I woke up this morning thinking about my life.  Being a tiny child, and my grandmother’s presence.  She would come stay at our house fairly frequently.  I’d get into bed with her and we’d have long conversations.  The bulk of her, the slight smell of her, her toothless mouth, her accent.  When we would visit her in the city, she would take me to the playground.  “Gon play” and she’d sit on a bench and watch me.  A black coat, a black hat with sequins on it, ever watchful.  The playground was all concrete.  There was a big concrete turtle, or maybe it wasn’t so big; with footholds molded out of it, so you could climb on top.  There were walls of concrete with footholds, handholds.  And the usual swings and stuff.

I remember being out of school, first job, first apartment, we were starting adult life but we were just children.  I was very much still being formed.  Margaret was always there.  Back then people talked on the phone, even me.  Hours, hanging on the phone, receivers tucked under our ears while we moved about, long phone cords so we could carry the phone around.  Me in Tarrytown, she in Brooklyn.  Yet we couldn’t keep apart.  I’d go down, in my cheap little white Mazda 323, sometimes stay the night, not always.  One night I headed back home in the rain and spun my car around on a BQE on-ramp.  I remember going into the turn and the car just kept turning, until I was facing exactly the wrong way.  I quickly and tremblingly did a K-turn and got back in the right direction and drove home slow and chastened and how in the world was it that nobody was speeding up that on-ramp right behind me?

Then I was living in Manhattan.  Hot, stinking Chinatown streets in the middle of summer; and in the dead of winter, the vast concrete in front of City Hall & the court buildings, making me feel the cold piece of rock that we live on hurtling through space.

Then things happened so quickly.  I met Xopher at the end of 93, he in Ithaca, my in NY, for over a year.  Then he was in NY for a year.  Then we were in VT, first it was just a vacation, then I was leaving everything, the job I loved & the city where I was happy, for the new life I’d been dreaming of since I was a teen, to strike out somewhere new, somewhere not NYC, somewhere clean where things were smaller and where I could maybe could be normal.  Then we were renting, but then 6 months later we bought this house, and a year later we married.  We had no idea what we were doing, couldn’t have known.

Sometimes lately I startle myself all of a sudden with the thought, “But I’m just a kid!”  Once recently I was walking through the mudroom and my eyes fell on some dirt, and I looked around at the mess and dirt and thought, “We are just kids!  We don’t know what we’re doing!  Living in this house making a damn mess of everything…”  And then the other night, I guess I was thinking of how I’d been touching or pulling up some weeds or something, and wondering if I’d washed my hands, and whether I’d touched food, and thought, “I’m just a kid!  How is it that I have not poisoned myself yet?  Or electrocuted myself?”

I am still the kid I ever was.  I play silly games in my head, sometimes in real life.  I hope no one realizes.  All the dumb things I do.  I’m the little girl with the older brother, bigger, smarter, snottier, but she wants his attention.  Wants him to think she’s smart, wants him to think she’s worth hanging around with.  Wants his love.  Except now that’s my husband over there.

How is it that I’m still here?  Because I’m in the universe where I happened to make it for 51 years.  I guess there is another universe where I got smacked into on that BQE on-ramp and was snuffed out at 22.  I suppose plenty of universes where I did poison myself, or electrocute myself.  The universe where I stayed in NYC and X drifted away.  The one where I married the HS bf and moved to Wichita.  The universe where we elected Donald Trump president and all got a new novel coronavirus.  Damn!  I end up in that one, seriously!?  But it’s also the one where we elect Biden in 2020 and end up shaking our heads like it was all a bad dream, and we swear we’re sorry and will never do it again…

 

Sure, a worldwide pandemic, the worst civil unrest since the 60’s, barreling towards a presidential election half the country won’t accept as valid anyway…  and it is a sign of my utter self-centeredness that I still say 50 was a good year for me.  On the inside.

You are the sun,

You are the rain,

Your life is just a foolish game

You need to know

It’s all a flow

And it happens all again & again

Apologies to Lionel Richie.

 

Not happy with Vermont anymore.  Too many days with double-digit caseload increases.

Almost heaven, in Vermont
Green Mountains, Winooski River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze

Route 15, take me home
To the place I belong
In Vermont, Mount Mansfield,
Take me home, Route 15

“Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum & put on the run.”

Bob Dylan being very Dylan indeed.

“[Robert Johnson] was so far ahead of his time that we still haven’t caught up with him”

 

Less than 11 months after reading The Fuck It Diet, I finally did it: canceled my Weight Watchers subscription.  It’s over.  I’ll always think highly of WW.  When I ballooned during my mirtazapine Bad Days, it was good for me… but as I’ve already stated, I’m not going to continue spending my life losing and gaining the same silly 5 pounds anymore.  I’m not a natural 120.  I seem to be a natural 128.  Fuck it.

…the perfection of this evening on Wiseacres Farm.

Spring chores done; the garden coming up perfectly; the goaties grazing.

 

• Make a rez at Trattoria D’Elia
• Stop in at Pizzeria Verita
• Visit VPB
• Chow down at El Cortijo
• Saunter down Church St
•  . . .

All right, basically visit every restaurant & bar in creation.

• Visit Montreal & see Cirque du Soleil every year for my birthday
• Bike the Chambly Canal
• Go to Bar Harbor/Acadia every September
• Go to the Caribbean every March

Restaurants and travel.  Yummmmm…..

		1-May	2-May	3-May	4-May	5-May	6-May	7-May	8-May	9-May	10-May	11-May	12-May	13-May
Chittenden	Positive test results	419	422	423	425	425	426	431	431	431	432	432	432	432
Vermont	Positive test results*	879	886	897	902	907	908	916	919	921	927	926	927	929
	Total tests conducted	16,233	16,591	16,954	17,332	17,518	17,867	18,451	19,008	19,527	20,048	20,871	21,262	21,676
	Deaths+	50	51	52	52	52	52	53	53	53	53	53	53	53
	People being monitored	20	15	12	12	20	20	23	24	27	24	23	25	27
	People who have completed monitoring	833	838	841	841	840	841	841	842	842	845	846	849	849
	Hospitalized patients with COVID-19	11	11	10	8	8	6	5	5	5	5	5	5	5
	Hospitalized patients under investigation for COVID-19	8	9	9	7	25	20	9	10	16	16	9	13	12

These numbers are spectacular.  New cases & deaths barely even nudge lately.

 

I think X and I are getting along better than ever during quarantine.  I think the basic reason is because we have to.

It used to be I’d spend a lot of the workweek here alone, trying to make things neat and tidy, annoyed at things that he left untidy or that just will never be tidy while he lives here.  I’d also be simultaneously annoyed when he wouldn’t come home till late, not caring about me; and annoyed when he DID come home before late, wrecking my solitude.

Now he’s just always there.  I don’t have to adjust between being alone and not being alone, and I can just plain give up on tidiness.  The dining room is an example.  It’s his home office now, and his computer and stuff are there on one end of the table.  No picture-perfect dining room with a vase of tulips in the center of the table for me.  So I don’t even try.  So I end up less frustrated.

Also he is less tired and more happy.  Less tired from not commuting.  Happier, I don’t know why; being less tired, for one, but also, I think he kind of thrives on uncertain crises just like this one.  He knows he can’t do anything about it, so he just whistles through the shitstorm as best he can.