The Newest New Normal

 

School has started. All summer we had been hearing about the different options, but it wasn't until September first that the school board decided to go live. Of course, they said they could always go back to video and home schooling.

That hadn't worked out too well for us. We got everyone a new laptop (an early Christmas present).  Ed fussed they would be back in school by Easter. I reminded him of all those wars that were going to be “over by Christmas.”

Fortunately, Ed and I could both work from home, so we could “help” with the online classes, Ed with math and science and me with English and social studies. Unfortunately, Ed and I have different philosophies. Mine is “Isn't this fun!” Ed's is “You have to learn, so you can go college and get a good job and make a lot of money. So suck it up!”

Josh wanted to know what Jesus would do, since “money was the root of all evil.” Ed told him that he would have more money to give to the poor.

Betsey, who is planning to be the AOC of her generation, (She got AOC glasses when she needed a new prescription. Fortunately or unfortunately, she already had AOC hair.) said that was classist. Ed snorted. I said she was right, but the more you know, the more you can help people. He snorted again.

They gave us two weeks to get ready. We did back to school shopping online, and for a while it was like Christmas every day with new packages arriving. When we dropped the kids off at school, it was like Halloween, with everyone wearing a different mask, animals, superheroes, cartoon characters.

I don't know what's going to happen for Halloween. I ordered some Scary Shapes candy (candy corn in shapes of bones and bats and so on), but the purple skulls had melted all over everything, and even though we managed to pull them apart, they still didn't taste good.

Of course this could all be over by Halloween. Good one.

Dear Readers,

Is it just me or are these pictures creepy?

Charlie

America's Favorite Episcopal Family Scenes from the Big House

 

Looking back, I think the time before the lockdown was like one of those horror movies that shows everyone going about their business before everything hits the fan. I had to take Cilla to dance class in the morning. (She has added hip hop to ballet, so that's two hours a week, not counting transportation.) In the afternoon, I took Betsey to the Mall. We picked up Ilse on the way, and Nikki walked to the car with a bag of books she was getting rid of. I said “Terrific" (an English major never turns down books), but I was going to clean out all the drawers and closets and maybe even the attic. She said, “I don't think it's going to last a year,” and we laughed.

Ed, who is very practical and likes apocalyptic and dystopian literature, has always insisted we keep a stock pile of paper products and canned food. We have an overflow of canned chili, and I thought I might as well pick up a few bags of tortilla chips and jars of salsa (all strength as well as pineapple and watermelon), but the parking lot at the supermarket was packed and people were rushing to their cars with overflowing baskets. (Karen told me she had put in an order on the computer, but at 5:00 the store told her the order had been canceled.)

I went to the drug store and got the chips and salsa (although they only had hot and mild. Hard times.) We were waiting to hear what would be closed. There was the feel of waiting for a snow day for the kids. Ed and I would both be working at home. The kids were delighted when it was announced that schools would be closed. What they hadn't thought of was that they would be home-schooled and that locked down means you are locked in your house, and so is everyone else.

Josh called the isolation “solitary confinement” and “house arrest.” Betsey said that lack of human contact makes people crazy. I asked them what was their family, chopped liver? Josh said Ed and I were the corrections officers and the girls were his fellow prisoners. Probably at the instigation of the others, Cilla had made an ankle bracelet out of Legos and duct tape.

I said “good one,” and, as I do when they fight, I told them I had wished for siblings all my life.  I would have even prayed for them, but I was a Unitarian. The Only Child Card may get old for them, but never for me. Cilla looked sympathetic. Betsey rolled her eyes and Josh told me how lucky I was to have all that extra money spent on me. Betsey said I hadn't had to put up with anybody getting in my stuff or walking by and hitting me on the back of the head. Josh said he just tapped.

Ed happened to be walking by on his way on his way to the kitchen, He said anybody who had siblings would say I was neurotic. I said maybe that was what made me that way. Not to mention being raised by two scientists/and having most of the family named after writers or literary characters, including an Aunt Pooh.

Is this the deluge?

+

I'm probably not a “brilliant” writer, but I like to think I'm “gifted” on good day.

But lately (ever since The Election, if I'm honest), there haven't been that many; It's not that we didn't have good times, – there's always something to celebrate with kids (not to mention a dog and cat). But there was always something not quite right. We were waiting, not for the other shoe to drop, but for a whole display case of shoes to fall over.

This past winter was like a soggy spring or summer. The scarves and mittens stayed in the drawers, and Karen's boys never got to wear the snowsuits they'd gotten for Christmas. We watched White Christmas and A Christmas Story, hoping for real snow, but after a fall which didn't leave you feeling brisk drinking your Pumpkin Spice cocoa or latte in your autumnal turtleneck, I was worried.

Ed wanted to know why I was getting upset over weather. I said obsessing about trivia kept my mind off the real problems, not the least of which was feeling guilty because so many people had so many more problems.

We hoped that 2020 would fix things. But we should have know that a leap year with a full moon on Friday the thirteenth would be, as Kate said, “a real side trip on The Journey” or as Nikki put it, “Another f**king opportunity so make some different mistakes for a change.”

And we're off!

Making a Halloween Fashion Statement

This year, the kids are saluting the Addams family. Josh had thought of being Bernie Sanders; He could put powder in this hair and wear a Bernie t-shirt Janet had saved. He made a sign to put on his back that said, “I wrote the damn bill!” He even offered to change it to “d**n bill”, but I said some people might be offended and anyway, we didn't want anyone to think we were Socialists. Josh said that we shouldn't care what people think, especially if it isn't true. Cilla added that some Socialists were probably nice people and had kids “just like us.”

I finally said we could go to the costume store and get anything they wanted, as long as it wasn't the sexy version. So we went to the Halloween Holiday Ghostly “Boo-tique,” in an old Blockbuster building, where a very nice millennial vampire helped us “create a howling good Halloween.”



Cilla decided to be Morticia because the costume was pretty and Betsey picked Wednesday because she was a “badas . . .girl.” Josh will be Cousin Itt, who isn't that far from Senator Sanders. Our sales vampire asked if I wanted to be Grandmama, but I never dress up, much to the relief of Ed and the kids, although I do have a pair of cat ears, and if I feel very daring I draw whiskers on my face.



What the Heck, It's Halloween!



It may seem redundant to call Halloween “weird,” but this year it's weirder than usual. For one thing, people are still wearing shorts. Besides that, pumpkin spice food just doesn't taste the same. And when the wistful autumn songs come on the radio, I just snort.

Ed says I'm being ungrateful, and this winter I'll be wishing Joni Mitchell or somebody would call this October back for another month or so.  He's right, but I want to wear my sweaters. Some people are shoe people. I'm a sweater person. I also like socks with animals on them.

To add to the unreality, the grocery store had bags of candy corn, candy pumpkins, and “Autumn Mix,” which is regular and Native American corn and pumpkins. The drugstore also had small bags of “Maple Syrup” corn. Nobody, including the candy store, which has been around since my mother was a child,and maybe longer, carried the Halloween mix, which has yellow, banana-flavored moons and femurs, purple “salted caramel” skulls, the usual corn and pumpkins, “chocolate” cats and bats of such a dark brown they could be black, and small brown jugs, which were maple flavored. The kids always fight over those. I restrain myself.

Fortunately, I was able to find them on the Internet, where shipping was free for orders over twenty five dollars. I bought three bags and gave two to Karen and Nikki. They didn't have the jugs; I guess the maple candy corn replaced them, perhaps to stop fights. I went back to the drugstore and bought six bags. They were small.

Ed said that it was a triumph of technology that enabled me to refuse to keep up with advances in holiday junk food so we could rot our teeth with purple skulls.

I  said, “It's a tradition.” When I say that, everyone stops arguing.



 



Little Christmas

By Epiphany, we have the tree and the lights down, but we have a tradition of finishing the Christmas food that has lasted though the holidays: cranberry sauce, dips, fancy cheeses and crackers from the Intellectual Deli, the popcorn left in those giant tins, those cookies from Denmark that also come in tins, and the last of the English “biscuits,” that I get every year, along with the popping crackers and plum pudding. Every year I put little boxes of Barnum's Animal Crackers in the kids' stockings (like my mother put in mine and her mother had put in hers). The kids don't like them and Ed says they're a waste of money, but I tell everyone it's a tradition and that they shouldn't be curmudgeons.

So there are always animal crackers left. Cilla and Josh like to make the animals fight and dance around the cocoa cups and then dive in. Betsey likes to say say they are immature and tell me I'm letting them run wild. Well, at least she doesn't call them big morons anymore.

But over the years, things have changed. The boxes used to come with a string that you could use to hang them from the tree. Not they just have paper handles as part of the box. And this year, the animals are free range. They used to be in cages in a circus train car. Ed pointed this out and called it “another victory for animal rights.” I said it was a good thing, but I felt kind of bad about it, not to mention the string. Betsey snorted, Josh patted my shoulder, and Cilla says she's going to write to the company about the string.

 

 



Aunt Pooh's Hotdog Smorgasbord

 

 

 

Our discussion of hamburgers and ketchup ("That's So Charlie") reminded me of Aunt Pooh's International Hot Dog Buffet, which she would set out for me and my cousins.  It works for hamburgers too.

Hula dog:  a hotdog with ketchup and pineapple.  Say aloha to a real treat!

Fiesta Perro: salsa and cheese, loving wrapped in a tortilla!  Ole!

Ach du Lieber Hund: a frankfurter mit sauerkraut and cheese.

Good Ole Boy/Gal dog:  Add barbecue sauce for a southern treat!  Yee hah!

John Bull Dog:  A jolly good show with cheddar cheese and mustard!  If you can find chutney, it will add the mystery of India.

Godfather Dog:  Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over spaghetti sauce on your hot dog. They'll leave the gun and take the dog!

Puritan Dog:  Smother your dog with baked beans.  Even Cotton Mather would love it! 

Aunt Pooh told me that when my mother was three she wouldn't eat hotdogs because she thought they were made from dogs.  When my grandmother explained that they were called that because they looked like dachshunds, my mother said that was "stupid."  But she ate them.