It has been a week. I had forgotten what life was like. I had been lulled into the dull anxiety and panic of the pandemic that was mostly staying at home trying to avoid my own children, banishing them to the backyard, stress eating chips.
Naomi has started preschool, and Caleb started school this week, and it has been pick ups and mask checks and packing lunch. We have this dinky plastic bento box thing that we used last year but, last year, Caleb mostly did hot lunch at his school so we suffered through it. At last, the complaints have come to a head, and so I bought these stainless steel lunch boxes that were on sale and when Jon found out the total, even before he found out they were on sale he was aghast. What are these? Lunchboxes?? We’ve become a family that calculates the cost of things in how many TWSBIs or Safaris we could’ve gotten wholesale, and I will spare you the details of how many ECOs we could’ve gotten for the price of these dishwasher safe, stainless steel lunchboxes. In fact, I had to buy two of them, planning ahead for Naomi, because shipping was extremely expensive. No sale on shipping, but who can control that stuff? Strangely, Jon did not feel much better finding out their regular price.
With the way things worked out, Caleb had a music lesson after school on his first day, and I hadn’t quite figured out the timing because we only found out Caleb’s dismissal time at the very last minute, which was half an hour later than last year. I was worried about driving though across the city traffic to pick up Naomi at preschool, which was the plan, and so I had to call Jon to drive from a different direction to pick her up in case I was late, while I met them there with Caleb. And his cello. And Naomi’s car seat in the car I was driving. I was, in fact, not late, and I’m not sure which would’ve been better, given that by the time I arrived, Jon was standing there beside his Subaru.
I had really and truly completely forgotten how busy life is. The world is swimming around me, and I’m mainly just pretending I know what’s going on.
In any case, on my car rides back and forth dropping off and picking up Naomi from preschool, I’ve been playing music from my high school days, U2 and Oasis, down the very slow downtown streets, trapped behind streetcars. I was trying to tell Naomi that the band was called U2, and she said “me also? and I said, “no, the band is called U2” and she said, “the band is called me also?” And I just gave it up. Because that’s what life is these days. Giving up on things that you hope really are give-upable and not the big things, and hoping it all comes out in the wash. 26 pens inked up? No problem. Frozen pizzas for dinner? Yes, please. And look! How convenient that we have this extra dipping sauce from when we ordered take out pizza.
making wild rice 