True confession. Everyday I get up and hear about everyone’s elaborate pandemic baking and their fancy home-prepared meals. And though I’ve done a little both, honestly I’ve gotten a lot of takeout over the last twelve weeks. Like, a lot of takeout. Like from all of my favorite local restaurants. Like multiple days of the week. And what I want to tell you is that takeout is awesome. And it’s oftentimes more cost-effective than cooking […]
Disasters, wars, catastrophes, pandemics. All larger than life events. If you’re inclined toward history, you read about them in the abstract and they stand so singular, you don’t consider the day-to-day. No one really thinks that hard about tax policy and roof repairs during the Bubonic plague. No one wonders whether Klaus and Maria’s marriage was seriously on the rocks during the back half of the 30 Years War. No one gives a thought for […]
A few days back, as I walked from the Co-Op to the car on a well-masked and socially distanced grocery run, I was approached by a similarly masked, middle aged white lady the parking lot. She waved me down and I turned, fearing I’d dropped something or left something in the store. I couldn’t read her expression , but she waved and, though her mask, mentioned that she’d seen me in the store shopping and […]
Things I Miss: Haircuts Massages Friends Hugs Live Music Noise Crowds Parties Excuses to dress up Human contact “Dropping By” OCSC Bars, in general Cat’s Cradle Clubs, in general My Family Travel Garage Sales Thrift Stores Browsing Records Browsing Books Theatres Going to the Movies Swimming The Ocean Vacations Long dinners in restaurants Weekends Not being worried all the time Being able to concentrate Daydreaming Ambition My friends, together Linear time Spontenaeity Museums Tomorrows, without […]
Today I started reorganizing the record collection. It was inevitable. When I moved into the new house, I left the records deliberately disorganized so I might have a thing to look forward to in the event of bad weather or illness. I didn’t anticipate quarantine, but here we are. And I’m back to being solo again, so the time, it would seem, is nigh. I had an old roommate years ago, who used to watch […]
A little more than three and half weeks ago, when I was moping around on a Thursday morning, contemplating the COVID and its accompanying existential abyss, my best friend called during my pre-work coffee and told me, if it was okay, she was kind of thinking about coming down to stay for a little while. I told her, without hesitation, that it was a fine idea, and then experienced a couple waves of tacit five […]
I was walking down in the woods today thinking about how this would be graduation weekend, were it not for the pandemic. Graduation weekend is always kind of a nightmare in a college town. I stay in, mostly. Sometimes I try to go home because graduation lines up tidily with Mother’s Day. Last year, I drove up to Virginia for the day to have lunch with Mom and Nana at this grand old, ersatz-Tudor hotel […]
In the unlikely event that these posts sort of useful historical document, I should probably stop and address what a fairly average attack of the 2020 Pandemics is/was like, if you, future person has stumbled across this in the future. So we’re cruising through the most gorgeous weekend ever and its myriad pleasures and it’s late Sunday afternoon and I decide to take a negroni to the deck and pull up the Times because I’m […]
During the first few weeks of quarantine, when I was falling apart all over the place, all the time, with such wide and varied peaks and valleys, I worried I might get be turning into a teenager again, I kept my brain together and myself truly off the precipice with a little gin and a whole lot of exercise. As a person who has never met a darkness she couldn’t lean right into, I accepted […]
A Complete List of Fictional Projects I Planned To Work On During Quarantine, Updated: 1) Untitled Pirate Novel: A maximalist romp through an anachronistically glam rock late 17th/early 18th century, featuring lots of gender-bending, adventure, romance, dumb pirate jokes and occasional trenchant commentary about both feminism and colonialism. Sample Passage: ‘The inn was actually called the Diving Mermaid, but the name was so regularly misread, even the owners started referring to it by its more […]
