Category — Uncategorized

I’m not great with blurry lines; I’m a rules follower and work much better with yes or no than maybe. Last Halloween what to do was clear: no trick-or-treating. No one in town was supposed to take their kid around, and no one in town was supposed to hand out candy. I knew what to do and what not to do.

This year, it’s all a little amorphous. Some people are trick-or-treating. Others are not. Do we buy candy? How much if we don’t want a lot leftover? How do we pass it out safely?

We’re opting to place a bowl with candy at the end of the walkway and sit by the door, many feet away from the bowl, so we can see costumes and be friendly but not have small kids crowding outside the door. So it’s kind of a grab, wave, and go. They get candy, we keep safe, we keep them safe, and we drink tea to keep warm.

What are you doing in your town?

Modern Mrs. Darcy linked to an old 2011 NPR essay (that I feel I read once upon a time, but maybe not) about how we need to be okay with all the things we’re never going to do because it is the fate of every single human on earth. We will not get to read all the books, see all the movies, travel to all the places, meet all the people, have all of the experiences.

She writes: “We could do the same calculus with film or music or, increasingly, television – you simply have no chance of seeing even most of what exists. Statistically speaking, you will die having missed almost everything.”

Missed almost everything! That phrasing. No matter how many books I read, it’s a small drop in the bucket of what’s out there. No matter how many people I meet, they’re a tiny fraction of the billions of people on earth. Many of whom would have possibly been good friends. (Though perhaps it is a small joy to know that I inadvertently avoided others.)

She tries to bring you to a place of peace by the end of the essay, but I’m afraid I got too hung up on the facts; the sheer amount of knowledge and art and humans out there and how little I’ll get to encounter during my time on earth.

Nothing like your own mortality to get you into the Halloween spirit.

There are 9 years left to the next decade; 79 to the next century. I found a fun time-based site, counting down the remaining seconds until the next minute, the remaining minutes until the next hour. Look at how much time I have.

I clicked over to see who was my age now back when I was born. Andy Warhol! But Andy Warhol was old. I’m not old. And he’s dead. I’m not dead. Gabriel García Márquez? But he died in 2014. David Bowie was only 27 when I was born; Freddie Mercury 28.

Which means I’ll likely be gone when all the kids born this year are in their late 40s.

A sobering thought to start your morning.

We are the type of family who buys toiletries in bulk. We go to the store once or twice a year and purchase all the toothpaste and shampoo we’ll need for the next 6 – 8 months. It’s efficient, we’re never left soap-less, and we save tons of money because we use a 25%-off-your-whole-trip coupon.

The exception is my hair gel. It’s only sold online. I purchase a half dozen tubes at a time and store them with the rest of the toiletries.

Whenever I open a new one, I check—usually by feel because it has a distinctive cap—how many I have left. I was down to one and knew I had to order soon, but imagine my horror when I went to grab the last one and it wasn’t there. There was no gel. Doing this by feel instead of opening the box and looking inside had failed me.

Ordering it wasn’t a problem—it was in stock and would ship immediately, arriving a few days later. But what would I do in the meantime?

I found a half-used bottle of an old hair product under the sink that seemed to be okay. I rubbed it through my hair and sniffed at a curl. My hair smelled like 2018. Like pre-pandemic. Like getting ready to leave the house instead of debate whether I really need to walk out the front door. It smelled like a no-mask life. Like college-is-years-away life.

I used it for two days until the regular gel arrived, and then I tucked the old bottle of hair product under the sink. It’s not 2018 anymore.

I went to meet a friend for coffee early in the morning, and my tire pressure light came on right as I pulled off the street. I am someone who has always taken my car to the local garage and had someone there fill up my tires or convinced Josh to drive out and meet me at a gas station. Which is kind of embarrassing because it’s not that difficult. The last time Josh helped me, I made myself an audio note with step-by-step instructions.

I drove to the nearest gas station telling myself that I can do hard things. I have an audio note, and it’s early in the morning. Sure enough, when I pulled into the gas station, there was no one in sight. Except for the man watering the plants right next to the air pump. No problem. I’m not embarrassed that I am a middle-aged woman standing next to my car, listening to an audio note telling me how to take care of my tires.

I started with the tire that looked lower than the others. The gauge confirmed this, and I started to fill the tire with air, becoming flustered because I really wanted to listen to the audio note again, but the watering can man (WHY ARE YOU WATERING PLANTS WHEN IT IS CLEARLY ABOUT TO RAIN?) is looking at me strangely. So I decide that I’m going to pull to the side of the station, listen to my note a few times, and then loop back to the air pump.

I go to reattach the cap, and it flies out of my fingers and through the tire, landing somewhere beneath my car. I’m scrambling around, looking for it, when another car (of course) pulls up behind, waiting to use the pump.

A sixty-something-year-old man climbs out of the car and immediately starts offering to help. Do I need him to fill my tires? No. I’m just trying to find the cap. Do I need him to find the cap? No, I am perfectly capable of finding a cap. Do I need him to…

Listen, I get that he was just being helpful, but sometimes being helpful is giving someone time to do something. Not rushing them along when there are two other gas stations within eyesight that you can go to if you’re in a hurry and need an air pump now. Instead, he hovered as close as he could with COVID-19 in mind and made me feel panicked.

A minute later, I found the cap, attached it, and drove away without checking the other three tires. I would have to loop back to the station later or risk being late to meet my friend. And, frankly, I was too embarrassed at that point to drive back in and test the other three tires without a clear and immediate reason.

The moral of the story; I will be cognizant when waiting in line that I don’t make another person feel rushed. You never know when they’re trying to follow steps from an audio note for the first time.