Category — Uncategorized

I received the most amazing, thoughtful email a few weeks ago from the Royal Collection Trust. Mother’s Day in the UK is in mid-March (as opposed to the U.S.’s Mother’s Day in mid-May), and they wanted to know if I wanted to opt out of receiving emails with gifts and messaging geared towards Mother’s Day.

So simple and kind yet it’s the ONLY email I’ve ever received with this offer. American companies take note.

Brilliant, right?

Speaking of old television shows, CrimeReads recently did an article about the show Moonlighting. I adored this show. I was allowed to stay up later (to 9:30 pm!) two nights per week, and I always chose to stay up later on Moonlighting nights to see the first half. My mother taped the remainder of the episode—9:30 pm to 10 pm—and I watched it after school the next day.

Cybill Shepherd—swoon. Probably 90% of the content went over my tween head, but the characters made me certain that I too could grow up and open a detective agency. I was also certain that by the time I reached adulthood, I would know how to dance like the woman in purple because adults danced like this on television all. the. time.

[Aside: Josh just opened the door to the room and said, “You’re watching Moonlighting” the moment he heard Mulberry Street begin.]

I find it amusing now. What appealed to 12-year-old Melissa that she would use up one of her precious 9:30s? Who decided that some Moonlighting at night was safer than trusting the VCR to tape the whole episode?

From 2006 – 2011, I was obsessed with the television show Brothers and Sisters. I called them “Our Family,” and I still think it’s one of the best shows ever created, starting with the all-star cast and ending with their interactions which were honest and messy and guided by love. We purchased the box set of DVDs.

After ten years without Our Family, I grabbed the first box out of the basement cabinet this week and cajoled the ChickieNob into watching it with me. (The Wolvog couldn’t be convinced, even when I reminded him that Sally Field is a national treasure.) ChickieNob was immediately hooked, and we’ve been working our way through the first season.

It is so nice to be back with these characters again. I’ve forgotten most of the storylines until we’re about two seconds away from a big reveal, but the familiarity is also like wrapping myself in a cozy sweater. The world is falling apart, but everything feels warm and happy with the Walkers on the screen. For an hour, I feel good, and I wonder why I waited until the one-year mark of the pandemic to spend time with old characters I love.

Which characters would you most want to revisit?

One year ago, we knew about the coronavirus, but it wasn’t impacting day to day life in the US. My journal changed over slowly, then all at once.

I mentioned a doctor’s appointment at the end of February, but I didn’t note that I asked her if she thought the virus would spread in the US. I remember she looked at me strangely and said, “It’s not ‘if,’ it’s ‘when’.” I went home and told Josh that maybe we should be worried.

I mentioned a reproductive rights rally on March 4th outside the Capitol, but I don’t mention how I decided not to go down for it because there were grumbles that we shouldn’t gather in crowds.

I mentioned coffee on the 5th with a friend, and I know we spent most of the time talking about the virus.

On the 6th, we went to a school play, and I cringed when I heard people cough in the audience. But I didn’t mention that in my journal. On the 8th, we sat outside eating water ice, and a man walked behind me, coughing. I leaned forward and away, as if that would protect me.

The first mention of the virus is on the 11th. I entered a medical building, and there was a guard at the door. They announced a two-week school closure on the 12th, which is still in effect a year later. The grocery shelves were strangely empty on the 13th. The kids went to my parents’ house for the final time on the 14th. We made an isolation plan on the 15th. It’s a wall of updates, day after day after day.

It is surreal how COVID-19 went from background noise to central thought, and then, at some point, became a split in attention. My mind is always processing the pandemic; it’s impossible not to think about it when you need to navigate it. But my mind is also not processing the pandemic. Most of my daily journal notes are about other things; non-pandemic things. It is the unspoken companion to everything else I do, but it is no longer the only thing we talk about.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

All I know is that we’re turning into the year’s end of the pandemic. We’ll mark it here on the 12th with the closure of school; that was when things changed. And then a second year will begin.

I’m not quitting social media, though I use it probably less than most people I know. I was fascinated by the recent Guardian article about people who have closed up their social media accounts and left all platforms for good.

I know plenty of people who have left a platform, and even more who haven’t started on a platform in the first place. But no one who spends zero minutes online. Reading about the people in the article was interesting because it is so far outside my experience.

It made me think about the platforms I like—blogs and Facebook—and the platforms that don’t appeal, and why. Social media is still worth it for me; more positive than negative. It opened my world to stories and ideas I would have never encountered otherwise.

Clearly, if you’re reading this blog, you are using social media, even if you don’t write a blog yourself. So no one fits in the category of the people in the article. But I’m curious how other people processed those stories.