Day 16 - LA County enters Red Tier for the first time

Finished…

3/30/21. Tuesday

8:00 – 8:30 - My alarm was set for 8:00, but I gave myself transition time to listen to The Daily while in bed. 

8:30 – 9:00 - Downstairs to say good morning to the animal.  I rub her tummy three times, she grabs her toy, and we go outside. More bird chasing.  The patio is covered in leaves – I absolutely need to work in some gardening today. The dog does her business and we return inside – salami for her, coffee for me. I unload the dishwasher, then go upstairs. 

9:00-10:15 -Long shower and I wash/condition my hair. Lotion. Sunscreen. Dress in Covid-19 uniform. Blow dry hair. Light make-up. 

10:15 – Leave for my therapy session.  I pack my lunch bag, students’ papers, my book, etc.

Today is also errand day, which I typically schedule in conjunction with my sessions.  This is a time efficiency “hack” in that if you have an appointment and you’re going to be out of the house anyway, you should actually be “batch tasking.”  It doesn’t make sense to run daily errands when they can be completed in a set block of time one or two days a month. Time is precious – you are better served ensuring you have space in your life for doing things you enjoy, like reading, gardening, journaling, hiking, biking, walking the dog around my neighborhood, exercising [yuck, but good for you, regardless] or whatever your hobby is instead of running errands constantly. On occasion, I’ll run a “break-out” errand, outside of errand day, but usually only during lecture, so I’m at least getting paid for my personal time, while class is ongoing. 

10:30-11:00 – I arrive for my session and, this time, my therapist offers to sit in the chair directly across from me, instead of 10 feet away, near the door.  It’s so odd, but it had never occurred to me to ask her to move forward, even though she’s been vaccinated for about 6 weeks.  I agree and she moves to the chair, which is how she conducted sessions in the Before Times.  

I feel like I’m embarking on some sort of strange experiment, daring to sit this close to a human being.  Even though she is fully vaccinated and I am double-masked, it is so disconcerting to sit this close to another person who is NOT in my “bubble.”  I can see her eyes and her facial expressions…I feel like an insect under a glass jar…is she scrutinizing me or is this just normal conversation and interaction?  I no longer remember what normal conversation is like. It dons on me that I could actually take my masks off, too…but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not having my mask on, while being indoors with another person, is so jarring and frightening to me, I barely entertain the thought. 

It is here, on this day, that I realize and understand that I’ve endured a great trauma. I’m emerging from the pandemic incredibly altered and changed forever…I’m sure others are, too. 

11:00-11:30 – Session ends and I drive to Undergrounds so I can buy a coffee and grade papers while seated at their outdoor tables. A guy descends the stairs carrying his bike, orders a coffee, and then sits in the middle of all the empty tables, outside on the tier.  There is literally nowhere else for me to sit, unless I want to be closer than the recommended 6 ft.  I find ONE table at the very top of the tiers and settle in, with my coffee.  Unfortunately, there is a transient asleep, tucked under another tier, like a dog, two tiers down.  This is so gross.  Go away! 

11:30-2:00 – I grade papers, drink my coffee, and eat strawberries.  A mom and her three rug-rats arrive and the two little boys, ages 2 and 4, keep climbing up the tiers and playing too close to me.  The Mom is doing nothing about it and I don’t want to get sick. Go away! 

One  of the employees comes outside and offers the transient a banana and water, but he’s too much of a snob to take the banana and rejects it.  Just take it!  You know you’ll be hungry later. 

I’m out of here. 

2:00-3:00 – I get $20 worth of gas, then drop off a return at Fed-Ex [those Reeboks I ordered that are a ‘Toddler size 5’].  I have to wait 20 minutes, indoors, in a line, and there are only three people ahead of me. The customer service is abysmal!  When it’s my turn, I hand the cashier my package and leave.  MY transaction takes 10 seconds.  Get a better system, Fed-Ex!  This is ridiculous and I was probably exposed to the ‘rona.’  Thank God I was double-masked. 

3:00 – 4:00 - Home and L. is on a Zoom meeting with her Color Theory class. I ask her if she can help me lower the back seat in my Toyota Corolla and she gives me attitude. I don’t ask very much of her, ordinarily, so I don’t understand this resistance to helping me. I say, “You really hate helping me, don’t you?”  She responds that we tried to lower the back seat a year ago and were unsuccessful and I was stressed out.   

Yes, this is true.  The pandemic had just started and L. needed a bike repair. In the course of a month, the world had changed. In order to stop by the bike shop, we had to make an appointment.  On that day, I had planned on lowering the seat so we could load her bike in my car, but we COULD. NOT. lower the seat, even with my ex-husband’s instructions.  Upset that we might miss our appointment, we crammed L.’s bike in the back seat and were barely able to shut the car doors.  I was very stressed on that day and I blogged about it. But that was a year ago. 

Seeing how irritated I am, L. says she will help me lower the seat, in an hour, after her Zoom class. great. thanks. 

I read Daffodils. 

4:00 –4:15 -  L. doesn’t bother to come down so I find a You Tube video and determine that the levers for lowering the seat are inside the trunk.  A year ago, my ex had incorrectly informed us that the levers were behind the headrests in the back seat. I open my trunk, pull the levers, and lower the seat.  It took 20 seconds.  Another ‘post-pandemic’ turning point…again, I’ve come full circle.  I want to take my cruiser to the Santa Monica bike path and I think it will probably fit in this space.  I’ll experiment later. 

4:30-6:30 – L. emerges saying she will help me lower the back seat. Never mind. 

I make a spinach salad with asparagus, egg yolks, some of L.’s gourmet rosemary cheese, and her Spanish olive oil. I finish Daffodils while I eat my lunch:

This is a memoir comprised of short essays and written by a female, ornamental gardener.  In fact, it reads, suspiciously, like a series of blog posts accumulated over several years. I suspect that she culled the best posts, put them in a book, and called it a day. Her actual business is called The Whimsical Gardener and she designs ornate gardens for people.  The author states that she’s won numerous awards in “competitive gardening.”  Who knew such a sport existed? 

Anyway, the book features lots of essays about nature and how nature serves as a metaphor for life which means there are an inordinate number of essays about spiders.  You know, like the web is a metaphor for the world and the spider spins its own destiny…or something like that???  Every time the author encounters an animal – bird, snake, raccoon, coyote – she compares this interaction to her life.  A bird flew into her window and collapsed on the patio, but recovered and felt much better the next day.  Well, guess what?  According to the author, that bird is her and she’s ‘recovering’, too. 

I’m also a gardener - of course, not at her level - but after awhile the essays became a bit monotonous.  The author slips in a few interesting sections about her personal life, but they are merely teasers…she doesn’t follow-up nearly enough.  For example, her husband left her for another woman, then asked her for a divorce.  Because he feels guilty about his transgression, he agrees to support the author financially and allows her to live in their home while he moves out.  This arrangement and separation lasted around 7 years until the author finally filed the paperwork.  Lest you think her husband’s a nice guy, he’s not.  In ONE paragraph (out of 300 pages), the author lets slip that her husband criticized her constantly about her weight.  It would have been nice if she’d written more about that in the book. 

After her divorce, the author embarks on a long-distance relationship, over the course of several years, with a much younger man who is absolutely in love with her.  She won’t commit and doesn’t take the plunge, but is absolutely devastated when he takes up with a much younger woman.  Even though this is an extremely interesting plot point, she only devotes around 20 pages to this relationship. 

Apparently, her grandmother was emotionally and verbally abusive – again, 5 pages max. 

Her Dad died tragically when she was …2?...16?...it’s not clear. And how did he die?  Never discussed.  

The author writes about how happy she was when she was a stay-at-home mother to her only son (now an adult and married), with whom she has a wonderful relationship.  2 pages. 

Although I made it through to the other side and finished the book, I don’t recommend this read. 

6:30-7:15 – I take the dog for a walk and listen to True Crime Garage. 

7:15-9:00 – Gardening.  The patio is covered in leaves.  I thought that only happened in the Fall. More True Crime Garage. 

9:00-10:00 – I have a few strawberries and some almond butter to prepare for my Insanity workout, then dive in.  This one is called Cardio Recovery – it’s very manageable.

10:00-12:00 – Recovery. I drink champagne and do a blog post. 

12:00 –1:30 -  It’s my Dad’s birthday and L. and I specifically waited until this time, when we knew he’d be up (he goes to bed around 5:00 a.m.) to wish him a happy birthday. We have a long, funny, interesting  conversation – at 82, my Dad is still sharp as a tack – and my Dad asks me to call more because he misses me.

 I’m going to call more. 

1:30-2:30 – Kitchen duty. I have a few pimento olives. 

2:30-3:00 – Night time routine. Bed.