Of Fires and Feelings
This is going to be all over the place, so please buckle up and hang on tight. There are some major S-curves ahead. I’m going to attempt to tie together a bunch of things, and I have NO plan right now. If you’re into the whole “vibes” thing, grab a bunch of good ones and and maybe some soothing tea. This will get heavy. It’ll be light in places, too. But I’m (still) processing a death- by suicide- of someone I looked up to… and hormone replacement therapy, and writing during summertime, and forest fires, and I might just even include a fart joke, you never know.
The Ants Are Back In Town!
Greetings! It’s March 2023 and the ants are back and so it seems appropriate that I come back, too. Just for a little while. Not too long. Like, maybe long enough to nibble on an apple core and three Ritz crackers that someone left on an end table overnight. I might come here and write more, I might not. I don’t know. Depends on how much this apple fills me up. I might head on over to the kitchen to check out those strawberry tops someone left in the sink. Maybe write another paragraph or ten next week. We’ll see how much ant bait there is to dodge, how this apple settles in my stomach.
Ants, the tiny ones that make their appearance in early Spring, will forever remind me of the beginning of the pandemic, of the lockdown orders specifically. That time when our yard was torn up from the sewer repair, and I was trying to school two kids under the age of 6 at home, and we were scrambling to make sense of the world amongst, of all things, toilet paper shortages. I remember the ants crawling all over everything, oblivious to anything besides the pursuit of food. They crawled all over us. Humans! Beings that could potentially crush them between two diminutive fingertips. Back then, I had the willies about them, was mildly annoyed at them, but only at the sensation of them, and not at the existence of them. In fact, their existence was so curious to me, so comically timed. Ants? During a pandemic? Didn’t the Universe know we already had enough to handle? Now, three years later, I can identify in me a kind of jealousy as well. To be so blinded by a desire for, say, raspberry jam on a dirty countertop, I could face down the mountain of death! Well, actually. Now that I think about… that’s kinda what we were doing, weren’t we? Potentially dancing with our mortality every time we ached for guacamole or butter pecan ice cream? We suited up and took our chances, scuttling like insects from aisle to aisle, bee-lining it for the checkout stand, hoping, praying, mouth-breathing into masks, willing ourselves to go on. I’ll never forget the woman I saw at the grocery store wearing gardening gloves for protection… or that meme going around of the man with a sneaker tied around his face in lieu of a mask. A man’s tennis shoe. The ants? They didn’t have those same anxieties about death. Or, if they did, didn’t choose to suffer the indignity of strapping smelly footwear to their heads to buy, say, a Coke at a bodega. They just went for it. Man, who woulda thunk I’d be looking back at the past three years and finding something sage about ants, for chrissakes?
COVID-IARIES Day 43. I’m Having It Both Ways.
Every few days, it comes: the emotional bulldozer, the thing that knocks me down.
On Day 1 of Week Whatever, I’m angry because the kids have tracked mud through the house, and I’m exhausted knowing I've got to re-up the eggs and milk soon, and I'm beyond BEYOND frustrated that I can't figure out how to make my kid sit long enough to finish a lesson... or IF she even should be sitting still at her age because who has time to read a child development book right now?... and then....
COVID-IARIES Day 30. It’s Been a Month.
Bobo and Beaversons are playing school/family right now, tearing through the house like excitable cats. Bobo is teaching Beaversons the songs she normally sings in kindergarten, and I ask you: WHERE IS THIS ENTHUSIASM ON ANY GIVEN SCHOOLDAY? On any given school day, she's exhibiting a different kind of cat behavior: scratching at me when I hand her a worksheet, slinking away with a hurt look in her eyes when I gently put my arm around her and coax her to the work table.
COVID-IARIES Day… Eleventeen. We’re On To Lists.
Sunday, 1:30 pm. Make toddler her own meal since she didn't want to eat what the rest of the family was eating. She sneezes right onto the food, the countertops, and you. Carry on like nothing's happened. Figure you'll save money on a all-at-once family cremation in about a month's time.
Monday-Friday 9am-6:30 pm: Trot out a video for the five year old of favorite musician singing kid songs, videos of kid zumba, videos of Mo Willems (sorry, Mo, we gave it a good run), videos of EVERY SINGLE EDUTAINMENT OPPORTUNITY ON THE PLANET and be met with such resistance, you would think she was being offered a newly eviscerated human kidney on a plate. All these "educational resources"? They're not resources if the kids don't want to have anything to do with them. Thanks for the suggestion. What I need is another set of arms, another functioning adult who isn't grouchy and overstretched about being indoors, and perhaps a robot to get us milk and eggs because the stores only let us buy two cartons at a time, and we need much more than that in a 30 day span, which is how often we're trying to go without groceries because we're all trying to do our part to stay OUT of stores right now.