Who took this vacation picture? Was someone else here? We’ll never know.
Last year I was on the cusp of my life changing. Sure, I was turning 50, but I was about to take a year off to live my dream and write my first novel. Kamala Harris had jumped into the presidential race and was going to be our first female president. That meant I was going to come back to work inspired about working for a female commander in chief and having ample career opportunities to pick from. The self-improvement goals were numerous. I was going to get fit again and eat better. I was going to spend my daughter’s junior year being present, not be such a bitch at home, spend more time with my folks, and be a better friend. It was going to be glorious.
A year later, I’m feeling kind of (using an out of date gen-z word here) meh. I’m proud of my book, but a smidge disappointed in my early reader’s feedback. Now that I’m done writing, what do I do next? Do I take the terrifying step to polish it and try to publish, write the next book, or just quit knowing that the publishing world is cruel? The country is a hot pile of steaming shit for so many reasons, but personally I have zero future job opportunities: there is no work in electric vehicle charging, climate change, or green careers because Harris didn’t get elected. My ex-colleagues are all fired, quit, soon to be fired, or scared. My network is decimated. During our family summer vacation I refused to let my family take any pictures of me because I look like a chubby bridge troll with a permanent scowl and wiry hairs growing out of my mole. Someday we’ll look back on our nine days together and wonder if I was there. (Honestly, did the semaglutide botox fervor have to hit now? Many of my friends look better than they did in their 20s, but I’m terrified of a med spa injecting stuff into my body and face. Sigh.)
Poor me.
Yes. I know things could be worse. I know people are starving in Gaza. Shit’s about to get real in the United States as support benefits are crumbled by the Big Beautiful Bill. I saw the impact this administration is having even on the privileged as we toured colleges this summer: less emphasis on services, less emphasis on equity, less emphasis on choices, less emphasis on diversity, and the University of Delaware didn’t even mention that President Joe Biden was an alum. Meanwhile, I feel guilty because we are a rich white family so my kid will be okay even if we have to pay more tuition. Heck, she may be better off, because international students aren’t interested in attending school in a country where they might be being swept off the streets by ICE agents. (We toured Tufts right after Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by a plainclothes agent off the street in Boston. Unsurprisingly, it was the worst tour we’ve been on. They were probably distracted.)
I know I’m a whiney old lady. I have had a year off. I have enjoyed quality time with my family and friends. I have delighted being available for my kid before she goes off to college next year. Having my mom and husband read my book (and enjoy it) has been a highpoint of my life. Financially we are doing okay, even without my year of salary, because somehow the chaos since election day hasn’t impacted our investments – see rich white family note above.
Tomorrow I will suck it up and be grateful again, but today is my birthday. Today I get to be frustrated at myself for my lack of willpower and becoming a dumpy old lady. Today I get to be aggravated because in less than a year I’ve gone from being a very successful career woman, who did things like meet Secretaries of Energy and Transportation and accepted invitations to the White House, to a worthless 51 year old woman. Today I get to be frustrated because there is so much work to do with my book, and my dozen this year (so far) for short stories, writing conferences, and jobs don’t give me any hope that I can write more than drivel, so what’s the point anyway?
Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday with friends. Next week I will celebrate with my family. Today I miss the hope of turning 50.
An afternoon game at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado
I saw two white men kneeling on a brown man, forcing his face into the blacktop of the highway yesterday afternoon. Tonight, in the wee hours of July 4th, my country’s birthday, I cannot sleep because I cannot understand how we got here.
Five of us, two teenagers and three adults, were driving home from a baseball game on Interstate 25. Traffic slowed, and my daughter asked why there was a car facing the wrong way on the road. Sure enough, there was an empty SUV pointed north in the southbound lane. Strange, but we, and all the other cars, swerved around it and drove on. What were we going to do, stop turn the SUV around? Before the next exit, there were two munched cars on the side of the road. The people in that accident were out and about, so I assumed it was a normal highway fender bender. Maybe related to the backwards SUV? We kept driving.
Then I saw the third accident. A person with copper skin, an orange shirt, and kinky black hair was getting resuscitated by the side of the road. He was on the ground and a white man had his hands over his heart. I saw the white man doing chest compressions and I did that thing where I didn’t want to look for fear of the gore, but I looked anyway. And then I really saw. The man was not doing chest compressions. The man, a white man, was kneeling on the brown man. The white man had the arms of the brown man pulled behind his back. The white man wasn’t saving the brown man’s life, but pressing his body into the asphalt. The brown man’s face was smashed into the black asphalt on a 91 degree day. Next to the white man knelt another white man. Then we were past them. I’m humiliated to say we didn’t do anything. We just drove on and got ice cream, like we were planning. While a man was being pressed into the scalding highway we got ice cream.
We aren’t monsters. We talked about the scene. Four of us had the same life saving first impression, followed by an oh-shit moment. My daughter’s friend never doubted that she was seeing a white man kneeling on a brown man. We all agreed that the men weren’t police. They weren’t in uniforms. They were men, like my husband, forcing another man into the street. My daughter’s friend, the one with the clearest vision of the situation, commented that the white men had the brown man’s head awfully close to the oncoming traffic, like they didn’t care if he got run over. She wasn’t wrong. My friend wondered what she could do in retirement to make things better. On our way home, we drove past the scene, but traffic had cleared and the tableau was gone.
How did my country end up here? In my almost 51 years, I never dreamed I would witness such a thing. This was a story my dad would tell me from his childhood in Texas. After the fact, I wonder if I’d been alone, would I have stopped? If I’d been driving, would I have stopped? I’m CPR trained. If they were doing compressions I could have helped. If I had mistakenly stopped to help and realized what was going on, could I have made them see the man as a human being who should be treated with dignity? Should I have called someone? Later in the day, I logged onto the godforsaken Twitter app to check the Denver Police feed, but there was nothing. I checked the Facebook Colorado State Patrol feed and there was nothing. Nothing about a backwards car, an accident, or a public assault on a brown man anywhere.
I know there’s a phone number I’m supposed to call if I see ICE agents in our metro area, but I didn’t think of that until tonight. Do they want to hear about something that happened hours ago? I am ashamed of myself. I am a white lady and I need to do better. The country that exists in my head, where people stop by the side of the road to help people is gone. I’m ashamed of my reaction and my behavior. I have the same sick feeling I had when I learned that other families taught their kids how to be safe with the police, while I grew up in a bubble thinking all police would help me.
On our way into the baseball game, we followed a man whose shirt read “Gunpa, like a Grandpa but with more guns and more fun.” At the baseball game the Colorado Rockies were playing the Houston Astros, and I was aggravated by all the obnoxious Texas fans. I stood quietly during the national anthem, while the woman next to me held her hand over her heart and belted out the song. At the 7th inning stretch I remarked that I was grateful we no longer sang “God Bless America” after “Take Me out to the Ballgame.” Those little differences seem like they could exist in the same country. The kind of annoying disparities that make up a population of human beings. Meanwhile, the chasm between the country I thought I lived in, where men stop to do CPR on another man, and the country I actually live in, where men publicly assault other men on the highway, don’t feel like they should exist on the same planet. I need to learn to live in the reality that actually exists, as awful as it is.
At the grocery store last week, I paid $14 for a dozen organic free range brown eggs. It was the only carton left. I realize you are busy writing executive orders and antagonizing foreign countries, so I wanted to offer my services as your new United States Egg Czar.
I own six chickens ranging in age from two to six years. Yes, the chickens have names: Shadow, Speckles, Acadia, Sequoia, Delaine, and Keeley. (I know! I thought the same thing. The last two totally sound like they could be your White House press secretary.)
Having been a chicken tender for almost a decade, I am the expert you need.
Let me start by explaining how we arrived at this crisis point. It’s a problem you know well. DEI. In the 1970s, there were no brown eggs. Eggs came in a cardboard carton with 12 perfect white orbs. Today we pay extra for blue and brown eggs. That’s right. Colored eggs cost more. Absolutely offensive. My first act will end egg diversity. Let’s make eggs great again.
Wait, less eggs? Won’t that make the cost of eggs go up even more? No. Because the DEI issue runs deeper than shell color. The shocking truth is that the entire egg production industry is made up of girl chickens. Boy chickens are not included in this important work. Our country was so busy making opportunities for girl chickens under the auspices of equity they forgot about the roosters. We could double our egg generation capacity by stopping this woke practice.
Personally, I can tell you the female chicken problems are insidious. Remember I said I had to pay $14 for eggs, but then I mentioned I have chickens. Shouldn’t my girls be pooping out free eggs? They should. But my lazy hens laid a total of four eggs from Election Day to Inauguration Day.
It’s tempting to blame Shadow and Speckles, because old lady chickens stop producing eggs. But you and I know that the elderly deserve respect, even if they have limitations. My young chickens, Acadia and Sequoia, are the problems. At two years old, they are the equivalent of human teenagers. In November that young fertile duo decided their look was mid and dropped all their feathers. Thinking only of themselves, those selfish fashionistas ran around naked, knowing that chicken bodies can either make eggs or new feathers. This feather shedding even has a repulsive name: molting. No, the problem isn’t limited to my coop. All hens are vain.
Furthermore, experience tells us that hens do not lay eggs unless there is enough light. I hypothesize this is because chicken ladies are weak and afraid. They want to huddle together and gossip, not sit alone in the cold and dark producing food for humans.
Teenage boy chickens wouldn’t care about fashion. They wouldn’t be afraid. They’d strut around in their long shorts and hoodies and do their damn job. Let us start a program to get roosters in the egg production business and show these hens what real egg laying looks like. (Ignore the naysayers whining about biology.)
Ugh. The whining. Seriously, only an idiot wouldn’t see this price spike coming. I would go so far as to say eggs should cost $14 each given the discrimination, aging, molting, and darkness. No. $1400 each, all winter long. Only worthy billionaires should be able to afford luxuries like French toast casserole on Christmas morning. We live in a capitalistic society. This is basic supply and demand.
I know. Americans don’t care about poultry science or economic systems. They want cheap eggs. Too bad. Thankfully we are visionaries with multifaceted plans. We know how to justify expensive things. Tariffs. I don’t exactly understand how tariffs work, but who does? Let’s tariff the heck out of all French sounding foods then rebrand eggs as œufs (French for egg). Then if some “American” wants a meal of fried œufs with a side of brie, poutine, and escargot, bon appétit. It sounds disgusting and will cost them a pretty penny. (Oh, sorry, you got rid of pennies.) It will cost them a quality quarter.
Now for the pièce de resistance. This will all fix itself soon. There is a reason all springtime rituals include eggs. When chickens aren’t being vain and fearful, when their feathers are full and fluffy, and when the sun is shining, eggs flow like manna from chicken butts. It’s true. By Easter and Passover, Americans will have their $2 a dozen eggs. Really. Just yesterday I skipped out to my back yard and collected five eggs from my girls. Like magic, your campaign promise will be delivered.
If anyone mentions the bird flu just ignore them. I’m sure it’s a hoax.
It’s been 6 months and 6 days since I stepped away from my job supporting the US Department of Energy, US Federal Highway Administration, US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and National Resources Canada where I helped build and document electric charging stations and alternative fuel stations around northern North America. When I left, the election hadn’t happened yet. Kamala Harris was 47 days into her campaign and people at work were confident in her presidency. I even had one of my bosses scoff at me when I mentioned that one of my reasons for leaving was the potential impact on our work from a Trump presidency. He insisted, “That’s never going to happen.”
It happened. One day shy of two months after I left my job supporting the Federal Government Trump won. Four and a half months after I left he took office, and since then I’ve watched from a distance as he’s demolished the work I spent decades building. It’s weird not being in the trenches with my old co-workers trying to salvage what we can.
I swear, if one more person asks me, “Aren’t you SOOOO GLAD you got out when you did?” I’m going to punch them. I’m sorry if it’s you, but I’m sick of it. I worked in public service because I believe in the importance of what the government does for it’s people. I built a team of smart, innovative, caring people who wanted to change the world and our country for the better. I left for a year, not because I wanted to be the first in the swamp drainage, but because I was tired and burned out from working and doing so much. My job consisted of managing 25 people with 30% of my time, and with the other 70% I supported a $16M portfolio, did business development, and managed five of my own projects where I was an individual contributor. I’m so fucking tired of hearing the bullshit about lazy government workers who do nothing. That was not my experience. I’m sick that my team and my projects are being demolished and I can’t help. But I also know that if I was still there, I’d probably be locked away in some padded room rocking slowly, because I was so far over capacity. I would have had no ability to continue working my ass off while the president and his cabinet destroyed our government.
Instead of having an insider’s perspective on the dismantling of the great experiment that was the United States of America’s constitutional division of power, I have been writing. I also left my job, because I had a dream I wanted to realize: to finish my novel. My first month I polished up a short fiction piece, that I love, called Bumblecat. I’m afraid it might never find a home because it’s been rejected five times since I started shopping it around, and it talks about the USDA, which may be dissolved any day. I wrote a second piece about becoming the United States Egg Czar. That one is quite funny, and was also rejected. (But the rejection said it was funny, so I know it is actually funny.) It’s going up on the blog this weekend, because it’s a timely piece and I don’t want it to expire. I hope you like it. The third piece, which will go up on my blog next week is a gut wrencher of a piece about my cat who died in November of 2024. It was also rejected and since it is outside of my normal satire and speculative fiction space and I’m not in the mood to research a bunch of new markets to reject me.
Rejection is my life’s theme right now. My daughter just got cut from the club basketball team she’s been playing on for 4 years, for her senior season. I’ve had 7 writing rejections in 2025. As a country, we are rejecting the values that I hold dear. Honestly, I feel like I exist in a universe that has no room for me.
Thank goodness I’m creating a whole new universe where I can escape. While I’m woefully behind where I’d like to be in my book, I really like it. The people are fascinating and their struggles are meaningful. When I left in September, I expected to have the manuscript done and ready to start shipping to agents by the end of this month. Ha ha. Turns out creative pursuits do not work like technical projects. I can’t lay out a Gantt chart filled with deliverables, milestones, and deadlines and make something like a novel happen. Thankfully after about 3 months of forcing myself to a schedule, I modified my approach and now have half of a book done. I’ve got a plan for the final half all written out with colorful pens on sticky notes stuck to a cardboard thing you’d use at a science fair. I know where I’m going and I’m excited about the direction. I’ve also got book 2 pretty solidified in my head, and book 3 keeps popping in to say “hello.”
The plan was to give this writing thing a year, and then go back to work. But right now, I don’t think there will be work to go back to. My expertise in electric cars and electric car charging has limited value in our country. My 20 years of experience working across the Federal Government is meaningless once the departments I know are dissolved. And everything I write gets rejected, so even if I get this book done, it’s unlikely to ever find a home. All I can do on a daily basis is kick all those worries down the road for future Johanna. Present Johanna still has 6 months of freedom to finish her dream of writing a book, and I try to push away the fear and worry to focus on creating a new world that doesn’t suck as much as this one. Hopefully you’ll get to read about it someday.
January 2021 things were still strange in my world. I was working at home. My daughter’s school delayed their winter start, trying to figure out executing in-person and remote school, so we were both home. She was in sixth grade.
I’m a bit of a political junkie and January 6th, 2021 provided an excellent opportunity to witness something I’d never seen before. The counting of the electoral college votes. I had a light day of meetings and lots of busy work, so I decided to sit with my computer and kiddo to watch the process as an impromptu civics lesson.
MSNBC coverage of the simple process that was supposed to happen to certify the 2020 election
I knew shenanigans were planned for the floor. Republicans were going to protest the count and try to avoid certifying the results. A potentially additional lesson on how the foundation of our government, the peaceful transition of power, would be tested.
I can’t believe how badly we bombed our national test. I remember flashes from watching the news broadcast with my daughter. I remember the interns, young women in suits, protecting the electoral college votes and whisking them away from the mob storming the capital. In my memory the votes were in wooden chests that invoked the history and importance of their contents. My memory is not wrong. I remember watching a gurney rolled out of the capital building and my daughter asking me, “Did someone die?” With the sheet pulled up over the body, I could only respond, “I think so.” My memory is not wrong. Windows were broken in our capitol and men wearing dead animals on their heads walked the floor of the House and Senate. As a lover of dystopian novels, reality stretched the bounds of my imagination that day while I watched a mob vandalize and disrespect our capitol, our country, and our system of government. I watched start to finish. It was not a “day of love” and those people were not “patriots”.
Image of my television showing the January 6th riot. One man holds Trump flags while another holds a Confederate flag in the United States Capitol.
It was a civics lesson that would continue. I remember the day last year when my daughter came home from her AP US History class ebullient about the importance of the peaceful transfer of power. Her knowledge had finally caught up with her experiences and she went on and on about how January 6th was the antithesis of the principles that make our country special. In two years she’ll cast her first ballot, and she can’t wait. Already she’s a highly informed voter.
My first election in 1992 I was a single issue voter. Straight democrat to protect abortion rights. When I was in my late teens and twenties unwanted pregnancies weren’t about a late term abortions to save the life of the mother. They weren’t about fetal abnormalities or ectopic pregnancies. They were about boyfriends who already broke up with you, and you didn’t want their baby. They were about being on the precipice of starting your own life and knowing your newly hatched dreams wouldn’t be possible with a child. They were about your parents, who wouldn’t understand. They were about getting loans from your friends for the $300 procedure, because if you couldn’t afford an abortion how were you going to afford a kid? They were about not wanting to be a mother and not wanting to join your life to a partner. That precious potential of young women was the most important thing in my world, and I voted to protect myself and my friends.
Now that protection is gone. Thank goodness pharmaceutical abortions were developed since my first election in 1992. When Dobbs took away our constitutional right I immediately ordered abortion medication. Not because I was pregnant. Not because anyone I knew was pregnant. But because I have had friends show up on my doorstep, needing help, and I wanted to make sure that help was available in the future. While mine and other woman’s rights to bodily autonomy are protected in my state, and hopefully will soon be in our constitution, I don’t trust that my country will continue to protect my right to choice.
My memory is not wrong. In high school I was told that abortion rights were protected by Roe and would never go away. Now I am told that January 6th wasn’t a riot incited by a Trump supporting mob. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees have revoked my rights as a human being. Trump’s followers desecrated our capitol and the ideals of our country.
I want to be able to remember how in 2024, we rejected violence and authoritarian control. I want to remember sitting next to my daughter and watching as we elect our first woman president. I want to remember what it’s like to have a leader who has lived in a female body with female vulnerabilities for 60 years and how that changed our country for the better. I want us to remember how to celebrate our differences and learn from each other again. I’m ready to remember the first moments of a Harris presidency.
We were so fucking careful for six hundred and sixty-two days. We canceled camping trips and school trips for fear of being infected. For fear of infecting others. We quarantined fourteen days before Christmas Eve 2020, just so we could spend a few hours with family without masks. My daughter played soccer games (outdoors), basketball games (indoors), and volleyball matches (indoors) masked. She wore masks at the beginning of cross country meets. My husband and I? We watched games and races apart from other families with our lower faces hidden behind our own masks.
It wasn’t enough. Six hundred and fifty-eight days of being safe and somehow COVID found my daughter. When you are careful, you know exactly when infection occurs, even if you don’t know how. We’d been quarantining after an exposure to a family friend. For five days from 12/26 – 12/31 my daughter didn’t leave the house, but when our New Years Eve plans were canceled because our friend (the same one we were exposed to) was still testing positive, I made a terrible decision, “Let’s just go to the hockey game. No one will be there.” Our first mistake.
My daughter and I put on our masks in the car. They stayed on the entire walk to the game and the entire game. No one was there. We got seats one row up and 6 seats over from the nearest people. People who didn’t wear masks the entire game. The woman in the group coughed several times. I glared at her a lot as if my mommy eyes could stop any germs. At the far end of the row, another group of maskless fans sat farther away, but didn’t show any signs of unhealthiness. Everyone was at least 10 feet away, probably more. No one was behind us to breathe their COVID-y germs down on us. We had masks on: my husband and I KN95s, but my daughter had asked to only wear a surgical mask. Our second mistake.
At intermission, we walked down through the concourse. My daughter had to use the bathroom. Our third mistake. After a moments hesitation, I followed her, deciding I would go too. We both went, but in stalls a distance from each other. We washed hands near masked women, and then went to visit friends at the game who we hadn’t seen in at least six hundred and fifty-eight days. They wore masks. We wore masks. We hugged, but they had COVID recently, so it was a safe hug, but we were near other people. I didn’t note the mask wearing of those strangers because I was so happy to see our friends again. Our fourth mistake.
We spent the rest of the game at our seats. Near the coughing woman. Near the maskless fans. My daughter sat between my husband and I in her less-protective surgical mask. After the game, it was cold, so we wore our masks all the way to the car, keeping our faces warm and avoiding the germs of the unmasked fans walking near us.
My husband and I were boosted, but kids my daughter’s age were not yet approved. The CDC wouldn’t recommend her booster until two days after she tested positive for COVID; six days after she was infected. All the times I’d thought poorly of people who were infected right before they could get vaccinated came back to me in a karmic vengeance. Our fifth mistake? Hard to say, because we hadn’t heard that boosters were imminent, but we did know it had been over six months since her shots, and we knew Omicron was raging. So yes, let’s count that as mistake five.
We went to another hockey game the next day. Same situation, but more fans. The guy next to me was drunk and kept leaning in to talk to me, touch me. We moved seats so I was out of reach. Could my daughter have been infected then? Sure. But neither me, my husband, our friends, or our friends’ unboosted kids got COVID.
On January 2nd my daughter’s phone pinged with a notification that she’d been near someone with COVID on December 31st. I didn’t get the notification, nor did my husband. The only time we were apart was in the bathroom. Could the state notification system have been smart enough to know that my husband and I had better masks than my daughter? Of course not. Right?
Monday, January 3rd, my daughter felt crappy when she woke up. A wicked headache and a bit congested. My husband had just recovered from a bad cold (not COVID, he tested three times). Maybe she caught it? Or perhaps irritation from all the residual particulates in the air from the fires that burned Superior and Louisville days before? She had no cough and no fever, but we tested her for COVID just in case. Negative, so she spent a few hours with my parents (mistake six), came home and went for an unmasked walk outside with a friend (mistake seven), and then went to her club basketball practice (mistake eight). At least she wore a mask at basketball, like always.
Tuesday she went back to school (mistake nine). Her head still hurt and she didn’t feel great. Of course she’d also slept less than 4 hours. I know because I slept with her. She was anxious about school and finally I gave up and joined her in bed so she could get some rest. All night we shared recycled breath. (mistake ten) “It feels like knives are stabbing my eyes,” she said as she got ready for school. I gave her a Tylenol, because I know how horrible a lack of sleep can make you feel: especially your eyes. Testing crossed my mind, but she was negative the day before and we only had five tests left (mistake eleven). I picked her up from school and she was feeling pretty good. She had an hour to eat a snack and change and then off to her school basketball practice (mistake twelve). After dinner she started feeling really cruddy, so we tested. Positive for COVID. My husband and I tested. Negative.
We felt terrible, and our penance was the COVID walk of shame. I told my parents their granddaughter had exposed them to COVID. She had exposed my immunocompromised father, the one consistent family fear of this pandemic. At least they were both vaccinated and boosted. My husband texted the parents of her (vaccinated, not boosted) walk friend. I emailed basketball coaches, and texted hockey friends. My final note was to school “friends”: the ones who hadn’t invited her to New Year’s, the ones who made fun of her for not going on their school trip, and ones who hadn’t bothered to invite her to any of their outings during the school break. (You know, those middle school “friends.”) I let all their moms know that my daughter was positive and had exposed their daughters to COVID throughout the school day. Everyone was either nice enough, or ignored my note. Was there a little snideness in their responses? A little smugness? Impossible to tell from email, but I know they found us overcautious, ridiculous, and exhausting for six hundred and sixty-two days. I’m sure at least one family felt a little secret joy that the uppity family was knocked off their pedestal. My daughter’s final penance? The recital all the “friends” were going to over the weekend was now out of the question. My kid couldn’t go because of isolation protocols. Another demerit. Another chance to get left out.
What was the tally of our even dozen mistakes?
My daughter, infected with COVID
Her walking friend, infected with COVID
As far as we know, that’s it. My parents were spared. My husband and I were spared. Both my mom and I felt bad enough to test three days after my daughter tested positive, but we were negative and both feel fine now. Did we have it, and our booster helped us fight off the infection? Who knows. No classmates or teammates were impacted. The family we infected has been careful, like us, during the pandemic, and they have been kind as our daughters go through COVID together. We’ve helped each other find tests and traded food ideas as our girls lost their sense of taste. The girls are happy to have an isolation buddy to do homework with via Facetime. As much as neither family ever wanted to end up in this situation we are making the best of things.
But my kid has a disease we know little about. She lost her sense of taste on day 6, so her symptoms aren’t decreasing. She’s still testing positive on day 7. No fever, and blood oxygen levels consistently above 96%. Protocol says she can go back to school tomorrow, but really? I’m going to send my daughter who doesn’t feel great and is testing positive to school? Sure she didn’t infect anyone last time, but do we push our luck? Push the luck of other families?
I’d love to say that I’m super zen about all this. That I can look back and say we were super risky, made twelve mistakes, and all that happened was our daughter and her friend got infected, but I’m not zen at all. I’m fucking angry. Look at my mistakes and tell me what parent, what person, which of you, hasn’t made the same mistakes. In fact, maybe you have made even bigger mistakes without masks or without testing. One of my mistakes was letting my kid go to the bathroom with only a surgical mask on. Should I have told her to hold it? Go when it wasn’t as busy? Force her to wear an N95 mask? What we did wasn’t a mistake. We followed proper protocol. She made another mistake when going on an unmasked walk outside with her friend the day she tested negative for COVID. Raise your hand if you’ve gone outside and talked to someone without a mask. I’m betting every one of you has your hand raised. And did you have a negative COVID test earlier that day? I’m guessing not. Now guess what? You gave your friend COVID. Fuck that. And sure, my kid was not boosted, but she couldn’t be. The damn CDC had to wait FOUR DAYS to approve the FDA’s recommendation and even those assholes waited until it had been over SEVEN months since the kids with the most responsible families got their kids vaccinated. This is all utterly unfair bullshit.
Now I get to worry about long COVID, and what long term impacts this virus will have on my daughter. Will she still be able to run? Play sports? What about even longer unknown impacts? I get to worry because there are no hospital beds and if she takes a turn for the worse there will be no oxygen for her, no ICU, and sure as hell no treatments. For making a dozen mistakes, I get to be that parent. The one who risked her kid’s life, her families’ lives, and her friends’ lives for a hockey game. Except, I didn’t do anything that any safe family hasn’t done this pandemic. And I’m angry as hell for all the people who haven’t been careful, who haven’t worn a mask, and who haven’t been vaccinated so this damned virus keeps mutating. Every selfish person who just can’t bother to put something over their nose and mouth and get a nothing-short-of-miraculous-vaccine is culpable for my kid’s illness. At least as much as I am for making what I admit is one bad decision: to go to a hockey game with Omicron raging.
For six hundred and sixty-two days we were careful, responsible members of society and this just sucks. If I was a toddler I’d be pounding and kicking on the floor screaming a tantrum of “it’s not fair.” As a fourty-seven year old, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that you’ll find me there tomorrow.
Someday I will be a morning person. I will jump out of bed before the sun even rises, lace up my running shoes, greet the day with the chirpy birds, and let the pink glow of the sun warm my soul as it lights the sky. Upon arriving home, I will feed the chickens and barn cat — respectively thanking them for my eggs and for killing the rats. Then I will feed the house cats and take a moment to appreciate the happiness they bring to my life. Exercise, gratitude, and chores complete, I will shower, shave, and be ready to greet my waking family with well-groomed joy knowing my day has begun with no sleeping-in or running-late guilt.
Someday my body will be a temple. I will feed it nothing but wholesome food. All the fruits and veggies it can take. Eggs from my beloved chickens. Cheese from cows lovingly hand milked in pastures where they eat nothing but all organic free range vegetation. I will cook my own meals, and when I can’t, I will only eat at restaurants that also consider my body a temple worthy of local low-carbon-emission produce. Occasionally I will allow myself a treat of a single square of bitter dark chocolate, so I can savor both the sweet of the dessert and the bitterness off mistreating my temple. The only beverage I will ever drink is pure clean water from glass containers. I will exercise everyday, but vary my routine from running to yoga to Pilates to ensure my cardiovascular health, flexibility, and strength.
Someday I will be on time to everything. After my blissful morning and my temple-worthy breakfast I will drop my child off at school exactly seven minutes early. Time for her to play a bit, and visit with her friends. Then when the bell rings I will walk my perfectly dressed self — in a size six, a slim nonjudgmental size — to my car and drive to work, arriving exactly at 8:30. People will depend on me, knowing if they schedule an 8:30 meeting I will be there nonplussed and ready to face whatever challenge they need faced. After working an 8 hour day — not including the 0.5 hours spent enjoying the wholesome lunch I packed, then walking around the park to clear my mind — I will be waiting for my daughter at 3:00, just as the bell rings, to walk her home from school. Hand in hand, we’ll talk about her day and my day as we much on fresh vegetables from our garden. She will have friends, I will be successful at work, she will be successful at school, and we will be so proud of each other. Then I’ll drive her, and all her friends, in my electric vehicle — powered by solar panels installed on our home’s roof — to whatever practice she has that day: carpooling to ensure our position in the social hierarchy while minimizing our carbon footprint.
Someday I will make good use of all the time available to me. While my daughter practices I’ll be using that time to write my novel, do grad school homework, catch up with beloved friends and family, or knit scarves for the poor. However, I will willingly pause to talk with other sports parents where I will be modest about my child and supportive of their children and their worries about traffic. I won’t squander time dinking on my phone, talking to parents who make me want to stab my eyes out, or half-listen to eye-stabby parents while dinking on my phone. I will be present and understanding.
Someday my evenings will run like clockwork. After practice, I’ll enjoy a wholesome meal with my family. We will all eat exactly the same thing, correctly proportioned to our body mass index. Dishes will be cleared, washed, and the kitchen will be cleaned in harmony, then everyone will sit down to homework. (Well, everyone but my husband who will enjoy a well deserved hour of rest watching some sporting event, but he will not be too loud or too emotionally attached to the event.) Homework done, my daughter will bathe, and I will read aloud to her for 20 minutes. Then she will make her lunch, brush her teeth, brush her hair, put on pajamas, and deposit her dirty clothes into her hamper. She will go to sleep by herself in her own room in her own bed after reading to herself for exactly 10 minutes.
Someday my late nights will be all my own time. Having accomplished everything I needed to do while in the office, I will spend 45 minutes catching up with my husband. 2.5 times per week we will have age-appropriate sex. Sated or not, I will then spend a few hours editing my novel, writing a blog post, or drafting a new short story. Sometimes, I will work a bit on a knitted gift for a friend, or hand-write a few thank you notes. Occasionally I will document my day’s accomplishments in a perfect Instagram shot or Tweet. Before bed, I will do a quick clean up of the house – filling the dishwasher, folding laundry, picking up clutter, sweeping, and wiping down counters and other surfaces – before reading for 30 minutes and then drifting off for an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep.
I was born from a non-hugger, so all this current rigmarole about “can I even hug my coworker anymore” has me baffled. From childhood I learned the discomfort that hugs can cause, and was progressively raised to ask permission before initiating physical contact with another human being. If you come into my office at work crying I will stand up put my arms out and ask, “Are you a hugger?” If you are, then you are welcome to step into my hug. If you are not, then you can shake your head, continue weeping, and I will offer you a tissue. However, I will not force a tissue upon you and wipe your face, because what if you don’t like tissues?
One of my best friends is also a non-hugger. For ten years we have worked alongside each other, raised our girls together, and I have never hugged her. I’ve watched others hug her and seen her tolerate the contact. She’s never pushed back or rejected the hug, because she’s a polite person, but I always wonder why others’ need to hug is more important than her desire to not be hugged. Especially when she is in crisis, I marvel at how people unknowingly make the situation worse by hugging her.
As I troll the social network scene I notice person after person commenting on how uncomfortable this “no hugging” mandate makes them, and I think about all the people who have been made uncomfortable by their hugs. So I have come up with a rubric for hugging which I call “The Wet-willy Guide to Platonic Touching.” Here is how it works.
The Wet-willy Guide to Platonic Touching
Put yourself in a hugging scenario. Maybe a colleague has just returned from medical leave and you want to welcome him back. Perhaps you haven’t seen a client in a year and you find yourselves in a meeting together. After twenty years you see your old lab partner from college at the grocery store. Before you hug translate the action of hugging into a wet-willy.
For those of you unaware, the wet-willy is the process of sticking your finger into your mouth and thoroughly coating it with saliva. You then remove the dripping finger from your mouth and place it into another person’s ear and wiggle your finger around a bit. It’s a common practice among elementary aged boys.
So now, consider each of the scenarios above. Would you give that person a wet-willy? Of course it will depend on the relationship. If you and the colleague are good friends outside of work maybe an impromptu spitty finger in the ear will be fine. The client situation? Probably never a good idea. The relationship plus the public venue makes for an unlikely successful ear rooting. The old lab partner? Maybe the two of you enjoyed a carefree relationship in the past, but do you know where her ear has been or where she has been? Maybe she’s just been released from an anger management program and you could cause her to relapse into her old unwelcome bludgeoning ways. Maybe she’s joined a religion which does not allow for physical contact outside of marriage. Either way, probably not worth the risk to you or her.
Personally, I would not wet-willy in any of these situations. It just seems too perilous. If I’d had a prior wet-willy relationship with these folks, I might ask “Hey you wanna wet-willy?!?” or even stick my finger in my mouth and offer it, allowing them to run forward with their ear proffered.
Assuming you are in normal healthy relationships, there are probably situations where you don’t have to ask, and those will differ by person. I’d totally wet-willy my kiddo. I’d also do it to my husband, who would hate it, but it’s within the norms of our physical relationship. There are a few friends, and that’s about it. Now, consider who you would unabashedly wet-willy your life. Maybe you have a more physical family than I do, in which case your your brother, your sisters, your parents, your spouse or your child might love wet-willy contact. (And your brother will probably do it regardless just because it makes you uncomfortable, because that’s what brother’s do. Sibling relationships are based on forgiving cruelty.) If the person isn’t on your wet-willy list then don’t enter their ear without asking. Sure, you might get rejected, but a “no thank you” response and the shot to your ego is better than the alternative.
Now, let’s say you assumed incorrectly and the person you thought was accepting of wet-willies is not. You stick your finger in their ear and they shriek, “Oh gross! What the hell is wrong with you?” There is an immediate and appropriate response.
You say, “I am so sorry I made you uncomfortable. I won’t wet-willy you again. Is there anything I can do to make it better?”
Do not explain to them how you like wet-willies or how you thought you had a wet-willy relationship or how most people really like your wet-willies. No. Do not get mad at them because you are embarrassed they rejected you. Don’t shame them because they do not share your affection for spitty ears. They don’t need to know about how in your family wet-willies are the epitome of caring. Finally, in no circumstances is it okay to wet-willy them again, to show how really inoffensive your wet-willies are.
Now, go back and read the wet-willy instructions as hugs. Hugs aren’t that different. It involves even more body contact and on sweaty days or in crying situations there’s an exchange of bodily fluids. A hug can be just as invasive to an individual. So before you hug, just ask yourself, would I give this person a wet-willy without asking? If the answer is no, than it’s really simple to say, “Do you want a hug?” Wait for a response before acting, and respect the wishes of the person you care enough to hug.
What in the hell? Are your tongues made of stainless steel? Is the reason you must dump sriracha on everything because your morning coffee has burned your taste-buds into oblivion?
Okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to come on so strong. But really, on Monday I met a recent graduate for a mentoring session at a coffee house, because that’s where you do such things. My typical morning beverage of ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper was not available (Oh God, yes I know drinking artificially sweetened soda is going to give me Alzheimer’s) and it was snowing out, so I decided to get myself a nice warm Earl Grey tea.
I let the tea steep, added a smidge of sugar, put the adult sippy cup lid back on and took a tentative sip. I could feel the individual taste-buds searing off as the boiling tea traveled from my lips to my esophagus. This happens every…single…time I drink hot beverages. Seriously though, it had been 15 minutes since my tea was served, and I was starting to feel awkward not drinking while the student guzzled his coffee with apparent delight. I did not start screaming or rush to the barista to demand an ice cube – I am a grown up after all – but I wanted to.
I’ve got to be some kind of weird mutant. My tongue must be made of some delicate recessive tissue which cannot withstand boiling liquids like the normal tongues of the 21st century. (I think it must have come from my dad’s side of the family, because he doesn’t drink hot beverages either.) Every morning I witness hordes of coworkers drinking their cardboard sweater wearing beverage – because otherwise the cup is too hot to hold SO WHY WOULD YOU IMBIBE THE CONTENTS – and I wonder if I drink differently than others or is my physiology fundamentally flawed?
It’s been three days since my hot beverage encounter. I can almost feel the center of my tongue again and am hoping my taste will fully return by Thanksgiving. Until then, I may have to become one of those weirdos who eats dressing on their salad. Maybe the sliminess won’t bother me so much without nerve endings in my tongue.
Anyway, congratulations on your ability to drink hot beverages.
Afthead 