyone. My children have everything they could ever want (and would rather have money anyway, I think). 

Our family is supposed to leave on a short trip soon after school ends, and this complicates the Christmas planning too, so I'm not planning. With airlines and delays being what they are, I have no guarantee that we will even get back when we are supposed to, so I'm not doing our "normal" at all. I'm not even going to try. While we are gone, if I feel inclined to buy someone something on our travels, I will get it. But I'm not buying everyone stuff just to have them a gift at Christmas. 

(I should say that this non-traditional Christmas is bringing its own OCD stress with it. The irrational part of my brain is pretty well convinced one of my parents is going to get COVID today at Thanksgiving and will be on a ventilator at Christmas, making our trip not happen.)

I am not putting up all the Christmas trees because the kids only help because I fuss at them, so I am putting up one tree that I will do myself and not ask them for help. I don't even care about Christmas, and I am sick and tired of trying to make my family a holiday that they don't seem to care about (although I suspect they will complain this year because it "isn't the same.") 

I feel like screaming from the rafters to every woman I know: STOP DOING THIS SHIT FOR YOUR FAMILIES UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY ENJOY DOING THIS SHIT FOR YOUR FAMILIES. IF YOU FUCKING HATE IT, then STOP. 

This year, I am listening to the crazy screeching lady in the rafters. 

The school choice SAGA continues AND can schools PUHLEASE think of better questions for admitting kids?

Item #1 on today's blog agenda is my comment that despite folks lamenting how much our district needs and wants kids to attend their "neighborhood schools," they lie.

They "say" they want neighborhood schools, and then they bend over backwards into something out of the Kama Sutra to get their kids into any school but their kids' neighborhood school. 

They say, "We want neighborhood schools!!!" 

They mean, "We want neighborhood schools.....except for my child."

These parents say crappy stuff about their neighborhood school whether they have stepped foot in said school. And some teachers, YES, teachers, contribute to this nonsense by telling students and parents that some schools are better than others. And some of those teachers I'm almost certain have never set foot in some of these schools that they denigrate. 

And then the kids believe all they hear so that they have ZERO desire to attend their neighborhood school which leaves parents who are totally ok with their kids attending their neighborhood school (ME) being forced into navigating applications and all the other shit that goes along with choosing high schools. 

The paper that one diploma from the "best" school is printed on in our district is EXACTLY the FUCKING SAME as the paper from the "worst" school. 

Yes, you have arrived at Carrie's blog, V2: My kid doesn't want to attend his resides school. 

His reasoning is this:

1--I don't want to attend my resides high school. (He doesn't know why, although I would say it has something to do with all the junk parents and their kids and sometimes teachers says.)

2--He wants to go where there is a computer program. (Ok, that I can understand.)

3--He wants to go where his friends are applying. (Same thing his sister did even thought she ended up not even having classes with any of those friends like all four years but whatever.)

Since I'm been through this rodeo, despite how much it bugs the shit out of me, I'm like, "I don't have the energy for this crap a second time. Apply where you want, but I'm not driving your ass anywhere."

Item #2 on today's blog agenda is why do the applications ask questions that are so heavily focused on the extroverted among the population? 

Like "Describe 3 groups or extracurriculars you have been involved in."

Which is bunk because 13 months of those three years of middle school were spent doing NTI when no one could be involved in ANYTHING. And do they want to hear about what he did when he took swimming lessons at the Y when he was two???

But also, my middle kid isn't interested in being super involved person. (He is very, very, very much like my husband who has zero interest in involvement with most of the human race.) 

He is never going to join spirit club (unless he is interested in someone romantically who bends his arm to go to spirit club.) He is never going to join a sports team (and for that I say, THANK YOU, JESUS!)

I have grown into my introversion; I didn't always use to be like this. For many, many years, I was a good-time girl (although not a drunk, orgy-involved good time girl.) I like to go out and do things. 

But I firmly believe since becoming medicated and going through therapy that my constant busyness was to quiet my mind. Keeping myself busy meant I didn't have to deal with my thoughts and my anxiety (and I think this is why a lot of people have glorified busyness...so they don't have to deal with what is going on inside themselves because it is painful and scary.)

Why can't these application questions ask things like:

"Do you think it is more important to be a leader or a follower or is there a need for both? Explain? (Because by god, we can't all be leaders. And sometimes leaders need to sit their asses down and let other people do things.)

Do you consider yourself a person who gets their energy from people or from being by yourself? Explain. (Because this asks kids to consider some pretty important self-reflection prior to high school.)

I don't know if Albert Einstein actually said this, but there is a quote attributed to him that I like, especially since he was Albert fucking Einstein. And who cares whether Albert liked to go out partying with friends? He had a brilliant mind and some of that came from taking the quiet time required to think. 

"Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.”

We have such a joiner, chatty, involved mindset that we don't even understand that our questions leave out entire segments of students who may have lots of insightful things to offer but we ignore that they could even be parts of the equation. 

Why milestones aren't sad (to me)

Despite being a bit of a downer personality, I don't usually feel sad about my kids' milestone events. 

I am not in any way, shape, or form sad that N's field hockey career is OVER as of next week when we have the banquet. Yes, she did it for seven years. Yes, she had fun doing it. No, I will not miss seeing her play field hockey. 

I didn't feel sad that my son got promoted to middle school and we left behind the elementary school where we had been for 12 years. It's a great school; my kids had awesome experiences there. But there are other experiences to be had.

The benefit of having three kids is that by the time the last one does anything, I'm kind of "over it." I've done whatever "it" is so much that I'm thrilled to not have to do "it" anymore. 

The truth is, I don't understand the boohooing people do when their kids reach milestones. These milestones are a GOOD thing, a reason to celebrate, a time to move on to the next thing. It seems strange to me to waste away time in nostalgia, where all the shitty gets glossed over as if it was delightful. 

I am thankful to have spent years at home with my children, but I have yet to slide into nostalgia about it. I can watch a video of their cuteness but also remember the sleepless nights and the poopy diapers and the whining over stupid stuff and the toys everywhere and the speech therapy and occupational therapy and endless doctor visits and surgeries and how much shit I had to pack just to go to Target with them. We had to have SNACKS to drive to the freaking post office to mail a letter. 

To lament the milestones is to get stuck in a haze of "It was wonderful in every way" when it wasn't. 

Last year during quarantines, it pained me to see so many people complain about their kids being home all the time. I have already started to see and hear people do the "My kids are going to college and now I'm sad because they are leaving" thing, and I want to yell, "YOU HAD A YEAR OF TIME WITH THEM THAT YOU COMPLAINED ABOUT. YOU WASTED THAT GIFT." 

Now maybe I don't have a heart (it is possible). 

Maybe I'm not in touch with my feelings. 

I am not sad about N graduating from high school because if I want to hang onto this time it means never letting her move on. It means trapping her in a lifetime of 17-year-old-ness to satisfy my own weird feelings. That's the kind of stuff they do to princesses in all the crappy fairy tales; trap them in amber so they can watch time go by without them. 

Plus, I have every reason to think that my relationship with my kids, which is good now, can get better or at least differently good. My relationship with my parents has grown and changed as we have grown and changed, and that has been lovely. 

And besides all this, time doesn't give a shit that you want to hang onto it. All the belaboring of time moving on is just a waste of the time that you have. 

If your kid gets COVID (a sad retelling of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie)

Apologies to Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond.

If your kid wakes up feeling hot and with congestion, you'll probably regret having sent this child to school the day before when he was also a little congested (but you live in the Ohio River Valley and 4/5 of your family take allergy shots so congestion is like a way of life, not a symptom).

If you're having these regrets, you'll remember that you have an at-home COVID test stashed away and you'll give it to this child (who is TWO FUCKING WEEKS from turning 12). 

If you give the child the COVID test and it is positive, you'll have to call the substitute center because you're subbing that day and WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO NOW?

If you call the substitute center and explain the situation, they will tell you to call health services.

If you call health services, they will tell you to go on in and substitute teach because you're fully vaccinated and without symptoms. (But try to stay six feet from students....have you ever been in a school before, lady?)

If you go on in and substitute teach, you will text your congested, at-home-COVID-tested positive child multiple times through the day to make sure he is not more sick. You will also text several friends throughout the day and notify the grandparents (one of whom is now also COVID-exposed). 

If you don't die from "My child has COVID"-induced anxiety while subbing, you will take your child to get tested through the district's drive-through testing site.

If you take your child to get tested at the drive-through site, they will be unable to record the test because the directions on their website are super freaking unclear (someone hire an ENGLISH MAJOR to make it less confusing so antsy parents don't screw it up). 

If your child gets tested and isn't able to be registered because the website instructions are unclear, you will call the company and text the people at the testing site and reregister again so that the freaking results can be recorded. 

If your child feels hot and is congested and cannot distance in any capacity especially at lunch, he will get a POSITIVE  COVID test TWO FUCKING WEEKS before he is eligible to get the vaccine (have I mentioned that?)

If your child is officially COVID-positive, you will look at your calendar and determine all the places and people you now need to call.

If you call the dentist to tell them you have an appointment next week and have COVID in your house, they will tell you they have to talk to the doctor because who the fuck knows what to do in all these various situations. 

If you call the volunteer organization to ask what their COVID protocol is since you are now officially COVID-exposed, they will not email back in the 1.2 seconds you want a response (because isn't everything SUPER CRITICAL AND TIMELY NOW?).

If you look ahead next week, you will realize you have to reschedule the orthodontist appointment for both your sons on Monday.

If you look ahead to Wednesday, you'll realize you probably need to call the hairdresser and find out what their COVID protocol is. (Likely another several weeks to get your mop cut.)

If you look to Friday, you'll see that your plan for a short day trip is now cancelled.

If you continue looking at the calendar, or you look at your COVID-positive child on the couch, or you look at your vaccinated but maybe will also get sick older children, you may WILL pour yourself another glass of an adult beverage.

If you feel overwhelmed, you will remember that there are all kinds of single parents out there who are dealing with this shit without a safety net of a spouse who works from home. 

If you think about single parents, you'll also think about parents who can't work from home who have to go into work or give up jobs because their kids may be quarantined for 10 days at a time, whether they are COVID-positive or not. 

If you think about all this stuff, you will feel the violent urge to throat punch anyone and everyone who has made light of this virus that has killed close to 700,000 people in this country in 18 months and continues taking people down either temporarily or permanently every single day. 

Stingy with the L word

When I was a kid, I threw around the word "love" like confetti. I loved Duran Duran. I loved dancing. I loved my best friend.

Even as I got older and into college, I threw it around with various guys I dated. I was in love with all of them. 

But at some point, I closed it in and determined that I didn't feel comfortable throwing that word around. And the older I get, the more cringey I feel when other people use it. 

At one point, one of my biggest pet peeves was when people would say or write "Love ya." 

Gawd. 

Just seeing that gives me the willies, so maybe it remains a pet peeve. 

On occasion people still write or say this to me, and my insides shrivel up a little.

Sure, there are different ways to experience love.

There is the general love of mankind, but I don't share in that feeling. I'm not sure when I heard the word misanthropy, but I identified with it then, and I identify with it now. I identify with it even more strongly after these last 18 months of watching people do things completely against their own best interests on the daily. 

I may aspire to a Christ-like love of others, but I don't think it is in the cards. People make it very hard to love them (including me; I am a hard person to love).

There are people I like, people I find fun to be around. There are people I admire. 

But to love someone, at least in my book, there has to be a history and a long one. There has to be honesty above all else. There has to be mutual respect. 

I cannot even begin to love someone I cannot trust. And I cannot trust someone I barely know. I'm not sure I can trust some people I've known for several years or even most of my life. 

So I am truly stingy when it comes to the people I say "I love you" to. 

And there are circles of it. Sort of like Dante's Inferno but with my own weird love designations. 

I tell my children every single day that I love them. Sometimes even more than once a day. 

I tell my husband and my parents a little less often. 

I tell my brother and his family and my mother-in-law less often than that. 

I tell my oldest friend usually once a year in a letter. 

And that is it. 

Because of this, I have an automatic revulsion-type feeling when I hear people throw the L word around. 

It is similar to the feeling I would get if I saw someone put mayonnaise on their waffle instead of butter and then smother it with syrup. 

Ewwww. 

I was wrong about sports

Many years ago I read the novel Jack Gance by Ward Just. It tells the story of a young man who goes to Washington, DC with idealism and a desire to make change, but the political machine slowly wears him down. He eventually gets sucked in by that machine that rolls over anyone who tries to push it off its course. If there is a lesson in that book, it is that you either conform or you get out. 

Or the machine crushes you. 

I've never been good at conforming. It was one of the reasons I stopped attending Catholic church in my twenties; I would attend out of a sense of obedience/shame and would leave with a massive anger-induced headache every time. My mental health won out, and I got out. 

I couldn't change the church, so I left. (Eventually, I found a church that allows me to be me where I can attend without feeling like my head is going to explode in rage.)

Last night, after a conversation with D, it occurred to me that I have been wrong about this whole sports thing ever since N was in middle school. 

I've written once on this blog about my failed sports "career" as a kid, but it wasn't even failed. It never began. What I realized even then was that sports was focused on results, on winning. People were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. That is what sports is; to try to change it would be like trying to change the spots on a leopard. 

But for me, people have always been more important than winning. 

In a real sense, sports rejected me, and so I rejected sports back. Some people react differently, I suppose. They continue to love a game that didn't love them. They continue to want to be part of the team.  There is an entire field of sports psychology, and I can't even pretend to know all the iterations of people's feelings about sports, winning, losing, self-esteem, etc. But I imagine that for every kid for whom sports gave a leg up, there are as many or more for whom sports let down and so they found something else that they feel a meaningful part of. 

I can find parallels between why I left the church and why I rejected sports: both were an exclusive club. If you didn't meet certain requirements or qualifications, you were out. Or you might be part of the team, but you weren't really part of the team. 

And, of course, there is a need for requirements. I want there to be requirements for lawyers and doctors and mechanics. I don't want some idiot willy-nilly sawing on my brain if I have an aneurysm. 

But religion and sports seem different to me with sports being far below religion in importance. The state of my conscience is way, way, WAY more important that tossing a ball around. 

[I mean, when I really think about it, there is a whole lot of angst/drama/anger/money spent over tossing a ball, and it seems like something Samuel Beckett should have written a play about. But he stuck with religion, which is also often absurd.]

Eventually I found a church that has an open-table. This doesn't exist in sports at least not that I have seen or found yet. The goal is, above all else, winning. 

And my conversation with D last night made me recognize that I have been wanting sports and asking sports and demanding that sports be something it is not, and I'm in the wrong for that. 

My view about sports seems the exact opposite of what sports enthusiasts think. I see it as exclusive and full of drama and half-truths and a whole lot of mind-fuckery. I cannot reconcile "We are a team; let's work together" with "We want to win and will isolate/ignore you in order to do that." Those same ideas are at work in sports, and they seem, to me at least, to be irreconcilable. 

Perhaps the problem is in the openness of joining. "Come join the team" is often followed by "But we're only going to play the same people over and over again." 

For some people who love the sport, I guess that is good enough. 

For me, it has never been good enough. (And gives me a deeper appreciation of women who have said "F you" to the Catholic church's refusal to allow women to become priests.) If you are good enough to be on the team, you are good enough to play. And if you're not good enough to play, coaches should have the guts to cut people, even if it makes the players sad (as it did me when I was a kid). They are going to be sad and/or angry anyway, but especially if they are being told "We love you; we're a team" but then actions are different. 

[As much as I felt rejected when I didn't make the A, B, or C basketball teams as a 10-year-old, it wasn't as bad as what I would have experienced if I'd made the team but was too shitty to actually put on the field/court.]

I truly try to understand sports dynamics, but after seven years of watching my kid play a sport (and I only watch when my kid is actually on the field), I have gotten nowhere. 

Another thing I suppose I've always known about sports but never specifically focused on is that it is a power imbalance that sometimes makes people do things they wouldn't otherwise do. I understand now how Larry Nasser was able to abuse girls. Parents may have spoken amongst themselves, may have wondered or questioned or felt uncomfortable or been downright angry. But to fight and fight and fight means their child loses something valuable to them. Their child would lose an opportunity, and their child would be stuck in a quagmire of uncomfortable. I have seen this dynamic play out in real life so I get it now. 

Parents may be angry as hell and speaking loudly and proudly amongst each other but quiet as mice when the coach is around. I both love and hate that I cannot just be silent, that I can't just let it go, but what I really hate is that other parents allow me to speak out without speaking up with me. I understand why they don't, but I hate it anyway. 

Even parents whose child plays a lot put up with stuff they despise so their child will continue playing a lot. 

I'm fairly sure someone who loves sports would read this and call it a major case of sour grapes, and they aren't wrong. But if I were to care about sports at all, I would care for the underdog most. I would care for the kids who aren't the all-stars but who just enjoy playing. (And yes, this is what my kid is like, and so I know I have that bias, but I would have that bias anyway based on who I've been my entire life.)

How much shrieking and gnashing of teeth would occur if coaches decided to bench their all-stars and only play the other kids? How quickly would those same parents who think everything is great when their kid plays a lot suddenly find themselves angry and frustrated? When we're in a privileged position, we can  quickly call someone else's frustrations sour grapes. "They're just angry because their kid isn't playing much," and they are right. If they put those shoes on their own feet, they would feel the same. 

They just don't have to wear those shoes. 

As a rule, politics doesn't change and religion doesn't change and sports don't change. The power imbalance won't allow it. And if it happens, it takes many, many, many people working together.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I cannot change the animal that is sports. It can bend me if I allow it, but I cannot bend it. 

The relief (and joy) of ending things

Endings aren't nearly as exciting as beginnings.

But they are immensely freeing. 

I started to think about the "relief of the end" today after taking M to his 6th-grade orientation. His entry into middle school means our family has said "So long" to the elementary school we'd been a part of for something like 12 years. 

It did not make me sad for him to move on. 

Perhaps some of this lack of sadness was because we didn't have the "traditional" promotion ceremony or any of the before-times banquets and things, although I generally dislike that kind of stuff so I don't think I felt anything besides relief that we didn't have to do it (one of the rare positives of COVID). 

Last weekend when I saw local church members doing a service project at schools to spruce them up in anticipation of school starting, I didn't feel sad that I wasn't pulling weeds at the elementary school with these volunteers as I had in years past because I was the school's "Beautification Chair."

This lack of sadness made me think, too, about the freedom of releasing myself from connections with people I didn't really know or like or have any real reason to be connected to. 

Yes, I know this has been something I have mulled over here before. 

It is my blog....so I chew on what I want. 

Let's blame it on the obsessive part of my OCD. 

I think what can and does happen to moms who spend years not working outside the home is that they sometimes confuse their own needs with their children's needs. As my children made friends, I became friendly with many of my children's friends' parents. Some of them I truly became friends with, but the vast majority were never my friends. We didn't socialize outside of our children. We don't really know anything about each other. I would never dream of calling them if I were in a bind. 

But sometimes I have mistaken them for more than acquaintances.

Even though I am well beyond the angst of teenager and young adult life, adult friendships or acquaintanceships or connections can still be a little confusing, especially in our social media world. 

It occurred to me that one of the most wonderful things about my children moving on is that I can give myself permission to move on as well. 

I do not have to stay connected (however loosely) to people I truly don't know or admire or like or care about. 

In many cases I no longer remember why we were connected, to begin with. 

(That doesn't mean I wish them ill, but I want to be connected to people I admire or find funny or who make me think. I want to be connected to people who don't say or do or post stupid things unless they are being sarcastic or ironic in which case I probably like them. I want to be connected to people who I feel are kindred spirits.)

And there is a special category for people whom I don't see often but who make me feel happy when I am around them or when we do speak. I won't pull my mask up and put my sunglasses on and turn the other way down the grocery store aisle if I see them. These are the people who I think would probably come to my parent's funeral or at least send me a card in the mail to let me know they were thinking of me. 

Something remarkable I also consider is how much I have changed from the time N started at the elementary school to the time M left. 

I went from "friending" everyone and wanting to know everyone and be involved to being extremely selective about who I friend (and downright delighting in unfriending people). Maybe it is because when N started elementary school I was a stay-at-home mom of three children under 5 who had absolutely zero time for myself or life beyond my children. Whatever friends I had were going to come through my kids or I simply wasn't going to have friends. 

The ending of things in terms of M's schooling has provided me some happiness I didn't expect to find there. 

My reality is not THE reality

Since my OCD diagnosis some 15 years ago, I have spent a lot of time trying to clean up the mess of my mind, trying to determine what is real and true, like some kind of objective reality, and what is my brain's perception of what is real and true.

I spent the better part of 30 years thinking that catastrophizing was normal and logical and made perfect sense. If someone didn't answer the phone and my brain told me they had DIED or were in the process of dying, I accepted this without question. If I thought it, it had to be right. 

It is a hard pill to swallow when you realize you've never actually been the captain of your ship but only played one on tv. 

The more I think, the more I come to the conclusion that there is no definitive real and true. I am limited by my brain and my sensory perceptions. I'm listening to an audiobook now that talks in part about how our memories can't even be trusted. What we remember may only be a tiny sliver of what actually happened. 

Somewhere along the line, my brain told me that adults knew what they were doing, and I accepted this belief as reality. 

Pretty soon after becoming a mom, I think I realized that adults are winging it. We don't know what we're doing but we're just better at pretending or not caring or simply being used to the status quo than teens or young adults. 

Because I'm diligent about replying to emails and getting things submitted on time or not showing up late for work, I have assumed that the reality is that other people do this. As time marches on, it is evident that I have been wrong. 

When people have lauded me with praise about things, I don't know if what I did was actually good work or if it is because I show up and have a pulse (which is beyond the scope of some others). 

Sure, there are some folks who have this same "be dependable, follow-up with people" approach as me, but the world is big...bigger than I can usually wrap my head around most days. 

It is a borderline miracle that any business or organization functions with anything resembling efficiency at all, ever. That anything gets accomplished is a win. 

Over the years, I've definitely chilled out and not expected as much from myself or others. Recognizing that my reality isn't everyone's is both disorienting and freeing. The longer I live and the more I think (which is a lot since we're still lying low due to M's lack of a vaccine), the more I recognize that I will continue to go through these periods where I reconsider things that my brain told me, things that I believed for a long time. 

Post pandemic (even though it's not over) ennui

Ennui is often thought of as boredom, but I define it more broadly. 

In some ways, I have been in a state of ennui my entire life---a listlessness brought on by near-constant existential crisis. Having children and being busy and medication have lessened it, but that feeling doesn't ever fully go away. 

For the past several weeks, that feeling has worsened, and I have been trying to figure out what is going on. 

It is pandemic-related and OCD-related, but the specifics are a bit fuzzy.

There are several subtypes of OCD, and there can definitely be overlap between them. For me, contamination OCD is primary (with forbidden thoughts/ruminations secondary). This means I was totally prepared to live through a pandemic and completely unprepared to re-acclimate myself to life post-vaccination. 

My sweet spot in life was wearing a mask, not socializing, keeping my distance, and having hand sanitizer EVERYWHERE. 

Now, as I write this, everyone is acting like the pandemic is over and done with, but I have my suspicions as to what will happen. There remain a whole lot of unknowns. What will the fall and winter look like, for example?

For me, the biggest is when my youngest child will be able to get his vaccine. While I trust the vaccine to work as well as the flu shots I take each fall (or better), I also recognize that no vaccine provides 100 percent coverage. And if one of us in our house gets sick, will M get a rougher case because he is, due to his age, unable to get a vaccine? 

That worries me (even though my rational brain can totally understand that the risk to M of being harmed in a car accident driving to the vaccine is higher than his risk of getting COVID and dying from it.)

But clearly, rational thought hasn't ever been my strong suit. The blog is mood-disordered mama; not totally rational mama who keeps her wits about her. 

Then there was the announcement by the school district that kids in schools will no longer have to wear masks which seems to me to violate the "unvaccinated people need to wear masks" policy, especially at the elementary level. I would be hesitant to immerse myself in a vat of liquified bacteria or virus without a wetsuit, and that image in my mind is what I picture walking into an elementary school will feel like in the fall. 

Of course, subbing in an elementary school has always been like immersing oneself in a vat of disease, mucus, and slobber.

And then there's the general people factor. 

I didn't love people before the pandemic, but being away from people has made me even less eager to be around them, especially in large numbers. 

I recently read a book that mentioned Dunbar's number, which I had never heard of. It is a theory that the most social relationships an individual can have with anything like stability, based on evolution and our tribal history, is around 150. Research seems to suggest it isn't completely accurate, and I would say that is true. 

My Dunbar's number is around 5; possibly 10 if I'm in the right mood. 

So I'm meh about people, and I'm meh about everything else. 

I'm not bored but I am completely unmotivated. 

There are things I think I'd like to do but I haven't the desire to do them.

My impression, which could be wrong, is that other people are boldly going back into "real life." And that may be ok for them as so many lamented the pause of pandemic year 2020. 

But I liked the pause for the most part. Not every second of it, of course. But on the whole, I liked the simplification of everything. 

I liked, for once, having an actual excuse (THERE IS A FUCKING PANDEMIC) for social activity besides "I don't want to" or "I don't like people" or "I don't have the mental energy to keep up with surface-level conversations."

The pandemic made it easy and acceptable for me to keep my distance...both physically and emotionally. The pause meant I didn't have to deal with involvement in school and planning with acquaintances and putting on the mask of caring about things I truly care nothing about (player packs, for example). 

I enjoyed the disengage. 

So now that things are ripping back into "normal," I'm forced to re-engage myself. And I'm having a hard time. 

Please don't mistake my bitching for ungratefulness

It has taken me many years to realize that a person can bitch about things in their lives and become aggravated with the people and/or situations in their lives while still also recognizing that they are beyond fortunate in all the ways that really matter.

I don't know if F. Scott Fitzgerald actually said it or if it is just obvious, but intelligence, and dare I say wisdom, is being able to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in your head at the same time and still function. I didn't need to watch Pixar's Inside Out to know that maturity in one's emotional life comes from being sad and happy at the exact same time. Or how you can hate your child and love your child in the same moment. 

Black and white have always been gray. 

I have long been a Debbie Downer, a complainer. I can find 10 trillion things I don't like in the world. And sometimes people, especially those who don't know me well, think this means I'm just a whiner. Like I'm oblivious to how good I have it. 

It occurred to me today after interviewing a woman near my age with leukemia that I talk to a lot of people who have been through it. 

I've interviewed people whose children have terminal illnesses. I've interviewed people who have dealt with some kind of trauma (former sex workers, drug addicts, etc.). I've interviewed people who have suffered debilitating medical conditions or who themselves have terminal conditions. I've been in neonatal units and talked with parents whose children are struggling to live (pre-COVID). 

And when what you do to make a living means listening to people tell these often devastating stories, it makes you fundamentally understand the "there but for the grace of God" thing. 

What I know though is that even these individuals don't savor every moment in the way that movies make it out or the way people think they might. 

Being grateful doesn't mean thinking every single thing is perfect and wonderful and good. We have a name for that condition and it's called batshit nuts.

I personally think being grateful is much deeper and more involved that simply glossing over everything as if it is wonderful. Gratefulness is about looking frustration and aggravation and suckiness and pettiness clear in the eye as you bitch about it. And that doesn't happen out loud; that is an internalized process. 

You can bitch and be grateful AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. 

I can think my 13-year-old is a phenomenal asshole (which he often is) while at the same time knowing that he is smart and funny and that I'm so fortunate his issues are minor compared to so many other children's issues. I can be thankful that we have the ability to get consistent treatment for his issues. 

But being grateful doesn't mean he is not a royal PITA and that I don't have feelings of frustration.

Being grateful doesn't mean I feel less or should feel less. 

It means having feelings and stating feelings while deep down knowing that even in the midst of relatively NBD suckiness, things are still pretty ok.